It Started with a Dog, page 12
“Sure. But there are all kinds of people in the world looking for love, and you are this amazing woman, and it surprises me.”
She smiled sheepishly. “Well, you surprise me, too. Why don’t you have a girlfriend, handsome dude with a great dog?”
He liked that she thought he was handsome—he liked it a lot. He was also very pleased that she thought Truck was a great dog. Not many people did. “My life has been consumed by responsibilities and work. And I’m too much of a dork to keep women around for long.” He gestured to their matching joggers.
Harper laughed. Jonah liked the way the late afternoon light caught her features and made her look luminous. He tried to remember Megan’s eyes, but he couldn’t, really, other than they were blue. What he could remember was that he’d never been compelled to look into her eyes quite like he wanted to look into Harper’s.
“See, when I say I have too many responsibilities, my best friend Olivia always says no one is that busy, and I work too much, and I am avoiding my inner Harper. But when someone like you says it, it sounds important and I know everyone thinks, of course he’s a very busy man.”
Jonah was about to ask her what she did that kept her so busy, but Snowball startled him by suddenly lunging at his face. “Whoa!” He caught the dog as she started to lick him, and he held the dog away from him.
“You weren’t paying sufficient attention to her.”
“She was on my lap. Should I encourage this?” He tried to calm the squiggling little dog.
“Here, let me,” Harper offered, and took the dog from him, putting the pup on her shoulder and stroking her back.
“Snowball is blowing my good-with-dogs reputation.” He looked down, brushing dog hair from his clothing. “And for this reputation to be blown on a dog-walking date is the height of humiliation.”
“What about Truck?”
Jonah caught the twinkle in her eye. “No fair. I have tried my best with Truck, but he’s a linebacker with a strong need to be liked by everyone.”
Harper laughed.
“Let me rephrase—my reputation is a guy who is good for dogs, because I’m a complete pushover. But in my defense, Snowball is the size of a kitten and is named like one, too. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with her.”
“Are you size shaming her right now? Snowball may be tiny and have those weird bug eyes, but she is still a dog. Right, Snowball? Right, Bob?” They both leaned forward and looked down to where the bulldog’s hind paws were last seen. Except his hind legs were not there. “Bob?” Harper shoved Snowball back at Jonah, then leaned forward even more.
They realized it at the same moment, both of them shooting up, searching wildly about for Bob. The dog had escaped. “Oh my God!” Harper whirled back around and grabbed Jonah’s arm in a death grip. “I lost Bob!”
“Try not to panic.” He was already panicking for the both of them. How could he be this bad with dogs?
“How can I not panic? I lost Bob!” she cried. “Bob!” she shouted. “Bob, come! Wherever you are, Bob, you better get back here right now!” She turned around in a circle, scanning the greenbelt. “He was right here. Where could he have gone? I lost a rescue dog, Jonah! Do you know how bad that is?”
“Take a breath,” he said soothingly. “I have an idea where he might be.” He grabbed Harper’s hand and began walking briskly. And then he thought of Bob marching into traffic on Anderson Lane and broke into a run.
“You’re going too fast!” Harper cried.
Jonah stopped. He handed Snowball to her. “I’m just going to run ahead and have a look.” And he started to run.
Jonah found Bob just as Harper caught up to him. He was where Jonah thought he might be, halfway down the alley behind the donut shop, his butt high in the air, bobbed tail wagging, his head in a box. “No!” Harper roared. “Leave it!”
Bob ignored her. Harper handed Snowball back to Jonah. “I’ll handle this,” she said with steel in her voice, and strode down the alley. Just as she reached for Bob’s collar, he darted out of reach with what looked like a cruller between his jaws. But Harper closed in on him, and Bob wasn’t so clever that he could overcome the length of his legs. He sucked the cruller in a little deeper, making sure he had a hold on it.
Harper caught the end of his leash, and Bob managed to swallow the cruller whole.
“Great! Just great, Bob,” Harper scolded him. “You’ll poop all night and they’re going to put me on the blacklist because of you. Is that what you want?” She squatted down beside him and began rubbing his ears. “What were you thinking? You know you can’t run off like that. You don’t even have both ears and can’t hear well.” She rubbed his face until Bob growled. She stood up, and she and the dog trotted back to where Jonah was standing with Snowball.
“Crisis averted. Bob has learned an invaluable lesson about running off and he’s not going to do it again.”
Bob looked over his shoulder at the donuts, and Jonah was certain the dog shrugged indifferently. “Yeah, I can see his resolve.”
On the way back to the ACC, they swore each other to secrecy. No one was hurt, they reasoned. They’d all learned a valuable lesson. When they handed over the leashes to Cinder, she did not seem to suspect anything was amiss. She didn’t seem to notice the bit of cruller stuck on Bob’s muzzle. “Thank you so much. We’ll see you next week.” She headed off toward the kennels, Snowball on her shoulder looking mournfully at Jonah, and Bob leading the way without a single, tiny remorseful look backward.
“We are the worst dog walkers ever,” Harper whispered.
“We are. But he’s the worst walkee ever,” Jonah muttered.
Jonah and Harper took one look at each other. A bit of laughter escaped Harper. Jonah grabbed her hand, and they ran to the parking lot like two kids about to be caught red-handed, laughing.
“How do you lose a rescue dog on a thirty-minute dog walk?” Harper asked as they collapsed against the side of her car.
She was glorious when she was laughing. Everything about her made it impossible for Jonah to look away. He caught her, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her with exhilaration. And then he kissed her slower. Deeper. But more urgently. Harper’s hand landed lightly on his arm, and she sort of sighed, and Jonah sort of melted. He lifted his head. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“We can’t stay here like this. I haven’t even impressed you with dinner yet.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Oh, yes I do. So far we’ve had one dog mishap after the other. I need you to know that a date with me can be good and trouble free.”
“I can see this is very important to you. Lucky for you, I am often and easily impressed.”
He leaned down and kissed her again. “Prepare yourself, Miss Thompson.” He opened the driver door for her. “You might get swept off your feet.”
“Way ahead of you.” She smiled pertly and dipped under his arm to get behind the wheel.
Jonah grinned like a loon all the way around the back of her car to the passenger seat.
Eleven
They parted at Harper’s apartment. Jonah said he’d be back in a couple of hours to pick her up and take her to dinner. Harper felt like a human magnet, everything in her pointed and pulling her toward Jonah . . . and it felt amazing.
She changed into the gold-and-green dress with a full skirt that floated just above her knees. She’d bought it on sale before Christmas for a special occasion. In Harper’s world, this was as special as it got. She put her hair up in an artful twist that Olivia had shown her how to do, with the requisite few tendrils framing her face. Heels as high as her kitchen counter.
Later, when she opened her door to Jonah’s knock, he surprised her with flowers.
“Wow.” She meant that sincerely—wow. How in heaven was she about to go on a date with this drool-worthy man? He was dressed in a blue-checked shirt, a dark blue blazer, and jeans. He was clean-shaven and he smelled liked the woods and oranges and something else that spiraled straight into her groin. He looked exactly like the kind of self-assured, handsome man she and Olivia would spot in a bar and swoon over. They would play a game where they would try to guess what sort of girlfriend he would whisk away to Saint-Tropez, because that’s what happened in the movies. Jonah looked like the perfect strong romantic lead.
She wanted to squeal. She wanted to snap a picture of him standing there with those flowers at her door, then text it immediately to Olivia with a proper emoji.
Jonah tilted his head to one side. “I’m not exactly sure what we’re doing right now, but I’m starting to feel a little conspicuous.”
“Oh!” Damn, she really was drooling over him. “Come in.”
He walked into her apartment and handed her the flowers. “For your single blue vase.”
“You remembered! This is really . . .” She tried to find the perfect word. Charming. Chivalrous. Sexy.
“Impressive?”
“At the very least.” She could feel the wide, cheek-stretching grin she could not rein in. This giddiness was so unlike her, and she didn’t know what to do with herself. The vase. Yes, she needed the blue vase. She grabbed it off the dining table and turned to the kitchen.
“You look amazing, Harper.”
He was eying her the way she took in a plate of nachos. Invested. Ready to dive in. “Thank you.” She felt like a fucking supermodel right now. She went into the kitchen, brushing past him, intentionally making contact with his shoulder in a manner she had never in her life employed. She filled the vase with water and arranged the gorgeous bouquet of dahlias, tulips, and peonies in it. “These are beautiful, Jonah.”
“So are you.” He smiled and held out his arm. “Ready?”
She was ready. She was so ready, she was thinking about sex. Quite fervently, she guessed, because she really didn’t know what happened next. She looped her hand through his arm, and he put his hand on top of hers, and she meant to grab her beaded evening bag, but she grabbed him instead.
Something amazing happened between them. Some switch was thrown, an electric charge melding them together. There were a thousand things she wanted to say, and yet she could not summon a single word.
Jonah’s gaze moved over her hair, her eyes. They dropped to her lips and her fingers. She felt sparkly and alert.
“Harper?”
“Jonah?”
“I really like you. And by ‘like you,’ I mean that I am actually crazy about you.”
No one had ever said those exact words to her before, and she was astounded by how they seemed to spark an explosion of rainbows inside, bits of colorful confetti falling into her bloodstream. “I’m crazy about you, too, Jonah Rogers.”
There was a beat or two, and then she launched at him, or maybe he launched at her, but her arms were tight around his neck, and his hands were around her waist, and they were standing, and they were kissing. Madly, frantically kissing.
With a gasp, she pulled herself free. She stared at him, wondered if he was making the same calculations she was making. She slipped her hand into his and pulled him down the short hall to her bedroom.
“Dinner reservation,” he said, but the words sounded thick, like he was speaking another language.
“Skip it?”
“Erg,” he said, which she thought was a yes. His gaze was on her face and he was grinning, and they had clearly reached a consensus.
In her room, she watched him look around as she kicked off her heels. Her bed was covered with a soft, plain gray cover, and white fluffy pillows were propped up against the black headboard. There wasn’t much on the walls, or other furnishings other than a dresser and a small chair covered in clothes. Very tidy. Orderly.
Jonah looked at her, and she thought he was going to say something about it, but he grabbed her up, his hand on her back, sliding up to her neck. There was fire between them, a mix of reverence and desire. Blistering desire like she couldn’t recall ever feeling in quite such an electric way. Their tongues tangled, their hands moved over each other’s bodies.
They kissed like two people who had just gotten engaged, who had fallen hard in love with each other and didn’t think they could live another moment outside the other’s presence. If felt almost theatrical, like two lost lovers finding each other at long last, a scene from a Nicholas Sparks movie.
They somehow managed to maneuver to her bed, and it was here that Jonah pressed his hand to her cheek and said solemnly, “I ruined your hair.”
“Ruin it some more.”
“Now I really like you.”
“Same,” she said emphatically. She grabbed his head and pushed her leg in between his, pressing against his erection. Jonah lifted her off her feet, then fell backward with her onto her bed. She scrambled on top of him and pressed her lips to his cheek, his forehead, and his mouth again before she began to undress him. She was determined, her focus on the small buttons of his shirt. She pulled the tails from the waist of his pants.
He rose up to discard the unbuttoned shirt. “This is just . . . I am totally into you, Harper. I want this to be right. I want it to be perfect.”
More words that had never been spoken to her. Harper cupped his face and pressed her forehead to his in an effort to savor this moment in spite of the desire raging through her. “I’m totally into you, too, Jonah. It’s already perfect.”
He put his hand on her back, found the top of her zipper, and pulled it down. “One more thing.”
“Yes?” She removed her arms from the dress.
“I don’t think I have ever been so turned on.”
Harper’s libido soared. “Then this should go great.” She fumbled around her bedside table and produced a string of six condom packages. “Do condoms expire?”
“Not for a very long time.” He ripped one off the bottom of the string, and she tossed the rest aside.
A wave of prurience crashed through her when he rolled her onto her back and pulled her dress down as he went. He moved down to her breasts encased in black lace while one hand traveled lower, over the curve of her hip. He knew exactly how to explore her body and drive her to madness. She was crazy ravenous for him, hyperaware of his scent, of how hard his muscles were, tensing and flexing beneath her touch. Heat radiated between them, especially when Jonah kept pausing to look into her eyes and ratcheted the lust in her. It felt as if the connection between them was much more than physical.
She kept her gaze locked on his, except when a touch of his lips or a swirl of his finger transported her.
Piece by inconvenient piece, the rest of their clothing came off. Jonah shifted onto his back, pulling Harper to straddle him. She moved above him without true conscious thought, by instinct alone. Her hands were on his skin, her body just above his, and she met his gaze. He remained completely focused on her, which made every bit of her frantic to have him inside her. Every tendon, every muscle, was on fire with want.
These feelings spilling out of her were new and intoxicating—she’d never really yearned for sex. She always participated, happy to be brought along to a successful conclusion. But this was so different than that—she wanted to be the one to bring it to a successful conclusion. She wanted him to feel all the lust and desire and regard he was showing her. She wanted to be the one he would always remember.
A thought nudged in between all the sensory experiences she was having—it was remarkable how everything in her had tilted in his direction—her heart, her thoughts, her gaze. He looked at her like he knew what she was thinking and feeling, gave her a soft smile, took hold of her hips, and guided her down onto his erection.
Oh. Oh. She braced herself against his chest and began to move. Her breathing was uneven, her hair tangled, her fingernails in desperate need of a manicure digging into his pecs.
He didn’t seem to mind. He was unabashedly moving into her, his lips pressed together, his expression filled with desire and lust and tenderness.
Harper’s heart fluttered and skipped around in her chest.
He moved again, flipping them once more, and hooking her leg over his arm, so that he could slide deeper into her. His gaze traveled her body again, every curve, every exposed patch of skin. He cupped her cheek and kissed her as he moved. She gave in completely then, holding nothing back, allowing him to sweep her along the tide to a climax. She finally fell away, cracking open to the sensations and all the new possibilities and feelings and heart murmurs that came with this experience. Jonah was seeping into her pores, his heat mixing with hers. He was so hard, so hot, moving with delicious force, carrying them both along for the ride. And Harper kept pressing back, kept digging her fingers into his hips, pushing him deeper inside her, wanting all of this, everything he had, until she couldn’t take it anymore.
She fell to pieces, arching into the sensation of it, the shift in her seismic.
Jonah followed, then collapsed on her when it was done, his breathing as ragged as hers. A few moments passed as she twined her fingers in his hair and traced his spine down his back.
He eventually rolled onto his back. “Harper?”
“Jonah.”
He laced his fingers with hers. “I have no words.”
She smiled to the ceiling. “Me either. Not a single one.”
He lifted himself up on to his elbow and smiled down at her. The room was dark but for the light of a streetlamp, and she imagined his shining eyes a night canvas filled with tiny stars. She would like to explore those stars forever.
“I did not expect anything like this—like you—to happen.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant by it, but she never had expected anything even close to this happening to her. She stroked his face. “What did you expect?”
“Not the extraordinary person who dripped all over me in the Lyft. I don’t know . . . a regular, run-of-the-mill phone swap. A woman with three kids at home, unfolded laundry, a grocery list, and late to work. That’s usually about my luck. But not this.”
