Page 68 of Ruthless Sin
I hand them to Mila.
She looks down at them and up at me.
“All?” So quiet I almost miss it.
“All,” I say.
She picks up the spoon and tastes it. Strawberry. Maybe cherry. Her eyes close.
Christ.
My hands go tight on the wheel.
She sets the cup down, picks up another, and tastes it. This time her mouth curves, not a smile, not yet, but close, and my chest goes tight and I keep my eyes on the road because if I look at her mouth right now I am going to drive into something.
She picks up another cup. Another. Another. By the time she’s making sounds, soft, low, somewhere in her throat that I have absolutely no business hearing from the driver’s seat, my jaw is locked so hard it aches.
Her tongue catches the edge of the spoon when she pulls it out.
God.
I put both hands on the wheel.
She picks up another cup. Chocolate. She makes the sound again and I am going to drive into a lamppost. I am genuinely going to drive this SUV into a lamppost and I do not care.
Then she laughs, quiet, small, a sound she catches almost before it gets out.
But it gets out and I pull over on a side street under the oak canopy on Audubon and put the SUV in park because I heard her laugh and I need to see her face.
She’s holding a cup of something green. Pistachio, maybe. Mint.
Her fingers are sticky. There’s a smudge of chocolate at the corner of her mouth and she doesn’t know it’s there. I cannot tell her. I cannot tell her and keep my hands where they are.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She looks at me, the cup in her hand. She holds it out.
I take it, take the spoon, taste it.
Mint.
I hand it back.
“Khorosho?” I say. Good?
She nods. “Khorosho.”
Then she holds out another cup.
Vanilla. She’s already tasted it. I taste it. Hand it back. She tries another and holds it out and we do this, her hand crossing the console, my hand meeting it, the cups small and cold and her fingers warm underneath, and I am not thinking about her fingers. I am not thinking about her fingers. I am looking at the line of her throat in the passing streetlight and the way her hair falls against her collar.
Then her fingers brush mine and don’t pull back.
Caramel.
Her fingers are sticky and cold and warm underneath and she is not pulling back and neither am I. Her hand is small against mine and her knuckles are pale from the cold cups and her fingers curved around the caramel like she forgot to let go and I am not breathing and the oak canopy holds the dark above the car and the street is empty and there is sugar and her in the space between us and I am one breath from saying something I cannot unsay.
Then she pulls her hand back.
