Graham didn’t respond as Misty carried the bowls to the table, sat the little boys down, and gave them spoons. The two boys stared at the spoons, mystified, then lifted the bowls, and started licking the ice cream out of them.

“Hey!” Graham roared. “Be civilized.”

“Don’t yell at them.” Misty sat down across the table from Reid and lifted her spoon. “Maybe they don’t know. Like this.”

Misty demonstrated how to hold the spoon and dip it into the ice cream, then she scooped some into her mouth. Frozen goodness coated her tongue, momentarily easing her constant thirst. Would be great if she could cure herself with ice cream.

As soon as she swallowed, the thirst came back, so she shoveled in more ice cream.

Kyle and Matt watched her, wide-eyed. “You can eat faster our way,” one of them—Kyle?—said.

Misty wanted to. She could lift the bowl to her mouth and take all its contents in one gulp. The only reason she didn’t was because Graham had sat down next to her and was watching her closely.

His gaze flicked to the spoon as she dipped it into the cream then followed it back to her mouth. He fixed on her lips as the ice cream went in, dropped to her throat as she swallowed, then returned to her lips, where a bit of cream lingered.

When Graham looked at her fully, Misty stilled, caught by eyes that held heat like silver fire. A shudder worked its way through her, besting even the thirst that popped back up as soon as she stopped eating.

Quench it with Graham . . .

The thought made her shake. Misty dug her spoon through the bowl, slowly lifting another scoop of cream. The ice cream was starting to melt now, its chocolate-stained vanilla droplets falling back into the bowl.

She lifted the spoon to her mouth. Graham’s gaze fixed on her even tighter. Misty moved her tongue out and licked up a dollop from her spoon.

A growl sounded in Graham’s throat, one so soft Misty knew only she could hear it. She took another lick of cream from the spoon. Graham sat so still he might have been carved into the chair, but his chest rose and fell sharply.

His face held the hardness of a man who’d survived on his strength alone for a long time, but Misty had always seen something in him besides the hardness. The tiny lines that feathered from the corners of his eyes, for example. He got them from laughing—Graham was a man not afraid to laugh. He could roar with it. Scars crisscrossed his cheekbones, and his nose had been broken, several times, he’d told her. His face was sunburned from their adventure today, but even that was healing, his skin settling into its usual liquid tan.

The sun-bronzing made his eyes stand out even more, the gray turning to silver as he watched her lick another bit of ice cream. She moved her tongue around the mound on the spoon and drew it back between her lips . . .

Graham snarled. With one flick of his big hand, he sent the ice cream bowl flying across the table to shatter on the floor.

Misty could form only the first syllable of his name in protest before he was up and out of the kitchen, striding out the back door into her small, walled yard.

As she leapt up to follow him, she realized the entire kitchen had gone quiet. Matt and Kyle were staring, their eyes round, spoons frozen in place. Xavier, across the room, was watching as well. He didn’t smile, but there was a knowing look in his eyes. Only Reid was oblivious, still poring over the little book.

Misty darted out the back door, pulling it closed behind her. Graham was striding through her small yard, which she’d filled with desert and tropical flowers she carefully cultivated. He was stomping around, hands clasped on his head, the sun beating down on him. He was about to ruin the clump of autumn sage she’d nursed back from frost kill last winter—she’d finally got the plant bushy again, the bright red blossoms cheerful against the green.

Misty marched to Graham and grabbed him by the arm. He swung around, the look in his eyes so wild and empty that Misty had to take a faltering step back.

CHAPTER EIGHT

He couldn’t do this. Graham couldn’t be around this woman, who smelled like honey and spice, who curled her tongue around the light and dark ice cream as though it were the sweetest aphrodisiac.

He had a hard-on that wouldn’t stop. Xav Escobar knew it, the ass**le. Graham had recognized the smirk. Of course, Xav probably had one too. And for that, Graham would kill him.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“Can’t do what?” Misty stood in front of him, hands on her hips. “Break my door? Smash my dishes? Trample my plants? You’re like walking mass destruction.”

She wanted him to apologize, Graham realized. But Graham never apologized. You said sorry, and people felt smug and justified, and started to take advantage.

Hard to look into those sweet brown eyes and say nothing, though. “I’ll fix your front door.”

“You bet your ass you will,” Misty said. “Now, are we going to talk about it?”

There she went again. Talking. Always talking. “I thought you were done with me,” Graham said.

“I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you. Or not talking to you.”

“Then we’re not done.” Not by a long way.

“Yes, we are.”

Graham turned from her, not liking how fast his heart was beating. Or how thirsty he was. He fought it, having learned to work through hunger and thirst a long time ago, but he knew he couldn’t banish it entirely. The Fae magic had gotten to him, but he couldn’t give in to it. If he did that, he was dead.

To keep himself from thinking about the thirst, he focused on Misty’s yard. It was like her—compact, neat, beautiful. She hadn’t simply stuck clumps of plants everywhere. The yard had been landscaped, sculpted almost, with low mounds of grass and gravel hosting small flowering bushes and plants that bloomed fiercely under the hot sun. A false wash of river rock cut through the yard, crossed by a small wooden bridge.

Stepping stones led to the bridge and across the yard on the other side. Between the stones were gravel and scatterings of plants, blossoms moving in the summer breeze. The ugly cement block walls, so common in Southwestern cities, were softened by stands of hot pink and white oleanders on two walls, with a line of rose bushes, sheltered from the direct sun, on the third.

A pretty garden, with chairs and tables set out so Misty and friends could sit and enjoy iced tea or whatever women drank on summer afternoons. Graham was out of place here, a hulking creature in the diminutive space.