Sweet as Honey (Aster Valley 2)

The orders necessitated several trips out to one of the outbuildings that held inventory. Every time I returned to the sunroom, I noticed each completed package had been neatly stowed in the handled post office totes I delivered to the driver. With his silent help, I was finished in less time than it usually took.

When I began to carry the totes out to the front porch, Sam quickly jumped up and helped. Afterward, he followed me into the big farmhouse kitchen, the room of the house I was most uncomfortable in now that Aunt Berry was gone. It used to be the heart of her home, full of friends and family, pets and music, scents of new concoctions, and the taste of whatever cookie she’d made special for me.

Now… now it was just a kitchen. And I hated it.

“Lemonade?” I asked. My voice sounded a little scratchy from the hour and a half of tense silence.

“Yes, please.” He waited patiently on the other side of the butcher-block island while I took down old Scooby-Doo drinks glasses from the 1970s. The decals were almost completely worn off from years of use and washing, but the memories were as fresh as they’d been when she’d first entrusted me with one.

I poured lemonade from the pitcher in the fridge and handed him a glass. “Sorry it’s a mess. I had plans to put beadboard in here, but then…” I shrugged and sighed. I didn’t owe this stranger any explanations or apologies.

Sam watched me as he took a deep gulp. After swallowing, he set the glass down and braced his hands on the counter between us. “I owe you an apology,” he began. My hackles rose. I didn’t want his apologies. I wanted him to leave me alone. Okay, fine. If I was being honest, I wanted him to kiss me again, but that probably wasn’t one of my options.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”

Ugh, why didn’t he just leave? Why did we need to rehash how wrong the kiss was? For god’s sake, it was just—

“I know you have a boyfriend,” he added.

My ears scrambled to hit the mental replay button on that. “But… I don’t?”

The edge of his lip inched up. “You asking me or telling me?”

I took a breath. “I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m single.”

Suddenly, Sam’s lips widened into a feral grin. “Well, now. That changes everything.”

He was giving me whiplash. “Why? You seemed disgusted with yourself after kissing me earlier.” Ugh, I wanted to kick myself for saying it out loud. I sounded so pathetic.

Sam began to move around the kitchen island. As soon as I noticed it, I moved, too, creating a circular motion like hands on a clock. One moved faster than the other.

“Not disgusted with the kiss, Truman. Disgusted with myself for forcing it on an unwilling participant.”

My heartbeat bounced around my chest irregularly like a handful of dice being shaken in a Yahtzee cup. “Not unwilling,” I managed to say without also begging for more.

I mentally patted myself on the back.

We stared at each other for a protracted moment. Maybe Sam was sizing me up, and I was truly worried about coming up wanting. When was I going to get a chance to kiss another man this exciting, this dangerous, again?

Never. Because I didn’t let big muscled guys close to me. Ever.

Thank you, Patrick and Craig Stanner.

Which reminded me I didn’t know Sam. And, sure, he was friends with Mikey and Tiller, but honestly… I didn’t know them very well either.

“But it’s fine,” I suddenly hurried to add as I continued the slow escaping shuffle around the butcher block. “You probably need to get going. I heard you’re helping sort out the work that needs to be done at Rockley Lodge. That’s really nice of you. I’m sure Tiller and—”

He caught up with me and pressed his body along my back. I sucked in a breath and squeezed my eyes closed. Sam didn’t touch me with his hands; he only stood with the warm, strong front of his body pressed against the back of mine.

I felt the bulge behind the fly of his jeans against my lower back. I smelled the lemony-pine scent I’d noticed on him before. I heard the soft inhalations of his breath.

“I probably should get going,” he said softly, leaning down to brush his lips against my ear the way he’d done in the diner. “But I really don’t want to. I want to stay here and do things to you, Truman. Dirty, dirty things.” He shifted in a way that brushed the steel-hard ridge of his erection against me. “And that’s why I’m going to leave.”

I could barely breathe, much less speak. No one had wanted to do dirty things to me before. Barney had wanted to do sexual things to me, I was sure. But not dirty things. At least, I couldn’t picture Barney with those particular thoughts and desires. He seemed more like the kind of person who wanted to do clean and tidy things to me. Quickly, and without much spice.