Page 99 of Her Greatest Adventure

His lips kiss beneath my jaw, and I tip my head to give him better access. My eyes flutter shut, a sound of appreciation escaping me as I arch into him.

“You guess?”

“I haven’t exactly finished what I was doing before.”

Adrenaline bursts inside of me just seconds before I tear myself from his arms and run toward the bedroom. His laugh is loud and free and happy as it follows me, embedding itself in the walls. My grin is so wide I know my dimple is out, and when I reach the bedroom and crouch in front of the paint can, Cooper is already there, in the doorway, with a matching dimple.

“You’ve painted me,” I begin, drawing a circle in the paint with my finger. “Now it’s my turn.”

His deep brown eyes snare mine as he reaches behind his head and pulls his shirt off. It falls to the floor.

“You’ve already marked me up inside. It’s only fair that you do the same to the outside, I suppose,” he says.

I stare down at the paint, watching as it ripples with every swirl of my finger. When I lift my eyes, I instantly zone in on his hand and the black ink on his finger. My chest warms, love burning me up from the inside.

“Can you sit on the floor? I don’t want to get paint on the bed,” I say, voice soft.

He doesn’t hesitate. Sitting in front of me, he brings his knees up and spreads them just enough I can settle between them. My heart crawls up my throat, making it hard to breathe as I move the can closer and slowly lift my finger from the paint.

“Do your worst, love.”

His stare is so warm, so soft that it becomes nearly impossible to fight the urge to just say the words I’m thinking. With my pink-tipped finger, I write them across his chest instead. Each swoop across his skin draws more of his attention, until he’s palming my waist and watching my finger with such intensity it sucks the air from around us.

I roll my lips and let my hand linger on his stomach when I’m finished. He’s breathing hard, each exhale warming my face. It’s not until after he tugs on the hem of my shirt and I quickly take it off that I notice he’s dipping a finger of his own into the paint.

A shiver rolls through me when he presses his finger to the swell of my right breast and starts to write on my skin. He’s watching his movements intently, but I’m staring at him. I don’t have to look at my chest to know what he’s writing. His eyes say everything he hasn’t said out loud.

Bliss as I’ve never felt awakens inside of me when he finishes with a brush of his thumb over my collarbone and glances at me.

I smile softly, bringing my forehead to his. He bumps my nose, and by the time I finally look down at my chest, I’m not surprised to find the three words written there.

They’ve already been etched beneath my skin for weeks.

I love you.

36

COOPER

Paint fumes.That’s the only explanation I have for my inability to tell Adalyn the truth. I was going to. I planned my entire speech on the way home. Every broken-hearted detail that I wanted to pretend wasn’t real, I was going to tell her.

But then I saw her in the spare room, painting that damn wall with hope so apparent on her features that the thought of telling her something I knew would crush us both suddenly felt all that less appealing. Just like that, my already shaky will crumbled beneath me.

Even now, as we lie on a bed of blankets on the living room floor, reclined against the edge of the couch while we work on our very different careers side by side, I still can’t bring myself to ruin the moment.

She’s working on her laptop, editing a video and humming along to whatever song is running through her head. Her hair is twisted on the top of her head, and she’s wearing one of my shirts. The thin blue material hides the pink paint still on her chest. A brand identical to the one I can’t bring myself to wash from my skin.

The weight of what we exposed to each other today is heavy on my chest but freeing at the same time. It’s what I’ve wanted confirmation of for weeks—that she feels the same way I do. Now that I know she does, things have shifted, clicked into place.

“Are you actually doing any work over there?” she teases, leaning over my lap to get a better view of my laptop screen.

“A little. You’re distracting me.”

She rolls her eyes, settling back in her spot. “I’m distracting you? You’re the one who’s half-naked. I thinkyou’redistractingme.”

“Would you prefer I put my shirt back on? Oh wait, I can’t. Not unless you plan on taking it off.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, right. You’d like that too much.”

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