She relaxed even more. “Do you have your own practice?”
He nodded. “I get by. It’s not my passion though.”
“What is?”
He wanted to say he’d walked into the library and found it, but he knew that wasn’t going to fly. “Books. Languages. The written word. Dead languages. History. Art. Martial arts from around the world. Legends. Weapons. Poetry.” That was all true. He didn’t bother to hide the enthusiasm because he actually felt it and that was who he was. If he wanted the real her, she had to want the real him.
A slow smile spread across her face. “You are an amazing man. I can’t imagine you as a lawyer.”
“Neither can I,” he agreed. “I should have been a librarian, although I did volunteer in a library once. I read all the books and then had to quit.” That was sort of true. He worked there, read as many of the books as possible, assassinated a member of the ministry and then returned to Sorbacov’s hellhole. That had been in Russia. “Do you like the outdoors?”
She nodded and looked up as the waiter returned to place a salad in front of her and then one in front of Absinthe. The waiter stood a little too close to Scarlet and she shifted in her chair slightly, edging away from him. She waited until he was gone before she spoke.
“I actually prefer to be outdoors if the weather’s good. Well,” she hedged, “sometimes I find the most amazing places and take a book when it’s storming just to be outside when it’s raining. I love storms.”
She was perfection. Who knew that it was possible to have a woman be perfection for him? He didn’t think it was. He hadn’t thought one was made for him. He could look at her all day. He knew he could because he had. He’d sat in the library and studied every single inch of her body. She was clothed, but often, her clothing was tight and moved with her body and he had mapped every curve, every valley, every sweet inch of her that he could.
“I really love storms as well. I particularly love to sit above the ocean and watch the storms move in while the waves rise up to meet the lightning. There’s something very freeing in the wildness of it.”
She regarded him over a forkful of romaine lettuce. “That’s poetic, Aleksei. I haven’t experienced that, but now I want to.”
“What about motorcycles? How do you feel about them?”
Scarlet took a sip of her water and then smiled up at the water boy who rushed to fill her glass. It was already mostly full. Absinthe thought the boy just wanted an excuse to be closer to her. He couldn’t blame the kid. Even the waiter was trying to find excuses to visit their table. He didn’t have to like it though—and he didn’t. The boy he didn’t mind. She didn’t either. The waiter was a different story. He actually seemed to brush his body up against Scarlet’s when he got close to her. Absinthe had never been a jealous man, but then he’d never had a reason to be jealous. He wanted her attention centered on him, which was childish. He was a grown man and very confident. He didn’t whisper “Go away” to either of the two servers, but he thought it.
“I take it you like motorcycles.”
“You could say I’m passionate about motorcycles. I love the freedom of riding on them. The way the road opens up and you become part of the world around you. You can’t get that in a car or truck. Even a convertible doesn’t give you that same feeling of being part of the landscape and highway around you as you ride. You can see everything. The road stretches out in front of you and it’s like the entire world is yours to see.”
“You make riding motorcycles sound very different than I ever thought about them.”
“What did you think about them?” He braced himself. Most people were very judgmental about motorcycles and the men and women who rode them. He was prepared for her poor opinion and knew he’d just have to work to change her mind.
She took off her glasses for a moment, blinking at him with her vivid green eyes. She had very long lashes, reddish-gold tipped with more gold. For some reason just looking at those lashes framing her large eyes made his cock come to life all over again. She had no idea what that meant when it was unheard of. The men of Torpedo Ink, his brothers, commanded their cocks. Women didn’t do that. Nature didn’t do that. The reality was, the ability had been beaten out of them so they could be trained to order their erections, to always be in complete control of every sexual response.