My body tightens then trembles as I rock my hips against my hand. Another orgasm shakes through me, and when Nate massages my clit as he jerks his cock, I hit the peak of my climax. Nate clasps my wrist and brings my hand to his mouth, seductively sucking my cum from my fingers. He shoves his fingers inside me, and this time, he raises them to my lips.

  “Taste yourself,” he orders.

  I stick out my tongue.

  “That’s a good girl,” Nate says as he lowers my hand to the counter.

  He rubs the tip of his cock along my slick folds, teasing my wetness. My eyes widen with every inch he takes, my teeth digging into my lip from the initial pain as I adjust to his size.

  He rests his forehead against mine, pushing through my inner walls, stretching me out. Gripping my hips, he slams into me, ripping a scream from my lips, his name falling from my mouth with each powerful thrust. As if possessed by the sound of his name, he fucks me harder and faster as if he can’t get enough of my pussy. When every inch of my body feels numb from pleasure, I swear I can’t take anymore, but Nate has other plans for me. Quickly, he pulls out of me, flips me onto my stomach, and enters me from behind. He holds my thighs apart, now making more slow and deliberate movements, so painfully slow my pussy aches.

  Like a ball of string, I unravel as another earth-shattering orgasm washes over me. Seconds later, Nate comes inside me, his orgasm shaking through me. He collapses on top of me, his sweat coating my back as he attempts to catch his breath.

  “Damn, Harley,” he groans and then slides out of me.

  I roll onto my back, staring up at the ceiling as I take deep breaths in and out as my body relaxes. Nate bends down to kiss my stomach, and where his lips and fingers touch, a warmth spreads along my skin. He kisses his way to my mouth, taking my lip between his teeth with a sexy look in his emerald irises.

  “We don’t have much time left,” he says, his voice deep and sexy.

  “Good thing we don’t plan on doing much sleeping,” I say with a wink.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Harley

  Clutching a piece of vine charcoal between my fingers, I try to focus on the sketchpad on my desk, ignoring Nate as he slides his hand up my thigh. I close my eyes for a split second, his hand leaving a trail of fire on my skin as he moves higher.

  “Nate,” I warn. “I need to finish this by lunch.”

  “By all means,” he says with laughter in his tone, “hurry up so I can… finish.”

  He taps his fingers on my inner thigh and gives me a look so sexy that my panties are already soaked. “I’m serious. I can’t concentrate with your hand under my skirt.”

  He grabs my thigh and rolls my chair closer to him. “And I can’t concentrate with you sitting next to me, torturing me with this skirt.”

  I chuckle. “It’s not even short. And I’m sitting. How can I possibly distract you?”

  “Maybe it’s just you.” He breathes the words against my neck. “I waited years for this.” I shiver from his featherlight touch. “Years to kiss your lips. Years to hold you in my arms. Years to touch every inch of your body.”

  “At least now I know why you were so popular in high school,” I shoot back with a wicked smirk.

  “I spent most of high school obsessing over you.”

  “Really?” I cock an eyebrow at him. “Because you sure as hell didn’t act like it. What about all of the girls?”

  He shakes his head. “I only kept them around to make you jealous.”

  “You should’ve said something. It would’ve saved us years of fighting.”

  “I tried.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I challenge. “You acted more and more like a jerk, rubbing those cheerleaders and skanks in my face.”

  “I was an idiot, okay?” He holds up his hands and shrugs. “What do you want me to say? I didn’t have any real skills with women back then. My popularity came out of nowhere. Even I didn’t know why so many girls were suddenly interested in me.”

  “I doubt that. Didn’t you look in the mirror?”

  He snickers. “Yeah, but you don’t understand. Back then, I still looked at myself as a nerdy programmer with no game. I didn’t see the same thing in the mirror as you.” Nate moves his hand from beneath my skirt and hooks his arm around my back. “You should understand this better than anyone. For most of our lives, you’ve become whatever everyone wants you to be, all at the cost of losing yourself.”

  “That’s not true,” I snap.

  “No? Then, how come it took you marrying me for you to stand up to your dad?”

  Annoyed, I look away from him, knowing he’s right. Nate moves his hand beneath my chin to gain my attention. He tips his head at the sketchpad filled with new drawings on my desk. “This is what you were meant to do. You’re one of the most skilled artists I’ve ever known. No one should stop you from becoming the artist you were meant to be, not even your dad. Especially not him.”

  I wish I had his confidence.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I know so.”

  “I need to finish this.” I tap the pencil on the pad. “And you have code to write.”

  He glances at his monitor and sighs.

  “You’re stuck, aren’t you?”

  He nods. “Something is missing.”

  “You’ve been saying that since high school.”

  I drop my pencil on the desk and move my chair closer to his. “Show me.”

  “You don’t know how to read code,” he points out.

  “Demo it for me.”

  “I only have a few levels completed.”

  “Show them to me.”

  He scratches the corner of his jaw, staring at the screen. “Okay, but they kinda suck. They’re nowhere near as good as the storyboards I wrote for Ashborn.”

  “Why are you so afraid of finishing this game?”

  “I’m not,” he says, defensive. “It’s just…”

  “It scares you for some reason. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he admits after a long pause.

  “You started writing it when we were still friends.”

  He rolls his shoulders. “Every time I’ve tried to work on it since—”

  “It’s because you associate the game with losing me.”

  A silence passes between us.

  “The same thing happened to me,” I confess. “After we stopped talking, I couldn’t draw a single comic book character, not even Harley Quinn.”

  His eyebrows rise. “Really?”

  I nod. “I couldn’t even look at a comic book for over a year.”

  “Is that why you stopped sketching? Because of me?”

  I blow out a deep breath. “You believed in me, pushed me to work on my art, and once you were gone, it was like… I don’t know. I lost my creativity for a while. Sometimes, I would sit there and trace over the lines of my old designs just so I could feel alive again.”

  He lifts a curious eyebrow. “How did you overcome it?”

  “I got away from you.”

  “You didn’t have to move to LA,” he counters.

  “The thought of being on the same side of the country as you was suffocating. I didn’t want to come home on breaks and see you with other girls. I couldn’t bear the thought.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen them anyway.” He laughs. “They snuck around back when my dad was home.”

  I shake my head. “You’re such a pig.”

  Nate wraps his arms around me, smothering me with his manly scent. “You know you love it.”

  “I do,” I whisper.

  “I love you, Harley.” He hugs me tighter. “Always have, always will.”

  Resting my head on his shoulder, I peek up at him. “It’s always been you.”

  “I’m so afraid of losing you,” he says in a hushed tone.

  “This started as a fake relationship.” I thread my fingers between his, and electricity skates along my skin. “But this is real. It has been for me for a while now.”

  He sighs. “I was afraid it was just me.”

  “I’m scared, too,” I mutter. “Falling in love is terrifying. I gave all of myself to you before, and it didn’t end well. I can’t go through that again. And I can’t help but feel like we’re too happy, that we’re too comfortable. Whenever it feels too good to be true, it usually is.”

  “Not this time.” He rubs his thumb along the top of my hand. “I’m not letting you go again. I’m not that stupid.”

  “You’re the smartest man I know.” My words earn me a smirk from Nate. “And the cockiest.”

  “You’re good for a man’s self-esteem.” He presses his lips to my forehead. “What was I thinking when I let you move across the country?”

  I howl with laughter. “You let me? I don’t think so, buddy. You couldn’t wait to get away from me.”

  “I think we both needed the break.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I’m always right,” he says with a wicked grin.

  I pinch his cheek, a smile tugging at my mouth. “You’re terrible.”

  “And you drive me crazy.”

  I run my fingers down his arm, loving that I can touch Nate like this. “Show me the game.”

  He taps his mouse, and the screen comes to life. “I’m warning you, it’s not my best.”

  “I don’t care if it’s the worst piece of shit ever made. I can’t help you fix it if I don’t know what we’re working with.”

  Without further protest, Nate deploys the demo. I stare in awe of the perfectly crafted storyboard that plays out before my eyes. King Meliorn raises his sword in the air and lightning shoots down from the dark sky, illuminating the blade. Dialogue scrolls across the screen as the king talks about the history of the sword that’s lethal to anyone who opposes the kingdom. To retrieve the sword from the River of Nightmares, the player must complete a series of tasks on their journey to make themselves worthy of the sword’s power. When the short demo ends, my mouth hangs open.

  “Nate,” I say under my breath. “It’s…”

  “Horrible, right? I know. Don’t say it.”

  I take his left hand in mine and give it a good squeeze. “No, it’s incredible. I love the backstory behind the characters and the world.”

  “You’re only saying that because you have to.”

  “Not at all. Our relationship has nothing to do with it.” I point at the screen. “Have you shown this to Stefan?”

  He shakes his head.

  “How about your team?”

  Another headshake.

  “Well, you should,” I say to encourage him. “They will love it.”

  “This is our thing, though. I don’t want anyone on my team involved yet. And I don’t want Stefan trying to take credit again.”

  His words bring a smile to my face. “I love that we have our own thing, but our game needs a name if we ever plan to sell it.”

  “What are your ideas?”

  “The story behind the sword reminds me of Arthurian legend. The quest to find the sword and become worthy of its power is similar to The Holy Grail. So, I see King Meliorn as the Fisher King.”

  “But he’s not wounded,” Nate points out. “In Arthurian legend, the Fisher King was handicapped in some way.”

  “What if we went down that road with this story? We could make King Meliorn bound to a magical wheelchair or have some kind of crutch and our heroes would have to cure him in order to become worthy of the sword’s power.”

  Nate slides his hand to the back of my head and kisses my forehead. “You’re brilliant, woman. See, this is why I needed you to finish the game.”

  “I tell stories with my drawings. You tell them with your games.”

  “We always made a damn good team.” He smiles, a genuine one that warms my insides. “The Fisher King, huh?”

  I nod. “Yeah, I like that angle. People love the quest for The Holy Grail. I see King Meliorn as the last descendant of a long line of men tasked with keeping the sword from evildoers. Only a knight with the power to heal the king will become worthy of removing the sword from the River of Nightmares.”

  “And he’ll become the new king.”

  “Yes. But the knights have to gain magic along the way. We need to create a series of tasks they have to complete and opponents they have to beat to advance to the next level, while earning experience points and getting new armor and weapons. You know, the usual stuff, but more geared around the legend of the sword and the magic of this world.”

  “We could make the online version teams of three,” Nate says. “We can do a play on the names Percival, Galahad, and Bors since they were the knights that, according to the legend, healed the Fisher King. And in the earliest version, it was Percival by himself, so that works for the single-player mode.”

  “I love it!” I throw my arms around Nate’s neck and smack a kiss on his cheek. “This game is going to be amazing.”

  “I needed my partner in crime,” he says, hugging me back. “And I was thinking we could go out tonight.”

  “Like a date?”

  He smirks. “Yeah, like a date. What do you say, wife?”

  I smile in response, and then he kisses me.

  * * *

  Date in nerd speak isn’t the same as a date for normal people. When Nate said he wanted to take me out for our first official date as husband and wife, he had other plans in mind. We strolled through LOVE Park, an iconic Philly attraction, holding hands and people watching. Spying on strangers as they go about their day helps with my art. Sometimes, they give me inspiration for a new piece. Nate says observing people in their natural habitat helps him write better characters for his video games so that they look and feel more realistic.

  We took selfies in front of the LOVE statue. When in Rome, right? Might as well poke fun at the tourists while we’re here. As children, when we visited Queen Takes King headquarters, we would beg our nannies to take us here. Our fathers were always working, too busy to take us themselves. A lot of memorable childhood moments occurred in this park, which makes it the perfect location for our first date.

  After an hour, we walked down the street to City Comics, where Parker’s roommate, Jess Bell, works the night shift. The bell above the door rings and Jess glances up at us, wide-eyed.

  “What are you guys doing here?” She slips out from behind the glass display counter and throws her arms around us, crushing us into a group hug. “Parker didn’t tell me you were stopping by.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Nate says. “We were in the neighborhood, and we thought, why not? For old times’ sake.”

  Nate and I would come here as kids and spend hours flipping through the comic book racks. Our fathers knew the owner, who never had a problem with us hanging out in his store, snacking on junk food and reading to each other.

  Jess frowns. “Did you hear? Frank is selling the store.”

  Nate’s jaw drops along with mine. “Are you kidding? Who’s buying it?”

  She rolls her shoulders. “I don’t know yet. He’s getting too old to run the place and doesn’t have any kids. Parker thinks I should put in a bid.”

  Jess might be irresponsible and a little crazy off her meds, but she has a ton of money in the bank from the settlement she got after her brother’s death.

  “You should,” I say to encourage her. “You love City Comics.” I point a finger between Nate and me. “We love it here, too.”

  “I couldn’t imagine someone else running this place,” she says. “This store is a second home for me. I just… I don’t know.”

  I went to the Rhode Island School of Design with Jess before I quit to move across the country for a more sensible degree at UCLA. Like me, Jess is a talented artist who’s never done anything useful with her degree. We both lack the confidence we need to share our vision with the world. I’m trying to do that with Nate and our video game. But it still scares the hell out of me. What if people don’t share our love for the game? What if I’m not meant to design worlds and characters?

  “I guess I have a lot to think about,” Jess says with a sigh. “Anyways, what brings you into the store? Are you looking for something in particular?”

  Nate shakes his head. “No… well, maybe. Do you have Mad Love?”

  Jess gives him an interested look. “The Batman Adventures?”

  “I love that one,” I say to Nate. “Harley Quinn has flashbacks to when she met Joker in Arkham Asylum and realizes she’s in love with him.”

  Nate dips down to nibble on my earlobe. “I know you do.”

  He’s my Joker, my partner in crime, the one person who would definitely help me bury a body. We’re not as messed up as Harley and Joker, but we’ve gone through enough rough patches over the years to have the same mad love. That’s exactly how I feel—madly in love.

  Jess beams with delight. “You’re in luck. Because we actually have a copy that’s signed by Bruce Timm.”

  “We’ll take it,” Nate says without hesitation.

  Jess walks away to retrieve the comic, and Nate hugs me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder. “Remember when we met him in person?”

  “Yeah, that was cool. He’s an amazing artist. I wish I could do that with my art.”

  “You can,” he challenges. “And you will.”

  I place my hand over his and smile. “One step at a time. Let’s finish the game first.”

  “I want you to draw the companion graphic novels for our game.”

  My heart slams into my chest. “You, what? Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s the right move. This game has a long history and a lot of depth to the world. I have ideas on how we can expand into a universe, but we need a writer.”

  “We have plenty of editors and writers to choose from.”

  “True. But I want someone who doesn’t work for us already. A fresh face. A new voice. I was thinking we could ask Callie to help us with the writing.”

  Callie is a talented writer, even though she chooses to use her gifts on dishing out gossip. When we were in high school, she wrote her first book. She still writes in secret, as far as I know, but refuses to let anyone read her novels.