Page 259 - The Love Hypothesis

She only had to smile at him, and his pleasure looked nuclear, pounding

through him and washing over his entire body. What Olive had felt earlier,
white-hot and just shy of painful. She was still sucking gently when he
regained control of his limbs and cupped her cheek.

“The things I want to do to you. You have no idea.”
“I think maybe I do.” She licked her lips. “Some, at least.” His eyes

were glazed as he stroked the corner of her mouth, and Olive wondered
how she could possibly be done with this, with him, in just a few hours.

“I doubt it.”
She leaned forward, hiding a smile into the crease of his thigh. “You

can, you know.” She nibbled on the hard plane of his abdomen and then
looked up at him. “Do them.”
She was still smiling when he pulled her up to his chest, and for a few

minutes they managed to sleep.

—

IT REALLY WAS a nice hotel room, she supposed. The large windows, mostly.
And the view of Boston after dark, the traffic and the clouds and the feeling

that something was happening out there, something she didn’t need to be
part of because she was here. With Adam.

“What language is that?” it occurred to her to ask. He couldn’t quite
look at her face, not with her head nestled under his chin, so he continued to

draw patterns on her hip with his fingertips.
“What?”

“The book you’re reading. With the tiger on the cover. German?”
“Dutch.” She felt his voice vibrate, from his chest and through her flesh.
“Is it a manual on taxidermy?”

He pinched her hip, lightly, and she giggled. “Was it hard to learn?
Dutch, I mean.”

He inhaled the scent of her hair, thinking for a moment. “I’m not sure. I
always knew it.”

“Was it weird? Growing up with two languages?”
“Not really. I mostly thought in Dutch until we moved back here.”