Page 68 of The Dating Pact

I scooted down the street to find most of the vendors had the same idea as me. I waved to Bill, the cheese guy, as he packed up, and high-fived Alicia, Sara Ann and Tori’s toddler. They sold homemade soaps and other personal hygiene products, totally organic and vegan.

“Your sign,” I called, speeding up to catch Jude’s self-standing sign that lost its fight with the wind.

He spun around, and we bumped right into each other when we reached for it at the same time.

“Hey, whoa.” He set the sign up with one hand, wrapping the other around my bicep.

“Sorry. I didn’t want it to get wrecked.”

“It’s fine, but are you okay? I stepped on your foot.” He motioned to the folding chair behind his table. “Sit.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sit down,” he ordered, and I bit back a smile, doing as I was told.

“I came over to give you some veggies.”

He accepted my basket, deadpanning, “Great.”

“Oh, come on. If you don’t want to make the zucchini for dinner, you can make some bread with it.”

“Why would I want to spoil perfectly delicious bread by mixing something green into it?”

“You’ve made banana and chocolate chip bread before,” I pointed out, and he tossed his hand in the air.

“Yeah, because that’s delicious.”

“So is zucchini bread.”

“You know what zucchini tastes like?” he asked, placing the basket down on his table so he could return to packing up. “Slimy.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Zucchini tastes slimy.”

“That’s…” I snickered. “That’s not a thing.”

“Yes, it is.” He smacked his lips. “How could you eat something with a texture that’s so wet?”

I tipped my head to the side. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

He froze and slowly turned to me. “Brooke Abigail Fraser, did you just make a vagina joke?”

I bit my teeth into my lower lip to keep from grinning.

“Your vagina doesn’t even work,” he teased, and I shot out my foot to kick him.

“Hey! My vagina works great, thank you very much.”

“You’re right.” He bent, his hands on the back of the chair behind me, lowering his face to mine. “I would know.”

I swallowed, no longer finding this funny.

“And I think about it a lot,” he confessed in his distractedly roughhewn voice. “About smoothing lube over my fingers before pushing them inside you and feeling that first clench.”

I closed my eyes, unable to hold his gaze as he spoke my fantasy out loud, what I thought about when I pulled my vibrator out of my nightstand drawer.

“That first inch, that’s when your breath hitches and your fingers curl.”

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