What was she waiting for? An engraved invitation?
She seemed to read his mind, judging by the way her eyes wandered from his eyes down his nose and landed for a brief second on his lips.
Why was she looking at him like that? When her eyes cast downward, her lashes curled up in his direction, almost like they taunted him.
Everything about her taunted him. From her pink cheeks to her reddish-brown freckles. From her red curls to her round little hips. The way Harper walked down the street every day past his house like she was on some kind of mission, to the way she spoke so fast that he couldn't follow half of what she said.
He needed her to leave.
"Well? Go then," he said, but all sharpness was gone from his voice.
She just stared back at him with narrowed eyes. Why wouldn't she leave?
He was giving her his coldest glare. She needed to know he wasn't going to put up with her busybody personality anymore. That was it. She could peddle her petitions—or reporters' notebooks, or whatever the fuck—elsewhere and leave him alone.
His entire life, she'd been there, chattering about one cause or another. Lecturing until everyone in the room, sapped of the will to live, grudgingly signed her petitions or agreed to vote for whoever she endorsed for school board.
Her eyes flashed as she looked up from his lips with real hurt in her eyes. "I'm only a pain in the ass because I feel things so deeply. Unlike you, who cares about nothing and nobody."
He barked a laugh. "You think I don't care about anybody?"
She blinked. "Not about anybody but yourself. Yes. That's what I'm saying."
He knew she was right. He cared about himself, his mom, his friends, and that was it. Maybe on some level, he cared about Holden's cats. But what she didn't know, what he didn't show, was that he cared enough to try to scare her away from getting herself in real trouble.
"You don't know the first thing about me," he said. "You're too busy talking even to make that claim."
Her head cocked to the side about one or two degrees. Not much, but she was then close enough that he noticed. "Oh really. What do you care about, Lynwood? I'd love to know."
Every time she teasingly used his real first name, he seethed. At that moment, his entire body lit up with an overheated sense of the need to shut her up.
He cleared his throat of the knot that lodged itself back there whenever Harper entered his prohibited airspace.
"I care about lots of things. First of all, that you're landing yourself in heaps of trouble if you think you're going to crack the missing girl case."
"I'm a big girl, Dash. You should know that."
He gritted his teeth. "You're not. Anybody could just grab you. Fuck, an oversized seagull could carry you off, and…" He forced himself to stop talking. They had both heard the weird tremble in his voice.
Her eyes widened slightly.
"I think you'd be surprised at my level of self-preservation. I don't take any unnecessary risks."
His voice cracked like a goddamn teenager. "Really?" Her face was too close. "No risks, at all?"
In the same moment, she lifted her chin, and Dash slanted his face down. His mind relinquished control of his body. Their lips came together in one fierce, spontaneous kiss.
Other than their mouths, their bodies stayed motionless. It was as if their lips had nothing left to spout at each other, and all that was left to do was kiss.
All of Dash's dark feelings for Harper exploded into downright greed and passion.
He'd had spent so much time trying to make her leave him alone, but at that moment, his soul and his body took a step beyond that into a whole other dark place. Anger morphed into passion. Hate into unspeakable lust.
The pressing of their lips lasted only seconds before their tongues slid against each other. This most obstinate woman's mouth tasted like coffee and cinnamon. Her turned-up nose felt frozen, and it tickled his cheeks.
Dash refused to reach out and pull her closer. He refused to let her hear a gasp, a moan, a sigh. He would not release anything. He would not admit that she made him feel anything. He would not accept defeat. His mind was fully aware that this kiss was a mistake while it was happening.
A mistake not because it wasn't a great kiss, but because they couldn't stand each other.
You are oil and water. Get away from her. She's a nightmare, just like you said.
But her lips…her taste. Dash heard the little intake of breath and a sigh. Or was it a purr? His lips fit perfectly between hers. She kissed with the same energy that she rallied people to action. So earnest, he couldn't bear it.
Harper suctioned Dash's bottom lip into her mouth and smoothed her tongue across it, sending spikes of happy, horny hormones down into his belly. He pressed harder and backed her closer to the brick wall, deepening the kiss. She had to grab onto his coat to steady herself. Delving his tongue to the back of her throat, he felt her hands against his chest through the many layers of fabric. She hummed out a small whimper and stumbled backward. Dash broke the kiss and grabbed her elbows to steady her.
"Whoa," he said. "Easy."
She stared back at him, wide-eyed in shock. He smiled, and her face morphed back into its usual state of outrage.
She exclaimed, pushing past him, "Take it easy yourself, horndog!"
Dash watched her scurry away down the street, adjusting her messenger bag and straightening her hat and scarf.
He could hear her muttering to herself indignantly, all the way down the block. He watched her go until she safely crossed Church Street, opened the door to Cherry's All-Night Diner, and went inside.
Dash floated down three blocks past
