Page 41 of Bearly Hanging On

“She what?” Kieran growled.

“Then I made clear what a mistake he was making.” Suddenly, I had their complete attention. “When he scuttled away while Harper was in the bathroom, I stepped up.” What happened tonight, my brain kept coming back to it over and over, as if to reassure myself it was actually real. “Shifters might be out to the world now, but the rules didn’t change. We have to show Harper we’re serious about her. I get the feeling she’s been kissing a whole lot of frogs and is about to give up on finding her prince.”

“Princes.” Tor always bounced back the fastest. He grinned. “Well, alright, I’ll take her out on a date tomorrow night.” He nudged Kieran. “Gives you time to think of something that’s gonna rock her world.”

“But no sex.” I felt like a hypocrite saying that, especially when I could still taste Harper. “Keep that weird ass dick of yours in your pants.”

“Because having two nutsacks is normal?” Tor shot back.

“A knot is not a nutsack…”

We bickered for a while, blowing off some steam, but it wasn’t enough. When I got back to my room I was stripping my clothes off by the second. My cock was still rock hard, because my body didn’t know that we weren’t mating Harper tonight. It still smelled the sweet scent of her arousal and wouldn’t quit until she did.

So I’d need to pretend.

The first rasp of the lace against my shaft had me shivering, the scent getting stronger with every stroke. I worked my fist up and down, then surrounded my knot with my hand. Harper, I thought. Harper… Her lips on my mouth, her body movingagainst mine, both of us finding a terrible rhythm. I had to believe that would happen one day.

Then I’d work out what the hell I’d do to stop history repeating itself.

Chapter 17

Harper

With Mack’s big speech, I figured I might have some visitors during the breakfast rush, then when they didn’t appear, maybe at lunch. Nope, just the same familiar faces. I kept it moving, serving customers, cleaning up, making sandwiches, but when I was done for the day, forced to mop the floor myself, I admit I felt a little flat.

Shifter guys were supposed to be different, weren’t they? No lying, no game playing, no bullshit. I wondered how true that was when my phone started to buzz in my pocket.

Mum had been trying to ring me all last night and today, and when I looked at my phone, I shook my head. Wheeling the mop bucket back into the kitchen, I answered it, tucking the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I emptied the bucket.

“Hi, Mum.”

“So you’re finally answering my calls!” She was riled up, that much was obvious. “I called you all night. Barely slept, thinking something might’ve happened to you.”

“What, I died of boredom listening to Brian—?” Shit, it was Brendan. “Talk about crypto all night.”

“Crypto?” she spluttered. “What’s crypto?”

I tossed around the idea of trying to explain what digital currencies were, but instead hung the mop and bucket up now that they were clean.

“It’s boring, Mum, that’s what it is. It’s really, really boring and so was Shau—Brendan.”

“He’s a nice man!”

“Does a nice guy rock up to my apartment and beep his horn at me?” I said. Geoff the cook was studiously working on cleaning up the grill. “Does he get all shitty when I wear heels rather than embracing short king energy?”

“You wore heels? Harper, you know you’re too tall for that.”

“No, I’m not.” I remembered the way Mack towered over me as he walked me over the restaurant, but it wasn’t his height that was the big thing. It was the fact that he was completely confident in who he was that got my panties moist. Which reminded me of what happened afterwards. “Not with the right guy, I’m not. Anyway, Brendan drives like a maniac, told me to go on a keto diet and that I could lose a few kilos and ordered a lot of expensive food and then walked out, leaving me to pay for it.”

“Oh.” Money, that was always the line in the sand with Mum. “Oh, well, perhaps he’s not the right guy for you, but?—”

“The next sentence better be ‘Harper, you’re a perfectly functional adult, capable of finding your own guys to date,’ Mum, or this is going to be a very short phone call.”

I could almost hear the cogs grinding in her head, but her silence didn’t last.

“Well, can you stop by your grandmother’s? She says she needs some things. I’m not sure when I became her personal shopper…”

The familiar sounds of Mum’s complaints washed over me as I nodded along. She was still talking when I finished closing up the cafe. I sighed as I passed Geoff and he mouthed a goodbye as I walked out the backdoor.

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