“I suggest your piece of paper hand takes a break, because as long as your cock keeps tally of my threats, it’s getting nowhere near my sharpener.”

Drake stops. His grip on his pizza loosens and the slice flops down. Luckily for him, he only just picked it up, so the hot toppings fall into the box and not his lap.

“Did you just refer to your pussy as a sharpener?”

“Did you just agree that your cock is a pencil?”

“Can I change my mind? If it has to be stationery, can it be a permanent marker instead?”

“Why are we comparing our bits to stationary? This is so wrong on so many levels.”

“At least we ain’t fightin’.”

“Yet,” I add. “We ain’t fightin’ yet. It’s only been ten minutes.”

“Is that all?” he groans, grabbing his beer bottle. “Feels like a fuckin’ prison sentence.”

“Oh, now, we’re about to fight.”

“Can you call me a bastard again?”

“I should call your mom and have her change your name on your birth certificate. Heaven knows Bastard would be more appropriate.”

“Since when do you have my mom’s number?” He looks amusingly alarmed at this.

“I don’t.” I raise my eyebrows. “But I have my new techie. He could get it faster than you could wrestle me to the ground to stop me.”

“I’d never wrestle you. I value my balls too much.” He puts the bottle down and reaches for the remote control. “There are several other things I’d do to you, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Spanking might not be a surprise with you anymore.”

“Hey—you knock it, but you’ve never complained. You’ve moaned plenty though.”

I reach forward and smack my palm against his hard upper arm.

Sassy son of a bitch.

“And there it is.” He laughs, and damn him, I want to hit him again, but all I can do is look down and smile, fighting my own giggles, because he got me.

Total bastard.

I don’t know if I’m amused or pissed. I do know that my thumb wants to trail across that stubbly jaw of his until it’s numb to the sensation of the rough hair against it. I want to tease my lips across his in barely there kisses until his patience snaps and he takes control.

God, I want this to be something and nothing all at the same time.

I’m not even hungry anymore.

The silence that has settled in the wake of his fading laugh has me taking a deep breath, picking aimlessly at the cheese on the pizza in front of me. I’m alternately licking my lips and grazing my teeth over them, making sure not to look at him. Because this is different.

It’s one thing to be on a date in a public place.

It’s another to have one at his house.

I swig from my wine glass, letting the alcohol linger in my mouth before swallowing it down. He even got my favorite fucking wine. What kind of sorcery is this bastard pulling with me? His voodoo is so fucking freaky that not even New Orleans would welcome him onto Bourbon Street without dousing his fine ass in sage and asking Roman goddesses for their blessing.

It’s easy to banter with Drake. It’s easy to fight and argue every second of the day because those are the words that flow easily. Foot stomps and door slams and righteous shoves and grabs are the way we’ve worked as long as I can remember. They’re easy for us.

This? This crazy, comfortable silence mixed with the echo of our laughter and words that aren’t insulting but plain old teasing?

It’s hard.

It’s hard to be something other than everything I’ve ever known us to be.

More than that, it’s terrifying. God, it’s so fucking terrifying.

Because it is comfortable. To sit here in silence, me picking at my pizza and sipping my wine quicker than should be allowed while he happily gorges down pizza and barely even sniffs his beers. We’re not even touching except for the slightest brush of his knee against mine when he reaches for another slice. And I…I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with this.

I have no idea how to live with this man who makes my blood boil with both anger and desire at the same time.

“Stop thinkin’,” he orders, flicking a piece of mushroom into his pizza box. “Bad shit happens when you think, cupcake.”

“But murders get solved, too, so it’s a win-lose kinda situation, right?” I give up on the pizza and instead drain the rest of my glass. I tilt it toward him in a question.

He nods toward the door that I’m assuming will take me to the kitchen.

I get up, grasping my glass tighter than I should. His eyes are on me as I make the turn from the living room into the hallway and then the kitchen. Charcoal cupboards cover the room, a chrome sink breaking up the black countertops. The stove is black, too, and completely shiny, but the fridge is a brushed chrome that’s neither the color of the sink nor remotely close to the cupboards.

But the cooker is black. His appliances aren’t coordinated. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Still…inside one of those appliances is a bottle of wine, and priorities have to win out here.

I’ll figure out how to get home once this awkwardness is gone.

I pour my glass a little higher than I should and put the bottle back into the wine rack on the middle shelf of the fridge. So I think most people call it a bottle rack, but it just so happens to be perfectly shaped for wine bottles. So it’s a wine rack.

If I’m rambling in my head, perhaps one glass of wine is enough.

I take two steps in the front room and stop. Drake’s shirt is undone, every button un-buttoned and the sides falling to his sides so there’s chest and tan skin and abs and a very tempting V that dips beneath the waistband of his black pants. And his belt is unbuckled. Invitingly.

I definitely don’t need glass two of this wine.

He turns his face toward me and, with his eyes glinting, smirks.

I take it back. I need this glass.

Fuck it. I need the whole damn bottle.

“Problem?”

“Are you seriously asking me if this”—I motion to his exposed body—“is a problem?”

“I’m sensing a flatterin’ answer comin’ my way.”

“Like a fuck, no, put it away?” I take a drink and set my glass down. “Or were you expecting a girly giggle?”

I think my vagina is giggling in the form of a very harsh clench. Nice to know she’s easier than the rest of me. No problems with her in the bedroom, huh?

Since when did I start referring to my vagina as a she? Or even a separate entity?

Fuck this all so much.

Clearly, I’m not cut out for dating.

Drake scoops his arm around my waist and throws me back onto the sofa. He moves his body over mine before I’ve barely even fallen, and I inhale sharply.

“Thinking,” he breathes, the heat of his mouth just ghosting mine making me close my eyes. “Too much of it, sweetheart. Stop it.”

“Can’t,” I admit in my own whisper. “This is so crazy. You. Me. This. We’re supposed to hate each other.”

“I can hate you. I do several times a fuckin’ day. I don’t have to like you to want to be with you though.”

“I know.” My eyes open, but I look down. Away from him.

Because he’s stronger than I am. He admits what I can’t. He admits what he wants, whereas I’m still hiding beneath myself.

He’s a better person than I’ll ever be.

And maybe… Maybe he deserves someone who can give him as much of them as he can of himself.

“Nope,” Drake snaps, covering my mouth with his hand, forcing me to dart my gaze to his. Toward that intense, Antarctic gaze of his. “Stop. Now. Noelle, enough. You’re the strongest, sexiest, most confident woman I know. No doubts. Not from you.”

I open my mouth, but it’s dry, so I close it again. I lick my lips, and I hate this. This feeling. So insecure. Like I’m not good enough.

Here he is, offering me everything on a silver platter, and I’m feeling fucking sorry for myself.

He’s fucking insane. I’m insane. This whole damn thing is so insane that there isn’t a single psychiatrist in the country who could make sense of this thing we call a relationship.