Page 41 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

As his breath drifted off, a waiter approached and she looked up at the man.

There was some communication between the two as glasses of water were put down—and then it happened.

The man in the white shirt and black apron nodded like he was going to go, except he paused as she resumed staring straight ahead of herself.

The bastard was looking at her, kind of awestruck—

Dev’s body moved before he decided to go inside, and he might have pushed that door open with a little more force than necessary.

And what do you know, the way Lyric’s face lit up as she saw him guaranteed that waiter was going to live to see his next birthday—as did the way the guy took one glance at Dev and backed off quickly.

Fuck, he did not need to start getting possessive over here—

“Hi,” she said.

Lowering himself down across the table from her, he felt himself smile, even with all the shit in his head. “Hey.”

Okay, Lyric was the first to admit that the brain was capable of dreaming up all kinds of romantic bullcrap.

Particularly when you were lying awake during the day, curled up into your pillow, your family a mess, your career floundering, your purpose in life evaporated… and yet you had a man who had just texted you back that yes, he would meet you for dinner at Roberto’s at seven p.m.

All of that was arguably the breeding ground for delusions of sexual attraction, but, good golly Miss Molly, as Lyric stared at the face she had been busy recasting for the last however many million hours, she could confidently say that the real thing was so much better.

Dev in person was next-level—and she laughed a little. Then almost knocked her water glass over when she went to pick the thing up.

“Sorry.” She took her hands back and put them in her lap. “I, ah—how are you?”

For God’s sake, did she have to sound like someone on a customer service line? In that tone of voice, she might as well ask for his social security number next.

“Good.” His smile faded. Then he glanced around. “Nice place.”

“It is, isn’t it.”

Even though she’d gotten here fifteen minutes early, she brought fresh eyes to the restaurant’s narrow interior and limited number of tables.

The uniformed waitstaff brought a little formality to the otherwise casual place, and the countless maps of Italy that hung on the exposed brick walls, from all different eras and in all different frames, made her feel like they were in a lowbrow museum.

Overhead, opera music rose and fell, and the smells coming out of the flap door in the back were pure heaven.

There was only one other couple in the place, and they had to be in their sixties, the pair of them each with reading glasses on their noses as they went through their menus.

Dev cleared his throat. Then went for his water glass like a total pro, even bringing it to his mouth and swallowing without a drop spilled.

She was about to comment on it—like he’d mastered some kind of complex skill—but fortunately caught the words before they left her mouth. As she racked her brain for something, anything, to say, she focused on his hands. They were such strong hands, with blunt fingers, and all those calluses.

They had felt good on her waist, and she wondered what they’d be like on her skin—

“Listen,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve got to be honest.”

Her stare shot up toward his face, but she couldn’t make it any farther than his Adam’s apple. The tension rolling off him was palpable, and as a cold, hollow feeling struck her chest, she braced herself, noting he hadn’t taken his windbreaker off.

Closing her eyes, she nodded. “It’s okay—”

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

Blink. Blink. Blink. “You… haven’t?”

“Why do you sound so surprised.” He laughed with an edge as he shrugged out of his jacket. “I can’t believe I’m the first man to say that to you.”

She refocused on her water glass because the fluttering feeling in her chest had probably translated into something rather walleyed-ish on her puss.

“That’s true,” she whispered. “But you’re the first man I’ve cared about hearing it from.”

Everything seemed to dim down around them, especially as he extended his arm and laid his hand on the table. Except just as she was about to reach across, the waiter, a tall, lanky young man with a ponytail, approached again.

“Hi, can I get you all some drinks?”

Dev took his palm back. “I’ll take a beer.”

“Sure, I’ll bring you the menu—”

“Just a beer. Doesn’t have to be special.”

That seemed to confuse the kid. “Do you want a seasonal lager? Or a draft—”

“Fermented hops. Cold. In a glass—but only because this looks like the kind of place where you can’t have it in a bottle.”

“Oh. Okay.” The waiter looked in her direction. “And you?”

Lyric smiled. “A ginger ale.”

“Right away.”

When they were alone again, she was the one who extended her palm this time. “Hi.”

Dev chuckled and took her hand in his. “Hi.”

“I thought about you, too.”

“Did you,” he drawled, his smile slow and sexual. “Good.”

The door opened and cold rushed in along with a quartet of bundled-up people. As their laughter spilled throughout the place, the sound barely registered.

It was amazing how you could be alone in a public place.

“Not much for drinking?” he remarked.

It was hard to translate his words, what with her mind going in all kinds of NSFW directions. But then the syllables arranged themselves properly.

“No, I don’t drink.”

He glanced out into the restaurant like he was looking for someone. “You want me to change my order? I can change—”

“Oh, no. It’s fine. I just don’t like the taste—as lame as that sounds.”

“Now that you mention it, you didn’t drink the beer I gave you last night. I would have gotten you water.”

The waiter came over with two golden long-stems, one of which had ice. “I’ll get your menus.”

“Thank you,” Lyric murmured. And then as they just stared into each other’s eyes, she flushed. “So…”

“Hard to make conversation without the soundtrack of bullets, huh.” As she recoiled, he put his free palm up. “Too soon?”

“Ah—no. No, I—”

“That was a bad joke. Sorry.”

Well, she thought, it would have been funnier if her brother was willing to talk to her. Or if all of her parents would have stopped looking at her like she was someone they didn’t recognize.

But come on, casually dating a human shouldn’t be that big a deal. And all of them had dealt with their own kinds of unconventionals in their relationships.

The arrival of the menus cut that avenue of thinking off, and that was not a bad thing. The conversation also got easier as they started to talk about food choices: what they liked, didn’t like, hated, would eat until they passed out.

After they put their order in, Dev sat back and regarded her in that way he did… like there was absolutely no one else on the entire planet. He’d been right. She did get told she was beautiful by males. But that was usually as their eyes were going down her body.

Dev’s were right on her own—

In the back of her mind, something registered, some kind of… not an alarm bell, no. It was something else that—

“So tell me more about your work?” he prompted.

Snapping out of it, she forced a laugh. “Well, I’m about to be out of work.”

“Career transition?”

“You might say.” She took a sip of the ginger ale. “I have one more commitment I have to honor, and then I’m through with the influencer business.”

“Oh?”

Lyric tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “Yeah, my manager’s roped me into that Resolve2Evolve convention—yes, the billboard that almost killed me. You’re remembering it correctly. Kind of ironic, all things considered.”

His eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do there?”

“Not stand under any big signs, first off. And it’s not my scene, trust me.

All that self-help stuff, I think, is largely just spoon-fed platitudes.

” Although considering the state of her own life, should she really be so judgy?

“My manager—former manager—Marcia set it up before I could tell her I was dissolving my online persona and then couldn’t get me out of it. ”

He took a long draw on his beer. “Is that what the convention’s about? Improving yourself?”

“From what I understand. With some beauty tips thrown in along with all the avaricious inspiration, I’m quite sure.

Have you never heard of R2E before? The woman who’s the face of it is everywhere, all around the country, doing press and social media.

It’s a huge event. They’re taking over the whole Caldwell Convention Center. A thousand people, maybe more.”

She was babbling, really, at this point. But she could sense him withdrawing, and that made her want to paddle forward. Which was lame, yes, she knew.

“Sounds… interesting.” He took another draw from his beer. “When is it?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“I’ve never been to anything like that before.”

Now she laughed. “Well, get your surprised face on, but you’re not exactly their target audience.”

“You don’t say.”

Lyric frowned. Then leaned into the table. “Hey, do you want to come with me?” As his brows lifted, she blurted, “I mean, it could be a second date. And we could tell everybody you’re my bodyguard. You could look at it as a social experiment.”

What the hell was coming out of her mouth—

“I think that would make it our third date,” he murmured. “Or fourth if you count what happened on the roof. ”

God, she hoped the flush she could feel on her face wasn’t obvious. But as if showing up here and meeting her had magically erased all that gunfire stuff?

“So the whole billboard thing was more than an introduction?” she said roughly.