by Piper King
Even though he’s right, it irritates the hell out of me that he’s able to read me that well.
“Good,” he says. “Wouldn’t want you pining after my screwdriver. Would we, sweetheart?”
10
Noah
The sky is dark, and I didn’t bring my hardhat with the headlight attached to it. As much as I hate to admit it, Harper’s right. I can’t finish up her floor in these conditions. It’ll have to wait until the morning. Not to mention, there’s a massive storm raging outside. It’s practically a blizzard.
“Look, I know you’ve got ants in your panties about this floor getting done, but I’m going to have to call it quits for the day.” I smirk when I see the word panties isn’t lost on Harper. As much as she’s trying to hide it, I swear to god she’s hot for me. A girl doesn’t just gape at a guy’s raging hard on if she doesn’t like what she sees.
So, in my usual fashion, I’m going to fan the flames as much as I possibly can. Until she’s begging me to bend her over and take her hard from behind.
“I like how you act as if this was your idea when I’m the one who came up here to tell you about the snowstorm.”
“Sure thing, sweetheart. Anyway, since I can’t really drive in this, I’m going to head on over to Bar Wilde. Roman will have the place open, even in this weather, I’m sure of it.” I unbuckle my tool belt and slide it from my hips, revelling in the way her eyes follow my every move. “Care to join me?”
She’ll say no, of course. She might flirt with me behind closed doors, but she won’t risk the entire town seeing her out and about with the man she claims to hate. Still, I have to try. Because one thing’s for sure. I’m full-steam ahead at this point. No turning back now. I want Harper Harrison wrapped around my cock, and I’m becoming more and more convinced she feels the same.
“Sure, why not? It’s not like I have anything better to do, and I certainly can’t hang out here in the dark cold.”
“Great.” I smile and drop my tool belt to the floor. “Just don’t expect me to buy you a drink.”
I have to admit, I don’t know why I do that. Poke at Harper the way I do. Just don’t expect me to buy you a drink. Really, Noah? I’m certainly not going to win any Gentleman of the Year Awards with that kind of attitude. But I just can’t help myself when it comes to her. It’s an old habit I don’t know how to break. Truth is, I want nothing more than to treat her like a princess and buy her all the drinks her heart desires. Well, really, anything her heart desires. I’d go buy her a thousand dollar puppy if I thought it would put a sweet smile on her perfect face.
“Do you like puppies?” I ask when we slide onto the bar stools. The place is pretty empty, which isn’t particularly surprising. Everyone else in Redwater is holed up inside like any normal, sane person would do.
“Of course I like puppies.” Harper cocks her head at me and furrows her eyebrows. “Who the hell doesn’t like puppies?”
“Well, I’m sure there are some out there who don’t.” I begin ticking things off on my fingers. “People who are allergic to dogs, for example. Cats. Serial killers.”
“My grandmother was allergic to dogs, and she still loved them,” she says. “So, that just leaves the cats and the serial killers.”
“Point taken.” I smile. “Good to know you’re neither a cat nor a serial killer.”
“No, but I still have claws.” She arches her hand toward me and mimes dragging her fingernails down my arm. And I swear to god, I shudder. Because what I would give to feel her scratching my skin as she moans in pure bliss, overcome by lust and pleasure by my throbbing cock…
Shit, my mind went there again.
“Well, this is certainly an interesting surprise,” Roman says as he drops two Bar Wilde coasters in front of us. “Of all the people to show up tonight, I certainly did not expect you two. Well, I’m not shocked to see Noah here, but I have to admit, I’m puzzled by his date.”
“It’s not a date,” Harper blurts out.
Roman pushes his eyebrows up to his hairline. “Of course it isn’t. So, what can I get you two on your non-date?”
“I could use a shot, please,” Harper says before I can make the order myself. I glance sideways, my eyes caught on just how red her cheeks have become. It’s a blush like none I’ve ever seen, and I can’t help but note the way she’s clenching her thighs together.
“Me too.” I press my palms onto the bar-top. It’s the only way I can stop myself from running them up and down her gorgeous legs. “Wilde Whiskey for the both of us, and make them doubles.”
“This is one strange-ass night.” Roman shakes his head and turns toward the bar to prepare our drinks.
I catch myself watching Harper. She’s rubbing her palms on her jeans and swallowing hard. And she won’t give a glance in my direction. It’s as if she’s humming with an intense nervous energy, similar to what I feel myself. But instead of fidgeting, I’m trying my damnedest not to jump her bones.
“You feel a little weird about being seen in public with me?” I ask.
“Well, you have to admit, it’s attracting some attention.” She jerks her chin toward one of the back corner booths where a couple of girls I remember from high school—they were the year above me, I think—are staring at us like we’re tigers on display at the zoo.
“Who cares?” I smile when Roman slides the whiskey across the bar-top. I hand a glass to Harper and clink it with my own. “It’s none of their fucking business who you have a drink with.”
She hesitates. “Even if it’s the guy I’ve fought with for practically my entire life?”
“Especially then.”
11
Harper
Sometimes life moves in unexpected directions. For starters, I never imagined I’d end up the owner and manager of a bed and breakfast. I thought I’d get out of Redwater and see the world. And I certainly never thought I’d end up at a bar with Noah Hall, clinking shot glasses and toasting to puppies.
I’m not entirely sure why I agreed to come in the first place. On a night like this, I should be holed up in the guest house with the fire blazing and cocoa in my mug. My Kindle is packed to the brim with books I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, and I need to update the B&B website with some photos I took last week.
But my brain apparently has different things in mind. Things, I keep trying to remember, it really shouldn’t have in mind. Sleeping with Noah Hall is a disastrous idea. Though, it’s starting to feel less and less disastrous with every shot I take. The whiskey swirls through my veins, heating up even my hands, which are always monstrously cold. In fact, I no longer feel as if we’re stuck in the middle of a snowstorm. More like the middle of a desert with the sun scorching my face every time I look at Noah’s ridiculously sexy face.
Did I just call him sexy? Whoops.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Noah asks, sliding his barstool a little closer. Is the whisky addling his brain as much as mine?
“Penny for your thoughts?” I let out a laugh that sounds suspiciously like a schoolgirl giggle. “Who says that anymore? Have we time-traveled?”
“Well, if we have, I’d like to return to the moment I made a bet in high school.” His voice still has an edge of laughter to it, but there’s also something much different in his tone now, though it’s impossible to read his true thoughts. It always has been.
“Why? Want to relive my humiliation? How nice of you.”
This conversation has flashing red lights written all over it. Why did he bring this up? And why am I acting like everything is a-okay? Because of the booze, I know. But also because of something else. The warmth I feel toward him, the same kind of warmth I swear he’s reflecting right back onto me.
“I want to do anything but relive your humiliation, Harper.” He taps his finger against my knee, and my entire focus zeroes in on where his finger lands on my leg. Over and over and over again, and I suddenly don’t care what he has to say about something that happened years in our past
. I just want him to kiss me, hard and fast and long. I want our lips to crush together. I want his fingers to get tangled in my hair.
“Well, what’s the point of returning to the past then?” I ask in a voice that’s barely a whisper. “If you don’t want to relive it.”
“Because I want to undo it,” he says. “Take back the bet. Erase the humiliation. Stop our neverending fight from ever happening.”
Which, I have to say, I did not expect. All this time, I thought he enjoyed driving me absolutely crazy. He seemed to get a smug kind of satisfaction every time he got me so mad I had to stomp my feet and storm away. But now he’s saying he wants to undo it. Erase this thing between us like it never existed at all.
“Well, I guess that would mean you wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore,” I say as a joke. But it doesn’t feel very funny in my gut. Despite the fact I want to throw water into his face most of the time, I can’t imagine what my life would be like without Noah Hall, as infuriating as he is.
He’s always been here, a constant thorn in my side.
I don’t know what it would feel like to exist without that thorn. If it went away, there would be a hole in its place.
“Hmm,” he says before picking up his shot glass and tipping back the whiskey. He presses his palms to the bar-top, almost as if he’s steeling himself. “Harper Harrison, do you want to know a secret?”
“A secret?” I raise my eyebrows, both relieved and disappointed by the sudden change in conversation. As strange as it seems, I want to talk about the time travel again and why Noah wants nothing more than to change the way things went back in high school. “Spill it, Hall.”
He leans close, so close I catch the scent of him. Whiskey shot through with pine and mint. His voice drops low, and his lips press against my hair. “I never wanted to make that bet. In fact, all I wanted to do was ask you out for real.”
All the air gets sucked from my lungs as my entire world turns upside down. This is just another one of his jokes, I try to tell myself. Another bet. Some kind of game he’s playing. A new one to humiliate me even more. But then my eyes lock onto his face, and I know he means his words with every single beat of his heart. There’s a seriousness there I’ve never seen, like he’s showing me the real Noah Hall for the first time in our lives. An earnest one, a wounded one, one who is very much afraid I’m going to laugh right in his face.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “If you didn’t want to, then why did you do it?”
He shakes his head, as if he’s not even sure himself. “I was young, dumb, and certain that you were way out of my league.”
Way out of his league. It’s hard not to laugh. The words are so foreign, so strange. I almost feel like I’ve entered some kind of bizarro Twilight Zone where Noah Hall thinks I’m too good for him. Hasn’t he seen himself in the mirror?
“But you’ve been fighting with me ever since.” I blink up at him, trying to work my mind around this new information. “That’s what we do, Noah. That’s what we are. We hate each other.”
He taps his finger against my leg again. “It’s you who hates me. I have to save face, don’t I? Can’t have the world thinking I’m hung up on a girl who wants nothing more than to drop a bucket of ice on my head. Well, that’s how it was at first, anyway. And once it started, I couldn’t really stop it. Besides, you really do know the right buttons to push when it comes to me, so I’ve been legitimately angry plenty of times.”
Hung up on. Noah Hall just said he’s hung up on me.
“So,” I say, scooting closer to him. Our knees now knock together, and our elbows brush. “If you were to go back in time, you’d ask me out for real instead of pretending to make a joke of me?”
“Well, that depends,” he says, levelling his eyes. “Would you still have said yes?”
“Maybe.” With my heart beating like the wings of an eagle, I shift my hand forward to where his finger taps my knee. Our hands brush. Timid. Uncertain. And, in my case, extremely hopeful. We’re dancing so close to danger now. Everything inside me wants him to mean what I think he means, but years of history makes it heard to believe anything but the worst.
But it’s difficult to remember why we’ve been at each other’s throats for so long.
Especially if his confession is real.
There’s no reason to hold back. Not anymore.
That doesn’t stop my heart from thundering in my throat.
“I guess we’ll never know what might have been.” His hand slides a little further north. “But we’re not sixteen anymore. And I’m not a scared little boy.”
12
Noah
Our mouths crash together. My hands grab her thighs and pull her toward me until she’s practically on my lap. I’m not letting anything stop me from getting what I want anymore, and what I want is Harper Harrison writhing underneath me.
Her lips taste like heaven, if heaven is full of strawberries, sunshine, and whiskey. She moans, wrapping her arms around my neck, hiking her leg around my stool, and slipping her tongue into my mouth. My cock goes rock hard, not only because I’m finally getting what I’ve wanted for so fucking long but because she’s absolutely wild in her desire for me. There’s nothing hotter than a woman who acts like she wants nothing more than for you to bang her senseless, and especially not hotter than this particular woman.
Harper Harrison. The woman of my fucking dreams climbing onto me like an animal.
Our lips move in sync, tasting, nibbling, exploring. This isn’t a soft kiss. It’s hard and fast and needy as fuck. It’s the kind of kiss that screams of pent-up desire, of longing, of years of tension. And now that I know we’ve both been harboring the same damn secret, it was only a matter of time that this kind of first kiss would happen between us.
I slide my hand around her back and feel the bubbly curves of her ass. She feels so damn good. She tastes so damn good. And she sounds so damn good moaning into my mouth.
There’s some laughter in the background. And then a cleared throat.
We break apart. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a small crowd watching. Harper breathes heavily and stares at the ground, her entire face a shade of red that I’ve only ever seen on cars. Me, I’m a little embarrassed, sure, but mostly I feel fucking euphoric.
“Hey, strangest couple in all of history.” Roman’s unmistakable deep voice breaks through the moment. “You having another round?”
Harper looks up at me through thick eyelashes, a deeper blush spreading through her cheeks. I know what she’s thinking, even if she won’t voice it aloud. Because fuck it, I’m thinking it, too. I don’t want to be in this bar anymore. Not when I could have this gorgeous woman in my bed.
“No, I think that’s it for tonight,” I say. “Can I have the bill, Roman?”
He gives a nod and rings up the bill, which I pay despite all of Harper’s protestations. Even though this didn’t start as a date, it is one now. Our first, I guess. Hopefully not our last. And I want to do the gentlemanly thing and treat her right. Especially since I’ve done the opposite for so damn long.
Harper sneaks another glance at me, almost as if she’s shy now. “That was something, huh?”
“It was more than something. It was fucking fantastic.” I give her a lopsided smile. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long-ass time, I hope you know that.”
She nibbles on her bottom lip. “Me too. “
“Let’s get out of here and go back to my place. What do you say?”
With sparkling eyes, she says yes.
Once we’ve exited the bar, I realize there’s a slight problem in my plan to fuck Harper Harrison in every known position (and trust me, I know a lot). The snow has pretty much poured from the sky while we’ve been inside, and the roads are at least a foot underneath. While some of our construction equipment could break through the snow, any taxi we call now won’t be able to make the trek, especially since I live a couple of miles out of town on a pretty rural road.
; “I forgot about the snowstorm,” Harper says, wrapping her arms around her chest. Within an instant, I have my shirt off and draped around her body. She gapes at me, probably because I’m now naked from the waist up. And from the look in her eye, I can tell she likes what she sees.
“Aren’t you cold like that?” She tries to give me back the shirt, but I sidestep the attempt.
“I’m not cold, and you are. Keep the shirt on, Harper.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You trying to boss me around?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Is it working?”
“No.” She narrows her eyes and takes a step back, putting some distance between us. “I’ll have you know that I can make my own decisions, thank you very much.”
“Oh, is that so?” I smile a little, jumping into our usual dance without hesitation. I know all the moves, after all. The new dance we’ve started is still so unsure, it’s easy to fall back into our old routine. “Then, tell me, Harper, what do you decide comes next? With the roads the way they are, we won’t be going back to mine.”
“Stay with me,” she blurts out without any hesitation. “You shouldn’t try to get home in this weather. The power is out in the bed and breakfast, but my guest house is fine. There’s a fireplace. Food. A warm bed…”
“You sure you aren’t just trying to lure me there so you can have your way with me?” I ask with a wink.
She takes a step closer, and it feels as though her barriers finally fall to the ground. “Why don’t you come with me and find out?”
I’ve never been inside Harper’s guest house before. Hell, I always assumed she lived in the bed and breakfast. Every time I saw her, she usually stood behind the front desk flipping through a magazine and drinking cocoa. In my head, that’s where Harper lived. In a little room just behind the front desk. I imagined lots of mugs, lots of magazines, and lots of cozy blankets that smell just like her.