“Lyssa!” At the next booth, Maya and Tom were craning their necks trying to listen to our conversation. “People might hear you.”
“Sorry!” She leaned toward me, as if being two inches closer would stop Maya’s and Tom’s flapping ears. “Mike, I regret the way we left things. I essentially used you for ….” Her eyes searched the town square, passing over various stalls before landing on Gil’s bratwurst stand. “Sausages.”
“Sausages?”
“It’s code.”
I sank down on the other side of the picnic bench and buried my head in my hands.
“I shouldn’t have reduced you to a sausage, Mike. I know that must have made you feel used.”
“You didn’t get anywhere near my”—kill me—“sausage.”
“It’s a metaphor.”
“I thought it was a co?—”
“It’s a code and a metaphor.” She tossed her hair. “The point is, if you ever want to, uh … share your sausage with me, I’ll make sure that in return I give you some of my?—”
“Lyssa, please stop talking,” I mumbled into my hands.
“—Mustard.”
“Hey, Maya?” I called loudly, without looking up. “You’re a nurse, right? Could you knock me out with pain meds?”
Maya giggled. “What was that, Mikey? I can’t quite hear you and your lady-friend. Speak up, would you?”
With a grunt, I got to my feet and tugged Lyssa a few feet behind my horse trailer, which was hopefully out of Maya’s nosy earshot and Tom’s pervy eyeline.
“Listen, Lyssa. Sausages and mustard aren’t at an equal exchange rate. I don’t care that I didn’t get any mus—” I made myself stop. I was a grown fucking man. “I don’t need to get my dick inside your vagina to have a good time. What we did was supposed to be about you. You don’t need to feel bad because you orgasmed and I didn’t.”
“Are you sure? Afterward, it felt like you couldn’t get me out of your house fast enough.” She frowned and then muttered to herself, “But you were pleased to see me, just now. You got me balloons. You kissed me back. So you must like me a little bit. Or you don’t, and you’re just being friendly.” Her eyes flew back to mine. “Oh god, is this a Kiwi thing, somehow? Are you?—”
“Lyssa.” I put a hand under her chin. “It’s not a Kiwi thing. You’re great. I don’t help girls get themselves off to be polite. You know I don’t have the squeakiest clean rep around town, but I’m trying not to make it worse while I get the Entrepreneurs Association to take me seriously.”
She nodded. “You’re in your reputation era.”
I didn’t know what that meant. “Sure. But let me be really clear. You’re a smoke show. This is not about you.”
An unfamiliar glint hit her eyes. I wondered what I’d said wrong until she stepped closer, pressing her body along the length of mine. My chest filled with air, as I suddenly had to work hard to get it and blood to my brain.
“So, you do want me?”
“Yeah.”
Understatement.
I wanted to have ice cream every day, I wanted to wrap up at the fair and get home, I wanted to tease my sister’s boyfriend to see if I could get a rise out of him. Her, I needed. Craved. Was fucking goop for.
Suddenly, her hands snaked around and grabbed my ass, pulling my hips forward. I hissed when my thickening cock met the resistance of her soft body. If she was just a little higher and would grind her hips a bit …
Like she could read my mind, she gave a little experimental push of her groin, teasing my cock, taunting me with everything that was right in front of me but I couldn’t have. She wanted me to lose my cool and make a bad decision. My eyes darkened as I imagined wrapping an arm around her, hauling her into the back of the horse float, and fucking her so good the whole thing shook. Old Mike would have.
She knew it too, my little vixen. She knew I was close. Capitalizing on my hesitation, she leaned forward and with one hot swipe, dragged her tongue up my neck.
Fuck.
I gripped her shoulders in my hands, half to stop her from getting any closer, and half to stop her moving away.
