The way that he was looking at me made me want to drop all my reservations, drop my panties… or maybe just drop to my knees.
“How are you doing?” Okay. Wow. The first words that came out of my mouth were that boring? It was like none of the dates I’d gone on meant a damn thing. Off to a great start.
“Better now you’re here.” His voice was a purr.
God. Damn. It.
The guy barely said four words to me, and I was already wet.
Shit. Was my face turning red? This was embarrassing. “Sorry, to be barging back like this, but after that last date I could use a drink.”
“That bad, huh?” David reached up to grab me the good stuff, but not before I saw a little smirk on his face—was he happy that my last date didn’t go well?
Wait… was that a good thing or a bad thing that he was hoping that my date didn’t go well? What did thatmean?
As David seamlessly tipped Grey Goose into a cocktail shaker along with my grapefruit juice, I couldn’t look away from his biceps as he expertly shook the drink and poured it into my martini glass. When I went to get the drink out of his hand, his thumb stroked lightly across my wrist, making butterflies erupt deep in my stomach.
I could feel the heat of his touch as he traced a slight path, as if it were etched across my skin. His warm caress sank deep into me, so I’d never be able to forget how good he could make me feel.
God, I wanted him to keep touching me.
How was it fair that the sexiest man I’d ever met in my life was off-limits?
David grabbed himself a glass, poured himself a shot and leaned closer to me.
He was so close, andsonot close enough. Close enough for me to get lost in dreamy blue eyes—the color of a clear, cloudless day—while here I was feeling like I was skydiving. If I wasn’t careful I could easily see myself falling for him.
I’m not sure exactly what it was; maybe it was because this was the first time that I was talking to him when I wasn’t on a date with some other guy, but the vibe between us was totally different—almost as if I was on a date withhim.
He asked me if my last date was that bad… I could have told him that the date was literally trash—heaps of it all across the floor. But really it felt like what really went wrong with the last date wasn’t the mountain of garbage that served as a cockroach breeding ground… the bigger problem was that the date was with the wrongguy.
“So you seem happy to see me back here.” I smiled coyly at him.
Maybe it was the fumes of the alcohol that had gotten me bold, because I certainly hadn’t taken a single sip yet. Or maybe it was that I was starting to feel sick of chasing after all these subpar men, some of them couldn’t even be bothered to give half a shit about me, when this HAWT specimen of raw male perfection was watching me with desire written all over his face.
“I am. You’re too good for him.” David let his eyes drag slowly up and down my body, making it clear exactly why I was too good for my last date.
Oh.
Oh,fuck.
David thought that I was hot. This delicious man in front of me thought that I was hot. This was not a drill.
I was all ready to shove our drinks onto the floor and leap up into his arms… I wanted to pull my dress off right here at the bar—didn’t even give a shit about the one other guy tucking into dinner at the far table. He looked bored, like he wouldn’t mind a little bit of a show.
Because… like that was normal. There was like no way that public nudity could backfire on me or anything like that.
Yeah, this wasn’t like me. It felt like David had gotten me under his spell, made me forget myself.
“So, you’ve been on a lot of dates.” David swirled his drink around in his cup. He hadn’t even had a sip—instead, he was just sort of holding it as if it were emotional support alcohol.
He said it as if it were a question and he was hoping that he could be the answer.
A part of me wanted to straight up just forget about everything and just ask David for a date. Just screw it. Forget about the dating app, the matches I’ve already written down and highlighted in a notebook somewhere—a huge part of me wanted to forget about all of it and just go after the man I secretly wanted. The man who was therealreason I kept crawling back to the Thirsty Pearl, night after night, with my next horrible date in tow.
Right.
As much as I might like to jump David’s bones, I couldn’t let myself forget.
