Vicious Romance

Chapter 17

Noah walks out of the café, hands full of two cups of coffee, smile on his face. My eyes can't help but fall on his face and our eyes lock, and I try to hide my smile as he sends a wink to me.

He walks over to the table, placing one cup in front of me, and one cup in front of him as he sits in the seat across from me.

"Because you love when I order you random things, I'm not going to tell you what I ordered for you... and it's good. So good that I ordered the same thing too, for myself," he smiles, leaving me with a frown. I hate surprises. I do, but within a second my anger disappears and is replaced with excitement, and mystery. Odd.

I'm about to taste an unknown coffee. I don't know what's exciting about that, but my feelings are beyond my control.

My fingers float up to the cup, gripping it, and slowly bringing it to my lips, as Noah watches me in silence. I take a sip a little too quickly, the stinging heat-like sensation burning my lips and tongue. I can't help but slam the coffee cup on the table, reaching for a napkin to help soothe the feeling.

From the corner of my eye, I catch Noah trying to hold in his grin, and I impulsively let out a growl. He erupts in laughter, and once the numbness leaves my mouth, I furrow my brows and shoot daggers from my eyes until he catches my stare, and stops laughing.

"Okay, I'm sorry but you should've seen your face, gosh it was precious. Burning yourself with coffee, it stings I know, but the way you jumped to take a sip... it was cute," he recites, looking at me, seductively.

I'm sure to express my cringe, as I look away and take a sip of the coffee... slowly, embracing the flavor.

I nod my head slowly just as Noah begins sipping on his coffee.

"It's good... really good actually, and I'd like to finish the entire thing, and not get it thrown across the sidewalk," I state, raising my eyebrows, taking another sip, attempting to ignore his previous statement.

Noah chuckles lightly at my comment, and takes a couple more sips from his cup, before responding.

"Okay, okay that's fair. I don't plan to throw any coffee cups on the floor, but that's subject to change, of course," he says, raising his cup.

My mood lighting from the influence of the coffee, I play along.

"Of course."

We both break out into a peal of childish laughter.

Moments pass and conversation freely flows between us as we both slowly devour our coffees, and by the time I reach the bottom of my cup, I feel as if I've known Noah my entire life. I learn how his father left him and his mother at a young age, and it was because of his mother he became the man he is today. He owed the world to her.

It's hard to believe that someone like him could willingly want to hurt people to make money.

But at the same time, it made sense. Noah worked at a grocery store. He couldn't have made more than $25,000 a year... which could serve as a motive to get involved in this trafficking and risky sort of business. Because as twisted these jobs were, they bought in a lot of money, there was no doubt about that.

But- if Noah was well involved in this line of work, then why would he work at Whole Foods? To maintain his cover?

That was something I had to figure out with time.

For now, I put on a smile and made it look like I was having a good time, returning my thoughts to whatever Noah was saying.

"So that was how I learned that Percy Jackson and his endeavors weren't real," Noah continued, explaining the little details from his past.