Love Hacked (Knitting in the City #3)(49)
Author: Penny Reid

I withdrew my foot from my spiked heel and found his leg under the table, caressed his calf with the tip of my toe. He jumped, flinched, banged his knee on the table, then cursed at the contact. The spell was broken.

I laughed at his overreaction, leaned back in my chair, and popped the fig in my mouth. I washed it down with the last of my wine.

He surveyed me from across the small table. He did not look pleased. In fact, he looked positively dangerous. I recalled our first date, over a month ago now. When I’d pushed, he’d pushed back. I was hoping for that kind of action now, and counting on it. I could feel his resolve crumble, I almost taste my victory. My body was humming from all the wine, suggestive conversation, and Alex’s dark look.

Then, he pushed back, but in typical Alex form, he did the unexpected.

He glanced at his plate. Using his fingers, he swiped a fig across a thick drizzling of honey, and—much like I had done only moments before—he trapped my gaze with his and licked the inside of the half fig.

My attention moved to the indecent movements of his mouth, and all was lost; his tongue was unhurried and immodest. I could not look away.

“I eat it like this?” he asked in his sexy, growly voice.

My breath caught.

My hands fisted.

I may have whimpered.

When his entire tongue made an appearance—and not in a clumsy kind of way, but in a sensual, I-am-in-complete-control-and-know-exactly-what-I’m-supposed-to-do kind of way—I almost died. Instinctively, I pressed my legs together, and for the first time that evening, I wished I’d opted to wear sweat pants and my No Sex is Safe Sex T-shirt.

Alex must’ve received the reaction he was looking for because he chuckled—a deep, rumbly, masculine sound—and the half fig disappeared behind his lips, though, evil man that he was, he licked his fingers with flourish.

“Mmm…” he hummed, “you know how much I like the taste of honey.”

My eyes lifted to his and found them daring and dark and not at all safe. I expelled an unsteady breath and forced my hands to relax.

“That wasn’t very nice.”

“Oh? Are we being nice now?”

“Yes. I wasn’t sucking on a banana, was I?”

The intensity of his expression mellowed just a fraction, but mostly he still looked dangerous. “Sandra, watching you lick a fig, sitting less than four feet away, dressed like that, is the definition of not being nice.”

I smiled sweetly at him. “But you liked it. Didn’t you, Mr. Bond?”

He did not return my smile. Instead, he wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, placed it on the table, and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me something.”

I waited for him to continue with his request. When he didn’t, I asked, “Tell you what?”

“I don’t know. Tell me anything. Tell me something I would never guess about you. Tell me your biggest secret.”

The words carried some weight, seriousness, importance that I couldn’t at that moment grasp. Therefore, because he’d asked, and because I wanted his honesty, his confessions so deeply, I told him my biggest secret.

I cleared my throat, squared my shoulders, and sat upright in the chair. “Okay… I used to be a phone sex operator.”

To my astonishment, Alex didn’t look at all surprised. In fact, he was perfectly expressionless. I guessed his lack of visible reaction meant he didn’t understand what I meant.

I steadied myself to explain. “It’s a person who talks on the phone to….”

“I know what a phone sex operator is.”

“Well, you didn’t know what Rickrolling was. How am I supposed to know what modern vices are in your scope of familiarity? I’m not a dirty mind reader.”

Not even a smile. He swallowed and studied the dishes on the table. “When? When were you a phone sex operator?”

“When I was a freshman in college.”

“And?”

“And….” I shrugged, “the entire experience was fascinating. I learned a great deal about human nature—some good, some bad—but mostly I learned that very few people are truly unique in their motivations and desires.”

“Your findings are hardly reliable. Sex phone customers don’t make up a random sampling of the general population and, therefore, any extrapolations you’ve made are faulty due to selection bias.”

“Don’t get your hozen in a twist, Professor Freud. I wasn’t talking about specific desires and motivations; of course most of the people were pervs. I was speaking in a broader sense.” I waved my arms around in large, sweeping motions; I hoped the movement emphasized the expression broader sense.

“Pervs? Is that the clinical term?”

“No.” I glared at the table. “It’s not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But it should be.”

I waited for a beat, picked an errant piece of potato from the tablecloth, then lifted my eyes to his.

He was looking at me, but not looking at me. His gaze was unfocused, narrowed, and I assumed he was absorbing this information.

I continued unprompted. “It actually pays quite well, and most of the calls were at night, typically the same kind of thing. I could study while I worked, and I was pretty good at it.”

He appeared torn, as if he was wrestling with his expectations of who he thought I was and who I might actually be.

Belatedly, he said, “I find this very hard to believe.”

“I know. It’s pretty unbelievable. I have two friends who stripped through medical school. I have another friend who dropped out of a full-ride master’s program at Cornell to enter the adult film industry. I know another woman who, after graduating from Yale law with top honors, became a nonprofit lawyer for undocumented immigrants. She could have done anything, worked for anyone, made millions—instead she chose poverty and righteousness. Look at you—you’re a computer hacker whose every move is being monitored by the federal government.

“There is boring. There is sensational. There is mediocre. There is lazy. There is good. There is evil. People do implausible things all the time, and they run the gamut of moderately weird to truly extraordinary. But there is no normal. The world is an unbelievable place full of unbelievable people doing unbelievable things.”

As my mini-tirade came to an end, I realized that I’d lifted my voice to a near shout. The silence afterward was deafening in its completeness. He studied me, and I allowed him to do so without giving him anything further.

Belatedly he asked, his expression still carefully cool, “Why did you stop? If the money was so good, why stop?”

I sighed, glanced at the wall behind his head. “It was interesting, but I never enjoyed it. And, well, I was fired actually. I came across individuals who were truly troubled, and they distressed me, so I tried to counsel them. I tried to encourage them to seek the help they needed, and my boss didn’t like my improvisation. Nevertheless, I guess you could say one of the main reasons I became a psychiatrist was because I recognized I had a knack for helping people simply by talking to them.”

“Why not an adult psychiatrist? Why children?”

I moved my attention back to the figs and goat cheese on my plate and pushed it away before meeting his gaze. “Because I want to help before it’s too late. I wanted to make a difference early rather than later.”

He frowned, his expression somber. “Do you think it’s too late when people reach adulthood?”

“No. But it is more difficult, because you have to have the money to pay for good treatment, and you have to want to change. Therefore, most people don’t seek the help they need.”

He nodded absentmindedly. Then, unexpectedly, a ghost of a smile curved his lips. “I still can’t believe you were a phone sex operator.”

I pinched my lips to keep from returning his smile. “Well, you asked and I answered.”

“You did.” He frowned. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Alex surveyed me for a long moment, and I was at a complete loss as to what he was thinking.

Under the unwavering weight of his gaze, I felt tired and a little sad. Our games, fun though they were, had taken a toll. I’d missed him. And now that he was here, I still missed him. I wanted to touch him and crawl into his warmth. I wanted to curl up with him in my bed wearing my Wake me in two days T-shirt.

But he was acting strange.

I accepted my failure to seduce the man and gathered a bit of resolve as I stood from the table. My mind had switched gears, and I was making a mental list of all the things I needed to do before I could go home, starting with the dishes and likely ending with my Wookie costume of rejection.

I pushed my shoulder length hair out of my face, tucked it behind my ear, and stacked the plates to clear them.

“What are you doing?” he asked, still sitting, just like a man.

I shrugged, didn’t look at him. “I’m clearing the table. I need to get these dishes done before we leave.”

I heard the scrape of his chair as he stood at the same time I reached for my flatware. But, before I could add it to the pile I’d already made, his hand gripped my wrist; he used it as leverage to spin me toward him and against his chest. My fork and knife clattered to the table.