Page 104 of Hang the Moon
He grasped her chin and tilted it back, staring down at her, lids low. “I want to take my time.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth and another and another in a meandering line across her jaw that led down to the hollow beneath her ear. “Besides”—his tongue curled around her lobe and his teeth grazed her skin, causing her back to bow—“aren’t you the slightest bit curious whether I managed to figure out your love language?”
“As long as you keep kissing me,” she murmured, tilting her head to the side, “I’m all ears.”
“Lucky for you, I’m a pro at multitasking.” His lips skimmed her throat in a gentle kiss. “Quality time.”
Her brain went fuzzy when he sucked at the skin over her pounding pulse. “Huh?”
“Love languages, Annie.” He chuckled against her neck. “Yours is quality time. Spending time just being together.”
Her eyes drifted shut, relishing the feeling of his lips against her skin. Brendon wasn’t wrong.
He tugged at the neck of her borrowed shirt, his kisses trailing lower. “According to my research, we tend to show affection the way we prefer to receive it.” His teeth scraped the thin skin over her collarbone, making her shiver. “Yours is alsoreceiving gifts. Not because it’s material, but because of the thought and effort that goes into it. Your actions speak louder than words.”
She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly narrow. “What about physical touch? That’s a love language, isn’t it?”
Brendon lifted his head, staring up at her. The glow of the lamp caught on his copper lashes and brought out the tawny flecks in his warm brown eyes. He dimpled at her. “Youaremultilingual, so...”
Letting Brendon in, letting him this close, had never been her intention. Somehow, without meaning to, he’d slipped past her defenses, scaled her walls, and now he knew her better than people she’d dated formonths.
If quality time and gifts were her love languages, words of affirmation was Brendon’s.
She leaned forward and captured his lips in an unhurried kiss, mostly to stifle the smile threatening to split her face in two. Against his mouth, she whispered, “Remember how you told me you’ve never felt this way about anyone before?” She swallowed hard and confessed, “No one’s ever made me feel this way before, either.”
She was pretty sure there were butterflies in her stomach; either that or her food wasn’t agreeing with her, because she felt like she was going to hurl but also like she wanted to laugh? Both? And maybe kiss Brendon? It was an extremely confusing feeling that would’ve been off-putting if not for the fact that he was looking at her now and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the dimples in his cheeks, the crooked curve of his mouth, made her think that maybe this feeling wasn’t so scary. Notif she wasn’t the only one who felt like this, the only one who cared. If they were in this together.
He swept the hair off her face, fingers tracing the shell of her ear after tucking her hair behind it. “Say you’ll move here. Say you’ll move to Seattle.” The expression on his face was achingly tender. “Say you want to be with me.”
Shedid. She wanted Brendon to be hers and she wanted to be his. Wanted it with a sudden ferocity that stole her breath and made her heart race. It battered against the wall of her chest, fluttering viciously inside her veins.
Annie swallowed hard and threw herself over the edge of the cliff. “I want that.”
Brendon’s smile put the sun and moon and all the stars in the sky to shame. He whispered her name, his thumb grazing her cheek as he rested his forehead against hers. For a moment, they simply breathed each other’s air.
Something buzzed against her thigh.
A line appeared between Brendon’s brows as he drew back, feeling around atop the couch for what must’ve been his phone. Hers was buried somewhere in the bottom of her purse.
“Everything okay?” she asked, reaching up and tracing the chiseled line of his jaw with her fingertips. God, he was handsome. And she was lucky.
“Hmm?” He glanced up from his phone and smiled. “Yeah, yeah. Unknown caller. Lost a bunch of my contacts when I fell in the lake with my phone. This could be about today’s meeting—”
“It’s fine.” She smiled and let her hand fall to his shoulder. “Take it.”
He swiped and lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello? Yeah, this is Brendon.” His eyes doubled in size. “Oh, hey.” His gaze flickered to her face and he offered her a brief, tight smile. “Listen, I’m sorry, Danielle, but I’m going to have to bow out. I’m actually seeing someone.”
Without meaning to, she stiffened. He offered her another smile, this one a little broader, but it did nothing to alleviate her confusion.
“Thanks. You, too.” He ended the call and set his phone aside.
Nosy was the last thing she wanted to be, but she was pretty sure her curiosity was warranted seeing as his call had had something to do with her. “Who was that?”
His lips pressed together and he reached for her hand, playing with her too-stiff fingers. “Ah, that was...” He laughed. “It’s kind of a funny story?”
She was all ears.
“The day you came into town and Darcy called, asking me to drop off her key, I actually”—he gave another awkward chuckle and scratched the side of his neck—“I was supposed to go out for a drink.”
She connected the dots. “You had a date.”
