Marek
“You are in some serious need of assistance,” I remark as I step inside Harper’s small shoebox-size apartment and take in the scene before me. Boxes and junk litter the hallway floors, tape and packing materials strewn around. It looks like she hosted a raging party last night. All that’s missing are the empty beer cans and red Solo cups. “This place is a disaster. Is this how it normally looks?”
Harper remains at the doorway with her hand clutching the doorframe, giving me her best glare and a scoff.
“Did you come all this way just to pick on me? If so, that’s a sure way not to get laid, Big Man.”
I chuckle and lift my shoulders. “Just calling it like I see it. And I’ll get laid. I’m not worried about that.”
I sidestep what looks to be old photo albums, swinging my arms around her waist and lifting her to my chest, going in for a big kiss on her lips. At the last minute, she turns her head away stubbornly so I find her neck instead, breathing in her light, fresh scent that I’ve missed in my bed.
It’s only been a few nights that we’ve been apart, but I came to the realization last night, as I sat eating day-old Chinese food, that I missed Harper’s presence in my home.
Thus I decided on my impromptu trip to Spokane under the guise of helping her move. It’s not a ruse, exactly. I did rent a moving truck and hire a few guys to help with the furniture, which I see she has very little of, but my main agenda is simply to spend as much time with Harper as possible before she begins her new job and I get into the thick of the upcoming season.
I pepper her neck with kisses as she tilts it even further so I gain more access to her warm skin.
“But if you’re looking for compliments, let me say you look absolutely ravishing and hot as fucking fuck in these grungy overalls and ripped T-shirt.”
I jerk my head back and waggle my brows as she laughs, slamming the door behind her before wrapping her arms around my neck and crashing her mouth to mine. It’s exactly the welcome I’d hoped to receive.
Harper Conrad has taken this battered, beaten, and flattened heart of mine and inflated it like a balloon with her presence in my life. Harper has brought joy back into my life. She’s returned what I had once lost. Love, happiness, and a reason to live other than basketball.
Nothing will ever scrub away the pain that collects like dust in the vault of my heart over losing Gabriel like I did. The unfathomable and unbearable agony of never knowing the son we expected to be born healthy and perfect and the apple of our eye.
I consider sharing this with Harper. Not in this moment, of course, but at some point. I can’t keep it from her much longer and it’s bound to come out as soon as Jasmine’s book is released. Which my attorney said would be in the next month.
But I have time for all that. Until then, Harper and I can just enjoy our newly minted status as we get to know each other. And the best way to do that is to find out why she has all this junk to move.
But I’ll save that for another time too, because with Harper’s body pressed up to mine, her arms and legs securely hugging my waist and neck, my cock becomes very interested in where this moving business is going. And whether he will get to fill his own box.
I begin shuffling around the landmines placed in my way, looking for her bedroom down the hall. “You do still have a bed in here, don’t you?”
Harper’s laughter rings through the doorway as I take the first right into a bedroom and gasp when I see the bed.
It’s covered and piled high with what looks to be the entire contents of her closet and drawers.
She twists her neck behind her to see what I’m staring at in obvious horror.
She giggles. “Ohh…right. We might need to go back out on the couch.”
I scoff at this ridiculousness and throw her over the mound of clothing as she whoops with laughter.
“Clothes can be washed,” I advise, my voice low and deep with the implication that I’m going to fuck her on this bed, with or without the additional padding. “And you’re not leaving this bedroom until I’ve given you at least two orgasms.”
I reach for the snaps of her coveralls when a knock at the front door stops me in my tracks. Her bedroom window blinds are closed, but I peer out the slats to see more than one person on the front porch.
“Auntie Harper! We’re here to meet your boyfriend!”
My eyes shoot back to Harper, who jackknifes upright, her mouth gaping wide as she shakes her head, mouthing, “Oh, shiiiiit.”
Another knock and then we hear the snick of the key in the lock. The door creaks open and a new female voice calls out, “Harper, it’s us. Are you decent?”
Harper jumps off the bed, adjusting the strap of her overalls that had slid down her arm and rushes to the doorway. “We’re in the bedroom…filling boxes!”
I stifle my laughter, drop to my knees in front of an open cardboard moving box, and begin to neatly fold some T-shirts from the bed before packing them up. The sound of an elephant herd comes rumbling down the hallway and I lift my head in time to see two little dark-haired girls enter the room, both beaming with excitement.
“Hey, girlies! What are you doing here?” Harper’s outstretched arms enclose around the two girls and they both giggle and wiggle rambunctiously when Harper tickles them both in the ribs.