SEAL’s Love by Leslie North
14
That night at the dinner table, both Colin and Harper seemed intent on making sure they portrayed the image of a perfectly happy couple, even though the tension from earlier was still simmering between them.
For his part, Colin smiled and nodded and held her hand when appropriate, shoving food in his mouth that could’ve been cardboard for all he tasted it. Honestly, keeping up the pretense was exhausting. And it didn’t help that every topic that popped into his head kept leading back to the issues between them or the situation with her sister—things he couldn’t talk about. So, when the conversation wheel turned around to him, he did what he could to keep the spotlight off him and Harper. Meaning he passed the baton. To Jojo.
“Hey, cuz,” he said after taking a gulp of his hard lemonade. “Tell me again about that weird themed wedding you went to last year. What was it, Facebook-themed or something?” Jojo’s stories tended to grow the more she told them—taking on additional flourishes—and she was always at her chattiest after she’d had a couple of glasses of wine, which she’d had with dinner. Colin didn’t know the details of the wedding, had only heard her mention it in passing, but he hoped it was a massive story, the kind that would take them all the way through the rest of dinner so that he wouldn’t need to say another word.
“Twitter, actually,” Jojo said, laughing. “Sounds nuts, but there was a kind of sweet story behind it. The couple met on the social media platform, tweeting back and forth about some spare concert tickets for sale or something. Then they became friends and continued to tweet at each other for like a year before they met in real life. By then a bond had formed and once they laid eyes on each other, the rest was history. The reception was all done in the Twitter colors, of course, and they even put those little blue birds on the wedding cake. They had a screen up at the reception with this whole slideshow of their important conversations on Twitter as they got to know each other—and then their biggest milestone posts from once they met in person. When they got engaged, the first thing they did was take a picture of the ring and post it on Twitter, so that picture showed up in the slideshow a lot. They added something about Twitter to their vows—and they even made the best man and maid of honor frame their speeches as tweets—hashtag celebration, hashtag RL fairy tale. It was very inventive, if a bit strange.” She smiled over at her wife Sara next to her. “Wasn’t my choice. I firmly believe the smaller and simpler wedding the better. Like ours. Small crowd, on the beach. It was beautiful.”
“Sounds like it,” Harper said, flashing Jojo a polite smile.
“It was,” Sara agreed, leaning over to kiss Jojo on the cheek before looking back at Harper. “Speaking of weddings, what kind would you like to have? Big or small?”
Colin damned near swallowed his tongue. Shit. That was not where he’d wanted that topic to end up.
Harper didn’t answer right away, and he could feel her posture stiffening slightly beside him. He knew she didn’t like lying to his family—but on the other hand, they needed to keep their cover going. So what would she say? He wasn’t sure, but the sinking feeling in his stomach told him that this was not going to be good. Not at all. Slowly, Harper dabbed her mouth with her napkin, then laid it on the table, taking a deep breath before saying, “Honestly, I don’t picture either kind because I don’t see marriage in my future.”
Without his consent, Colin’s gaze shot to his dad at the end of the table. He expected to see anger, judgment, maybe a bit of I-told-you-so. But instead, all he saw was his dad wince, then give him a sympathetic look. Which, frankly, shocked the hell out of Colin. It also made him feel worse. Because, for once, there was no silent argument between them, nothing to distract him from the awful feeling of sadness and hurt inside him. His throat felt tight, and he wasn’t sure words would come out at all, but he forced himself to say something to ease the sharp silence that had fallen over the table at Harper’s blunt statement.
“Uh, right. As for me, I’d say anything internet related would be off the table. Not my style at all.” He gave a strained chuckle, which was echoed by several other guests as well, before switching the topic to the latest World Cup game that had been televised earlier that day. As the chatter returned and attention shifted off him and Harper at last, Colin took a deep breath and slumped back in his seat. If Harper felt the storm brewing inside him, she gave no indication, just continued talking with Patsy and Richard like she hadn’t dropped a bomb and blew up everything between them. But one thing was certain. He and Harper needed to talk, get it all out in the open as soon as possible. With her sister’s case nearing an end and their return to Baltimore looming like a specter over it all, he had to know where things stood between them, once and for all. Plus, if even his dad—who he’d never agreed with on anything—could see the incompatibility issues between them, then things were way worse than Colin thought.
The rest of the evening passed in a bit of a blur for him, with his mind churning through and overanalyzing everything that had happened between him and Harper since they’d boarded the plane to come here. By the time they were back in their room and ready for bed, he was a fucked-up mess.
So much so that he couldn’t keep it inside anymore.
Colin waited until Harper had crawled into her side of the bed, then he took a deep breath. It was a gamble, but one he had to make. He shifted slightly to face her and came out with it. “Harper, that conversation at dinner tonight…it made me realize that I need to be honest with you about what I want, where I see this going. I want to be fair—to both of us—and make sure we’re on the same page.” Because if not, I’m going to have to walk away, even though it’s the last thing I want to do, he thought.
For a moment, all she did was blink at him, her expression blank. But then she forced a smile and reached out to him, stroking his cheek and sliding her fingers into his hair. “Well, what do you think of this page?” she whispered, and then she leaned in and kissed him. It wasn’t the sweet kiss he’d expected, though. Wasn’t funny and lighthearted and hot like last time. Nope. This one was filled with heat and heart and desperation. Her fingers clenched in his hair, holding him close, holding him like she was afraid he’d disappear on her and damn if he didn’t feel the same. He knew he should pull back, make them have the conversation they needed to have…but God, what if this was the last chance he had to make love to her? How could he say no?
Between kisses and sighs, Colin removed her clothes, then his, stopping to worship every inch of her before laying down gently beside her, stretching out alongside her beautiful body. Even then, he didn’t rush, kissing her long and slow before bending to take one of her nipples into his mouth while lavishing attention on the other with his fingers.
She buried her face in her pillow, attempting to muffle her cries of pleasure because they still had to be quiet. Again, the silence only seemed to make the experience more intense. Each lick, each stroke, each caress shimmered around them like pure light, sending showers of firework sparks blazing through Colin’s nerve endings. It was like they couldn’t get enough of each other. All greedy touches and covetous sighs. For his part, Colin kissed and licked and nuzzled every inch of Harper that he could, like he wanted to memorize her in case he never saw her again, in case tonight was it. She seemed to feel the same, taking her time exploring him, touching him.
He kissed his way down her body to her abdomen, then lower still, tracing his tongue up the slick fold between her legs. He made love to her with his hands and mouth until she tumbled over the brink into orgasm, whispering his name over and over as the waves of ecstasy rocked her entire being.
At last, he kissed his way up her body again, stopping at her breasts once more before propping himself up on one elbow while reaching for a condom. She watched him put it on, stopping him to use her own hand to stroke his hard length. He took her hand after a moment, kissing her palm then looking down at her, needing her to know this meant more than just sex to him, needing her to understand how he felt. “Harper, darlin’, I—”
Once more, she cut him off, drawing him down for an open-mouthed kiss while wrapping her legs around his waist and arching her hips into him. He couldn’t help it. With no further delay, he entered her in one long stroke, then held still, allowing her body to adjust to his. When he did move finally, they both moaned low and deep, and he began a rhythm that had them teetering on the brink once more.
“Colin, I…” Harper whispered before she climaxed once more, her words lost to him as he rode hard toward his own climax, his face buried in her neck and her name on his lips.
Tonight, he wanted to be inside her, joined together as closely as possible, if only for this moment, this evening.
Afterward, they lay together in the dark, her head on his chest, their panting breaths mingling with the sound of the waves on the shore in the distance. Colin stroked her hair, trying to decide what if anything he could say or do to convince her that this was right, that they could make this work, but knowing there wasn’t anything to say.
So he waited, until her breaths evened out into the patterns of sleep, then whispered into the shadows the words she hadn’t let him say, knowing it was futile but needing to say it anyway, “I love you, Harper.”
