A Brush with Love(71)
“You’re making it a thing and it isn’t a thing.” She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of surrender.
He moved to start tickling her again and she caved.
“The moment!” she squeaked when he squeezed her side. “It’s for the moment.”
He stopped immediately, replacing his tickles with gentle touches against her skin.
“Good girl.” Dan gave her a sweet kiss that warmed every inch of her.
“I hate you,” she said against his mouth, her own breaking into a smile.
Dan laughed and pressed his lips to her tingling skin in a truce, making Harper sigh. She raked her fingers through his hair and gave it a gentle tug.
“What do you mean by ‘the moment’?” he asked.
He nuzzled his face against her chest and held the phone so they both could see the screen. She swiped it open and scrolled to her music library.
“I don’t know, it’s probably silly,” she said.
“There’s that phrase again.”
Harper chewed on her lip. She wanted to do this. She wanted to be open with him.
But wanting it didn’t make doing it feel any less like pulling out her own teeth.
“I just like to play a song in a moment that’s special or when I’m really happy. Something that always lets you go back to the memory when you hear the lyrics.” She paused, feeling Dan’s eyes burning into her as she continued to gaze at the phone in his hand.
“I told you it was silly.” Harper moved to close out of the music app, but Dan stopped her, capturing her hand in his free one and kissing the fingers gently.
“I’m really happy too,” he said quietly against her hand. “Like, stupidly happy. So let’s find a song.”
CHAPTER 27
DAN
Butter sizzled in the frying pan while Dan plucked eggshells out of the pancake batter. While Harper and Dan had enjoyed feasting on each other, their near thirty-six-hour sexfest had left them at a severe risk of starvation, and Dan took it upon himself to feed Harper something other than the gummy worms and noodles they’d scavenged from her cupboards. Dan heard Harper’s feet dragging down the hall and he smiled as she rounded the corner, her hair sticking up in wild angles.
“What’s this?” she asked, standing in the kitchen doorway with a bemused look. She wore his flannel, and Dan indulged the possessive thrill of seeing her in his clothes.
“Pancakes,” Dan said, holding up his mixing spoon and letting some of the batter plop back into the bowl. Dan felt his heart skip a beat as her eyes went wide with excitement, a huge grin blooming across her lips.
“Are you even real?” she asked, shaking her head.
Harper shuffled over to a clear section of the counter next to the stove and hoisted herself up to sit on it. She reached over to a cabinet and grabbed a mug, moving to fill it from the fresh pot of coffee sitting next to her. “There’s no way you’re real.”
Dan shrugged and placed a kiss on her forehead. She was the one who was too good to be true.
As he pulled back, Harper grabbed fistfuls of his T-shirt and brought him closer. He stood between her legs and bent to give her a soft kiss. She hummed against his lips and the vibrations echoed through his blood.
He could have her, and have her, and have her, and still be desperate for more. He set down the bowl and ran his hands through her tangled hair, tilting her head to different angles to deepen the kiss. Her fingers traveled up his throat to rest along his jaw, the soft pressure of her skin against his igniting small bursts of pleasure through him.
Harper’s stomach made a low rumble and they both laughed into the kiss. He gripped her cheeks and placed rapid-fire pecks all over her face until she was laughing like a child. He’d never get over the thrill of touching her, being allowed to openly adore her. It was addicting.
“I guess we both have to choose between hunger and horniness,” he said, picking up the mixing bowl and moving to spoon batter into the pan.
Harper grabbed a handful of chocolate chips from the bag sitting on the counter and popped them into her mouth. “Lucky for us, hunger and horniness are both pretty fun to alleviate.”
Dan nodded and tilted open his mouth toward Harper, and she fed him some pieces of chocolate. He locked his lips around her fingers and she laughed again, pulling them out with a loud pop. He turned back to the pancakes, checking to see if they needed to be flipped.
“Did I really have all the ingredients?”
Dan turned to stare at her, his eyebrows shooting to his hairline. When he realized she was serious, a huge laugh erupted from him. He watched her earnest smile turn into a frowning pout and it made him laugh even harder.
“A simple ‘no’ would do,” she mumbled, fisting her small hand around his chin. He wiped at his eyes and tried to take a steadying breath.
“Hell no. You didn’t have any of the ingredients.” Another laugh broke free as he remembered rummaging through the junk food closet that she tried to pass as a pantry. He was almost positive a tumbleweed of silly straws had blown across a shelf. “I ran to the store while you were sleeping. You did have three bottles of syrup though. How your teeth aren’t rotted out of your mouth is a total mystery.”
“I’m just a really good dentist,” she said through a mouthful of chocolate.