Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine #4)(22)

“You don’t have to tell me that. I just had one of her breakfasts this morning.” He took a swallow of ice water. “And she’s cooked for us at Aurore Manor when she and Lucien were visiting. I won’t regret a damn thing about ordering this food, though. And don’t think I’m sharing any of my ribs and pizza.”

“Fine with me,” she said with determined unconcern. He rolled his eyes.

“All right,” he said with an air of being strong-armed, his gaze dipping to her mouth. “I’ll share.”

She smiled. Why did she always feel that shift in her lower belly and sex when his stare sunk to her mouth like that? It was like he could stroke the very deepest pit of her being with his eyes. The lighting in the bar probably didn’t change much from day to night given the three solitary windows all the way at the front. In the dimness, Kam strongly resembled Ian. Was that the real reason for that delicious sensation? Somehow, she didn’t think so.

A question wormed its way into her entrancement.

“Do you?” she asked quietly. His brows quirked slightly in puzzlement, so she clarified. “Have a woman back in France, I mean? Someone special?”

“I wouldn’t have had sex with you last Monday night if there was someone special.”

“That’s good to know,” she said, her gaze dropping at the mention of them having sex. It sounded illicit and exciting murmured in Kam’s rough, accented voice. Not to mention how him speaking the words caused graphic snippets of erotic memories to flash across her brain.

You want it now, ma petite minette? You want it fast and hard?

“Good to know I have a smattering of basic morality, you mean?” he asked.

“You aside, Kam,” she said, recovering from the charged memory. “It’s a good thing for any woman in this situation to hear.”

There was a loud metallic grinding sound from behind the bar and the bartender cursed. Kam winced slightly, but neither of them broke their stare.

“Ian never talked to you about it?” Kam asked.

“About what?”

“About me . . . and women.”

Now she was confused. “I thought you said there wasn’t anyone.”

“Not anyone special.”

She blinked. “Oh, I see. There are women, in the plural sense. The non-special variety. What does Ian know about it?”

His expression went blank. “Nothing.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “Then what would he have to tell me if he knew nothing? He stayed with you on several occasions at Aurore. Aren’t you suggesting he knew something about your comings and goings?” She flushed. Comings and goings. Every word she used with him seemed to take on a sexual tinge.

The bartender was now cursing in subdued tones while the woman who had come to seat them barked instructions at him. Kam’s impassive expression didn’t give.

“Okay, so we’re not going to talk about it,” she said.

He sighed in a beleaguered fashion. “No, it’s not that. Just . . . excuse me for a moment.”

“Okay.” Was he irritated at her probing? Maybe he was going to use the men’s room. She sat forward curiously when instead of walking toward the rear of the establishment where the restrooms were located, he calmly walked around the bar. The waitress immediately noticed his tall, formidable and uninvited form behind the bar, but the bartender kept wrestling with and poking at a countertop shake freezer and blender, cursing. Kam thumped the bartender on the shoulder.

“Do you mind?” he asked, pointing at the machine.

“Be my guest,” the bemused-looking bartender said after a second, stepping aside.

Kam had caught the attention of everyone sitting at the bar now, not just Lin. He stepped up to the machine and opened a utility cover. For a moment, he just studied the whole unit. Lin had the impression he was absorbing the machine somehow. It was a little how she felt whenever he looked at her with his laserlike stare that seemed to see more than just the surface, like he was examining her component parts and analyzing how they all worked together. She couldn’t say precisely what he did next, but if she had to describe it, she’d say he flipped one thing, twisted another, and jerked a third: one, two, three, quick as counting up to something good.

He turned on a switch and the blender made the familiar monotonous roar Lin had heard sporadically when they first entered.

“I hadn’t even noticed it was broken. That was nice of you to fix it,” Lin said in amazement when he sat down again next to her at the bar a moment later, waving off the bartender’s profuse thanks with a look of vague discomfort on his face.

“Not really,” he said, his mouth curled in a self-derisive expression. “I wanted my milk shake.”

“That’s not it,” she said quietly after studying him closely for several seconds. “It bothered you. Having something out of joint . . . broken in your vicinity. Didn’t it?”

He frowned, not replying for a moment.

“I can’t stand to be around a machine that doesn’t work. It’s like they call out to me. Scream at me. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”

She recalled him reading her body the other night with his touch. “And with human beings? Is it the same? Is that why you studied medicine?”

“Human beings, animals . . . anything that isn’t humming the way it should. Anything broken won’t let me rest. If something is out of rhythm, I hear it. Feel it. It puts me out of joint, too.”