Chapter 8 #3
He reached for my hand, and I gave it to him because apparently my common sense had decided to wait in the car. His fingers closed around mine, firm and warm, then he drew me in for a brief hug that should not have done half of what it did.
But it did.
His chest met mine for one second. His hand touched my back.
His scent moved over me, warm spice, expensive cologne, and skin, the kind of quiet masculinity that did not announce itself until it was already in your breathing.
It hazed my senses before I could prepare for it, and the feel of him, solid and close and careful with all that restraint, sent heat spreading through me so fast I almost got mad.
By the time he eased back, I needed the booth more than I wanted to admit.
Micah seemed to know it too, because he kept my hand in his just long enough to help me slide into the seat before he sat across from me.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
I settled my purse beside me and crossed one leg over the other, mostly to give myself something to do while my body remembered the exact feeling of that hug.
“I’m fine.”
His mouth curved like he heard everything I did not say.
“You definitely are.”
I felt my face get warm. Having his intent focus on me did something to me. His eyes caressed every one of my features like taking snapshots to store for later.
“You came,” he said.
“You sounded surprised when I said I might.”
“I was trying not to be hopeful.”
“That sounds false.”
“It is a little false.”
That got a laugh out of me, which seemed to please him more than it should have.
A server appeared before he could say anything else.
I ordered a French 75. He got another old fashioned.
Once we were alone again, the room settled around us differently than it had at the mixer.
This was not incidental. We had both chosen to be here, sitting across from each other in low light with old songs moving through the lounge and enough memory between us to make pretending feel like a waste of time.
He looked at me for another second, then said, “That post was about you.”
I leaned back against the booth. “I know.”
“I figured.”
“That’s why I commented.”
His mouth shifted, and damn, I liked that little movement more every time I saw it.
“You are very pleased with yourself.”
“I’m pleased with my timing.”
“That too.”
The drinks came, and for a while, we let the conversation do what it had done from the beginning. It opened the space between us instead of filling it with noise.
We talked about the week. About work. About his sister, because he mentioned her in passing and I made him tell me more.
About my family, because he wanted to know what had me all the way out in Penn Hills in the first place.
About music, again, because music had become one of the little bridges between us and neither of us seemed interested in pretending we hadn’t noticed.
That was the thing about us already.
The chemistry did not erase the conversation. It made it hotter. Every answer felt like it had a body behind it. Every pause carried something neither of us was rushing to name.
At one point, I laughed hard enough to tip my head back, and when I looked at him again, he was watching my mouth.
The air changed immediately.
I felt it in the stem of the glass between my fingers, in the warm little pull low in my stomach, in the way my nipples tightened beneath my bra and denim like my body thought it was helping.
He saw the shift too.
“Sit with me,” he said.
I looked at him across the table. “You say that like I’m already supposed to be listening.”
“Ain’t you?”
I smiled, picked up my drink, and stood.
Micah stood too, smooth and immediate, giving me room to slide into the inside of the booth. He didn’t make a show of it. Didn’t explain. Just moved like that was where I belonged, tucked in and comfortable, with him on the outside.
I hated how much I liked that.
Before he sat, he reached behind him and loosened the cord holding back one side of the red velvet curtain beside the booth.
The heavy fabric fell with a soft rush, not enough to shut us away completely, but enough to blur the lounge around us and turn the corner into something warmer, closer, more dangerous.
My eyes moved from the curtain to him.
He sat beside me like he had not just done something entirely too intimate in public.
“What?” he asked.
I lifted my glass and took another sip of my drink because apparently I had decided to help my own downfall along. “You always closing women in behind curtains?”
His mouth curved. “Only when I want to hear what they’re really saying.”
A slow pull started beneath my ribs, then slipped lower before I could pretend his words had only amused me. My thighs pressed together under the table, uselessly discreet, and the sip of the French 75 I had just taken seemed to turn warm everywhere at once.
The room did not disappear. The music stayed where it was.
Glassware still moved. A couple at the bar laughed too hard at something that could not have been that funny.
But behind that loose fall of velvet, everything felt muted and warm, like the booth had turned into a small private world with red walls, amber light, and Micah Sutton sitting close enough to ruin me.
His thigh brushed mine and stayed there.
Neither of us mentioned it.
His hand landed lightly at the back of my knee under the table, just enough contact to let me know where the rest of him was.
“You do that on purpose,” I said softly.
“Do what?”
“Act like you don’t know what your hands are doing.”
He looked at me then, really looked. “I know exactly what they’re doing.”
My breath lost its rhythm.
Just for a second.
But he was close enough to catch it, and the quiet confidence in his face made it worse. Something in me softened and tightened at the same time, that awful, delicious awareness of being wanted by a man who was not guessing his way through it.
I turned my face just enough to catch his scent again. Warm. Expensive. Familiar now in a way it had no right to be yet.
His hand slid from the back of my knee to my thigh. It was not far. It was not vulgar. It was only enough to make my breath change all over again and my whole body gather itself around the point of contact like it had been waiting all week.
The curtain shifted a little beside us, soft velvet breathing with the movement of the room, and for one wild second, I felt caught.
Not trapped exactly.
I would have moved if I wanted to.
That was the problem.
I did not want to.
Between the few sips of lemon drop warming my blood, the dark glow of his eyes, and the general disrespect my body had already shown me where this man was concerned, I felt like I had wandered into a predator’s lair and sat down willingly.
I set my drink down because I no longer trusted my hands.
“Micah.”
“Yeah?”
“You are being very… intentional.”