Page 73 of Emergency Exit
He swirled his tongue, and Harper made a noise she wasn’t sure she’d ever made before.
“Yes!” she managed to squeak out.
“So, I should put my tongue…” He took his sweet time dragging his tongue along her entire torso. “Here?” He kissed her through her panties, and Harper couldn’t help letting out a woof of air.
“Yes! Yes, I want you to…” Harper didn’t know how to actually ask for what she wanted. She’d never said it out loud before. Ash nibbled along her panties while his fingers worked them off her hips.
“Say it,” he said, challengingly. “Go on. Tell me what you want.”
Harper looked down at him. Ash always gave her everything she wanted. Every time she asked for something, he just gave it to her. He was an anomaly. Her very favorite anomaly in the whole world.
“Put your tongue right there,” she whispered, sliding her hand between her thighs, “and don’t stop until I come.”
Ash grinned as he popped a hair tie off his wrist and pulled his hair back. He was about to get serious.
Harper lost track of time and possibly reality. Still, somewhere between sensation, exploration, and trying to figure out how to sayyesrepeatedly when she could barely breathe, he definitely delivered.
Ash kissed her way up her body, and when he was finally inside her, Harper let out what previously would have been an embarrassingly loud moan of ecstasy.
Their bodies moved together, and Harper forgot to thinkabout whether or not she was doing anything wrong. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder and held onto him. The extra pressure was so good. She wanted him to keep doing it forever. It seemed so unlikely that she would be able to keep him, but for tonight, he was all hers.
23
Ash
The Next Morning
Ash woke up in Harper’s tiny bedroom, stretched, and scraped his knuckles against the shitty drywall texture. In that moment, Ash knew two things simultaneously. The first was that he would spend as many nights here as Harper wanted him to. The second was that he would attempt to move her into somewhere else—preferably his place—as soon as possible. He didn’t want to be an asshole, but her bed was a queen, and it barely fit into the room.
It would be much more convenient to take all of her things and move them into his condo. She pretty much just seemed to own clothes and that gorgeous coffee table anyway. And the coffee table would look fantastic with his couch.
Emma had hated that he’d purchased a blue couch.
In retrospect, he couldn’t remember anything of his that Emmahadliked. It was as though she’d spent two years trying to get rid of his personality. And he’d let her. Mostly. He’d dug in his heels over cutting his hair, but he’d said yes to everything else, from holidays without his family to his clothes to putting his more colorful artwork in storage. She’d been planning on getting an interior decorator in after the holidays. Why had he agreed to that? Because he’d wanted that effortless sense of sophistication that Emma seemed to exude. She was always so certain about things where he always felt like a tornado being pulled in a million different directions at once.
He rolled over and saw that Harper’s eyes were open. She didn’t look very awake—she had a dreamy sort of fifty-yard stareon the inert light fixture. He loved the tilt of her nose and the dark pile of hair on the pillow. She had a little smudged mascara under her eyes, and for some reason, that was sexier than a full face of make-up. He snuggled in a little closer and nibbled her earlobe. She giggled and turned her face to kiss him. Reaching up, she tucked some of his hair behind his ear.
“I like your hair,” she said. “I always want to play with it, but I know I’m not supposed to touch other people’s hair.”
“It’s a rule that if you have sex with me, you’re allowed to touch my hair.”
Harper laughed. “You just made that up.”
“Yes. But… my hair, my rules,” said Ash, with a shrug. In response, Harper buried her fingers into it with a happy little growl. Ash could not help laughing as she pulled him down to kiss her. Making Harper happy was more fun than he had any right to have.
He stopped laughing as her kiss softened, and their bodies met. The tender feeling of her skin against his was like the softest touch of silk.
Ash would have died rather than admit to any of his girlfriends that he occasionally ADHD glitched during sex and ended up thinking about something else when he was supposed to be concentrating on his partner. He couldn’t think of anything ruder or more embarrassing. Sex was supposed to be all-consuming—at least according to the movies—but while he thought sex was great, his brain sometimes literally had other thoughts.
But as Harper gleefully clenched her fist into his hair, he realized it would be hard to think of anything but Harper when she kept switching what she was grabbing.
She nibbled kisses along his jaw and trailed her fingers through the strands. He managed to crook a finger under her chin long enough to pull her mouth around to his. The way shearched up into him in pleasure was the best compliment he could think of. It was as though her entire body was trying to ask for more.
His hands trailed along her sides, enjoying her curves and angles. She tilted her head, and he kissed along her neck as she looped her leg over his hip, pulling her more fully on top of her. That wasn’t asking for more so much as demanding, and he was more than happy to oblige. The air seemed heavy and warm as their hands and bodies tangled.
He nudged her legs further apart and caressed her earlobe with his tongue. She gave a sigh, and her arms flopped out like an ecstatic starfish as he entered her.
“God, that feels so good,” she groaned, rocking her hips to match his lazy rhythm. Ash wasn’t capable of much more than a murmur of agreement. He didn’t want to talk—he wanted to revel in the feeling of Harper. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. He should have changed their agreement months ago. Harper was better than anyone he’d ever dated, and he was an idiot for not realizing it before now.
