Shut up.
“Though you know that as soon as I get my garden tools out, the rain’s going to come.”
Shut up now.
Matias stared at me with that unreadable expression of his. It should have been enough to shut me up.
It wasn’t.
“Now garden tools, those are my jam. Most people think all you need is a regular trowel and you’re good to go.” I shook my head even as my brain commanded my mouth to stop moving. “I mean, you could probably get by with a potting trowel and a traditional one, but why would you want to, right?”
Matias’s eyes stayed on me as he reached down to collect his beer and took a long swig of it. Then he started walking toward me.
“I’ve got ’em all,” I sputtered. “Potting, digging, weeding, tulip, planting…”
Shut the fuck up right now, Sam!
“You’d think that would be all of them, but then you’d be leaving out some of the most important ones. Like the Great Dixter trowel. You’d like that one because you can hit it with a hammer so it goes in deep—”
Matias took another swallow of his beer. Just watching his throat move had my own mouth going dry.
Dry, but not silent.
“It, um, goes deep…”
Matias came to a stop in front of me. He slowly put his empty beer bottle down on the table, leaning into me in the process. “You were saying?” he murmured.
“Huh?” I croaked. My eyes were stuck on his beautiful lips. If I turned my head just a little…
“It goes deep.”
“It does?” I whispered and then God help me, my eyes fell to his crotch. Matias’s breath skittered over my skin.
“Your tool,” he clarified. “You said it goes deep.”
“Um, yeah,” I murmured. “The Great Dixter… it’s meant for deep, tight places.” It wasn’t until the words left my lips that I actually heard them. Heat crawled up my neck.
“Sounds like a useful thing to have,” Matias said. I swore his mouth skimmed my ear before he leaned back. He had my beer in his hand. I hadn’t even noticed him take it from my fingers. A smile drifted over his gorgeous mouth right before he took a sip.
“Ass,” I muttered, though I found myself smiling too. I hadn’t thought the man capable of finding humor in anything. That one small smile might as well have been like a burst of sunshine as far as I was concerned.
I was surprised when Matias climbed onto the picnic table with me and sat so our hips were nearly touching. He passed the beer back to me. My eyes clung to the spot where Matias’s lips had just been. I was so consumed with the excitement of putting my mouth where his had been that I didn’t notice the stiffness in Matias’s body at first. It wasn’t until he snatched the bottle from my hand that I realized he was pissed.
“What?” I asked as he jerked away from me and began to climb off the table. I grabbed his arm to stop him. What the hell had happened to the easy comradery we’d just found with each other?
“So you’re fine with my mouth when it’s getting you off but any other time it offends your sensibilities?” he snapped.
“Wha—?”
“Don’t worry, this spic won’t—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest of his tirade. I didn’t need to. Instead, I grabbed Matias’s face and turned it enough so I could slam my mouth over his. The element of surprise meant I had several precious seconds to absorb every detail of his response before he could react.
The little grunt of surprise.
The stiffness of his lips beneath mine that didn’t last even a full second.
The hitch in his breath right before his arm snaked around my waist.
They were an amazing couple of seconds but there was no arguing with the rush of pleasure that went through me when Matias hungrily began kissing me back. My whole body went up in flames as Matias’s hot tongue licked over mine.
Pure satisfaction rolled over me when Matias broke the kiss and dragged in a deep breath. I was equally oxygen-deprived, but I managed to play it cool as I reached out and took the beer bottle from his lax fingers and asked, “Any questions?” before taking a hefty sip. When I casually handed it back to him, I swore I saw a hint of a smile touch the sides of his mouth.
I forced myself not to get hung up on watching him take a drink and instead focused on the little shed and its newly fixed window. “Does that happen a lot?” I hesitated and added, “People calling you that?”
Matias shifted next to me. His arm, which had been braced behind me, disappeared. He leaned forward so his position on the picnic table was mirroring mine. “Not to my face,” he finally responded. “Not if they want to keep their own in one piece.”