Page 104 of Into the Dark
Reaching across the table to take my hand again, he strokes his thumb absently over my fingers as he looks back down at his menu. It’s an impressive but rather confusing selection. Unfamiliar words and flavor combinations jump off the page, whetting my appetite and making my stomach grumble but fueling my indecisiveness. Like always, Jake doesn’t take long to decide, closing his menu after only a few seconds and lifting his glass again. As he relaxes back in the chair, I go on weighing up the potential pros and cons of each dish, scared of making the wrong choice and getting food envy as usual.
“Want me to pick for you?” he offers. When I look up at him he looks amused, the side of his mouth quirked up.
“Ugh, actually, yes. Please do.” I drop my head back with a sigh. “I hate deciding things.”
He flicks open the menu again and leans forward. “So, you want meat or veg?” he asks, licking his tongue over his bottom lip slowly.
I giggle. “How on earth do you make the most innocent question sound filthy?”
“Skill?”
I shake my head. “Meat, please.” I lift my teacup and sip, and he drops his eyes back to the menu. When he closes it a few secnds later and leans back in his chair I simply stare at him in awe. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Decide. So easily. So quickly.”
He shrugs. “Because I know what I want when I see it.” His eyes linger on me for a long time. I think about our first date then. How different it was, but how similar too. The look he’s giving me echoes the way he looked at me that night: a deep, intense stare I never knew how to handle back then. Now, I absorb the heat from his attentive, watchful eyes and return it with an equal amount of desire.
Again, I’m startled by the stealthy apparition that is “the Vogue waiter.”
“Ready to order?” he asks politely.
Smiling, I look at Jake expectantly, and he nods at the waiter.
“The hot and sour soup for me, and the dim sum platter for the lady,” he says, throwing a small wink at me. “Then she’s going to have the grilled Japanese rib eye, and I’m having the crab in black bean sauce. And we’ll share a fragrant rice. Cheers.”
“Excellent choices, sir,” the waiter says before turning to me. “Madam, we cook the beef medium as standard for this dish—is that okay for you?”
“Perfect,” I say. I’m over the moon with Jake’s choices. I may let him decide my meals every time from now on. One less stress to worry about.
“And the wine?” the Vogue waiter asks me. “You’d still like some with your main course?”
I’m impressed but also annoyed by his memory. “Ah, yes, I would. I’ll just have a large glass of whatever you would recommend with the beef. Thank you.”
A nod. “Red or white, madam?”
“She’ll have red,” Jake announces just as I begin to mull it over.
I smile and nod my agreement, and the waiter lifts the menus, hiding his confusion well as he refills my teacup and slivers off into the dark somewhere behind me.
“I’m glad we did this,” I tell Jake. I enjoy being with him in public. I enjoy the way other women look at him. I enjoy that he’s the kind of man women look at with desire. The kind of man who looks like he could make every single fantasy come true.
As though he knows what I’m thinking, the side of his mouth lifts up into a small, self-assured smile, the turquoise fire in his eyes glittering wickedly in the low light. “Me too,” he says “And you look fucking incredible, by the way. Did I say that already?”
“You said wow.” I smile. “And then you swore…”
“Meant every word.”
I don’t even have the grace to blush. “Well, thank you.” I tilt my head to the side and smile back at him, drawing my eyes slowly down his body and back up. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”
“Yeah?” His nod is as cocky as his smirk. Sometimes Jake turns shy at my compliments; other times he takes them as though they’re merely confirming what he already knows. He pulls on that sexual arrogance like a favorite T-shirt whenever he wants to. “Thinking about anything else right now?” He licks his lips.
I lean my elbows on the table and rest my head on my hand. “Hmm…well, I was also thinking about how different this ‘date’ feels to the last time…but also how similar. Okay, that doesn’t make sense.”
Despite this, he nods slowly. “Well, I’m way less nervous this time, thank fuck.”
“You were nervous? You?”