Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,57

right in the V of her red top. It was sitting on the plump curve of her breast. She didn’t even have the chance to attempt to pick it up before Abe leaned over and wiped it off with the soft white of his cloth napkin.

“Behave,” he ordered in a tone as stern as that of her junior high school principal. “I mean it.”

Sarah took another bite of the mousse, slid the spoon out oh-so-slow from between her lips. She didn’t know what had gotten into her except that Abe was looking at her like he wanted to eat her alive, and no one had looked at her with that much raw want for a long, long time—not even the man who’d once been her husband. He had back before everything went wrong, before the grief and the drugs and the anger turned him into someone she didn’t know.

It was a heady feeling to see that look in his eyes again.

Swallowing the spoonful of mousse, she slid in another bite and closed her lips around it with lush deliberation. Abe’s eyes were black flames across from her. When she let her eyes flutter shut and moaned in the back of her throat this time, she heard him push back his chair in a screech of sound against the concrete.

Lifting her lashes, she met his gaze, shook her head.

His jaw clenched as he pulled his chair back to the table, but that fire in his eyes, it didn’t dim.

It seemed to flare ever brighter as she finished the mousse with exquisite patience before picking up the new cup of tea that had been delivered partway through by a slender man in black pants and a white shirt, their old cups whisked away. This tea was cold and cleansing, all peppermint and ice.

Shivering in sensory pleasure, she put the delicate cup of transparent glass on its matching saucer. And spoke for the first time since she’d begun her teasing. “You didn’t eat your mousse.”

Abe nudged his plate toward her.

Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, she shook her head. “There are multiple courses to come, and I’ve already inhaled a gazillion calories.”

“Who cares?” He stretched his legs out on either side of hers, his big body in a sprawl that wasn’t the least bit careless. “You always look hot.”

The blunt comment got her right in the gut. Because he said it as if it was an unquestionable truth, as if the fact she’d been labeled “plus-size” by the media when they were being nice and “fat” when they weren’t was a load of bullshit. As if she was gorgeous and sexy. She knew he meant it—because no matter how awful he’d become under the influence of drugs, he’d never, not once, made her feel bad about her body.

It was the one thing he’d always and enthusiastically loved about her.

“Thank you,” she said, then smiled. “And you are seriously ripped. Like a model off the cover of that health magazine.”

Eyes gleaming in masculine pleasure, he nodded at her chocolate bowl. “Not going to take a bite?” It was a dare.

CHAPTER 20

NARROWING HER EYES, she picked up the empty bowl and flicked out her tongue to lick the edge. The rich, decadent taste of the mousse mingled with that of the creamy milk chocolate used to create the bowl. She couldn’t control her shudder.

“Fuck!” Shoving back his chair, Abe rose and stalked to the edge of the tiny roof.

When she made a move to join him, her face flushed and in need of the wind she could see ruffling his shirt, he half turned and pointed a finger at her. “You. Stay. There.” It was a growl.

Sarah stayed. Not because she was scared but because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep hold of her senses or her clothes if she got near Abe when he was looking at her like that. Glaring at her until it was clear she’d obey, Abe turned back to stare out into the darkness. His wide shoulders rose and fell multiple times, as if he was taking deep breath after deep breath, but when he shifted on his heel to return to the table, she saw his body remained out of control.

“Quiet.” He slammed back into his chair with that command, pulling it under the table enough that he could use the tablecloth to cover his lap.

Sarah felt a smile try to form, attempted to bite it back, but it just wouldn’t die. The fight to withhold