Mister O

Makes it hard to resist, and right now I don’t want to. Fuck resistance. Let her play with me for a few minutes. “Anything else you want to feel up?” I ask, hoping she’ll take me up on my extremely generous offer to be her test subject. “The arms are available. The chest is on duty, too. Even the hair is fair game.” I tip my forehead toward her, inviting.

In a second, her hand is in my hair. She’s slow and measured, and takes her time running her fingers through the strands. My mind goes haywire, picturing every other kind of scenario where her hands might thread through my hair, pulling me close. Ones where she kisses me hungrily, consuming my lips with the kind of greedy touch that leads to clothes yanked halfway off in a fevered frenzy. That turns into slammed doors and hot up-against-the-wall sex, her panties falling to her knees. Or to one of my favorites, one of my fallbacks, one of my simplest and yet hottest fantasies—her legs wrapped tight around my head as I taste her on my lips. As I send her soaring with my tongue.

The next day, I’d walk past her, brush a strand of hair away from her ear and whisper I can still taste you. She’d shudder, then run her hands through my hair again, needing more.

Like she’s doing on the street right now. For a sliver of a second, her hand stops and rests against me. I can feel her soft breath on my face. I meet her eyes, and try to read her, to find that flicker in her blue irises that would match the flame inside me.

“Kiss the girl, Mister Orgasm!”

I jerk my head at the same time Harper does. The two guys are now across the street, cheering me on from the edge of the sidewalk. They probably think we’re together.

“Do it!” the other one chimes in. “Like the Kissing Virus episode.”

Harper turns back to me, her lips curving up in a playful grin. “He had to kiss her to cure her,” she whispers, as if I could forget that little element in the storyline. “Can’t disappoint the fans.”

I barely have time to register how the hell this is happening, but she’s swaying closer. My brain is full of noise and static, and I don’t know if this is a double-dog-dare until she mouths, For the fan-boys right?

And hell, if the fan-boys make this possible, I should send them a signed collector’s edition of every panel. “Let’s give them a show,” I say, my throat dry as it becomes clear that she’s not messing around.

“Hurry! Or the virus will spread!” one of the guys shouts, and Harper shudders, clasping her hand to her chest as she whispers, “You’re the only one who can save me.”

The very line the damsel in distress uttered in that episode.

She’s letting them egg us on. Harper loves games. She loves entertainment; she loves performing. This is the magician in her, taking the trick from its setup through to the payoff.

She runs her thumb along my jawline, and my breath hitches.

There’s no time to process, no time to analyze. And since she just had her hands all over me, it’s only fair that I get to return the favor.

Possibility hums in me. I slide my right hand into her hair, letting the soft strands fall through my fingers, nice and slow, as I watch her expression flip from that daring playfulness to something entirely new.

Something unguarded.

It’s so enticing. That look makes me long for her even more.

Up close, her blue eyes are even brighter, like island waters, and I can smell the hint of something like oranges from her shampoo. It’s heady, and my mouth waters, wanting to taste her, inhale her.

I bring my right hand to her chin, gently tipping her face up toward me. My heart rate quickens, and I lick my lips as our gazes lock. Her eyes shimmer with desire that looks so damn authentic. I tug her close, and her lips part, a soft breath escaping as our eyes close. Judging from her reaction, it sure as hell feels like she wants this in a way that goes well beyond the reason we’re play acting. But then I stop thinking of reasons at all, as I slant my mouth to hers. The world slows, and I kiss Harper as the pair of fans across the street hoot and holler, shouting “woohoo” and “hell, yeah” and finally a victorious, “She’s saved!”

This is the payoff, and what a payoff it is.

I want to high-five them for goading her, or goading me, or whatever happened to make this moment possible.

Because this is exhilarating.

Our lips graze. There’s a hint of lip gloss, and the faintest taste of the Long-Distance Lover she drank at the bar. I brush my lips across hers, a barely-there caress that’s full of promise, a hint of what it could become if it were real, without the audience.

Whatever this kiss is, it possesses its own pulse, its own frequency, as if the air around us is charged and vibrating with sensual energy.

Or maybe it’s just me, because my body is humming. My skin tingles, and this whisper of a kiss lights me up all over, making my mind gallop far beyond the payoff.

“Your lips are so soft,” I whisper against her, and she gasps in response, then presses her mouth to me once more, murmuring, “Yours, too.”

We’ve pulled off the ruse with aplomb, but when her lips sweep across mine one more time, it feels way more than necessary for the kiss-the-girl dare to be authentic.