Prompt: "Who'd have guessed you could pull such a face"
The action takes place in the same universe as The Sum of its Parts, but it can be read on its own.
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"Who'd have guessed you could pull such a face?" Ben says.
Hannah looks up from her little black book.
"What face?"
"Yours. Looks like you're trying to figure out Mona Lisa's smile or something? What're you doing anyway?"
He looks over her shoulder at the neat little marks she has traced on the page: Four vertical lines and one across, that's five. Four more bars and another strike across, that's ten.
"Just counting."
She waves a dismissive hand in his general direction. Ben purses his lips and gets back to work behind the counter. He wipes glasses while Hannah is still hunched over her notebook, a deep crease between her brows and her tongue poking out in concentration.
Hardy left less than an hour ago, and now she's trying to understand the phantom sensation on her lips, that taste of aether in her mouth the vodka-tonic can't wash away, that tugging feeling in her heart. She wants to know how many kisses there have been tonight. How many more than with a regular client?
Two when he came in: a quick peck first and a longer one for good measure. Three while they were catching up on what they'd been up to in the last weeks. Well, four really, because there was that one on her cheek. But that's all. Actually, five. Ish. There were two on her shoulder when she'd been talking about a fight with her sister, but he'd barely lifted his mouth off her skin in between.
Then she'd said something about getting down to business, and she'd found herself on her back, on the floor, and that was a bloody long one. Let's make that two lines. Three?
She'd be hard pressed to remember how many there were after that, even more so to distinguish between kisses and licks and nips.
Although, she distinctly remembers pressing her lips to his jaw afterwards, right on the angle of it, it had been so inviting for some reason. He must have kissed the top of her head too because that's what he does when she's snuggling up to him. She hums contentedly at the memory of that quiet moment, her skin had still been tingling where they were pressed together.
She looks up, tapping her pen on her chin. Does blowing raspberries on someone's belly count as kissing? Maybe not. After that, they'd been laughing too much to kiss properly, it was more like lips sliding against lips and teeth colliding. Let's make that half a line. She bites her lips to hold back a goofy grin.
And then she'd been talking about her new nail polish so that's five more: one on each fingertip.
After that, she'd let her fingers linger on his mouth and there was a slithering tongue, and his own fingers had slipped between her legs. There had been no kiss then, his lips were too busy pronouncing filthy words. He'd made her come again. Nothing in that counts, but she enjoys recalling that part of her night.
"What's that face now?" Ben says, rudely interrupting her reminiscence. He pinches her cheek. "Is that a blush?"
"Shut up."
She bats his hand away, but she can definitely feel her cheeks heat up. Oh, the things Hardy had whispered in her ear, telling her all about the fantasies he'd had at work. You wouldn't think that of him, he looks so proper, so square, but under that crisp white shirt and tie, he's got a sinful imagination.
She shakes her head, focusing back on the task at hand.
In the shower, he'd kissed that bite mark from last time between her neck and shoulder, and then the other side of her neck too, for symmetry, of course. There might have been more. She draws a line across. That's fifteen. And a half.
She can already tell that it's way more kisses than usual and she hasn't even gone through the whole evening yet. Almost half of the kisses had happened in the last ten minutes, by the door. He couldn't let go. Neither could she, but she'd promised Ben they'd hang out.
Maybe Vivian in Pretty Woman had the right idea after all.
She glances up at Ben as he refills her glass.
"You look like you need another one," he says, "have you figured it out yet?"
"Yeah."
"So?"
"I'm fucked."
"Tell me something new."
She laughs and rolls her eyes.
"It's that Hardy bloke, innit?" Ben asks.
"How d'you know?"
"'Cause you get that look on your face I wish you had when you think about me."