His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 194: Part of Your World

** Eli **

Having spent almost an hour teasing the girl to hell and back, Eli wasn’t planning on being gentle once he finally got to finish his feast. He had every intention to ravish her savagely ... until her unintentional joke reminded him of their conversation on that drunken night.

Those dreamlike words she said to him at the time hadn’t left his mind since then, and the memory of her tender promises touched a soft spot within him. It changed the molten heat sizzling in his blood, turned the surging and hissing flames into something else. Something no less fierce in its intensity, but not at all primal. Deeper, calmer.

So much so that as the tension wound tighter and tighter in his body, as the final moment struck and they both gasped into each other’s mouth, what occupied his thoughts was no longer the burning desire that got them to where they were. Instead, it was a different desire ... one to make her a true part of himself in more ways than what they already had. To prove to her that he meant what he said, that he wanted to show her everything in his life and share the entirety of it with her.

It wasn’t the first time he had come across similar thoughts. But unlike the usual, it was clearer and sharper tonight, no longer clouded by unmet longings or unsatiated lust. Even as his body was still shuddering from the most incredible high, he knew what he was feeling, what he was doing, and for the first time, the realization came gradually and naturally —

He didn’t want to ever go back to a life without her in it anymore.

It was an astounding thought. But at the same time, it seemed like an inevitable one that was bound to come sooner or later, and its final arrival only made the release that tore out of him so much more intense, to the point that he thought he felt it echo in his soul.

He was clutching the sofa cushion beneath them, reeling to catch up with how his body had processed that revelation, when a matching sigh of satisfaction escaped Harper’s lips.

"That was ... two hundred percent better than what I expected." The arms draped over his shoulder tightened, although the tiny tremors pulsing through them made the embrace feel more like a gentle caress. "I guess you really were ... hungry, even after all that."

Eli laughed softly at her assessment. But with his mind still in a daze on an entirely different thought, he failed to come up with a clever response. Gently, he pressed one more kiss to her lips, before rolling them to their sides so that he could lie down next to her.

The girl was quick to notice his unusualness. "Eli?" Her lashes fluttered open, and she pulled away slightly to look into his eyes. "Don’t tell me you disagree," she teased.

"... No, how can I?" This time, his laughter was more heartfelt as he slowly came back to his senses. Not wanting her to mistake his reaction for being distracted, he kissed her again and nudged her in their still intimate connection. "I was only thinking ... that this trip to Hawaii might be the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life."

Well, she was in fact the best thing that had ever happened to him in his life, though that seemed a bit too cheesy to voice out loud.

Harper blinked. Then a beautiful smile bloomed on her face. "Oh, got to say it’s the same for me. And I can’t believe it’s only been a week since we were here ... Somehow, it feels like a lifetime has come and gone already."

She reached up to brush her fingers over his face, lifting a lock of damp hair falling over his forehead. "It’ll only be another few days before we go back though," she added with a soft chuckle.

It was a simple statement of truth, uttered in a lighthearted tone. But Eli heard the hidden seriousness behind it, along with the unspoken question — would everything still be the same, once they went back to their old homes and their old lives?

He understood exactly what she was thinking at that moment. Hawaii was a dreamlike break from real life, an out-of-the-world escape that whisked them away from every last nuisance back home. But once they returned ... so would the old troubles they had left behind. So would a handful of undesirable people and situations that had always been there before this trip and never went away.

Though at the same time, he couldn’t complain all that much about such nuisances. It was exactly those people like his father and Vanessa Jones who taught him the most important lesson in his life, who made him realize what his childhood friend truly meant to him. In a way, he had those people to thank.

And besides, it wasn’t like he was returning to precisely the same old life, anyway. Too much had already changed — he had already changed — and if there was any decision he had made that felt right in the past ten years, it was the one where he’d just saved a permanent and indispensable part of his soul for the most precious girl in this world.

He smiled softly at the thought. "Nothing will change when we get back, Harper," he promised. "The trip might be over, but the best things that ever happened to us will still be ours. Especially this—"

Gathering her closer into his arms, he kissed her again, deeply and tenderly. As he engulfed himself in the familiar, heady sweetness that only she could give him, he let her know what he meant through every press of his lips, every brush of his tongue, sealing a promise with the stamp they left on each other’s flesh and heart.

He felt her smile against his lips, and he felt her own answer in a quickening of her heartbeat that fluttered in tune with his.