Mister O(16)

She roams her eyes over my biceps. “I mean, your ink is awesome,” she says, pointing to the shapes and swirls I designed myself. The tattoos are abstract lines and curves, but inside them there’s a sun, a moon, and stars, because those were the first things I realized I was good at drawing.

“Then, the body. Mr. Men’s Health-I’m-so-fit,” she says in this mocking tone, but it’s not me she’s making fun of. It’s the article.

“You read it?”

“I read everything. I devour information,” she says, and we’re right back to that place I seem to inhabit with her, where she compliments me, but she could be saying it like I’m a car she’s considering buying. And this one has one hundred seventy horsepower.

“And then, there’s your face, and you have all this awesome scruff on it.”

I run a hand over my jaw, and the neat, trim beard that’s like an additional sex toy I can bring to the bedroom. “Chicks dig the beard,” I say, with a lopsided grin.

“I bet they do,” she says under her breath. She doesn’t say anything else right away. She presses her teeth into the corner of her lip and then speaks, more softly than before. “Can I feel it?”

FUCK, YES.





7





She raises her hand and touches my jaw. My breath hitches as she runs her thumb across the light bristles. I’m keenly aware of every second that passes, one ticking into the next as she touches me, stroking my jawline like she’s mesmerized by the texture.

“Soft,” she whispers, almost in wonder as she stares at my chin. My heart starts hammering, and I fight to stay still. When she says, “But kind of hard, too,” I swear, I don’t know how I manage not to cup her cheeks, back her up against the stone wall, and just kiss the hell out of her. Kiss, touch, grind, and then some. I want to yank that lush body against mine, let her feel how much she turns me on, and find out if I do the same thing to her. The way her breath barely catches sends my mind spinning and lust spiraling tight in me. I can’t help but hope she wants what I do, and it feels like she could, going by the way she touches my face. It truly f*cking does, and maybe that’s why her name takes shape in my throat like a warning.

So she knows she’s playing with fire if she touches me like this again.

Then I remember. This is Harper, and she probably has no idea of the effect she has on me. I’ve never known someone like her. Here she is saying all these sweet, sexy things, and probably not even realizing what it can do to a man.

Makes it hard to resist, and right now I don’t want to. Fuck resistance. Let her play with me for a few minutes. “Anything else you want to feel up?” I ask, hoping she’ll take me up on my extremely generous offer to be her test subject. “The arms are available. The chest is on duty, too. Even the hair is fair game.” I tip my forehead toward her, inviting.

In a second, her hand is in my hair. She’s slow and measured, and takes her time running her fingers through the strands. My mind goes haywire, picturing every other kind of scenario where her hands might thread through my hair, pulling me close. Ones where she kisses me hungrily, consuming my lips with the kind of greedy touch that leads to clothes yanked halfway off in a fevered frenzy. That turns into slammed doors and hot up-against-the-wall sex, her panties falling to her knees. Or to one of my favorites, one of my fallbacks, one of my simplest and yet hottest fantasies—her legs wrapped tight around my head as I taste her on my lips. As I send her soaring with my tongue.

The next day, I’d walk past her, brush a strand of hair away from her ear and whisper I can still taste you. She’d shudder, then run her hands through my hair again, needing more.

Like she’s doing on the street right now. For a sliver of a second, her hand stops and rests against me. I can feel her soft breath on my face. I meet her eyes, and try to read her, to find that flicker in her blue irises that would match the flame inside me.

“Kiss the girl, Mister Orgasm!”

I jerk my head at the same time Harper does. The two guys are now across the street, cheering me on from the edge of the sidewalk. They probably think we’re together.

“Do it!” the other one chimes in. “Like the Kissing Virus episode.”

Harper turns back to me, her lips curving up in a playful grin. “He had to kiss her to cure her,” she whispers, as if I could forget that little element in the storyline. “Can’t disappoint the fans.”

I barely have time to register how the hell this is happening, but she’s swaying closer. My brain is full of noise and static, and I don’t know if this is a double-dog-dare until she mouths, For the fan-boys right?

And hell, if the fan-boys make this possible, I should send them a signed collector’s edition of every panel. “Let’s give them a show,” I say, my throat dry as it becomes clear that she’s not messing around.

“Hurry! Or the virus will spread!” one of the guys shouts, and Harper shudders, clasping her hand to her chest as she whispers, “You’re the only one who can save me.”

The very line the damsel in distress uttered in that episode.

She’s letting them egg us on. Harper loves games. She loves entertainment; she loves performing. This is the magician in her, taking the trick from its setup through to the payoff.