Commanding Her Seal (Plus Bonus Novella)(35)
Maybe if he’d let her take a picture, she could pull it out later to examine it…
“I’m the kind of guy who likes to form his own opinion, especially when it comes to what a woman tastes like.”
Okay. That was not difficult to interpret at all. Unfamiliar heat gathered in places she’d only just realized hadn’t dried up and blown away like she’d thought. “I’m the kind of woman men don’t spend a lot of time tasting.”
Dear God, could she just shut up for a minute? Why couldn’t she be tongue-tied around a guy with striking cheekbones instead of blathering on like a drunk half-wit?
And now she’d completely piqued his interest. He swiveled his stool to face her and propped an elbow on the bar as he treated her to a long, slow once-over that she felt all the way to her toes. “That is the biggest travesty I think I’ve ever heard. Why not?”
“Um… because I don’t taste good?”
His laugh did not help matters in the brain function department. “Or because you surround yourself with morons. Since I’m not one, I’m more than happy to volunteer for a taste test.”
Prickly heat spread through her cheeks. And other places. She should quit while she was ahead. Behind. Sideways. The man had her so flipped around she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. “I literally don’t know how to respond to that.”
He cocked his head with a fair amount of heat emanating from his gaze. “Which is also a shame. But very intriguing.”
Sure. Boring Lilah Rose Houston had so many facets worthy of capturing this guy’s interest. “I’m the least intriguing person on the planet. I don’t even know how to spell complex.”
He grinned like he didn’t believe her. “That’s what makes you unique. I have a feeling that what I see is what I get with you. Let’s see how close I am. You don’t date much but not because you don’t want to. The men you meet are too low on the evolutionary chain. You need a more sophisticated kind of man. One who knows how to treat a woman. Yeah?”
Only off by about a million miles. She liked safe men who didn’t make her uncomfortable. Since she hadn’t met one yet, the lack of practice in holding a mere conversation showed.
“On the contrary,” she countered drily. “Men would have to notice me to ask me out. I’m invisible.”
“Not to me.”
They stared at each other for the longest time, and she got the distinct feeling that he valued straight shooting in a woman because it was one of his own qualities. He liked her. For really real. What was she supposed to do with that?
This was her problem in big flaming red letters. She couldn’t photograph people because she didn’t know how to interact with them. There was a fundamental piece of human experience missing from her life, and the absence of it translated into inferior pictures.
Perhaps she’d found a muse in this unlikely candidate who—she was pretty sure—had been flirting with her. Maybe just this one time she could throw the risk dice and not crap out.
Eventually, Fitz managed to tear his attention from Lilah long enough to order two beers. Dark, because anything else smacked of incivility.
Then he had to seriously consider dropping to his knees to propose to the woman when she took a sip and said, “Wow, this is really good.”
“You drink dark beer?” Quelle surprise. And that was saying something considering basically everything about Lilah Houston had knocked him upside the head from the moment she’d opened the door.
“Not until today. But I like it.” Her dark eyes peeked out from under long and lush lashes, and he couldn’t stop imagining what she’d look like flushed with arousal.
To be fair, she’d started it with all the talk about tasting her, which immediately planted a fair amount of longing in a place that would be very difficult to dislodge. Plus his gut was screaming Red Hot Virgin Alert, or at least close enough to it that she needed someone—him—to introduce her to everything. Pretty much nothing else was getting through the thick layer of awareness that had dropped over him.
Just as he was about to dive into a very long conversation about all of the ways she could have responded to his taste-test-volunteer comment, Jack and Thora picked that inopportune moment to join them.
Fitz bit back the long string of curses.
“You started the party without us?” Jack’s arm draped possessively around Thora’s waist, which gave a whole new meaning to the concept friends with benefits.
She still looked a little worse for wear, so maybe the arm was strictly to keep the woman off the ground. But he didn’t think so. After getting a text proclaiming that Thora was sick, Jack had almost torn an ACL in his haste to scramble off the boat he’d piloted from Freeport to Duchess Island.