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“Frazzled.”
“I don’t get frazzled,” she said, tilting her head to lick her chocolate and peach mash-up.
“No? Let me guess, you don’t sweat either. You glisten.”
“Exactly.” She wasn’t quick enough to catch drips of peach, and they splattered on the ground between her feet.
His mouth quirked to the side as he dragged the knuckle of his index finger down her temple. “Well, you’re glistening a lot.”
She playfully smacked his hand away. “You could be a gentleman and not point it out.”
“You know I’m not much of a gentleman,” he said in a voice that hit her deep in her belly.
She wanted to giggle or smile or do anything other than sweat more with his heated stare. But she couldn’t. She was frozen with ice cream dripping onto her wrist.
Mike tugged on her hand and had his mouth on her skin before she even fully comprehended it. He sucked off the melted ice cream, and she felt the warm lap of his tongueeverywhere.
“You better hurry up and eat,” he said, as if he didn’t know what he was doing to her, and she let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a cat’s meow.
They sat for a while, eating their respective ice creams, racing the sun to try to beat it from creating a puddle of flavored milk at their feet.
“You gonna tell me what’s up with you being a helicopter parent with your dad?” Mike asked, before biting into his cone.
“I don’t know,” she said, turning her hand to the side to lick melted ice cream off it. “I guess I sort of feel bad for him. It’s not like we were ever super close, but now that Gavin’s going to school and he’s selling the house, it feels like… I guess it feels like he doesn’t have anyone. Mom has Lina, but he’s been alone for all these years, and he had to get this surgery and no one was around to help.”
“Except for you.”
“Right. That’s why when he told me, I knew I had to come home.”
Mike finished his cone, brushed his hands off, then gave her his extra napkins. “Sorry about the circumstances that brought you here, but I’m not sorry you are here.”
She slanted her eyes at him—she’d told him about saying things like that to her—but he only tipped his chin to where the ice cream dripped a line down her shin. “Ugh,” she grumbled. “I’m all sticky.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t look at me like that.” Sam nudged him with her shoulder, ignoring his sentiment from a moment ago. Instead, she focused on the curve of his lips as he licked them. “You want any of this, or should I throw it away?”
“Toss it.”
Sam threw her mess of a cone away, along with the dozens of napkins it took to clean herself up. But before she could start toward her car, he wrapped his hand around her right wrist. “You still mad at me?”
“I was never mad,” she said, suddenly having trouble breathing.
“Upset,” he amended, dragging her fingers toward his mouth, achingly slowly. “You were upset.”
“I was…” She lost her train of thought when he sucked her index finger into his mouth, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Was what?” he asked, all innocent-like. “Frazzled?”
She shook her head as her pulse thrummed in her ears. Her heart hammered inside of her rib cage. Sweat trickled down her back. “What are you doing?”
She was asking in more of a broad sense—what was he doing to her heart?—but he answered in the immediate sense.
“Trying to help,” he murmured. “You said it yourself. You’re all sticky.” Then he sucked on her middle finger, his teeth scraping along the tip. “Sweet as always. Like peaches.”
Slowly drawing her fingers into a fist between them, Sam reached her other hand up to Mike’s neck, intent on pulling him in for a kiss. Until some little tornado on two legs crashed into the back of her, sending her flying into Mike, who stood no chance of staying upright.
They both collapsed to the ground, and Mike let out a low, “Shit.”
