Page 179 of Gamebreaker

Nobody had ever asked me that. Not once. Not in my whole life.

"Take the bonnet off," I said. My voice had gone low. "Leave it up. Hold it at the base, right where the scrunchie is. That's where you can pull."

Her eyes went dark.

She slid the bonnet off my head slowly and set it on the counter, folded, like it mattered to her, because it did. My curls were piled up on top of my head in the loose pineapple I'd tied six hours ago. She looked at it for a second. Then she slid her hand into the back of it, wrapped her fingers around the base, right over the satin scrunchie, exactly where I'd told her, and closed her fist.

The pull went all the way down my spine.

The sound I made against her mouth gave away considerably more than I'd meant it to.

"There," she said quietly. "Like that?"

"Exactly like that," I breathed.

"Good." She tightened her grip, and tipped my head back, and looked down at me. Her eyes had changed. The warmth was still there, all of it, but under it now was the intensity I'd seen on the court, in the second before she made a decision and committed to it with nothing held in reserve. "Because I'm not letting go of it for a while."

"Cam. It's six in the morning."

"I know."

"The coffee..."

"Harper." Her mouth curved, slow and deliberate. "Stop talking."

"I'm just..."

She kissed me again, her fist tightening in my hair, and every opinion I'd ever had about coffee evaporated.

She walked me backward until my lower back hit the edge of the counter. I grabbed it on either side of my hips because my hands needed somewhere to go. She kissed me deep and slow, and her free hand gripped my hip with that complete, unhesitating certainty she brought to every task she decided to take seriously, and I understood that she'd decided to take this very seriously.

She broke the kiss and moved her mouth to my jaw, my throat. I tipped my head back without being told and gave her the access, and the sound of approval she made against my skin nearly finished me.

"Every kitchen," she said against my throat.

I went still.

"Isla's kitchen." Her mouth moved to my collarbone. "Where I stopped."

"Cam..."

"My kitchen." She bit down gently and soothed it with her tongue. "Where I should have made you breakfast instead of watching you leave."

"We don't have to..."

"And this kitchen." She lifted her head and looked at me, steady and wanting, the controlled surface completely gone. "I'm not stopping. And you're not going anywhere." Her grip in my hair tightened. "Are we clear?"

"Crystal," I managed.

"Good girl."

I made a sound that was not my most dignified, and I did not care even a little.

She pulled my sleep shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor. Then she stepped back half a pace, still holding my hair, and looked at me in the morning light with the same expression she'd had looking at the second mug. Like I'd become real while she was paying attention elsewhere.

"God," she said, low and almost involuntary. "Look at you."

"It's six in the morning, and I slept like an hour."