Beautiful Boss (Beautiful Bastard 4.5)

“I love you, too.” He paused. “So . . . Harvard?” he asked, and it was impossible to miss the hopefulness in his voice.

“I think so? They really want me, and I think I’d have the most flexibility there, which . . . is something I really want. Balance. You remember that, don’t you?” I said, smiling into my dark hotel room.

“Balance sounds pretty fucking great. So we’re moving back to Boston, then?”

“If you think you could be happy there?”

“I think I could be happy wherever you are,” he said, and I was pretty sure he was smiling, too.

If this Harvard thing didn’t pan out, Will and I could definitely not fall back on a career as professional movers.

The first weekend after Caltech, and only three days before our honeymoon, we woke up, made coffee together, went for a run, met friends for brunch, and headed home. It dissolved into chaos from there.

By eleven that morning, we’d accomplished nothing more than covering our living room in folded cardboard boxes. I somehow managed to tape my ponytail to a box, and when Will finally found me, painstakingly trying to remove a strip of boxing tape from my hair, he ended up going down on me on the coffee table.

I wasn’t actually sure how it happened.

Not that I was complaining.

In our bedroom, we decided to tackle Will’s comic book collection.

The bedside table is where most men would keep porn. Though as I watched Will unload precious issue after issue and then stack them reverently on the bed with a sort of wild, glazed look in his eyes, I realized this was identical to his reaction to porn anyway.

I flopped on the bed and started skimming an issue. In my peripheral vision I sensed Will watching me, brows furrowed and a frown tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Hanna,” he said, gently scooping up a few I might, maybe, have accidentally lain on. “Careful, baby. Some of these are older than you are.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

Will began carefully loading them into boxes and I picked up a copy with a particularly busty heroine on the cover.

“Really, Will?” I said, holding it up for him to see. Thanks to a rather large cleavage-displaying cutout, she was practically spilling out of her costume. “I’ve seen a lot of questionable outfits these girls are made to wear, but this is ridiculous bordering on obscene. How could anyone be expected to fight crime in this?”

“Oh, wow,” he said, ignoring my rant entirely and beginning to thumb through the pages. “I haven’t seen this in years.”

“What on earth is her power? Does she pummel bad guys with her boobs? What is this outfit she’s wearing? I think I cover more when I shower.”

“This is Power Girl, and her costume looks like this for a reason.”

“Is the reason so teen boys can wank without actually having to buy porn?”

When he didn’t say anything, my eyes widened.

“Oh my God!” I said.

“I think I’ve got this,” he mumbled, continuing to stack comics in boxes with a lot less care than he had a minute ago.

I rolled on the bed, giggling. “Wait until I tell Max you masturbated to a comic book.”

“Hanna, most guys masturbate to comic books. It’s like masturbation training wheels.”

“Okay, well, you just made this a lot less fun for me, though I will say your boob fetish makes a hell of a lot more sense now.”

And that’s how, by half-past noon, we ended up having sex on a stack of old comic books. He might never admit it, but I think Teenage Will just checked something off his bucket list.

At five, Will was going through a box of books in the living room when I passed him on my way to the kitchen.

“Need any help?” he asked, setting down a massive structural biology textbook and nodding toward my box.

“No, this is light. Just underwear, but I realized I want to go through some of it,” I said. “Don’t have a copy of Power Girl tucked in there, do you?”

“She’s a comedian,” he grumbled, turning on his heel and following me across the room.

“I could leave you alone for a few minutes,” I offered generously over my shoulder.

I set the box down on the counter and started going through it. Will stepped up next to me.

“Oh, I remember those,” he said when I pulled out a pair of satin panties.

“You do?”

“You had them on at your parents’ house when I visited for Easter.”

Ah yes, the fateful Easter visit, when no one in my family knew that Will and I were seeing each other. I lured him into my room and convinced him to have unprotected sex while my family was obliviously hanging out downstairs.

Lord. Will’s entire life had flashed before his eyes when Jensen knocked on the door.

“You couldn’t remember to pick up laundry soap today but you remembered that?” I asked.

“Yeah. Well.” Will was quite a bit taller than me, and even standing at my back, he could peer over my shoulder. “May I?” he finally asked, motioning to the box and its contents.

“Knock yourself out,” I said, walking to the freezer and returning with a pint of ice cream. Spoon in hand, I hopped up on the counter next to him and popped off the lid.

He pulled out pair after pair, wiggling his eyebrows and kissing me full on the mouth whenever one sparked a particularly happy memory. Turns out, unpacking was way more fun than packing.

“Wait,” he said, slowing as he came to the plainer ones toward the bottom. “Why have I never seen any of these before?”