Chapter Fifteen #2
Wow. The dynamic had really done a one-eighty.
“No!” I called back.
“I said I’d help you!” Cooper said.
“Too late!”
Cooper caught my wrist and stopped me. “JoJo! Cut it out!”
Why was I resisting him? He was giving me what I wanted! But he’d just rejected me, and I couldn’t seem to do anything but reject him right back.
I met his eyes with defiance.
“It’ll take sixty seconds,” he said—quoting me back to me.
“It’ll take sixty seconds,” I agreed, “but the cooties will last forever.”
At that, he broke into a You’re adorable smile that went all the way to his eyes.
Then he reached down, grabbed my hand, and started tugging me along behind him toward the rear of the ship.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“I’m taking you someplace private,” Cooper said, “so I can suck on your neck.”
BY THE TIME we reached the railing at the stern, we were both a little breathless.
I looked around. “I thought you said someplace private.”
Cooper gestured at the empty deck and the ocean beyond it. “Who’s going to see us? A whale?”
“Okay, then,” I said, covering my own sudden hitch of hesitation by pretending to study the churning wake trailing behind us. “Let’s get it over with.”
“Right,” Cooper said. Then he turned my shoulders to face him. Then he stepped closer, looked down, and frowned.
“You look worried,” I said.
“I’m just concentrating.”
I pressed two fingers to a spot near the jugular and said, “Somewhere around here. Nice and visible, you know? And don’t hold back. Really get in there. Go big!”
Cooper nodded, studying the area like a topographical map.
I dropped my hand, tilted my head back, and waited.
But Cooper just stood there.
“What?” I asked, like Hurry up.
“I’m just—formulating a plan.”
“Don’t overthink it,” I said.
“I’ve just … never done this before.”
“You’ve never—?”
“Given someone a hickey. That I know of.”
I let out a little laugh and said, “You haven’t?”
“Have you?” Cooper asked.
“I’m not the issue here.”
“You are one hundred percent the issue here.”
“Fine,” I said. “I haven’t, either.”
Cooper was still hesitating. I watched his dark hair blow in the wind. At breakfast, it had been so neat—swooped forward and up. But now, after all this upper-deck drama, it was scattered all messy over his forehead.
He’d started out the day so coiffed. And this was what I’d done to him.
Though I couldn’t decide which way looked better.
“How hard can it be?” I finally said. “Just pretend I’m a water bottle and you’re really thirsty.”
“Why is that not helping?”
“My point is, if cavemen could do this, so can you.”
Cooper sighed, like all this talking was just making it worse.
“Okay,” he said, dead serious now, his eyes on the target.
“Okay.” I gave a thumbs-up.
He clutched my shoulders again and started to lower his head down—and as much as I had been insisting all along that everything about this was the opposite of a big deal, as it actually started to really happen …
as Cooper actually leaned down closer and closer …
I felt the anticipation of it like electrical sparks in my body.
Cooper must have felt it, too, because he got about two inches from making contact, and then he just stopped and hovered there.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Cooper said, pulling back a bit.
“Look, if you hate this so much—”
“I don’t hate it.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I just—want to do a good job.”
“Any kind of job will do,” I said. “Seriously. I’m not picky.”
“Okay, okay. Got it,” Cooper said.
Then something occurred to me. “You’re not going to throw up again, are you?”
Cooper’s eyes snapped to mine. “You remember that?”
I looked at him like he was totally bananas. “Of course I remember it. It’s one of the top five most humiliating moments of my life. I think about it once a week, at least. Sometimes I remember it out of a dead sleep and wake up screaming.”
Cooper squinted. “You’re joking, right?”
“I am fifty percent joking.”
“I’m really sorry about that day. I was—”
“I tell myself you had food poisoning. I tell myself you couldn’t possibly have been so repulsed by the touch of my lips that you had to barf up a corn dog. If I’m wrong, don’t tell me.”
Now Cooper looked right into my eyes. “I didn’t have food poisoning. And I wasn’t repulsed.”
I looked out at the ship’s wake again. What other option was there?
Cooper took a breath. Then he said, “I was nervous.”
“Nervous?” I frowned. Could being nervous make you throw up?
Cooper nodded.
“Are you nervous now?” I asked.
His eyes were steady. “Yes.”
I stepped back. “Do not barf on me, man.”
“Hold still. Not that kind of nervous.”
I stepped closer again, but cautiously. “Can you do this?” I asked, suddenly not so sure.
“Of course,” Cooper said.
He regrouped and went in for another landing. This time, though, when he got close enough, his breath tickled the peach fuzz on my neck—and before I knew it, I was pushing away.
“What?” Cooper demanded, backing off again.
“It tickles,” I said, squeezing my eyes closed.
“Got it,” Cooper said, all serious—though now all that anticipation had me in full tickle mode, and he’d barely launched again before I was squealing and wriggling away.
But guess what?
This time, he was ready.
This time, as soon as I started to pull back, he used both of his arms to catch me, clamp me tight against him, and hold me there. And then he totally stuck the landing—cradling me close, draping himself over me, pressing his mouth purposefully to my throat, and going absolutely all in.
And that, my friends, put an end to the giggling.
I don’t know if you’ve asked anyone to give you a hickey lately, but may I just recommend it? I’m as shocked as anyone, but Harmony, of all people, was right: If you know a nice person with a mouth—friend or foe—who might be willing to put it on you … just go for it. Submit your request.
Because holy hell.
We should have a national holiday for this.
What was happening?
The first thing I realized was that Cooper hadn’t had time to shave this morning—as we scrambled out, late, to breakfast. The minute he made contact, I felt his stubble scratching and prickling my skin like the most erotic sandpaper in the world.
Instant, full-immersion chills—just rolling up and down that whole side of my body.
I closed my eyes and leaned back.
Cooper clutched tighter and kept working. I guess he really took that water bottle advice to heart, because he was positively drinking me down. I could feel his jaw shifting and his lips pressing and pulling, and his tongue doing … something.
Something good.
And my whole body just …
Just sank into the moment like time itself was a hot, sultry bath.
And I don’t know what the etiquette is for exactly where to place your hands when a childhood friend is giving you a pity hickey after making you cry …
but my hands decided to make their own rules.
They just floated their way up over his shoulders and combed themselves into his hair without my consent.
He wasn’t kissing me, of course.
He was—just performing a necessary service.
Not unlike if I’d been bitten by a snake, for example—and he had to suck out the venom.
That’s not a kiss. That’s medical care!
And yet.
And yet …
It wasn’t a kiss. It was not a kiss.
But it was the best kiss I’d ever had—in adult life, anyway.
I got positively submerged in it. It was like every single nerve in my body decided to take a sip—or maybe a gulp—of Cooper’s complimentary cabin champagne.
I started to float and churn and glow like a phosphorescent tide.
My breaths got deeper and slower, overflowing the edges of my lungs and seeping out into the rest of my body—swirling at the toes, and the fingers, and everywhere.
Had he really never done this before?
Liar.
He had to know what he was doing.
He was a musician, after all, and I was like a musical instrument that was being played just exactly right in every possible way.
And what do musical instruments do when you play them like that?
They … sigh erotically.
Wait—
Hold on—
But, yeah. That’s what happened.
I didn’t even realize at first the person sighing was me.
It could have been—anybody, I guess. Out in the world. Anybody who was having a very, very unexpectedly nice morning.
But then—it had to be me. Cooper must have realized it, too.
Next, everything stopped.
Cooper ceased all hickey-making, released me, and took a step away.
I stumbled back a little but grabbed on to the railing.
For a moment, the ship’s motor just kept humming, and the wind just kept whipping, and the wake behind us just kept churning.
I took one of those three-second breaths that are supposed to be so good for you.
Cooper regrouped first. He coughed, and nodded, and looked around.
And then—decisively—he dusted off his hands. “Well,” he said. “I hope that worked.” Then he checked his watch and said, “You wanted sixty seconds, but that was actually closer to two minutes. Hope that’s okay.”
That felt like too much math. And there was no such thing as too much math.
I kept clutching the railing and nodded.
Cooper peered in at my throat, all business, to check his work. “Looks good. Red and blotchy, for sure. That’ll bruise up great.”
I was still too melted to speak.
Then Cooper shoved his hands into his pockets and said, “Okay. Great teamwork. Got it done.”
I nodded liquidly.
Next, the hands came out of the pockets so Cooper could gesture over his shoulder at the staircase with his thumb. “Well, I’ve got—some things to do back at the—somewhere. So I’m just gonna—go—make that happen.”
Then he held out that same hand to me so we could shake.
Like business partners or something.
I draped my hand over his like a silk scarf, and he pumped it up and down for a while. Then he looked down at his shoes before nodding a couple of times, like he’d decided to say something.
Then he said, to his shoes, “I’m sorry I made you cry.”
Then he added, to the deck, “I hope this hickey solves all your problems.”
And then he looked up to say one last thing. “And just for the record?” He met my eyes. “I never forgot about you. And I never will. Even if you fucking marry Finn Turner.”