“I’ll come help you.” I give Sandro a discreet wink, to which he responds with an eye roll.
In the small kitchen, Blake turns toward me. “There’s not much to help with.”
“It’s not polite to leave the chef alone to do all the work.”
“Did your nonna teach you that?” She walks over to the stove and checks on one of the steaming pots. She takes a wooden spoon and stirs whatever is inside twice.
I stop right behind her. She’s so fucking tiny compared to me, her head only reaching my mid-chest. “She wanted to make sure her grandson was well-mannered.”
The second she realizes how close I’m standing to her, her back stiffens. She stirs the pot once more and then slips around me and moves to the fridge. “Doesn’t seem like she succeeded.”
I lean back against the counter and grin. “I can be very well-mannered when I feel like it.”
“Ah.” She shuts the fridge, holding a bowl of tomatoes in one hand. “Then one day, you may still surprise me.” She blows an errant blond strand out of her face. “I need to finish cutting some veggies for the salad. How are you with a knife?”
“I’m good with my hands.”
She wraps her lips around her teeth to hide her smile from me. “Of course you are. If I asked you to try the gravy, would you say something equally ridiculous, like you're good with your mouth?”
I laugh at the way she drops her voice to mimic mine. “How did you manage to read my mind? By the way, both of those statements are true.”
She gives me a cutting board and a sharp knife, a smile tugging on her lips. “You take the cucumbers, and I’ll do the tomatoes. Your mind is quite easy to read.”
We stand side by side, her cutting board a few inches from mine. “Oh yeah? Am I really that simple?”
Her knife work isn’t bad, but mine’s slightly better. It comes with years of practice. Cutting off a finger or a tongue is not as easy as one might expect.
My elbow brushes against hers. She blows at the strand of hair again. “You’re not as simple as you want people to think, but not as complicated as you think you are.”
The observation is unexpected. I turn it over once, twice, decide it's nonsense, and huff a laugh. “So you think you’ve got me all figured out.”
“Not entirely. But I’m making progress.”
I put my knife down and wipe my hands on a towel. The strand keeps slipping, getting in front of her eye.
“All right. Tell me what I'm thinking about now.”
She glances at me, taking a moment to answer. “That I’m a bad host for psychoanalyzing you?”
I lift my hand and tuck the strand away, the tips of my fingers brushing against the shell of her ear.
Her breath hitches. Her knife slows and then stops completely.
I press my index finger against her jaw and guide her to face me. “No, Sunshine. Right now, I’m thinking about doing this.” My palm slides around the back of her neck, and I lower my head and press my lips to hers.
The moment we make contact, I know something’s different.
Electricity surges just beneath my skin, like a power grid coming back online after a blackout. My skin tightens. My heart picks up speed.
I’m buzzing. Does she feel it too?
I can’t tell.
She’s stock-still, letting me nip on her lips, letting me curl my hands over her hips. A gasp comes out of her when my fingers dig into her flesh through the fabric of her dress.
It’s the soft graze of my teeth over her bottom lip that does it. She opens up for me, allowing my tongue to swipe against hers.
Fuck, she tastes like a chilled glass of wine on a hot summer day.
