Chapter 145: Take her to bed tonight

"Let’s eat here by the fire instead," he suggested, his voice like a soft caress over her skin. "It’s comfortable and cozier."

Cozier...Mia’s mouth went dry as her mind made up another meaning to that word. In the kitchen, she was finding it hard to concentrate, because her hands were trembling so hard she could hardly ladle the hot soup into bowls. From the corner of her eye, she saw Neil walk over to the home system, where he flipped on a button and spoke to the device to play a song; a moment later, Ed Sheeran’s song ’Perfect’ filled the room. From all the songs in the world, he’d chosen perfect...

The lyrics swirled around in her brain in the kitchen. She reached for two napkins, put them on the tray of food, and then, with her back to the living room, Mia braced her palms on the counter top and drew a long, steadying breath. She didn’t have to be told to know that he was trying to make her relax before... before he’d take her to his bed tonight.

She knew it, just as clearly as she knew that the situation between them had changed irreversibly from the moment she chose to stay here with him rather than leaving him at the river or bringing him here and calling the authorities. He knew it, too. She could see the evidence. There was a new softness in his eyes when he looked at her and a smiling tenderness in his voice, and they were both utterly shattering to her self-control.

Mia straightened up and shook her head at her foolish, useless attempt to deceive herself. There was nothing left of her self-control, no more arguments that mattered, nowhere she could go to hide from the truth. The truth was that she wanted him so badly. And he wanted her as much. They both knew it.

Mia put silverware on the tray, then she quietly stole another glance at him over her shoulder, but she hastily looked away. He was sitting on the sofa, his arms spread out across the back of it, his foot propped casually atop the opposite knee, and he was watching her in a relaxed, indulgent, and sexy manner. He wasn’t going to rush her, and he wasn’t a bit nervous either, but then he had undoubtedly made love many times with countless women—all of whom she was sure were much prettier and unquestionably more experienced than she was, which was why he’d looked calm.

Mia controlled her compulsive urge to suddenly start rearranging the kitchen, and picked up the tray instead.

Neil watched her return to the sofa and, bending down, place the tray on the table, her movements graceful and uncertain, like a frightened kitten. The firelight gleamed on her heavy brown hair as it spilled forward over her shoulders; it glowed on her soft skin as she arranged the bowls on the mat he’d spread on the floor next to the fireplace.

Her long, sooty lashes cast fan-shaped shadows on her smooth cheeks, and he noticed for the second time that she had beautiful hands, the fingers slender with no engagement ring, and that, for some reasons filled him with delight. He had a sudden faint memory of those hands of hers clasping his face to her chest at the river as she rocked him in her arms and pleaded with him to get up. At the time, it had seemed like a dream in which he had merely been an uninvolved observer, but later, after he staggered into bed, his recollections were clearer. He remembered her hands smoothing blankets over him, the frantic worry in her lovely voice...

As he looked at her now, he marveled once again at the strange aura of innocence about her, then he suppressed a puzzled smile at the realization that, for some reason, Mia was avoiding his eyes like a little shy virgin.

For the last three days she had opposed, defied, and challenged him, and today, she had outsmarted him and then saved his life when he’d given up. And yet, for all her courage and her spirit, she was amusingly shy, now that the hostilities between them were over. "I’ll get some wine," he said, and before she could decline he got up and returned with a bottle and two wine glasses.

"I didn’t poison it, querida." He remarked a few minutes later when he saw her reach automatically for the wine he had poured in the glass then pull her hand away as if afraid.

"I didn’t think you did," Mia replied with a self-conscious laugh. She picked up the glass and drank some, and Neil noticed that her hand was shaking. She was uneasy about going to bed with him, he could tell; she knew he hadn’t been near a woman in years. She must be worried that he was going to jump on her the moment they were done with their meal or that once they started making love, he’d lose control and finish in two minutes and not give her pleasure like her fiance must have been doing for the past years he was in prison.

Neil didn’t know why she should be concerned about all that; if anyone should be worried about his ability to pleasurably prolong the act and perform well after five years of being deprived, it was him.

And he was. In the past he wouldn’t have worried about his performance in bed, but now he was. He was, in fact worried that she’d find him boring compared to that son of a bitch, Owen. He’d even turned on the music to make her relax, even though he wasn’t a fan of music anymore.

Neil decided to try to reassure her by engaging her in some sort of pleasant, casual conversation. Mentally, he tried to search for a topic of interest to her while he reluctantly discarded the subject of her beautiful body, her gorgeous eyes, and, most reluctantly of all, her whispered statement at the river that she wanted to go to bed with him.

He also remembered all of the other things she had said to him in the bedroom this afternoon, when he hadn’t been able to shake off his numb paralysis and respond. Now, he was almost certain he wasn’t meant to hear most of them. Or else he had only imagined some of them. He wished she would talk about her time In the orphanage, he loved her stories about children because that was the only time her entire face brightened up. He was about to try to get her to talk about them, when he realized she was giving him an odd, curious look.

"What?" he asked.

"I was wondering," she began, "that day, I mean at the restaurant when we met, did I really have a flat tire or...?"

Neil struggled to suppress his guilty expression as he replied. "You saw it with your own eyes."

"Are you saying that I ran over a sharp object and didn’t realize my tire was going flat?" She raised a suspicious brow.

"I wouldn’t say it happened exactly like that." He was pretty certain she suspected him now, but her face was so bland that he had no idea if she was playing cat and mouse with him or not.

"Then if you don’t mind, Mr. Wayner, I’d like to hear from you how you think I ended up with a flat tire?"

"I’d say that the side of your tire probably came into sudden contact with a sharp, pointed object." He said with a casual shrug.

Finished with her soup, Mia leaned back and fixed him with a level look that would have shamed an instant confession and apology out of any stubborn male child. From the young woman he’d known five years ago, she looked so mature to the point he think she’d make a good mother and a good discipliner to her children with that look on her face.

"A sharp, pointed object?" she speculated, lifting her brows. "You mean like a knife?"

"Like a knife," Neil confirmed, trying desperately to keep his face expressionless.

"You mean your knife?" She asked.

"Yes, my knife." With an impenitent smirk, he continued in a boyish voice, "I’m sorry, Miss Harrison."

Raising her brows, she said firmly, "I’ll expect you to fix that tire, Neil. And reflect on your bad behavior."

The only thing that stopped him from laughing at that moment was the sweet shock of hearing her finally say his real name to his face. "Yes, ma’am," he said. It was unbelievable how his entire life was in chaos, and all he wanted to do at this moment was laugh and pull her into his arms. Laughter, Neil thought, was like a taboo in his life before, and now sitting here with her, made it more natural than it was to him before.

"I don’t have to write an apology letter, do I?" he asked, watching her huge brown eyes shimmer with answering amusement as she looked pointedly at the bowl he had just pushed aside.

"No," she said, "but you’re grounded tonight. And the entire house chore are on you, including the dishes."

"Oh no!" he replied, but he stood up obediently and picked up his empty bowl. As he reached for hers, he added, "You’re so mean, ma’am!"

To which she firmly replied, "No whining, please. Go do you work."

Neil couldn’t help it anymore. He burst out laughing, he then turned his head and surprised her with a quick kiss on her forehead. "Thank you, Mi amor." He whispered, holding back another chuckle at her flustered expression.

"F-for what?"

He stopped laughing and held her gaze as he said, "For making me laugh. For staying here with me and not turning me in. For being brave and funny and incredibly beautiful in that red dress you’re wearing underneath your robe. And for making me a wonderful meal." He lifted her chin to lighten the mood a split second before he realized the expression in her shining eyes wasn’t embarrassment...

"I’ll help you with the dishes," she said, starting to stand up from the mat.

Neil put his hand on her shoulder and gently pressed her back down. "Stay there and enjoy the fire and the rest of your wine, I’ll do it myself." He said, then headed to the kitchen.

Too tense to sit still, waiting to see what would happen next, no, when it was going to happen, Mia got up and walked over to the glass wall. Crossing her arms against her chest, she gazed out at the snow wonderland with mountaintops gleaming in the moonlight to distract herself from what she knew was going to happen between them tonight.

Meanwhile, In the kitchen, Neil, who noticed her standing by the glass wall, pressed something on the wall, dimming the lights on the chandelier above the living room to a mellow glow. "You’ll be able to see outside better that way," he explained when she threw a questioning look over her shoulder at him. And, Mia thought, it was also much cozier with only the dimmed lights and the glow from the fireplace to illuminate the room. Very cozy and very romantic, especially with the music playing in the background...

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay Read