Maybe he was on the house later too. Or maybe that was the Brittany’s of the place. Either way…
“You don’t know, do you? One scoop of pistachio, one of bubble gum, dipped in a chocolate shell. Or two double burgers and a coke. Every. Single. Time.”
“How should I know? I’m a dude. Dude’s don’t remember anything,” he shot back. He took a sip of his cherry shake and really hoped there weren’t pubes stuck in there. Maybe Brittany thought the shake was Alix’s. He didn’t taste anything weird. In fact, it tasted pretty damn good. As good as it did every single time, which was why he always got it.
The place was a favorite of his parents. They’d brought him there since he as a kid and it rubbed off on Alix and Chance, even though he couldn’t recall a single time Alix’s parents ever came with them.
Alix snorted. She started walking, licking at her ice cream the entire time. He railed after like a lost puppy. There was an alley between two other businesses down the block, an accounting firm that looked desolate, but then again, it was well after the work day was over, and a pizza place that didn’t look like it had a single customer. Alix ducked into the space between them and leaned up against the brick wall that belonged to the accounting office.
She propped her shoulders up against the brick, set her red canvas shoe back too, and stood on one leg like a flamingo, licking away at her ice cream.
Ross unwrapped his burger and devoured it without tasting it. He finished his cherry shake off in record time, while Alix watched him with her unwavering, completely unnerving gaze. It was the first time he’d really noticed her looking at him. Or maybe the first time she was so direct. The rest of the time he’d always been too distracted. Or she’d probably looked away.
That ice cream was going down painfully slow. There was a dumpster thirty feet away- terribly romantic- and he went and threw his trash in the giant bin. After he stalked back, he stood right in front of Alix while her tongue snaked out, licking and savoring that ice cream. She’d always been the world’s slowest eater, but this was torture on a new, painfully inhumane level.
That pink tongue.
That.
Pink.
Tongue.
He wanted it licking and savoring something else. His cock was pretty much ready to leap out of his jeans and fist bump him for the idea. He felt like the pervert of the century.
Ross did the only thing he could think to do to cut that shit off at the pass. He reached out and smacked the bottom of the ice cream cone so that the ice cream drove up, right into her face.
“What?!” Alix gasped as chocolate and vanilla swirl splattered all over her nose, her lips, her cheeks, and her chin. “What the heck did you do that for?”
Her eyes burned with rage and if he thought he’d be better off when she was angry, he was mistaken. She looked absolutely edible, her eyes flashing and her cheeks a bright scarlet, her lips hanging open.
“I don’t have any napkins! Ross!” Alix wailed. She cocked her arm back and threw the rest of her ice cream at him. It hit him square in the chest with a wet splat before it bounced away to the crumbling concrete below.
Her chest puffed in and out with her rapid, angry breaths.
Her eyes blazed with rage.
She looked like a goddess ready to go to battle on his ass.
She opened her perfectly pink, full lips to no doubt give him a piece of her mind.
He didn’t give her a chance. He obliterated the distance between them in a single step. He pinned her shoulders back against the wall with one hand while his other splayed around her hip and waist. Their mouths collided like two shooting stars smashing up in the night sky- with a bright and ferocious bang that rocked the ground beneath him.
He was more than a little shocked. He’d kissed plenty of women. Plenty. It never hurt. It never made his chest ache like she’d been hiding a secret dagger up her sleeve and had plunged it between his ribs. The heat that trickled into the pit of his stomach, the synapses in his brain exploding, his chest imploding because his lungs were on fire, his slamming heart and hammering pulse- he didn’t understand any of it.
So, he deepened the kiss, doing what he was pretty much fucking famous for, at least according to Alix. She wanted to see what the fuss was about- her words, not his- he’d show her.
CHAPTER 7
Alix
She had no idea what was happening. It was like standing in the rain, dancing like a fool with her face turned to the sky, her arms outstretched, laughing, and the next second getting zapped by a bolt of lightning straight from a vindictive heaven, getting laid out flat on her ass.