After we checked our shoes and coats, we followed our escort downstairs where the restaurant was actually located. As we walked down the narrow hall, we passed individual dining spaces, each separated by sliding shoji doors. Another set of doors was available to shut the rooms off entirely, but most of them were open. In each room, the dining table was low to the ground, and instead of chairs, they were surrounded by cushions for guests to sit on. Kneel on, actually.
I’d seen those kinds of tables in movies but never in a restaurant. In fact, they were exactly what I imagined when I thought of dining in a Japanese home.
“The tables are those kind,” I said, not knowing how else to express my surprise. “All little and low.”
“They’re called chabudai. I have one at my apartment.”
“That’s interesting.” Kind of cool was what I meant, but I wasn’t all the way ready to be friendly yet. Especially now that he no longer had his hand on my back.
“Okazu is a traditional Japanese restaurant,” he explained. “These are called tatami rooms, named for the straw mats, which are easily damaged and hard to clean. It’s why we took off our shoes.”
I smiled as we passed a little boy who waved at me over his soup bowl.
“Hard to clean but they’re kept under people when they eat food?” I was willing to bet that little kid alone had as much rice under his feet as he did in his belly.
The hostess stopped and gestured for us to enter our room.
“Have you never eaten Japanese before?” Donovan asked smugly from behind me as we walked in.
“Yes,” I said, offended. In fact, my first experience eating it had been with Weston back at Harvard all those years ago. Not something I intended to bring up now. “I might not be as experienced in the world as you are, but I am a somewhat cultured eater.”
I knelt where I was directed on the cushion near the far end of the table. “Now I haven’t eaten at a Japanese restaurant anywhere as fancy or as traditional as Okasu, but the food’s essentially the same, I’m sure.”
The hostess gasped while Donovan, who was unbuttoning his suit jacket so he could sit down, broke into a grin.
My eyes darted from one of them to the other. “Okay. What did I say wrong? Is the food totally different?”
Donovan knelt at the head of the table next to me. “It’s Okazu . Not okasu. The first, which is the name of the restaurant, is a word that means food that accompanies rice. The second is a verb. That means rape.”
I rolled my eyes, taking a menu from the hostess before she scurried out of the room. “Who would name a restaurant something so close to a word that you’d never want the place to be called?”
Donovan bent over his own menu. “Both could be appropriate depending on how well our dinner goes.”
I scowled, but something hummed deep in my belly and spread between my thighs. And I was pretty sure my scowl didn’t look as sour as I’d meant it to, so I hid behind the menu for as long as I could.
Which was about three seconds.
Then I sighed when I couldn’t read a single word. “This might as well be Chinese,” I said, throwing it down in front of me.
“It’s Japanese.”
“Oh, yeah.” I managed a smile at my stupid word choice. “I guess you can order for me.”
“I already planned to.” It was another remark that deserved a glare, and I was sure to deliver.
When the waitress arrived a few minutes later, she brought a porcelain container and two cups, which she set down on the table in front of us. Then Donovan proceeded to order in fluent Japanese, which was also a lot sexier than I could have imagined. As was seeing him sitting so comfortably on his knees. Basically, I was learning that almost everything where Donovan was concerned was a lot sexier than it should be.
Which made things complicated. I could understand a sex only thing between us, but if he made everything so sexy, then what did that leave as not sex?
The whole thing was frustrating, and that wasn’t helping my underlying mood.
When the waitress left, Donovan poured the liquid from the container into one of the cups and turned to me.
“We need to talk about why you’re still wearing your panties.”
I hadn’t told him. And my little mishap with the skirt upstairs hadn’t been enough to show off the goods. He just knew. Like always.
“I bet you’re still wearing your underwear too,” I said as sassily as I could. Though I was pretty sure his weren’t nearly as wet as mine were at the moment.
He handed the cup out to me. “Drink this.”
“Why? Did you spike it when I blinked?”
He glowered at me. “I don’t need to spike it. I’m trying to help you with the stick up your ass.”
I let that sink in. “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined you accusing me of having a stick up my ass.”
He dipped his thumb in the cup and then smeared my bottom lip with the liquid. “That’s how wound up you are. You’re the uptight one tonight.”
A shiver ran down my spine and my lungs suddenly felt constrained, like my bra was too tight. I licked the liquid from my lip—sake—and wished I could suck the rest from his thumb.
Except I was still feeling all the other things I was feeling, too.
“Did you consider that I might have reason to be wound up? That the reason might be you?” I took a swallow of the sake, finding it more acidic than I’d expected, which fittingly matched my mood.
He leaned close and the warmth of his breath at my neck accompanied his next words. “I don’t care why you’re wound up. I care what you’re wearing.”
Yep. Panties definitely weren’t dry.
“There’s a restroom in the hall to the left,” he said, believing he had me under his command.
Apparently, he wasn’t wrong. “I’ll be back.”
In the bathroom, I slipped into a stall, undid my garters and, while continuously shaking my head at myself, removed my panties. I still didn’t have anywhere to put them, so I wadded them into a ball in my fist and stopped at the mirror to check my lip gloss and give myself a silent pep talk.
Being mad wasn’t making the night better for me. Nor was being confused or frustrated or hurt. And none of it was meant to make the night better for him. So what was the point of holding on to these miserable emotions?
No point. No point at all.
With my panties still hidden in my fist, I returned to the table, knelt at my place, and dropped them discreetly in Donovan’s lap.
He held them up like they were treasured lace and swept them under his nose as though attempting to identify the bouquet of a wine cork.
“Oh my god!” Nervously I glanced around the restaurant. The people across the hall weren’t paying attention to us, thank goodness, and no one was walking by. The lights were dim and shadows could be seen through the thin walls between rooms, but I couldn’t make out what our neighbors were doing. No one would be able to tell that Donovan was showing off my panties.
“I didn’t have anywhere to put them,” I explained, when I felt less panicked about his display.
His eyes narrowed in on my mouth. “I can think of somewhere I’d like to put them.”
I took a breath but only managed a shallow one. It had been an element of some of my fantasies—Donovan stuffing my panties in my mouth to keep me from screaming. The image was already burned into my mind from previous daydreams, but now I had a feeling that the image was burned into his mind as well.