Decadent Dreams

She nodded. Nodding kept her from saying something she was sure she wouldn’t be able to take back. Something along the lines of, “I need your hands on me again.”

Belinda shifted in the seat, the faux leather making a very unpleasant sound as she did. Luckily, Malik didn’t look up from his menu or comment in any way. Still, there was something going on that Belinda wasn’t a hundred percent sure of. It had started when he’d helped her out of the car. No, before that. When he’d pulled up in front of her apartment building and stepped out of the car. All he’d needed was background music, something with bass that might be heard in a strip club. Not that she’d ever been in a strip club to hear such music.

It was the way his long, lean body had emerged from the car and the way he’d folded his arms over a chest she hadn’t realized was so toned and muscled. He wore simple jeans and a T-shirt, an outfit she saw him in daily so it shouldn’t have sparked anything different inside her. But it did. As she’d walked down the sidewalk to meet him at the car, she’d felt a tingling begin in the pit of her stomach. That tingling had only increased during their ride to the skating rink because his cologne seemed stronger than usual, more intoxicating. He’d driven with the air-conditioning on so she didn’t have the pleasure of a breeze to serve as a slight reprieve.

Then when he’d held her close so she wouldn’t fall on her face, Belinda thought she’d melt right in his arms. Instead she had to apply some type of focus because—despite popular belief—she wasn’t good at everything. Her legs hadn’t liked the fact that she’d put wheels beneath them and expected them to move around agilely. By the time they’d left the skating rink, every nerve in her body was on end and she tingled all over.

Belinda was no fool—inexperienced maybe—but not a fool when it came to the physicality of men and women. She knew the buzz of attraction the same way she knew her mother’s recipe for pineapple upside-down cake by heart. She knew it because she’d been feeling it a lot lately. Or rather, she’d been feeling the need to explore other options in the past weeks.

These feelings had precipitated her decision that her life needed to change. There was definitely something lacking in all of her achievements, a void that she was trying to figure out how to fill. For as proud as everyone was of her, Belinda wanted to break the mold they’d cast her in so badly she could scream.

“Chicago-style or thin crust?”

Belinda cleared her throat to cover up the fact she’d been thinking of something other than ordering from the menu. With her cheeks flushed from her thoughts, she closed the menu and sat back against the seat. “Chicago, of course.”

“I like shrimp.”

She nodded. “And pepperoni.”

“Ham and pineapple,” he added.

She shook her head. “No pineapple. This is dinner not dessert. I cannot do fruit and meats together.”

He laughed at that. “Right.”

The waiter came and they ordered the pizza along with a soda for her and a beer for Malik.

She couldn’t help but stare at the veins in his arm, which shot upward like taut strands of rope, fading out into the massive bulge that was his bicep. Her mouth watered and she picked up her glass of soda.

“So what do you think about the competition?” she asked after she figured she’d drank enough to either cause a brain freeze or quench her thirst. The former was much more likely since every time she looked at Malik she felt parched.