Chapter Twenty-Four
Isla
The waiter showed up and did a double take before he quickly masked his surprise that I wasn’t date number one.
“Ma’am, the Maine lobster thermidor.” He set the plate in front of me.
“And for you, sir, the New York strip steak.” He set down the second plate, then glanced between us. “Can I get you anything else?”
Hating to waste food, but unable to eat what’d been put in front of me, I smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, I can’t eat this. May I please have the grilled salmon, no sauce, with wilted spinach, no butter?”
“Of course, ma’am.” The waiter whisked the lobster away. “I’ll put a rush on the order.” Then he glanced at the giant steak. “Should I bring an extra plate while the salmon’s being prepared?”
I said, “No, thank you,” while Will-slash-Nix said, “Yes.”
“I’ll return shortly.” The waiter couldn’t retreat fast enough.
I glanced at the warrior I knew had been a SEAL the second I’d first met him, but the fleeting sense of self-satisfaction that I’d been right all along despite him not confirming it until tonight disappeared in less than a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, the swirling vortex of jealousy threatening to pull me in wasn’t disappearing. Nor was the guilt that I’d made his first date leave. Even worse, my treasonous heart was still galloping at the mere serendipity of him being here.
Looking borderline angry, Will-slash-Nix fired off a question I was dreading. “Are you allergic to shellfish?”
“No.” I grasped at the retreating sexy, self-possessed personality I’d stepped into the moment I saw him.
“Food allergies?”
I evaded. “I prefer the grilled salmon.”
His angry expression held. “No sauce, no butter. Because?”
“You should eat your steak while it’s hot.” It smelled delicious, even if I wouldn’t take a bite.
The waiter reappeared with a plate and a steak knife for me. “Your entrée will be out shortly, ma’am.”
My kidnapper’s gaze did not leave mine, not even for a heartbeat.
Seeing how he wore his anger with raw masculinity, it struck me.
When he was like this, like the man on that terrace in Cap d’Antibes who’d drawn a gun on a woman in a bikini without hesitation, he wasn’t the SEAL version of himself.
His throat strongly defined above his shirt collar, his long fingers gripping his glass with purpose, his full lips infused with more color, he was something darker, more sinister.
He was Nix. Maybe Phoenix. But definitely Nix.
And it was that version of him, brutally staring at me, who waited for the waiter to retreat before he spoke again.
“The romesco sauce with the salmon has almonds.”
I let his words curl around me. “Okay.” It wasn’t only what he said, it was how he said it.
“Nut allergy?”
“You don’t need to worry about what I can and cannot eat.
I’m an adult. I can take care of myself, Mr. Erikson.
” Those two last words—the mister plus the surname—I tacked them on just to taste the full-body shiver as I said them in public, at an expensive restaurant, while I was wearing a designer dress, unrepentant lust, and no underwear.
His shrewd gaze didn’t let up in intensity or react to me using his last name.
“Your purse is too small for an Epi-pen. You told the waiter you couldn’t eat the lobster, not that you didn’t like it, and if I have to counter an anaphylactic reaction tonight, I need to know exactly what you’re allergic to. ”
His unadulterated dominance, the authoritative energy coming off him in heady waves, the intent in his eyes, the implicit danger in the sheer power of his muscular body—Jesus, he was sexy.
My memories did not do him justice. Then again, he was even sexier in his suit.
Like a barely contained wild animal in a world wholly unprepared for him.
I crossed my legs against the incessant, pulsing need in my core that reminded me just how uncivilized he was. “No anaphylactic allergies. Satisfied?”
“No.” He sawed off a hunk of steak with quick precision and put it on the spare plate the waiter had brought for me. “Eat.”
“That was sarcasm. I know firsthand that satisfaction isn’t a concept you’re familiar with.
” Nor a term he’d ever embrace. I’d had a taste of his version of sex, and it definitely wasn’t about pleasure.
It was about power, control. Most of all, it was about his complete dominance.
“And no, thank you.” I shoved the plate toward him. “But you enjoy.”
“Insecurity disguised as sarcasm,” he arrogantly corrected like he knew the ugly corners of my soul. Then he leveled his tone and seamlessly switched off the topic of our almost night together that would’ve been my worst mistake. “You don’t eat meat?”
The thought of his hard length pushing past my lips suddenly made my mouth water.
But that wasn’t the type of meat he meant.
Attempting and failing to ignore my sudden and new fixation with his cock and my mouth, I wondered how he would look fisting himself. If the veins on his hand would strain as he fed the head to me. If he’d pull my hair. If that intense gaze of his would turn savage.
Licking my lips, forcing myself not to squirm in my chair, I answered him.
“No, I don’t eat meat.” Not unless I was truly desperate, had no other food option, and knew the source.
My mind, my body, my life—for now. But I wasn’t about to explain why I made the choices I did any more than I was going to confess how much I wanted to taste his cock when I’d never been into that. “Don’t presume to know me.”
“It wasn’t a presumption. Pescatarian?”
“Do you always feel the need to label people? Put them in neat little boxes?” I remembered how not one item had been out of place on his giant boat. “Trespasser. Pescatarian…. Intruse.” The searing memory from a month ago, in that darkened cabin in the middle of a raging storm, came crushing back.
“You like to be bitten, ma petite intruse.”
“I’m not a girl or little.” Nor was I his.
“You’re small to me, intruse.” Releasing my hair, he pulled the tie on the other side of my hip.
Then that familiar touch ghosted down my spine.
“You didn’t answer my question.” The pressure on my wrist increased, heat covered my back, and his lips brushed against my ear right before his lethally quiet voice came back to dominate. “Are you greenlighting this?”
I barely hid the tremor that wracked my body from the mere memory of his touch and the encounter that followed.
His green-eyed stare, more lethally perceptive than my father’s had ever been, stripped me down to aching need in less than a heartbeat. “When the label fits, ma petite intruse. Do you always dine at Michelin star restaurants?”
I wanted to hate his deep voice, how it still sounded so dominant, so in control when he spoke French, but also softened at the edges instead of becoming harsh.
I wanted to hate that I was still sitting here, so easily falling into the narrative of the lost child starved for attention, for direction. For his brand of discipline.
Most of all, I wanted to detest how every molecule of him, every earned ounce of his dominance, was a direct shot of endorphins to my hapless soul.
And my twisted mind? She was already melting all over this table, reaching for every bantered word like his voice, his reason, was the only spoken language my body could understand.
It was fucked up.
I was fucked up.
I took a sip of my drink.
Then another.
The pineapple no longer sweet, the scent no longer evocative of craving, I wondered everything I shouldn’t about him.
“We’ve already covered the petite label.
” I’d protested. He’d continued to use it.
That the size difference between us was so deeply bewitching was a secret I’d take to my grave.
“And no, I don’t usually dine here. But tonight seemed like a good time to start. ”
I didn’t lie about the restaurant. The unhealthy part of me wanted him to ask if I was staying in this hotel. The even more depraved part wanted to lure him upstairs and beg for his touch.
Because I knew how this man touched.
And I wanted to drown in every debasing act his authoritarian, controlling, dominant, alpha self could think of.
I wanted my mind and body stretched to the very edge of my limits.
Then I wanted to succumb to his danger until he left me a needy mess so pathetic, he had to pick up the remains and gather my soul into his arms.
Because that was where I truly wanted to live this life—out of control, but under a dominant warfighter’s controlling hand.
As if I were broadcasting my inner thoughts, he studied me like a scholar pores over his research.
Then he cut another bite of the steak. “Petite is a statement of fact. I’m almost double your weight and a foot taller.
Which you like.” This time, as if for emphasis, with his gaze locked on mine, he ate the bite.
Mesmerized by both the captivating intimacy of watching a warrior this dominant eat and the movement of his cut jaw and Adam’s apple, I didn’t notice the waiter until he was setting a plate in front of me.
“Your salmon, ma’am. No sauce or dairy. Can I get you anything else?”
I forced myself to look away from a lethal operator who could kill me in less than a second and glanced up at the waiter. “Thank you. This will be fine.”
Nix barely waited until the waiter was out of earshot. “No meat, no dairy. What else don’t you eat?”
I picked up my fork, and a hint of his cologne struck me from my own wrist. Sucking in a sudden breath before I could think to mask it, I focused on my salmon and tried to play it off. “This smells good. How’s the steak?”
“How was the crossing on the MSC containership from Tenerife?”
Bastard. Of course he’d tracked my movements.
Not knowing if he’d stopped following me once I’d gotten on that containership or if his boundary issues continued all the way to Miami, I chose to ignore the question.
“Do you know what I find most interesting about you?” Forking a piece of the salmon, I took the bite.
Then, for a single moment, I forgot myself.
The perfectly grilled fish landed on my tongue, my eyes closed, and I remembered how hungry I was for actual food. Savoring the taste, but also suddenly immersed in childhood memories where nothing had been stable or safe, I remembered fresh-caught salmon. It’d been a staple.
“Mm, this is so good.” Opening my eyes, I forked another bite. “Would you like to try it?” I looked up.
His utensils forgotten, his giant hand wrapped around his tumbler, a molten-eyed, lethally dangerous man looked at me like he wanted to devour me.
“No, Isla, I do not.” Deep, controlled, his tone was calm, but his reply was anything but.
Prickling awareness crawled all over my body, and all at once, I felt more exposed in my expensive dress than I did on his luxury yacht, naked with my legs spread.
Lifting the fork to my mouth, holding his eye contact because it would be suicide to my agency to do otherwise, I took the bite. But the swallow was hard.
His left eyebrow rose a fraction of a centimeter. “Still good?”
Oh, the intricacies. Lust, food. Need. This man.
How simple it would be to despise him. A dressed-up squire who left a woman to sit alone in a Michelin starred restaurant while he dressed down another. A hate fuck would be so easy. Like a cleansing. An orgasm of vengeance.
One and done.
Except the sad truth was, I couldn’t hate him if I tried.
I barely loathed how well he played the game.
The only thing worse than my traitorous body’s response to it was my respect for it.
Because dear God, this man was a master at strategic governance.
No one harnessed the power of dominance like him.
Unfortunately for my self-preservation, I’d stepped onto his battlefield.
My smile slight and well-practiced, with a personality flavor I’d perfected, I threw down the gauntlet. “It’s better than swordfish.” The taunt would have been flawless—had it not been delivered from a seat another woman had occupied mere minutes before me this evening.
Without missing a beat, knowing exactly what I was referring to, he landed his retort. “You’ve never had swordfish the way I prepare it.”
“I prefer to avoid meals cooked by thieves.” Especially ones who seduced me only to then deny gratification.
“Must be difficult.” He lifted his drink to his full lips and held it there for an impeccably timed, calculated second. Which was exactly long enough to get my gaze to drop to his mouth. “Not eating anything you prepare, ma petite intruse.”