Her knee against my knee.
Her body heat against my body heat.
I forced myself to stay still even though my vision turned hazy and all I could focus on was her. Her smell. Her voice. Her temptation.
“I don’t want money. I have plenty of money.”
She inhaled sharply, a slight shudder working down her spine. “What do you want then?”
Fuck, that was a loaded question.
And one without a simple answer.
“If I told you what I truly wanted, you’d run out of this place so fast I wouldn’t be able to catch you.”
She pulled back, eyes locking onto eyes. She licked her lips, and I fought every fucking instinct to kiss her. I knew she’d taste of tequila and orange juice. I knew she’d be warm. I knew she’d kiss me back.
Christ, this is harder than I thought.
Straightening, I swiped my drink and finished it in two long pulls. “What I want, Pim, is for you to steal me a spoon.”
She shuddered as the heat between us sputtered out thanks to my avoidance of everything we danced around. “A spoon?”
I rubbed my mouth with the back of my hand, enjoying this game because it put me back in power while stripping her of hers. “Yes. Specifically, a black spoon from behind the bar.”
“But you have countless spoons on the Phantom.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” Her growing belligerence made me hide a smirk that she felt secure enough to show attitude and annoyed because it made me even harder for her.
I lowered my voice to a rumble. “To make you obey me.”
She swallowed, staring long and hard.
Time stood still.
The hotel faded, shimmering with lust and rapidly straining boundaries of date etiquette. Who the hell cared about dinner and conversation when just the idea of spreading her over the bar, barking at everyone to leave, and taking her right here, right now almost made me come?
That fantasy was too good, too real.
I rearranged my rapidly hardening cock as she finally dropped her eyes and slid off the bar-stool. Her tension said she didn’t approve. Her cocked eyebrow said she’d obey…with vexation.
“Just one?” Her tone reeked with sarcasm. “Are you sure that’s enough?”
I let her surly remark go without reprimand. “Just one.”
She didn’t say another word as she huffed then moved around the bar, keeping an eye on the attendant who continued to speak to his elderly customer.
She moved like the ocean I loved. Like a river tumbling over pebbles, cashmere and velvet, never splashing, never breaking, journeying somewhere new.
The fact she did what I asked, all while her fire never extinguished fucking ruined me.
How had she been kept as a possession for all those years and never broken? How could she be treated so terribly but never allowed them to ruin her? Did no one else see what I did? See the empress in mortal form? See the warrior so much braver than anyone?
Fuck, if she moved and spoke and put me in my place so quickly after captivity, what would she be like a month from now? A year from now? I’d be the one on my knees begging for any attention she’d bestow.
Not dallying, Pim strode past glittering glasses and expensive bottles of liquor to the object of her theft. With swift fingers, she plucked a long-stemmed black spoon from the rack holding its brothers and sisters, and without shyness or fear, turned to face me.
The lights designed to entice patrons to buy bourbon or brandy from their richly decorated decanters dazzled over her face. She looked as if the stars had fallen from the sky and found a new home upon her skin.
Trapping me in her hot stare, she smiled once then inserted the utensil down her cleavage.
I gulped.
My legs tightened.
My body hardened.
My heart went a mile a minute.
This girl was too dangerous.
This girl was hell itself.
Swiftly, but with every authority, she walked back toward me just in time for the ma?tre d to announce our table was ready.
Chapter Twenty-Two
______________________________
Pim
THE SPOON HAD long since switched from cold metal to warm friend.
It nestled between my breasts like an emblem of who Elder was turning me into.
I’d stolen for him.
I’d headed from the bar with something that wasn’t mine and sat at a table with no guilt.
Sure, the hotel had thousands of spoons—and most would go missing over time or be thrown away from overuse—but I’d taken it without requesting, and I would keep it with no shame this time.
Unlike the photo frame, I didn’t itch with the need to return it. I relished in its weight inside my bra. Somehow, it became a talisman of power. I sat taller. I breathed deeper. I became alive with its magic wedged against my breasts.
The breasts I used to hate as they made men beat me.
The breasts I used to despise because it made me female when I wanted to be nothing. I wanted to be no one with no physical form, no pain, no blood or body to hurt.
But now…sitting with that spoon kissing my skin and Elder sizzling with everything he bottled up, I unlocked another part of me.
A part that was finally grateful to be a woman. Thankful I hadn’t given into death’s delightful siren and had survived. Life was better. Life was mine to steal and manipulate and decide.
I wanted to hug myself with how exciting the world suddenly seemed. How many opportunities and missed experiences I had to compensate for. I wanted to steal another spoon. And another. And another. I wanted forks and knives and vases and figurines. I wanted to take and take—to take back what was stolen from me.
Elder didn’t speak as we sat facing each other over an intimate table swathed in shadow and cloaked in privacy. A single candle flickered on the navy table cloth. A white rose beside it almost as perfect as the origami dollar ones Elder had perfected.
The air was heavy with everything we didn’t say.
He knew something had happened to me.
And I knew he battled far more than he let on.
We read each other—holding entire conversations in nuances and flickering eyelashes, building our own decisions and theories without asking for the truth from the other.
“Hello, I’ll be your waiter for tonight.”
I flinched in surprise as an unwanted interloper ruined the heightened atmosphere between Elder and me.
Elder tore his eyes from mine, smiling curtly at the stylish young man with a white cloth over his arm and crisp notepad and pen.
The waiter tipped his head. “Are you ready to order? What can I get you?”
My ears rung as Elder snatched up the unlooked at menu and barked a command. His seductive timbre entered my hearing, but his words didn’t compute.
I didn’t have a clue what we’d eat as my ears stopped working in favour of my eyes imprinting every little thing about him. The way he sipped his water after the waiter left. The way he fiddled with his silver wave cufflinks. The way he tried to stop looking at me, but within a few seconds, his eyes found mine again and couldn’t let go.
I had the same affliction.