Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,40

straining against the fabric of his black tee.

In the time I spent gawking, he closed the cabinet and walked back outside. I’d done a really crappy job of protecting my sons if he decided to get menacing up in here. I was too busy perving at him, in the very kitchen where I’d shared coffee with my husband. My very dead husband. What kind of monster was I?

By the time I dragged myself back outside, Zeke had poured the rest of the bottle of wine into two glasses.

“Go right ahead, pour yourself some of my wine that I was looking forward to finishing. Alone,” I snapped, closing the door behind me.

Zeke sipped and looked up at me, his expression mild against my grating tone. “It’s good. Drinkable. If you’re a fan of Cabernet, next time I’ll bring over Austin Hope. It’s a good bottle. Napa Valley. Powerful, but smooth.”

I blinked. Was the tall, dark, menacing biker really talking to me about the smoothness of a wine at midnight in my backyard? Beyond that, there was something else in that sentence I needed to latch on to.

“Next time?” I repeated, snatching the glass off the coffee table because I could not handle this without wine. I stayed standing, though, because sitting would communicate that I wanted him here. At midnight. With all of his toxic masculinity and sculpted arms.

Which I did not.

Of course I did not.

“You don’t sleep,” he said.

“Have you been watching me?” I snapped.

His eyes met mine. “Yes.”

My skin prickled. That single word, knowing that this man had been watching me with that intense and dangerous gaze of his, it was meant to piss me off, right? Meant to creep me out? It was not meant to turn me on.

“You need to leave,” I said.

He took a sip. A slow, erotic sip. Yes, this man was even erotic drinking wine. He’d be erotic doing dishes.

I was not meant to find another man erotic. I was meant to be ruined for life, wasn’t I? Dead inside? There should not be this ... fire.

“Sit down,” he said.

Okay, that doused the fire ever so slightly. I straightened my back, jerked my chin up. “Do not tell me to sit down in my own fucking house,” I hissed. “You. Need. To. Leave.” I tried to inject my very own form of menace into the words.

Zeke didn’t look very worried by the tone; instead, he tilted his head and regarded me with interest. With some of his own heat. The kind that burned my very bones. That forced the memory of what he tasted like to the forefront of my mind. “You don’t want me to leave, and we both know that. So sit the fuck down.”

I should’ve taken great offense—I should’ve repeated an order to leave. And I definitely should’ve lied and said I very much did want him to go.

Instead, I sat down. Across from him, not beside him. I wasn’t that insane. Yet.

I did scowl at him, which he didn’t seem bothered by.

He didn’t force conversation. He just sat there, watching me silently. It was more than a little unnerving. I was used to people staring, of course. First, because I’d gotten boobs early. Then because I figured out how to make my looks work for me. Then because I got famous on social media, famous enough for the moms of the country to recognize me in places like coffee shops or Whole Foods. Then I got used to people staring at me after David died, trying to pick at my scabs with their eyes.

None of those stares compared to the way Zeke was looking at me. He was unashamed, unblinking, and not at all uncomfortable with this situation.

I tried to survive the look. The moment. I’d survived a lot worse than that this past year. Sure, I didn’t exactly handle it well, but I’d survived it. I should be able to sit silently and weather the stare of my hot next-door biker neighbor.

“Why are you here?” I blurted.

Apparently I couldn’t handle him.

“Because I don’t like the thought of you sitting alone out here in the middle of the night,” he replied. “Because you have good wine. And because I can’t stay away from you.”

I blinked at him. I had expected either silence or some alpha-male clipped response. Not this naked honesty laced with the ever-present heat between us.

And he wasn’t done.

“Because I can’t stop fuckin’ thinking about what your tongue tastes like inside my mouth. Because I can’t stop imagining