Chapter 12
TWELVE
“You seem… chipper?” Olivia asked, her suspicion hardly an undercurrent as she leaned toward her computer.
Hanna adjusted the volume on the laptop, leaning closer so her therapist could note the exact runtime of her eyeroll.
“I’m having a nice time,” Hanna said.
“That’s great to hear.” She tapped her pen on the edge of her lips. “Are you getting outside?”
“Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “It’s nice to be in such a walkable city.”
“And there’s nothing else contributing to the fact that you’re grinning like a kid on Christmas?”
Hanna tried to ignore the sound of the coffee maker gurgling to life downstairs.
“I don’t know. Maybe the humidity agrees with me.”
Olivia nodded, her silence a condemnation all on its own.
Even she knew Hanna was an idiot.
“I think that’s our time,” Hanna said, stealing her line.
She said her goodbyes and closed the laptop.
The smell of coffee wafted up the stairs, and even though she’d slept decently for the first time in months, she craved the caffeine.
She went to find a bra, but thought better of it as she pulled Milo’s flannel over her bare skin, finding the shortest shorts she’d brought in her suitcase.
If they were going to abide by the time box, she needed to make the most of it.
She’d had coffee with Milo many, many times in her weeks in the city, but she’d never seen him fresh out of bed.
He was a morning person, dressed and ready for the day as she scrolled through no fewer than ten texts from Logan, each more desperate to apologize than the last.
Milo sat on the couch, reading emails on his laptop. A pair of thick black glasses rested on his nose.
“Morning, Clark,” she said, passing through the living room. He chuckled.
“Coffee’s in the kitchen,” he said.
She rounded the counter, touching the petals on the sunflowers she’d brought him the day before. There was already a mug for her next to the coffee maker.
“What’s on the schedule today?” she asked, sitting across from him in the worn leather chair Matty usually claimed.
He glanced at his screen. “Meetings most of the day. Sara mentioned something about pickleball, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see Logan after last night…”
“Not particularly,” Hanna mused. “I have back-to-back calls until lunchtime. I can run and grab us something if you’re slammed?”
Milo smiled. “Can we please go back to that sandwich shop that did you dirty last week for redemption? I promise they don’t usually fuck up.”
Hanna rolled her eyes. “If there are pickles on mine again, I’m eating yours.”
“Deal,” he said, typing fervently.
“I’ll have to talk to Logan at some point today,” she said, pulling at a loose tendril from her bun. “And then… I guess I’m just waiting for you to let me suck your dick.”
Milo coughed, pushing his laptop away from him.
“I can be direct, too,” Hanna said.
Milo checked the time on his phone. “I’ve got twenty minutes.”
Before he finished the sentence, she dropped to her knees, his legs spreading as she ran her hands over his thighs.
“Nope,” he said, pulling her chin up to face him.
“I need a little romance first.” Hanna laughed, surprised that the doesn’t do relationships guy was also the needs to be sweet-talked guy.
She climbed over his lap, settling comfortably into him as his hands wandered her back.
“Will I ever get my shirt back?” he asked.
“Looks better on me,” she breathed, rolling her hips forward and running her fingers over his neck. She knew from the night before that he liked a little pressure there, and the widening of his eyes as she squeezed his throat only reconfirmed his preference.
“Looks best on the floor,” he mumbled, pulling at the buttons. “I need to see those tits again, Arizona. I thought about them all night.”
Hanna shrugged his shirt over her head, glad that her no-bra plotting paid off. He dropped to her chest immediately, his tongue circling every inch of flesh as he hardened under her. His hand slipped under her shorts, teasing the skin of her hips as she moaned into his mouth.
She rolled her hips against his again, a hiss escaping his lips.
“Romanced enough?” she whispered.
“No,” he rumbled, his mouth catching hers.
Her experience might have been limited, but she was certain no man on Earth kissed better than Milo.
It was like he had some sort of venom dripping from his tongue, not crafted to kill, but to daze.
Her head swirled as he parted her lips, coffee and peppermint blending into an intoxicating potion.
He pushed up into her, the romance clearly taking effect.
Hanna slipped down his body as he lifted his hips and shimmied his pants and boxers off, tossing them onto the couch.
If he’d been a boyfriend, or even a potential boyfriend, Hanna might have spent more time teasing him and working him up, but that was one of the perks of their arrangement.
It was about getting him off, not getting him hooked on her.
Hanna stroked him twice, getting her bearings, before eagerly taking him into her mouth.
She’d thought about it as she drifted to sleep the night before—what he might taste like. What he might sound like on the edge of ruin. And par for the course, Milo did not disappoint.
“Shit, Hanna,” Milo gasped, his hand wrapping around her hair and pulling as her tongue circled him. She shoved him deeper, addicted to the way his forearm flexed as he pushed her gently, setting the rhythm that worked best for him.
She watched the ink on his arm pulse and relax in time with her movements, his muffled moans growing in volume.
The sound sent a fire through her—Logan had always been so quiet.
She never knew if he was enjoying it or not.
But Milo made no mystery about it, throwing his head back onto the couch and rasping filthy commentary to her increasing speed.
She tucked her free hand between her legs, riding against herself at the insistence of her body.
She couldn’t resist the need for friction as he mumbled something about how well she took him.
“God, are you touching yourself?” Milo asked, his head snapping toward her. She moaned around him, her eyes locked on his.
“I want you to come with my cock in your mouth,” he whispered.
He pushed on the back of her head harder, her belly tightening at the sound of his pleasure.
She moved her hand faster, but lost her control over her pace when his eyes found hers.
She clenched around her own hand, the pressure driving her faster, harder as he squeezed her scalp.
Hanna cried out against him, her vision exploding into stars at the way he bit his lip.
“God, the look on your face. So fucking beautiful. Don’t stop, Hanna, I’m right there. ”
She doubled down on her efforts, bringing her hand up, soaked in his name, to grip him even harder.
Milo finally stopped talking.
He grunted as he approached the edge, releasing the grip on her head and tapping her shoulder as a warning—one she happily ignored.
Hanna took everything he had to give her, his eyes closing as she beamed with a satisfactory smile. She stood, his chest heaving, but he pulled back on her hand.
“I guess I should have warned you before we decided to do this that I like to cuddle after,” Milo said, dragging her onto his lap.
“Oh no,” Hanna giggled. “The gorgeous man who wants no strings attached, god-tier sex, also wants me to feel human after? How terrible a fate.”
He laughed, and she felt the sound absorb into her skin, warming her from the inside out.
“I have a dress fitting with Sara this afternoon,” she said, peppering his neck with kisses. “But maybe after that I can make us dinner?”
“You cook?” Milo asked, his surprise offensive.
But then she realized, in all the weeks she’d been there—in the last year—she’d hardly cooked at all.
“I cook.”
“Damn,” Milo said. “Really putting the benefits in FWB.”
* * *
“Okay, just a little more in the waist and then I think it’s perfect!”
The alterations manager scribbled a few more notes on her form and tapped Sara on the shoulder. She stood on a pedestal in the middle of a bridal shop in Lower Haight, twirling left and right in what was possibly the most incredible wedding gown ever made.
It was a little bohemian, a little timeless, a little sexy. All the things Sara had put on her list when they’d started shopping. Hanna held the phone up as Cami blubbered on FaceTime. Once the shop attendant added the lace veil, it was over.
“You look like a celebrity,” Hanna said. Cami started anew in her tears—there was no way she was surviving the ceremony.
“Do I have to take it off?” Sara said, admiring her reflection.
“I think it’s a bit much for happy hour,” Hanna quipped as Sara hopped off the pedestal. The moment she disappeared from the frame, Cami launched into a line of questions about how she was liking San Francisco.
After a short silence, Cami said, “You know, I’ve gotta tell you, sweetheart, you’re glowing.”
Hanna blushed. She glanced at her face in the bottom of the screen. She wasn’t wrong.
“I mean it! You look so healthy. It’s nice.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled, averting her eyes from her own face on the call. Time box, time box, time box.
“Sara told me you’re shacking up with that Milo boy.”
Ah, so there was an ulterior motive to her compliment.
“Only for the week,” Hanna said, running her fingers over a wall of lace samples.
“Berty said he’s not allowed in the house again.” Cami giggled. “You know, I always pictured you with someone like him. Tall, dark, moody.”
“He’s not that moody, the tattoos kind of misrepresent him. He’s actually really sweet.”
Cami’s eyes lit up. “Is he now?”
Hanna sighed. “He lost his dad when he was a teenager, so he just kind of gets what I’m dealing with, you know?”
Cami dropped her voice. “Are you being safe?”
“Camila!” Hanna barked at the same time Sara rounded the dressing room corner.
“Mother!”