Restraint - Adriana Locke Page 0,9
a lot of women, but none quite like her. She might just be the total package.
“What?” she asks, catching me studying her.
I could toss her a canned line or redirect the conversation to something that’s not how gorgeous she is. But if I know anything about Blaire so far, it’s that she can pick out a line of bullshit a mile away.
“You’re beautiful, Blaire.”
She flushes. “Thank you.”
“It’s not a line. I mean it—you’re fucking beautiful.”
The candlelight flickers as she shifts in her seat. Her eyes pull away from mine, and I instantly regret opening my mouth.
She clears her throat as her fingertips touch her necklace again.
“I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable,” I say carefully. “That might’ve been a little forward.”
“It’s fine.” She takes a deep, steadying breath. “To be frank, I’m not used to situations where someone would say something like that.”
“I don’t understand.”
She sits up a bit straighter. “I don’t have a lot of dinners with men who I’m not trying to outwit or outplay. This whole thing tonight is a little foreign to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t date,” she says simply.
My brows shoot to the ceiling. “You don’t date? At all?”
I tilt my head as though it will help me hear her better—as if the idea of Blaire not dating will make more sense if the octaves are a bit higher.
It’s baffling. How could a woman like her not date? Sure, women say that shit all the time because they think it ups their desirability. But I actually believe Blaire. And, lo and behold, I need to adjust my cock at the thought. So maybe they’re on to something with that line.
“I mean, I’ve dated,” she says. “Just … not often. I’m just too busy to entertain another human. I can barely keep my own life on target, let alone adding someone else’s life in.”
“I feel the same way,” I say. “My life goes a hundred miles an hour. I can’t be thinking about buying flowers or chocolates or making sure I pick up my shoes.”
“See? That’s a hard limit for me. Pick up your own damn shoes.” She laughs. “That is one of the reasons I find men to be barbaric creatures, as you so carefully noted.”
I point a finger at her and wink. “That’s what you tell yourself.”
“Excuse me?”
“You like to think you find barbaric tendencies in men to be appalling. Society has taught you that. There’s no place in the world for aggressive men, men who know what they want.” My smile deepens. “But deep down, you enjoy an alpha male.”
She bites her bottom lip. “That’s not completely true.”
“Is it not?”
“No. I do find those tendencies appalling. Truly. They insinuate that the woman is the lesser sex—that we should pick up men’s shoes, make them dinner, have a lower paying job—and to that, I call bullshit.”
She lifts her glass and takes a drink, keeping her eyes glued to mine over the rim. There’s a steeliness to the blue irises that feels like a challenge. But as they stay trained on mine, I see a softness, too, that feels like an invitation.
“As you should,” I say, my voice lowering. Breathing in the warm notes from her perfume, I watch her chest rise and fall at a quickened pace. “I have no doubts you are as capable and intelligent as any man I know. But I also know something else.”
She sets the glass down. Her finger runs around the bottom, her chin lowered as she looks at me through her lashes. “What’s that?”
I lean forward and run my teeth over my bottom lip. The movement catches her attention. Her gaze drops to my mouth as her own lips part.
The air between us warms, the connection between us cackles with energy. Her brows arch as if she knows the answer and is waiting on me to deliver.
So deliver I will.
“I have no doubts that if I bent you over a chair and buried myself in you, there wouldn’t be any complaints.”
Her eyes widen as she shifts in her seat.
She wants it as badly as I do, but there’s no way I’d do that. Not here. Maybe with another woman—one who would orgasm all over my balls in the middle of this dining area and not regret it. But Blaire? She’s cut from another cloth, albeit one I’d like to mark.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I silently curse whoever it is. She hears it and motions for me to take it. While I type a