“You okay?” Wes asked, mid-lick, peering at me with a dot of ice cream on his nose.
I was really glad I’d worn my other jeans today. Wes was apparently the only man in the world who could make cargo shorts look sexy.
It wasn’t so much the cargo shorts I was looking at, which might’ve helped.
“You’re… I… there’s…” I waved at his nose, but he looked at me like I’d lost the plot.
Maybe I had, because the next thing I knew I was licking the ice cream off the tip of his nose.
Wes blinked at me, mouth hanging open, more ice cream dripping down over his hands.
Who knew his favorite flavor was going to be vanilla?
Just like mine.
People treated vanilla like it was boring, but agoodvanilla ice cream had a lot going for it, both on its own and as a base for other things. Plain vanilla ice cream with seasonal mix-ins had been one of Pleasure’s first big hits.
“I amsoturned on right now,” Wes said, still staring at me.
“How do you thinkIfeel?” I asked, letting the distress come through in my voice. “You keep getting it all over your fingers and then licking it off, and—”
I cut myself off when I caught the sparkle in Wes’s eyes, but I knew I was too late.
AndI was still owed payback for making him rush back to the guesthouse a few days ago. He hadn’t mentioned it again, and I’d gone to him for the next couple of nights, telling Dad I was going out for the evening and not to wait up. There hadn’t been any more close calls like that.
But I doubted Wes hadforgotten, all the same.
“So what you’re saying is,” Wes began, tone dangerous. He paused to lick a slow swirl around his ice cream with the flat of his tongue, eyelids lowered, mouth hanging slack.
I swallowed.
“You like it when I lick it,” he finished, lapping at the top to make a curl in the softening ice cream.
It was the only thingsofteningaround here.
“This is a family event,” I whispered, shifting uncomfortably on the low brick fence we were perched on, hoping like hell that I wasn’t about to be yelled at by someone with three kids and a dog.
“Mm,” Wes agreed, licking his fingers again.
If he wastryingto get us both arrested for public indecency, he was heading in the right direction.
I still wasn’t the kind of person who kissed in public, but I couldn’t help myself.
Wes’s mouth was cold and sweet and familiar by now. I’d kissed him dozens of times and it was never quite enough, I always wanted a little more when one of us had to get up and do something else with our life.
Right now, there was nothing I wanted to do more with my life than kiss Wes, hear the needy little sounds he made, feel his pulse speed up under my hands, hear him laugh when we broke off, breathless, eyes shining and pupils blown wide.
I’dneverget tired of how responsive he was, how competent he made me feel. I’d never get tired of the swarm of butterflies in my stomach that erupted just as our lips parted, heart soaring with the knowledge that we could do this again, that hewantedto do this—and more—again.
But I also wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to use his distraction to take his ice cream cone off him and steal a bite while he was still recovering from the kiss.
The sudden burst of sweetness and distinctive vanilla made me hum happily, reminding me instantly of Wes’s mouth. It wasn’t, technically, the best ice cream I’d ever had, but it wasemotionallythe best ice cream I’d ever had.
All the good feelings I associated with the taste of plain vanilla ice cream rushed back to me. Making a mess in the kitchen with Mom when I was maybe eight or nine, absolutely covered in half-churned ice cream.
My thirteenth birthday cake, lovingly handmade, dense and chocolatey and filled with a layer of vanilla ice cream.
Mom cheering me up after my first breakup with a boy she insisted never deserved me anyway. I could do better, she said. Someone would love me one day.
