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He smiled, one of those rare, honest-to-goodness smiles. “What?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head and put down her sewing kit. “So, should we get started? Where’s the suit?”
Instead of taking the hint, Mike crowded her space and ran his thumb down her cheek before kissing the corner of her mouth. She both hated and loved those innocent little kisses. No one had ever kissed her like that before, like she was something to be cherished and enjoyed slowly.
Or maybe that was by her choice.
Either way, she couldn’t help but sink into him.
“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”
His compliment made the blushing even worse. If Sam could move, she’d try to cover up her face with her hair or at least try to step away from him, but she was frozen in place as the backs of his fingers ghosted over her cheek before his palm cupped her jaw. She slowly brought up her hand to cover his, her fingertips smoothing over the rough skin of his knuckles and the brush of soft hair on his wrist.
His hands were callused from work, yet soothing and tender when he touched her. He stared down at her, his unreadable eyes moving over her face before settling on her mouth. Then he leaned down and drew his tongue across her lower lip before pulling her in so that she could feel the hard planes of his body against all her soft ones. He was both gentle and commanding, leaving her weak in the knees, but he kept his hands on her until she was steady.
Although, this time, they weren’t in public, there were no children running around or Eddie tangling himself up in his leash. Now Mike kissed her like he had all the time in the world, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her hips against him, meeting his tongue with long, languid strokes that had her skin breaking out in goose bumps.
“Do you guys want any snacks?”
Sam and Mike flew apart at Mrs. Ewing’s voice calling down to the basement. Sam swiped at her mouth, caught red-handed, yet Mrs. Ewing didn’t appear on the steps. Mike slapped his palm to his forehead. “No, Mom!”
“Are you sure? I was at the grocery store. I got those chips you like.”
Mike let out a breath through his nose, and Sam covered her laugh. It was truly like they were kids.
“We’re good, Mrs. Ewing. I’m pinning Mike’s pants. I wouldn’t want to get them dirty with crumbs.”
“Oh, good point!”
After a few moments of quiet, when they were sure she had walked away, Mike dropped his chin toward his chest. “That’s embarrassing.”
“It’s funny.”
He lifted his focus to her, his pupils so large his eyes looked entirely black. “It’s torture.”
She flicked her hand in the air, pretending it didn’t bother her when she said, “We have all summer.”
Or, more precisely, eleven and a half weeks. That was all they had left.
As if he could read her thoughts, Mike dragged his thumb across her cheekbone and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The simple touch had her blood rushing in her ears, and even as her brain screamed to tear her gaze away from Mike’s, she couldn’t.
It might have been a few seconds or a few millennia, she couldn’t tell after the years they’d spent staring into each other’s eyes like that. Odd how an innocent gesture could be so much more intimate than anything else, and it knocked her off-balance. She wouldn’t and couldn’t follow her emotions down the rabbit hole and finally freed herself enough to pivot away from him, not interested in complicating this thing withfeelings.
She pointed to the garment bag, where it hung on a closet doorframe, and she opened up her kit. “Go ahead and put it on,” she told him. “I’ll get it all pinned up so I can work on it tomorrow. It shouldn’t take long.”
He turned down the hall to the bathroom, giving Sam time to find her center once again.
But because life never went as planned, Mike appeared a few minutes later in a navy suit, the White Rabbit leading her to Wonderland.
Her eyes drifted from the tips of his shined shoes to the slim-cut pants that fit his muscular thighs like they were made for him, then up to the jacket that was left open, showing off his chest in a white shirt.
“Wow,” she said after who-knew-how-long of ogling him.
He tugged on the sleeves. “Yeah?”
She laughed at the suspicious question. “Yeah, Mike. I don’t know how many girls fell over themselves to get to you in your Marine uniform, but if this suit is any indication, it must have been in the double digits any time you went out.”
He lifted his head to the side, checking himself out in the mirror. “Eh. Maybe triple.” When Sam backhanded his shoulder, he picked up his solid fuchsia tie. “But seriously, what do you think? They showed this with it, so I bought it all.”
