Page 29 of After All This Time (A Time For Love #2)

Cooper

I wake up splayed on the warm chest of my favorite person in the world.

I can feel my face splitting into a smile I never have this early in the morning and it’s all because of him. Because he’s here. Because he came back to me.

I arch up to brush a soft kiss on his stubbled jaw and he stirs, pulling me tighter against his side.

Those mossy-green eyes I love flutter open, blurry and heavy with sleep.

And yet he smiles as soon as they fall on me.

“You came early,” I whisper.

“I promised you I would.”

And just like that, I can feel the lump that clogs my throat and the sting that burns my eyes.

“Yeah. You did.” My voice is thick and I see the moment he frowns in confusion, a question forming in those dark-green depths.

I silence that question with my lips on his in a kiss that’s both meant to soothe us and set us aflame. My tongue slips into his mouth and he welcomes it, his hands coming up to cradle my face and stroke my cheekbones.

I kiss him for what feels like hours but must only be minutes. It doesn’t go further than that. We’re just happy to kiss, lying on our sides, until our lips are sore and my heart is lighter than it’s been in years.

We separate only when air feels necessary.

“Tell me everything about your trip,” I whisper against his neck.

And he does, his smile never dimming for one second.

***

Two days later is my first full day off in years.

As the boss you’d think I would have taken more advantage of the fact that I could take some days off more frequently, right?

Wrong.

I’ve always wanted to come in even on days when I wasn’t needed, even if it was for a couple of hours, just to make sure that everything was alright and that there were no emergencies like an explosion in the kitchen, a massive food poisoning, or a customer riot demanding coffee that had never been delivered.

Okay, those might or might not have been recurring nightmares I’ve had in the past when I’d just opened my coffee shop and I was fully convinced something would go straight to shit.

Thankfully, it didn’t but I was still there every day.

Which is why Lily looked at me as if I had grown two heads when I told her I’d see her on Wednesday.

“I’m sorry, did you say Wednesday?” Her hand had been dangerously close to pouring the milk she was holding on our just mopped floor instead of the latte in front of her.

“Yes. Why?”

“Because today is Monday. Which means that tomorrow is Tuesday.”

“Are we reciting the days of the week? Because I thought we were past that, age-wise.”

The look she’d given me had almost made me duck to avoid a potential flying milk container.

“Why are you not coming in tomorrow? Are you not feeling okay?”

“No, no I’m fine. I just have this thing.”

Her sparkling green eyes had narrowed suspiciously.

“What thing?”

“Uh… a date thing?”

If the saying ‘the cat that ate the canary’ had been a picture, it would have been her face.

“Ooh, do you now?” she’d said, wiggling her eyebrows quite aggressively. “Well, you have fun then, boss. Loads and loads of fun.”

“Don’t you mean ‘lots?’”

“I said what I said.”

I’m still chuckling as I exit the bathroom with a towel around my waist.

And bump straight into my date.

Liam’s hands come up and grip my biceps to steady me, except all that move achieves is make my breath hitch with the feel of his rough hands on my naked skin.

His eyes roam over every inch of me, and of course my dick takes notice beneath my towel.

No surprise there. My best friend is all my dick has been interested in in a while.

He just has to look at me a certain way and my groin floods with heat.

It still baffles me that my body reacts this way to him.

I have never been attracted to another guy, but if I have to be completely honest with myself, no woman has ever stirred me up like this either.

This is all Liam’s doing.

He called me a good boy, for fuck’s sake, and I thought my soul would leave my body.

He rubs his hands lightly up and down my upper arms and I shiver, my eyes threatening to flutter closed.

“Coop,” he warns, and my eyes snap open.

His expression is easy and relaxed, but his dark-green eyes hide a hunger that never leaves them when he’s looking at me.

And I feed off that hunger like an addict.

“Sorry,” I smile up at him beneath my eyelashes, biting my lip.

“No, you’re not,” he says in a low voice, tightening his grip on me.

“You’re right. I’m not. But I am sorry for bumping into you, I was on my way to get dressed. Unless,” I pause, tilting my head to nuzzle his jaw and nip at his skin playfully. “Unless you’d like me to come like this.”

His hands loosen their hold until they release me completely. A pang of disappointment thumps in my chest but only for a moment, because his fingers thread in my still wet hair and pull my head back.

He keeps my head at an angle where my throat is exposed and all I can do is feel the way my pulse is jumping.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, baby,” he whispers in my ear, his breath hot against my sensitive skin. His other hand drops to stroke me at the exact line where the towel is hanging low on my hips, all the blood in my body rushing at that exact spot.

“Maybe you should have told me where we’re going then if you wanted me to know what to put on.”

God, why is my voice so deep?

Oh yeah, it’s because he won’t. Stop. Touching me.

He chuckles darkly as he pierces me with his intense gaze.

“Make no mistake, baby. The only way to come like this,” he says and I choke as his hand suddenly slides under my towel and cups my cock and balls, massaging them in his rough palm, “is to make you come just like this in the middle of the hallway.”

Oh God, he can make me come like this, I know he can.

“But we have a date to get to,” he says with a devilish twinkle in his eyes as he releases me and a very unflattering whine leaves my mouth.

“You’re pure evil,” I groan, sucking in a deep breath through my nose to get my body under control.

The bastard laughs.

“I learned from the best,” he grins and, I swear to God, swats my ass as he by-passes me to get to the bathroom. “Oh, and it’s casual clothing, Coop.”

“I hate you!” I shout as he closes the door and I hear his hearty laugh from in there.

And despite my painful erection, I grin the whole time I’m getting ready.

***

An hour later, we’re on the road with Liam behind the wheel and me on the passenger seat unable to stand still from the excitement.

“Is it dinner and a movie?”

“Nope.”

“Karaoke?”

“Have you heard me sing?”

“Bungee-jumping?”

“Not today.”

“Wait. Does that mean we could do it another time?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Is that your way of saying no?”

“Probably,” he says, but he’s smiling, and the afternoon sun hits the blonde highlights in his hair in a way that makes him look stunning.

When he walked out of the guest room in his dark jeans, blue shirt and leather jacket, I almost swallowed my tongue. Add in the way his hair looks like someone has run their fingers through them and he looks like a fucking wet dream.

“Hey, Li?”

“Hm?”

“It doesn’t matter where we’re going, as long as I’m going with you.”

His gaze locks with mine for the briefest of seconds before he turns his focus back on the road, but the raw longing I see there is enough to rob me of breath.

“For me, too, Coop,” he rasps, one of his hands reaching over and squeezing my thigh.

I swallow past the lump in my throat, determined to have the best day ever.

“Sooo, hot air balloon ride?” I ask and this time we both crack up so hard, it’s a miracle we stay on the right side of the street.

***

“Okay, we’re almost there. Close your eyes.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I’m gonna park right outside so close your eyes so you don’t ruin the surprise.”

“Fine.”

“And no peeking.”

“How did you know I would peek?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer, Coop.”

“Okay, fair.”

The car slows down five minutes later and if I were a cartoon character, my ears would have grown into fucking antennas with the way I was trying to pick up any distinct sounds that would tell me where we are.

“You can open them now.”

My eyes fly open so fast, I’m positive I sprain my eyeballs.

But the moment my mind registers our location, I go completely still.

I can’t believe this.

“Coop?”

I turn and see Liam with an expression that ranges from hopeful to uncertain.

“You brought me to the arcade?” I ask him in a small voice I barely recognize. “The one we used to go back then?”

“Yeah, um—well, it’s not exactly like it was back then since they kind of redid the whole thing, but yeah, it is.” I’m still staring at him, which makes him fidget in his seat in a very un-Liam-like manner. “We don’t have to go in if you don’t like it, we can go wherever you li—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence because my tongue is in his mouth a heartbeat later.

He groans, sucking me in deeper and pulling me towards him until I’m sure I’m half-straddling him right in the middle of a very public parking lot.

“So, I take it you liked the idea,” he grins against my lips.

“No, Li. I fucking loved the idea,” I tell him, licking his bottom lip. “I want to run through those doors like a deranged person but I can’t because I’m so hard for you right now and I have to wait for my dick to go down or I’m giving those families in there a show they didn’t ask for.”

Liam is biting his cheek to keep himself from laughing.

“If you laugh right now, I’m going to smack you so hard.”

“You’d have to catch me first and how are you gonna run after me with your slutty cock the way it is?”

“Oh shit, you’re not helping. You’re so not helping, you asshole.” I close my eyes, breathing in and out. “Disgusting thoughts. Think disgusting thoughts. Yeah, not working. Just walk in front of me.”

Liam is openly laughing now as we exit the car and I check that I’m somewhat decent.

Thank God for black jeans.

As we enter the arcade, a wave of nostalgia hits me like a sledgehammer at the sight of this familiar place.