Chapter 164: Mosquito Bite
** Harper **
When Harper hurried to the conference room after a quick shower and a change of clothes, it was only two minutes before the meeting’s starting time. Lindsey, who was her presentation partner of the day and was waiting anxiously at the podium, let out an audible sigh of relief at the sight of her and looked almost ready to give her a bear hug.
"What happened?" Lindsey asked in a low voice as Harper scurried over. "You’re always at least fifteen minutes early to every meeting, even back in the office! Don’t tell me you overslept your alarm on a day that actually matters?"
Harper winced. "I—" Damn, she hadn’t had the time to come up with a good excuse yet while she rushed to get ready. "I, um, took a bit too long with ... breakfast ..."
That was a super lame one, but fortunately, Lindsey didn’t seem to have suspected anything out of the ordinary. "Geez." She simply rolled her eyes. "I know the food is good at the resort, but come on—"
Suddenly, she paused. "Wait, what happened to your neck?" She pushed up her glasses and reached out a hand with a look of concern, as if trying to check something on Harper’s collar, but then thought better of it and touched a spot on her own neck instead. "You’ve got a rash or something right here. Are you allergic to whatever breakfast it was?"
It took Harper an embarrassingly long moment to realize what Lindsey was talking about ... and what that mark on her neck might be.
Oh crap.
Last night, Eli had been nothing but careful and gentle, but this morning when they were in the kitchen, just before Harper remembered the time and abruptly called things off, he had been kissing her quite passionately ... and maybe suckled a little too hard on a particular spot on her neck ...