And it was so tempting to try to hurry his plan along, but no. Not this time, and not with this girl.
Yesterday, their trip to the museum had started out a ploy to make her trust him enough to invite him to her bed. But somehow, it had turned into the best day he’d had in this long and pointless year. It had been connection and seeing art through this beautiful woman’s searching eyes. Seeing himself through her eyes, too. Not the man who’d had all his choices stripped from him, only to be shown the ugly underbelly of the life he’d been told he had to lead. The man who had seen it, and then turned around and run.
He was just a guy to her. One she liked the look of. One she’d invited to take her home last night. One who could make her disheveled and glazed just from a kiss.
His pulse roared. He wanted her like this, naked and laid out for him, all right. But he wanted the rest of it, too. He wanted more.
It took an exercise of will, but he managed to take a step back. His breath was still coming too fast, and he had to will his body to calm down as he forced some distance between them. Dinner. They were going to have dinner. And then they could have the rest.
“Come on.” Entwining their hands, he reached down to grab his pack off the ground.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Condoms and a fresh change of clothes, mostly.
“Nothing.” He slung the bag over his shoulder and tipped his head toward the exit of the park. Changed the subject before he could talk himself out of his own plan to not rush this along. “How do you feel about Ethiopian food?”
“It’s not French.” Her voice quirked upward with uncertainty at the end.
“Astute. But do you like it?”
“Never tried it.”
Perfect. “Feeling adventurous?”
She chuckled and squeezed his hand, letting herself be dragged along as he maneuvered them down the path. “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
And he liked that—the idea that this was an adventure. One that he was leading her into, but that she was taking him along on, too. In a year of conquests, he hadn’t tried it this way, not with dates and dinners and kisses in a park. Not even once.
Had he ever, really? With all the fucked-up examples of relationships he’d had to look to, with the games the people in his life liked to play . . .
Here, with this girl who didn’t know who he was, though, who would be on this continent for only so long. It somehow seemed worth a chance.
The restaurant, when they got there, wasn’t quite as shabby chic as grabbing food to go from a literal hole in the wall, but it wasn’t precisely fine dining, either. Tucked into an alcove on a little side road, the place was below street level, the lighting dim but the colors loud, all the walls painted in orange and red and gold. Keeping Kate close, Rylan glanced around the space, past all the woven baskets on the tables and the tapestries on the walls. He frowned. Lucille always worked on Saturdays.
Ah, there she was, slipping out from behind the beaded curtain near the kitchen. They made eye contact across the room, and she smiled as she took him in. She raised an eyebrow as she sashayed her way to the front, dark skin gleaming in the lamplight. “Deux?” Two?
It was unusual, he could concede. He typically showed up alone.
“Deux,” he confirmed, guiding Kate over to a cozy table near the wall. As he pulled out a chair for her, he checked, “This okay?”
“Sure?” She didn’t sound so certain about that, so he leaned down, cupping her shoulders in his hands and kissing her cheek.
“It’ll be fine. Trust me.”
She made a little humming noise as she settled her purse in her lap. She was pretty protective of the thing today. Maybe to the point of verging on paranoia, but he couldn’t exactly blame her, considering.
Projecting confidence, he sat down opposite her and swung his own bag over the back of an empty seat. Turning to face the table again, he caught Kate eyeing the pack with as much curiosity as she’d had before.
Good. Let her keep thinking about it.
Lucille dropped a couple of menus on the table in front of them. “You need a minute to look?”
It was odd. He’d never heard her speak English before. “Yes, please.”
She nodded and slinked away, but not without running her fingertips over the back of his neck. Troublemaker. He shot her a restrained glare, partly in warning and partly to show Kate he wasn’t amused.
As for Kate, she didn’t seem to know what to think of any of it. She gestured vaguely at Lucille’s retreating figure. “You’re a regular, I presume?”
“You could say that.”
He liked to find little eateries with their own flavors—ones with owners who doubled as waitstaff, and where everyone was family. Walking in a world of strangers, it was nice, having places like that. Places where they knew only one of his names.
Like Kate did.
“So.” He flipped open his menu. “Anything you don’t eat?”
“Not really.” When she reached for the other menu, he put his hand over hers to stop her.
From the look on her face, that might have been a douche move. He shifted, curling his fingers around her palm instead of preventing her from doing her own perusing. “You can take a look if you want, of course. But . . . if it’s not too scary, maybe let me?”
“I’m not scared.” She could have fooled him.
He shook his head, trying to allay whatever concerns she might have. “The idea here is you order a few different things. They all come out on a big tray lined with bread. Everybody tries a little bit of everything.”
“Uh-huh.”
Letting his lips slant upward, he rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “I don’t pretend to know your mind, but I have a few favorites I’d like you to try. What do you say?”
And there was that look again, like she was peering straight through him. It should have felt invasive, but it never did. Instead, it left him wondering what on earth it was she saw.
Whatever it was, it must have met with her satisfaction. As if just to check, she asked, “Nothing too spicy?”
“I can do mild.”
“All right, then.” She nodded decisively. “I’m game.”
Good. He squeezed her hand and turned around to catch Lucille’s eye. Once she’d made her way back over, he paged through the menu, picking out a variety of flavors for Kate to sample, mixing up the choices of featured vegetables and meats.
“Will that be all?” Lucille asked when he was done.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He passed the menus over to her, never letting go of Kate as he did.
Apparently, his message was received. While Lucille smiled at him fondly, she didn’t try to touch him this time.
He’d have to thank her for that later. For now, he had more pressing things to think about.
“So tell me,” he said, focusing all of his attention on the woman before him. He picked up her hand in his, spinning it around and uncurling her fingers from her palm. Rubbing at the hints of pigment ground into her skin, he grinned. “Whatever have you been up to today that’s gotten you so filthy?”
It probably shouldn’t have been quite so appealing, the way Rylan could make something sound seductive and serious and ridiculous all at once. Kate laughed, letting him turn over her hand and inspect her fingernails. The warmth of his touch felt nice, and he was just the right combination of delicate and firm.
And no matter what she felt, she refused to flinch or yank her hand away. How many times had she been nervous about the condition of her hands? Wouldn’t a guy prefer the girls with the smooth, soft skin and perfect manicures over the one covered in little cuts and ink and glue? If he cared, he didn’t give any sign of it. He loosely grasped her knuckles and tugged at her arm, getting her close enough that he could press his lips to the back of her palm.
“So?” he asked, returning their hands to the table.
“N-nothing all that interesting.” Her voice came out raspy in a way she hadn’t expected, for all that it matched the jumpy, keyed-up feeling in her chest. The tingling in her breasts. “Just some sketching.”