RICH BOY BRIT (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)(9)

I took a deep breath and looked up. He was gazing at me. He had a thick black beard which covered his strong jaw, but not completely. His lips were kissable in that beard, but I pushed that thought away. It was not appropriate right now. His hair was black like his beard, and cropped close to his head, styled and swept to the side. I could see the top of his chest and the blue and red tribal tattoo. His eyes were earth-brown. He was hot. I couldn’t deny that. But I also couldn’t deny that what I had done was completely out of character.

I pleaded with my eyes. And then he nodded, and I knew he understood. We ate our main courses, and then Dad leaned over. “Jess?” he said.

I turned as though struck. I had been deep in my thoughts, deep in last night, deep in the dream world with the lion, with the man sitting across the table from me. “Yes?” I asked, as I severed a particular tough strand of fabric between my thumb and fingernail.

Dad, slightly drunk on alcohol, and very drunk on love, didn’t notice my nervousness. “Annabelle and I are going to dance.” He pointed at the dance floor at the far end of the restaurant, where a few children and old couples spun around to the soft lolling music.

“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, fine.”

They rose, left us, disappeared into the outer world of the restaurant, which might as well have been a thousand miles away; whatever the distance, it left me and the lion alone. I was sure my dress was in tatters now, but when I peered under the table, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe none of it is, I thought. Maybe it’s like the dress. None of it is as bad as I think it is. But thinking that, even knowing that, rarely helps. Nerves are nerves, and when they’re raw, they’re raw.

I sighed, and forced my hand from my dress. It shook when I placed it on the table. The table was cool and hard on my hand, and when I moved it I could see a damp outline where my sweaty fingertips had pressed against the surface. I looked at this for a few moments, so I wouldn’t have to look at him, at the lion, at Eli.

Then he cleared his throat. “So, your name is Jessica,” he said. It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t offer an answer. His voice was the James Bond voice that had made me come so much last night. His hand was the dagger hand that had made me come. His body was the body that had made me come. But this was nothing like last night. Last night had been secret, in the dark, with the anonymity of the masks. Now we were out in the open.

“It is,” I said, and risked a look into his eyes. He stared at me openly, his earth-brown eyes unreadable. “And your name is Eli.”

He nodded. “It is.” He looked down at his knuckles for a moment. A crease appeared between his eyes, like a math student trying to work out some particularly hard problem. The crease deepened, and he looked up at me. “This is crazy,” he said. “This is absolutely crazy. What are the odds of this? I honestly can’t think. It must be like a billion to one.”

“Probably,” I agreed. But I still couldn’t believe I was talking to the lion, that the lion and I were out in the open together, that the lion and I were looking across the table at each other. “What I did, I—” The golf-ball lump rose higher, stopping my words. I didn’t know how to go on. Sometimes emotions are clear, easily explained. I’m sad. I’m angry. I’m anxious, etc., etc., etc. But what do you say when you’re a hundred emotions at once, and then some? What do you do when your chest feels like it’s pulling you in ten different directions? I rubbed my throat, as though I could rub the lump away. The man was as handsome without the mask as he had been with the mask. I wished he was ugly, wished I was repulsed by him. It would’ve been easier to bury this if he had been. But he wasn’t. He was perfect.

I cleared my throat, coughing once, and then looked once again into his eyes. “It wasn’t like me,” I said. “What I did, I mean. It wasn’t like me at all. I’m not the kind of girl who—who does things like that. I don’t want you to think I am.”

“Why do you care what I think?” he said, his unreadable eyes glancing up and down me.

“I don’t!” I blurted, as though correcting a mistake. I was making a mess of this. “Just—” I sighed. My hands worried each other, fidgeting like a student who doesn’t know the answer to the lecturer’s question. “Can we forget it?” I said, unable to keep the note of pleading from my voice. I had fucked this man, but I didn’t know him. Maybe he was the vindictive type. Maybe he would get some thrill from seeing me squirm.

But he nodded, and I let out such a big sigh of relief that I swear I saw it reverberate on his beard. “We are meeting for the first time,” he said slowly. “You are an American woman I do not know. You are the daughter of my Mom’s boyfriend. That is all. Eh?”

I felt like an actor repeating my role, but it brought me comfort. “Yes,” I said. “And you are just the son of my dad’s girlfriend. That is all. Yes, that’s all.”

“See?” He raised an eyebrow. I got the sense he was trying to make me smile. He held his hands out before him, palms up, in a the-worst-is-over gesture. “We won’t speak of it ever again. We’ll pretend it never happened. Will that be enough to stop you from tearing your dress to pieces?”

I blushed. I hated to blush; it made me feel powerless and horribly young, but the blush didn’t care about that. I hadn’t realized he’d seen my dress-attacking antics. “That sounds good,” I said. “Let’s do that, Eli.”