Page 103 of Hang the Moon
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
“You remember how I mentioned the intimacy-and-dating survey?”
Her lips twitched. How could she have possibly forgottenthatconversation? “Vaguely.”
Brendon pinched her hip lightly, making her squeal. “You’re hilarious.”
She flourished her free hand in the air. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all night.”
“Well, I’ve been doing some thinking—”
She gasped. “No way.”
“Quit!” Brendon snickered, fingers once again digging into her sides, making her shriek with laughter.
“Uncle!” She sniffed, face on fire and eyes damp. “I’m sorry. I’m listening. I promise.”
She really did want to hear what he had to say. It was just difficult to focus when his hands were on her. When he was wearing next to nothing, only his boxer shorts, and she was in her underwear and a shirt of his she’dborrowed. She had zero intention of giving it back.
“As I was saying.” He narrowed his eyes playfully. “We’ve all been doing some brainstorming about how to draw in newusers to the app because, right now? Growth is stagnating. Not an issue at the moment, but down the road...”
“Got it. Easier to prevent a fire from starting than be forced to put one out.” She nodded, showing she was following along.
“Exactly.” Brendon stroked his thumb across her wrist. “I already told you about how, at OTP, we emphasize compatibility and communication—we’ve even got helpful icebreakers to inspire users to keep a dialogue running so conversations don’t drag—but at the end of the day, it’s all meant to help usersfindtheir one true pairing, their person.” His teeth scraped against his lip. “We’re good at what we do, the finding part, but what comes next is out of our hands.”
“That’s true for any dating app.”
“Right, but then something you said got me thinking.”
“What did I say that was so poignant?”
“Try, everything?”
Her face warmed and so did the rest of her. “Brendon.”
“I thought about our conversation, what you find romantic, what romance means to you. About how we all have our own love language that dictates how we show affection and how we recognize affection. That two people can have the best intentions and still struggle if they’re speaking two different languages and don’t even know it.” He smiled down at her. “At today’s meeting, I proposed that we make a few small tweaks. Not to the matching algorithm, but in the account setup. Maybe we should have users take a quick ‘What Love Language Do You Speak?’ quiz, and the results can appear on their profile along with a link to what each language means.”
She smiled up at him. The warm, amber glow of the lamp beside his couch played against the chiseled edge of his jaw, his cheeks, highlighting the sharp strength of his features.
“That’s not a bad idea,” she admitted. “It’s a great idea, actually.”
“I have you to thank for planting the seed in my head.” He beamed down at her. “And I know—how’d you put it? Even with all the right tools, you can’t make someone put in the effort? What users choose to do with the additional knowledge will be up to them, butmaybethose thirty percent of skeptical dating app users will at least know we’ve heard them and we’re trying. Maybe they need to try, too.”
“As far as dating apps go?” She sat forward and twisted around, settling into his lap with a smile, her knees bracketing his thighs. “What you guys do at OTP seems really... thoughtful.”
Everything Brendon did was thoughtful. He tried at everything he did, tried harder than anyone she’d ever met.
“Thoughtful, huh?” he whispered, staring at her mouth. “I’ll take it.”
With his hand on the back of her head, he angled her just so, allowing his mouth to cover hers. His lips pillowed her bottom lip briefly before nipping it gently, the pleasant sting making her gasp and grind her hips downward.
He grunted into her mouth. “Fuck, Annie.”
Brendon’s cursing should’ve been outlawed, not because she didn’t like it, but because she liked ittoomuch. He seldom ever swore except during sex. Hearing the wordfuckfall from his tongue was a promise and prelude all in one, and it never failedto make her heart stutter, a heady sense of anticipation threatening to overwhelm her.
She ran her hands down his chest, splaying her fingers against the dips and valleys of his abs through his thin T-shirt. When she dug her nails in, he tore his mouth away, pressing their foreheads together and panting softly.
“Why’d you stop?”
