Chapter 14
14
It felt strange for Fraser to knock on his own door – not just one he owned, but one he’d made and fitted himself. Harper had made him a guest in his own cabin, but he couldn’t find it in him to mind. Not after the other night.
He flexed his fingers, trying to calm the jitters. This was supposed to be casual, yet he felt anything but when he was around her. Still, he wouldn’t ruin their newfound fun with whatever was happening inside him. It had been too long since he’d been touched the way she touched him, kissed the way she kissed him, and he needed more. He’d been starved. He hadn’t realised just how hollow and hungry he’d felt before her. Now, no amount of her would feel like enough.
When nobody answered, he looked down at Bernard as though the dog might know where Harper was. “What d’you think she’s up to today, bud?”
Bernard wagged his tail, just happy to be privy to thoughts that probably wouldn’t have been voiced aloud by any sane owner.
His breath caught in his throat. What if she’d left? Or perhaps she was avoiding him. They’d both been fine, normal, casual, since their heated collision in the truck two nights ago, but… Harper had just got out of a serious relationship, one that had clearly left her hurt. Maybe this had all got too overwhelming for her. It had happened so quickly, and neither of them had stopped to talk about it yet.
“Harper?” he called, knocking louder this time.
Maybe she’s gone for breakfast before our walk , a more rational part of him reasoned. Or into town. Didn’t she say—
“Ow! Bloody hell.” Harper’s grunts drifted from somewhere behind the cabin and were followed by a bizarre, heavy shuffling.
“I dread to think what she’s doing,” he muttered, and then followed the sounds around the cabin and shed, to the back garden-in-progress, where he had first met Harper.
Whatever possibilities his brain conjured were nothing compared to the scene in front of him. Harper was sprawled on a Barbie-pink yoga mat in neon purple leggings, jumper tied in a knot just beneath the curve of her breasts. If she was aiming for a pose, it would have been called something along the lines of “three-legged frog”, because her rear end jutted into the air while the rest of her squatting limbs flailed at interesting angles. One of her legs was tucked under her hips, her torso collapsing in on itself as she gasped for breath.
“I don’t bend that way, Melanie!” she screamed at the ant-sized yoga instructor on her phone, propped against one of Fraser’s taller, sturdier saplings.
Fraser stayed back, amusement and desire rolling through him in equal measure. She was ridiculous. He loved it. Of course, the bright nylon hugging her curves, accentuating all of her softer parts, helped. Heat uncoiled within him as she shifted, revealing the exposed, glorious, pale skin of her middle.
“Tuck your left foot further under your hips to really get that stretch in,” Melanie the instructor was saying in a syrupy Californian accent. “Breathe through it, relax into it. Just like that.”
“I hate you,” Harper muttered, then let out several deep breaths all the same.
“Good job. Now, slowly push up on your arms and let your breaths guide you back into downward dog.”
Oh, this, Fraser looked forward to seeing. Harper didn’t mirror the movements quite as elegantly as the instructor, kicking her leg back with a loud, “Fuck me!”, but the result was the same. A perfect view of her perfectly round bum.
Through her parted legs, Harper finally noticed him and her upside-down eyes widened. “Ah!” she shrieked, collapsing into a heap on the mat.
“Good morning to you, too,” he drawled, releasing Bernard from his lead. He bounded over to her limp body, covering her in sloppy kisses as she squirmed beneath him.
Fraser’s chest and cheeks ached with laughter as he watched their battle. “I think it’s fair to say that we’re both very impressed with your moves.”
“Bernard. Remove your tongue from my ear canal, please.” Harper’s voice was muffled through her hands. She sat up slowly as Bernard continued to sniff, tail wagging so quickly that it was a blur of brown and white.
Fraser was kind enough to finally guide him away with a click of his fingers and a stern utterance of his name. Bernard wandered off, cocking his leg on one of the saplings to do his business.
Slowly, Harper removed her hands. Her face was flushed, eyes narrowed. “You were spying on me.”
He shrugged. “I’m only human. I must say, your downward dog had me all flustered. The frog thing before that, not so much.”
“It was supposed to be lizard pose.” She reached for her phone and turned off the video. “Melanie seems to think that we all have superhuman flexibility.”
“Well, you’re certainly one of a kind.” He offered out his hands, helping her rise to her feet as he met her gaze. “Will you be capable of walking after that?”
“Remains undecided,” she muttered, shaking out her legs with a huff. “I didn’t think you’d be here this early.”
He checked the scuffed watch on his wrist. “It’s almost twelve in the afternoon.”
“It’s a Saturday. That basically makes it seven in the morning.”
“Well, we’re on the cusp of winter in Scotland, so you have about four hours of daylight left. Figured you wouldn’t want to waste them.” He couldn’t help but brush an errant curl from her eyes, tucking it behind the pink-tinged arch of her ear. Her skin was cool to the touch, but when she shivered he was sure it wasn’t because of the weather. “We don’t have to go today if you’d rather spend some more time with Melanie.”
“Melanie is not my favourite person at the moment,” Harper said, locking her phone. “Which is good news for you, because I’m all yours.”
That was music to his ears. He tugged her closer, hands sneaking down to her lower back and tracing along the thick band of her leggings. He didn’t know if he was allowed to touch her like this, and yet it was instinct. “Is that right?”
“Well, actually, it depends.” Her forehead scrunched suddenly. “We haven’t really talked about what’s happening here. Properly, I mean.”
And there it was. The conversation he hadn’t been much looking forward to, mostly because he didn’t have any answers. He wasn’t interested in starting up something serious, not with anyone, but especially not with a woman who wouldn’t be here come January.
Then again, he wasn’t usually interested in casual sex, either. He’d thrown his reservations out of the window for her.
“What do you want to be happening?” he asked, hoping she didn’t hear the faint quiver in his voice.
“I don’t know. I guess I need some clarification on what ‘casual’ means. We don’t know each other that well, after all…”
“We know each other enough that I consider you a friend,” he replied. “A friend I may or may not be very attracted to, mind.”
Her lips twitched with the trace of a smile. “So, we’ll be doing it again?”
“If you’d like.” His stomach stirred at the thought.
“Which makes it a friends-with-benefits thing.”
“If that’s what you want to call it. Like I said. We’re two adults having fun.”
She nodded zealously. “And there won’t be any catching romantic feelings, right? We agree? Because I don’t think this needs to be overcomplicated, and I don’t think it would be wise to start something. I have to focus on my book. You have to focus on…wood.”
“I have other interests than wood, sunshine.” But still, he agreed, “No catching feelings. No complications.”
Satisfied, she stood on her tiptoes to peck the corner of his mouth, her lips silky against his rough stubble. “Then we have a deal. Let’s go and see some fairies – casually. As friends. But first, I have to change.”
He pressed his lips together, wondering how many times she planned to specify just how casual they were. Did she think he needed the reminder, or was it for her own benefit?
Still, he followed her into the cabin, Bernard at their ankles, and tried not to let it irk him. Tried not to wonder why it did.
“Would you take a picture of me on this tree stump?” Harper asked, shoving her phone into Fraser’s hands before he could object. They’d only just begun their walk along the Fairy Trail footpath, and it had taken close to an hour to reach the trailhead.
Mostly, it had been because Harper refused to continue without a cup of a cinnamon and hazelnut hot chocolate from the coffee truck stationed in the car park. Then, she’d needed a wee. Then, she’d had to video herself for an Instagram story to inform her followers that she was about to meet fairies she didn’t even believe in. Delving further into the world of Harper was certainly an experience, and one that tested his patience. At least she’d kept his grumpy face out of the shot.
He sipped his own latte, then propped the cup next to his feet so he could give his subpar photography skills his full attention. Harper climbed onto the wide, growth-ringed tree stump, which stood among an assortment of whimsical garden gnomes, plucked wildflowers, and, weirdly, a single pack of sliced cheese – soggy offerings that people had left for the fairies in exchange for good luck. This place had been part of local seelie and pixie lore for hundreds of years. Though most people no longer believed that little winged creatures lived in the wildflowers surrounding the woodland walk, people still brought gifts and allowed themselves, for a moment, to believe in magic.
It was his favourite place to take his nieces and nephews for that reason.
“Okay. Smile.”
Harper didn’t, instead angling her body sideways and sweeping her hair back, her gaze landing on the forest floor.
Fraser waited. Cleared his throat. Wondered if maybe she’d seen a spider and was paralysed by fear, as he secretly would be. “Erm… Are you alright?”
“Are you taking them or not?” She huffed, still frozen in position.
“Oh. I thought you were distracted.”
“I am trying to look natural! Candid!”
His brows lifted, but he tried his best to school his features into sober understanding. “Ah. I see that now. Sorry.” The phone clicked incessantly as he captured her, still staring downwards, still looking like she was trying not to step on a flower with one heel lifted off the ground.
She looked beautiful, of course, in a cream turtleneck and dark green tartan trousers beneath her duster coat. She always did. But he didn’t really get it. This wasn’t her. Her followers wouldn’t see her smile, or her bright eyes, or the way her entire body changed with every expression she made, every emotion she felt.
Selfishly, he was glad. He wanted to keep those parts for himself. Let him be the only one who really saw her, if only while she was here.
But that would be doing the rest of the world, or at least the virtual one, a disservice. If this social media shite was important to her, the least she could do was showcase herself properly.
He decided that, if she wasn’t going to do that, he would wrestle it out of her. He gasped, pointing to the nearest tree. “Is that a wee pixie?”
She hopped up on her toes and shouted, “ Where ?” just as the camera shuttered. He beamed. Perfect. The last image showed the real Harper, mouth parted in a half-smile, face illuminated as she searched the foliage for something that didn’t exist.
Chuckling, he said, “I thought you didn’t believe in fairies.”
Her pout was nothing short of adorable, so he snapped that, too, until she covered her face. “Stop! I need a nice picture! You’re not taking your duties seriously.”
“Oh, shut it. I got plenty of nice pictures, see?” Just as he reached out to hand the phone back, the squeak of rubber soles against wet wood sliced between them.
It happened in slow motion. Her arms windmilled through the air as she stumbled back—
Phone still clenched in his hand, Fraser caught her, bearing her weight before she could topple off the stump entirely. “I’ve got you,” he whispered.
And he had. All of her. She looped her arms around his neck, breaths serrated enough to convey her surprise, as well as that split moment of terror that must have jolted through her before he’d steadied her.
“That was close,” she said, the smell of cocoa and spice lacing her breath. She was so near he could feel its heat fanning across his face, teasing him with how she might taste if he kissed her.
Would that be casual enough?
Did he care?
“And you wonder why I don’t want you walking in the woods alone,” he groused, gaze snagging on the soft pink of her cold nose, the depthless molten brown of her irises.
She giggled, using him as a crutch as she landed on solid ground again. The last dregs of her drink sloshed around in her cup, and she drained them as though unfazed. “You just wanted an excuse to feel me up.”
“Oh, aye. That’s what it was.”
His grin was unwavering as she snatched her phone and skipped away. Would he ever be able to catch up to her, or would she always be one step ahead of him? She was wittier than him. More complicated, yet somehow easier to read.
She was more than he could ever prepare himself for, and when she walked away, he could do nothing but follow.
So he did.