Dark Wild Night (Wild Seasons #3)(58)
Author: Christina Lauren

“Look at me,” I say. “Let me taste that pretty mouth.”

She tilts her face up to me, lazily sliding her lips with mine: warm, heavy, wet.

“I love you,” I tell her. Her eyes flutter closed, her kisses deepen. And I don’t need to hear the words from her in return because this—her body language, her response when I say it, even the fact that she’s confirmed to anyone in the store that she’s mine—tells me she feels it, too.

After another ten seconds where I’m debating having her again, but this time on the couch near the window, I pull back, kissing the top of her head and coaxing her arms from around my waist. It’s time to face the inevitable.

I cross the room and look over my shoulder at her; she swipes away the smudged eyeliner from beneath her eyes, and then gives me a tentative thumbs-up. The squeak of the doorknob seems to reverberate in the quiet and I pull the door open, letting in a gust of cool air.

My heart drops when I see Harlow first, Finn just behind her. I expected Joe. Not this.

“Well, well,” Harlow says as a smile spreads across her face. “If it isn’t my two favorite nerds.”

I step out, working to keep my expression neutral. “You know two other nerds?”

Harlow’s mouth tries to form a few words. Finally, she manages, “How long have you been—”

Finn gets his hand around her and over her mouth just milliseconds after she releases a loud “Fucking?” into the entire store.

“Roughly for the last eighteen hours,” Lola answers, coming up behind me, and I look down at her, surprised by the poise in her voice. She slips her arm around my waist. “Though we took a break between ten and three today to get some work done.”

Joe whistles from behind the counter, and then looks down at a book he’s reading, as if he weren’t behind these shenanigans.

“Think you could have started the music a few minutes sooner?” I ask him with a grin.

He laughs down at the book. “Probably. But where’s the fun in that? This is your punishment for taking so long to do that.”

“And leaving him in charge,” someone calls from the front reading nook.

“Wong to Doctor Strange . . .” I remind him. “Wong would have been a team player.”

Joe looks up at me, feigning insult. “That hurts, boss.”

Harlow is staring at Lola, brows raised in expectation. “Do you have a minute, friend?” she asks, fighting an enormous grin.

Lola looks warily up at the clock behind the counter. It’s nearly four, and I’m sure she’s thinking the same thing I am—that a conversation with Harlow about this is unlikely to be quick. “I have a few. But I need to pack for L.A., so just come to the loft with me for my interrogation.”

She turns, gives me a pained look, stretches to kiss me in front of her best friend—who gasps—and then whispers, “I’ll see you Friday.”

“Friday,” I repeat, holding her hand until the last possible moment. With a last wide-eyed glance over her shoulder at me, Lola allows Harlow to march her out of the store.

Finn watches the two women leave with a mixture of amusement and concern. Harlow is already shouting excitedly on the sidewalk. “So,” he says, turning to me.

I smile. “So.”

He lifts his cap, scratching his head. “Lola’s headed to L.A. again?”

My smile widens. I can always count on Finn to keep things easy. “For a few days.”

“I hate L.A.”

“You do?” I ask through mild sarcasm.

He ignores this. “You either spend the entire day driving from meetings on one side of town to another or you get up there and do everything over the phone and could have stayed home anyway.”

“Well, I think they’re working on the script.”

He nods. “Probably better to be up there, then.” Finn walks around the counter and looks in the mini-fridge we have stashed in the corner. “Lola will figure it out, I bet.” I hear him slide a couple of cans out and he tosses me a beer. “So things are good?”

I grin at him for several beats of silence before asking, “Finn, did you just ask me a personal question?”

Laughing, he says, “Forget it,” and cracks open his beer.

“Yeah things are good,” I tell him, opening my own. “Bloody great.”

“So last night . . . ?”

He lets the question hang between us. This is the deepest Finn is willing to pry.

“Yeah.” The reality of it—of Lola as mine—makes me feel like sprinting from the store and running a marathon.