“Go on,” Milo murmured, hand warm and smooth beneath her own. She should have pulled hers back, but the moment was so confessional, so raw and naked, for both of them, it still felt right to leave it there. Even when his hand gently turned over so that they were palm to palm, a moment more tender and intimate than the entirety of her last sexual encounter combined. “How long, Sammy?”

“Four years!” She sank back, breaking contact and avoiding Milo’s eyes, awaiting the nonstop laughter that was the only appropriate response to such a ridiculous, pathetic, private revelation. “Can you believe that?”

But Milo didn’t laugh. Or snort or tease or use his slow, tantalizing, country drawl to do anything but comfort. “I can believe it, actually. Busy as you are, employees dropping like flies, working open to close every day, who has the energy, or the opportunity, to do anything but drop dead after fourteen hours on your feet a day?”

“It wasn’t always like this, though,” Sammy reasoned, as if digging her own grave. “I’ve been fully staffed in the past, able to work regular hours and, still, I’m just … not very good at all this. What? Why are you grinning? No judgment, remember?”

“I’m grinning because I get it, girl. Once all my little honeys left town, once that last baseball season was over and the trophies got dusty and I had to be myself, start from scratch, with no varsity prep rep or letterman’s jacket to prop me up, turns out my game was pretty damn lame, after all.”

She gave him a soft “tut-tut” tongue cluck. “I still find that hard to believe, Milo.”

“Yeah, well … believe it. From stud to dud in record time, that’s my life story.”

She chuckled, self-consciously, almost relieved to have shared her deepest, darkest secret with another human being. She hadn’t even told Kiera the real number, always leaving it vaguely at “too long” when the subject of her nonexistent sex life inevitably came up.

“Your life story’s not written yet, Milo. Not even close. You’re literally a kid, about to start school. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but in a few weeks’ time you’ll be all settled in that dorm building, surrounded by young, willing flesh and, well … you’ll get tired of our little talks after work, trust me.”

He leaned gently forward, big knuckles white as his hands gripped the arms of his chair. “I’ll never get tired of this,” he insisted. “You … you saved my ass, plain and simple. You come first, Sammy. Remember that.”

“Fine, fine, I’m just saying … our little talks aren’t going to be able to compare to some hot young coed who wants to follow you back to your dorm room after class for a little ‘extra credit,’ know what I mean?”

Milo shook his head, lifting up his cap and running his fingers through the sweaty brown locks beneath before sinking it back on top, slightly higher and far more crooked than before. “Seems like forever until then, though, you know?”

“I’m sure it does, right now. But trust me, once school starts up, all this,” Sammy circled her fingers, to indicate more than just the cozy little break area behind the sub shop, “will dry up and fade away, like the sweat on the bill of your work hat.”

He sat back, sipped his beer cockily, as if he knew just what those full, wet lips, wrapped around that long sexy bottle top, were doing to her already sticky panties. “Trust issues, see.” He wagged the index finger of his free hand, long and lingering and tempting. “There you go again.”

She chuckled, coyly, too coyly by far. Sammy sensed, in that moment, it might have happened. Him. Her. Hot, sweaty, naked in that comfy little day bed under the open window, moonlight flattering his long, lean body as they pumped and thrust and gushed their way through a regrettable escapade that would make quick work of their joint dry spells.

Maybe that’s why she stood so abruptly, the chair behind her almost toppling over as Milo’s eyes studied her the whole way up. “Well,” she huffed. “Long day tomorrow, so…”

“But I’m still thirsty,” he teased, wriggling his half-empty bottle as he sat, long limbed and lazily like a piece of taffy just waiting to be tasted, turned, and twisted, just for her pleasure.

“You still got beer upstairs,” she hastened, using her best boss bitch tone as she stood just inside the screen door. “And your key, so … stairs are right there, you know the drill.”

Her eyes led his to the short flight of stairs beside her, eight short steps leading to the landing outside his temporary door. When she glanced back, he was still watching her. “You mind if I stay and finish this one first? It’s … lonely up there.”

Sammy heard the offer in his voice, clumsy and awkward but soft and sincere, too. Every cell of her body craved to answer it in kind, taking his hand and leading him upstairs and giving him the wildest night of his life. Of her life, if things went as they did in the nonstop fantasies she’d been having since they’d first met. Instead she sighed and slid the screen door tight between them, like a life-size chastity belt. “Lucky you only have a few hours until your shift starts in the morning then, huh, kid?”

She gave him one last glance before shutting the back kitchen door, his dark eyes soft and quiet as they watched her seal it tight. She knew, even as she turned the lock and strode away, purposefully, toward the front door and safety from his long, tempting arms, she’d be seeing those sad, lonely eyes for the rest of the night.

If only in her revved up sexual fantasies once she climbed into bed.