Mister O (14 page)

I drag a hand through my hair, words coming out choppy as my body hums with the aftereffects of the best hand job with a blow job finish I’ve ever had. “Or . . . yeah . . . that works, too. That’s another way I like blow jobs,” I deadpan.

She clears her throat. “Does that mean I can call you Prince Come Quickly?”

I smack her ass, chuckling. “I won’t be earning that
title again. Besides, you got me all worked up with those magic hands of yours.”

She makes an
abracadabra
gesture.

We both laugh even harder, and she snuggles against me. Damn, this feels pretty fantastic, too, Harper curled up by my side. We stay like that for a few minutes. When her stomach growls, I brush a hand across her soft belly. “Let me take you out to eat.”

She says yes, and dinner out with Harper seems a perfect way to top a damn near perfect evening.

“
W
e did
the order all wrong.” Harper shakes her head and sighs heavily.

“The food order?” I ask as the waitress walks away, her notepad in hand. We’re at an Italian restaurant a few blocks from my house. It’s busy, even on a Sunday night, as waiters scurry by, arms laden with plates of pasta.

“No. The activity schedule,” Harper says, running her foot up my leg. She’s flirty, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy this affectionate side of her. She’s across from me at a table for two. The restaurant is dimly lit, with candles perched on red and white checkered tablecloths.

“Ah. You mean we had dessert before dinner?”

“Yes.”

“We’re unconventional. Mixing it up,” I say, as Harper reaches for a slice of bread from the basket. Loose strands from her high ponytail frame her cheeks. After we cleaned up, she changed once more, pulling on a tight green sweater and jeans, along with short high-heeled boots. As we walked here, the struggle not to check out her ass the entire time was real. Sorry to report I received an F on that test.

Wait. Not sorry at all. The view was worth it.

She gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I like this reverse schedule, too. I liked everything today,” she says softly. “But seriously . . .” She lets her voice trail off. “Did you like it?”

I scoff. “That doesn’t even begin to cover it. I
loved
every second of every single thing we did.”

She lights up, her blue eyes sparkling now. “I want it to be good for you, too, because for me, it was amazing.”

“It was the same way for me,” I say, and I’m tempted to slide my hand across the table and hold hers. But something stops me. Maybe because that seems like way too much of a couple thing. She wants to be temporary lovers, teacher and student, and all I want is to simply get her out of the starring role she’s been playing in all my solo flights. A few more nights and I’ll definitely be able to relegate Harper Holiday to a supporting part, then absolutely downgrade her to an occasional cameo, and bam, before I know it she’ll stop occupying so much precious real estate in the dirty-thoughts lobe of my brain. Which, obviously, is the biggest one. For now, I zoom in on our lessons. “Let’s recap today’s classwork. We tackled dirty talk. Turns out you’re a natural.”

She wriggles her shoulders proudly, brings her index finger to her tongue, and pretends to wet the air, letting it sizzle.

I point at her. “You also learned that you can, indeed, have multiple orgasms, one right after the other.”

“I had four in an hour,” she says with a big grin.

“Show off,” I tease, then stop. “Wait. One was solo.”

“I’m still counting it, since looking at you on the train was my foreplay.”

And like that, I’m ready to go again. She is a sexy little cupcake, and I want to bite into her. “And you also learned that the G-spot isn’t a myth.”

“Oh, I believe in it big time. I’ll be building a shrine to it, in fact,” she says, ripping off a corner of the bread and popping it in her mouth. When she finishes, she lowers her voice. “Want to know one more thing I learned about what I like?”

“I do,” I say, and my muscles tense, not from worry, but anticipation. I want to know her. What she likes. What she dislikes. What makes her feel good.

Her eyes lock on mine. “Seeing you undress for me,” she says, and her voice slides into that vulnerable tone she uses every now and then. The faintest of smiles tugs at her lips and pulls at my heart. We’re talking about sex, but we’re also not. She’s saying something else it seems, something about what it means to open up to someone, to let him in. Or maybe I just want to think that. I half wish I had that Harper decoder ring and could translate what she just said into what some part of me wishes it meant. But I’m not sure how to get in touch with that part. For so long, I’ve been primarily focused on one thing with women—driving them wild. With Harper I want that in spades, but I want something else, too.

More.

Even though I know I can’t have that with her, and there’s no point in dwelling on it.

I grab a piece of bread, instead, and bite into it to keep from saying anything too revealing in response. The waitress arrives with a glass of wine for her and a beer for me, bringing to an end the serious moment.

The rest of the meal is easy. We talk about work and movies, agreeing that
The Usual Suspects
has the best twist, then books, and which
Harry Potter
spell we’d most want to do. We both choose the ability to apparate. “Instant transportation. No more airplanes, no more cars, no more waiting,” I say, pressing my index finger to the table for emphasis. “We could just go to Fiji right now.”

“Next stop, Bora Bora.”

We even chat about the crossword puzzle, and she’s surprised when I tell her I finish it nearly every week.

“Every week?” she asks, arching an eyebrow.

“When you signed up to ride this ride, did you think you were only getting beauty here?” I gesture to myself then tap my temple. “There’s brains, too.”

“The Sunday crossword is just really hard.”

I shrug. “I like puzzles.”
Like you. You’re a mystery to me sometimes.

“Me too,” she adds, and sometimes we have so much in common it scares me.

* * *

W
e stroll
along Central Park after dinner. The evening air is cool, and a flurry of golden brown leaves skip past our feet in the night breeze.

“I love fall in New York City,” she muses, glancing up at the trees, their branches bursting with color, canopying us as I walk her home. “It’s my favorite season.”

“Why?”

“I love fall clothes and scarves,” she says, her boots clicking against the sidewalk. “Fall colors, too—all the orange, and red, and gold. And the air is crisp, but not cold. And mostly, it just seems like the season Manhattan was designed for.”

“How so?”

“It’s romantic. It’s as if . . .” She pauses as if she’s taking time with her thoughts. She slows her pace and looks at me. “It’s as if Manhattan and fall have chemistry. Know what I mean?”

“Like they’re meant to be?”

“Yes. Exactly. New York was made for autumn,” she says, as a tall brunette and an even taller blond dude walk toward us, his arm draped around her shoulder. Harper and I move slightly to the right, and her eyes linger on them for a moment.

“And autumn was made for New York,” I add, then I go for it. I wrap my arm around her shoulder. “Are you cold?”

She shakes her head. “Not anymore.”

Silence falls between us for the next block. It’s weird, because we’re usually so chatty. But it’s nice like this, walking through the city, New York unfolding before us in all its autumn splendor, elegant buildings on our left, a jewel of a park on our right.

“Now it feels like a date,” she says under her breath, and my heart speeds up, pounding against my chest. Because I really like dating her. More than I should.

But as I flip her words in my mind, I wonder if I’ve overstepped with her, and crossed a line she doesn’t want crossed. “Is that okay?”

“Of course,” she says, as if she’s saying
duh
. “This is still lessons in dating, right? I mean, just because we added sex to the mix doesn’t mean we’re leaving the dating lessons in the dust, right?”

My heart skids, slamming cruelly against my rib cage. I tell it to shut the fuck up, because I can’t keep letting it get out of line and wanting more. “Sure,” I say gruffly, but now I wonder if that dinner was a mock date. Is she practicing dating with me now, too? Sex is one thing, but trial dates gnaw at me. I don’t know why. They just do.

“I thought I was pretty impressive at dinner with you tonight. I didn’t spill any red sauce on myself. I didn’t tell any embarrassing stories, and I spoke in complete and intelligible sentences the entire time,” she says, poking fun at herself.

I manage a small laugh, trying to let go of whatever weirdness is ping-ponging inside my head. “You were pretty damn impressive.”

“You know what this means, then?” she asks, a knowing grin on her face.

“Nope.”

“C’mon. Try,” she says, elbowing my ribs.

I draw a blank. “No clue. Coming up empty.”

“But I thought you liked puzzles,” she says, with a quirk in her lips.

“I do, but I can’t solve this,” I admit, my tone clipped. I don’t know how to play her game.

She tsks me. “It means,” she says, stopping, stepping closer, and grabbing the neck of my shirt, “that last night in your hotel was our first date, and this is our second date. And you know what third date protocol is.”

Schwing!

The decoder ring worked! I get it. She’s donned her Princess of Innuendo cape tonight, and she wants to fuck tomorrow. And that’s what I’m going to focus on. Not this dating shit that’s vexing me. Besides, there’s no need to be pissy when I’m going to have her coming all over my cock in less than twenty-four hours.

Ah, there. I feel so much better with that image front and center in my head. Thank you very much, brain.

I loop an arm around her waist. “I do, indeed, know what third date protocol is, and I intend to give you the full and proper treatment.”

Then, because I want to give her a taste of what tomorrow will be like, and maybe, too, because I want to remind her that I can wind her up in a second, I kiss the hell out of her on the streets of Manhattan, yanking her close to me. She grinds her pelvis against my growing hard-on, and I’m about to whisper dirty things in her ear about how wet she’s getting. But I don’t want to end the kiss yet. I don’t want to stop at all, and she doesn’t seem to either.

Until a bus rumbles by, spewing out a thick plume of exhaust that ruins the moment.

Her phone buzzes as we separate, and she grabs it from her purse.

Her mouth forms a surprised
O
as she scans her screen. “It’s Simon.”

I clench my fists and look away. My jaw is set hard, and I
hate
the reminder right now. He’s the guy she’s really into. Fuck, he’s the one I’m training her for, right? For a moment, I wish that he doesn’t really like her, that he’ll let her down, that he’ll hurt her and she’ll run back to me. But I feel awful wanting that for her.

“How is Mr. Hemsworth?” I ask, barely masking the bitterness in my tone.

“It’s just a confirmation of the party info,” she says gently. “It’s later this week. Saturday morning, actually.” She shows me the text, and it’s not as if I need to see it. It really is only a work message, and I feel like a schmuck for letting my misplaced jealously shine through.

But another note pops up on her screen.

W
ould
you like to get a coffee sometime soon? :)

H
e used a fucking emoticon
. I can’t believe it. I want to punch the air in victory, because that is complete and absolute grounds for a revocation of his man-card. “What’s with the smiley face?”

“It’s cute,” she says, and she sounds a little dreamy, like she likes him.

That’s it. I snap. “Don’t go. Don’t fuck him.”

She wrenches back and looks at me as if I’ve sprouted two heads. Snake heads, based on the vitriol in my tone. She parks her hands on her hips. “What the hell does that mean, Nick?”

I scrub a hand over my jaw. I try to let go of the jealousy, but it’s not a green-eyed monster for nothing. “Just not yet, okay? Don’t fuck him while we’re fucking,” I say, keeping my words as crass as can be. I can’t let her see that the thought of anyone else touching her eats me alive.

“I would
never
do that.” Her tone is full of hurt.

“Well, how do I know?”

She pushes my chest, shoves me hard. “Get real. Seriously. I told you I haven’t slept with anyone in a few years. I told you I barely know what I’m doing in bed. I’m not going to sleep with you and someone else at the same time. I’m not even going to date him right now.” She slices a hand through the air. “I would never be with you and someone else. Never.”

And I’m an asshole.

“I wouldn’t, either,” I say softly. “I don’t want to be with anyone else right now, either, and I didn’t mean to suggest you would.”

She stares at me and exhales. Her eyes seem to soften, but she crosses her arms over her chest. I’m not forgiven yet.

I reach out and wrap my arms around her. She lets me hold her, but doesn’t reciprocate. “It’s just we never said we wouldn’t while we do this.” Whatever
this
is.

“I didn’t think we had to. Isn’t it obvious we won’t? I won’t. You won’t. It’s that simple. It’s not even a rule we need to establish. It’s just an is.”

And fuck, the way she says that, so certain and determined, so clear on who she is, hooks into my chest.

I am so utterly fucked with this girl. And I don’t just mean fucked in that way. I mean it in every way.