“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you trying to hide it?”

“Not hiding anything, ai ren.”

“And sounding guilty, to boot.”

Mal sighs. There’s very little he can keep from his wife, and he wonders, yet again, why he would ever try. Except maybe this once. “I …” He looks up.

Freya is standing at the bottom of the ladder, her arms crossed, and it appears as if … yes, her foot is tapping. “Well?”

“I just … it was … there was …” He feels like he’s tripping over the words, so just comes out with it, bringing the item into the light. “I wanted an ice cream.”

She nods slowly, her eyes fixed on the cone in his hand. “So I see. A double scoop, too.”

“There’s more,” he adds before she can comment further. “In the freezer, for everyone. After dinner. I got it from the parlour outside Eavesdown.”

“Really.”

“But I just …” He stops.

Her gaze follows a drop of liquid white as it slides down the wafer and onto the base of his thumb. She involuntarily licks her bottom lip, very fast, but Mal notices. His groin tightens even as his breath hitches, and he has a mental image of cold ice cream being painted down a flame hot tattoo …

“You couldn’t wait?” she asks, her eyes moving to his face.

“I thought, you know, me being captain and all …” He pauses. “’Sides, it made me think of home.”

“Home?”

“Shadow.”

Freya uncrosses her arms, instead letting her hands hang at her side. Her expression softens. “Your mother?”

He nods. “It was a treat,” he explains. “I wasn’t that much older than Ethan, but on high days and holidays my Ma’d make sure we had a cone from Dickerson’s in town. Maybe two, three times a year. A’course, what with earning money for chores after school and the like, I soon got to the age I could buy my own, but somehow it never tasted the same.”

“It doesn’t.”

“No.” Not just vanilla, he knows, but flavoured by the past.

“We had an ice cream maker at home in the kitchen,” Freya admits, perhaps a little ruefully. “Brigitte would have it going almost every day, certainly during the summer. My … my father had something of a sweet tooth, and it was the only thing he allowed himself. A bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sprinkles after dinner.” She can still see the brown chips pressed into the purest white, like rocks in a snow field.

Mal has only met the man once, on his deathbed, when he finally made peace with his only daughter, and in all honesty he has no real feelings for Ivan Rostov one way or the other, but Freya is another matter. “Good times?” he asks, wary of reminding her of the Academy, but since he can almost count the number of occasions she’s talked about her past as Elena on the fingers of one hand, he doesn’t want her to stop now.

“Different.”

“Better?”

Her lips twitch. “No. Just different. I was a child, with childish needs.”

“And you needed ice cream. Did he let you have any?”

The twitch turns to a chuckle. “Are you catching being psychic from River?”

“I take it the answer is no?”

“We didn’t dine together,” she says, ending on something like a sigh. “Alex and I ate in the nursery, and ice cream wasn’t allowed in case we made a mess.”

“Kids are supposed to make messes,” Mal points out.

“Not in the Rostov household.” A slightly guilty look crosses behind her eyes. “But Brigitte would sneak us some when we were in bed, just once in a while.”

“I bet it tasted even better than this, seeing as it was illicit,” Mal says, feeling another run of liquid over his hand. If they didn’t eat it soon it was going to go to waste, so he smiles and asks, “Want a taste?”

She quickly sits down beside him before he can take back the offer and leans forward, her pink tongue darting out, cat-like towards the confection. Her eyes half-close as she swirls just the tip over the peak. “Oh.” She has to smile. “That is good.”

“You barely got anything.” He holds the cone higher. “Take a mouthful.” Besides, it really is decidedly erotic watching her eat.

“Shiny.” This time it’s her lips, pulling a small amount of cold into her mouth. Her eyelids flutter, and his heart echoes a moment later.

“Hang on,” he says, reaching out to wipe away a dot of white from her chin with his thumb, before thinking better of it and licking it from her skin.

Her eyes slam open and her lips curve, even as he moves up and kisses her. She tastes sweet, all hot and cold at the same time.

“You know, I had an idea …” he murmurs into her mouth.

“Be a waste,” she purrs, making him vibrate.

“Worth it.”

“Messy.”

“Then I’ll clean you up after.” His free hand is inching its way up her shirt towards the top button and flicks it expertly open, fingertips brushing the silver Firefly at her throat.

She doesn’t flirt, at least that’s what she professes, but the look in her eyes is better than that, although it makes him groan slightly when she says, “I’d rather eat it properly.” Then she takes pity on him. “Although maybe after I can get us a small bowlful from the freezer. You know. If you’re still hungry.”

He grins, and holds the cone up between them. He knows he wants to eat it quickly, two or three bites and there’d be nothing left, just to get to the better dessert after, but she’s not going to let him. She’ll lick and savour, and he’ll watch, his mind giving him graphic pictures of what they’re going to be getting up to later, and she’ll smile as she sees what he wants to do, and it is so going to be worth the wait …