sip, I wanted to run my finger over his bottom lip. When he rubbed his shorn head, I wished it was my hand doing it, and I could almost feel the suede-like smoothness on my palm.
What the hell is wrong with you, Zoë? I asked myself, but my brain wasn’t able to engage even in that simple question. It was like I didn’t even have a brain any more, only a body that wanted to get as close as possible to this irresistibly sexy man.
As if Seth sensed my feelings, he nudged his chair closer to mine, so that our denim-clad knees were just an inch or so apart, and when I uncrossed my legs to cross them back the other way, my thigh touched his. Our eyes met again, he smiled and I felt his hand on my leg, resting there, heat spreading through my jeans and my skin and my whole body.
And when he finished his drink and said, ‘Shall we go?’ I could only nod, watching mutely as he paid the bill and letting him guide me to the door, a warm, strong arm around my shoulder. He was taller than me but only just, thanks to my unfamiliar heels. If he kissed me, he’d only have to lean down a tiny bit.
It was still light outside, so bright after the gloom of the bar I felt almost disorientated – although that might have been the gin. Pavement tables were crowded with people eating, drinking and smoking, enjoying what would be almost the longest day of the year. The air was cool against my skin, and I realised my whole body felt hot, as if I’d been lying in the sun.
‘So,’ Seth said. ‘Back to mine?’
‘Sure.’ I tried to sound casual, like I did this sort of thing all the time, but part of me was terrified. What was I doing? No one knew where I was. This man could be an axe murderer.
‘I’m not an axe murderer,’ he said.
‘Like you’d admit to it if you were. Imagine. “Come back to mine – oh, by the way, I’m an axe murderer.”’
He laughed. ‘Not the strongest of pick-up lines. Which is why I stopped using it years ago.’
It was my turn to laugh. ‘So what line do you use now? When you’re not meeting people online, that is?’
‘I don’t. I just rely on personal magnetism.’
That was it, I realised. This average-looking dude – above average, maybe, but not someone whose picture you’d put on your bedroom wall and daydream over when you were fifteen – had magnetism. Charisma. Some elusive quality which, whatever you called it, made me go weak at the knees and made me self-conscious of my lips in a way that had nothing to do with lipstick, and of my breasts in a way that had nothing to do with the lacy bra I was wearing, which was digging into my ribs and itching like a bastard.
‘It’s just down here,’ Seth said as we turned off the main road onto a side street lined with tall stucco-fronted houses, most of them painted white but the occasional one pastel pink or green. The one he stopped in front of was pale yellow.
He unlocked the front door and gestured to me, and I climbed a narrow staircase, up and up to the third floor. My heart was hammering by the time we got to the top, and not just from the many steps. He followed me onto the landing and seconds later we were in his flat.
It was a gorgeous room – high-ceilinged, with the evening sunlight streaming in through tall sash windows. But it didn’t stream for long, because Seth crossed the room, lowered the blinds and switched on a lamp, bathing the room in a soft glow like honey and transforming it instantly from an ordinary lounge into a love nest.
‘Drink?’ he suggested, and I accepted gratefully. ‘The bathroom’s just through there.’
A few minutes later, I was sitting next to him on a squashy cream sofa, sipping another martini that was just as expertly made as the one I’d had in the bar. This, I realised, was a practised seduction scene: the lamplight, the gin, Seth’s arm along the back of the sofa almost but not quite touching my shoulder.
‘So,’ he said, ‘here we are.’
‘Here we are,’ I agreed, carefully putting my glass down on the polished wooden coffee table and turning to face him.
‘You’re very beautiful, you know,’ he told me, and then he