Dahlia's whole life is flipped upside down when her eccentric aunt enrolls her in a prestigious university in England. She is forced to make friends with a rather eclectic group of people and adapt to her new lifestyle all while trying to find the a...
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Incomparable comfort and relaxation.
That's what I felt waking up next to Harry the morning after. And, I felt like I'd been sleeping for a week, like I was cemented to the mattress.
My left cheek was pressed against the pillow, my arms curled up between my chest and Harry's side, and my right leg was cast over his thighs, my knee bent up at his hip. His right hand was barely rested on my head, his fingers combing through my hair with caution, clearly not wanting to wake me up, and I looked up at him, seeing that his shoulders were propped against the headboard and he held a paperback book in his left hand, the bottom edge of its spine extending vertically upwards from his butterfly tattoo.
I watched his eyes scan the page, fascinated by the way his facial expressions changed minutely as he read. I could tell when he would read an unsavory part, or when something in the text troubled him- his eyebrows would scrunch together a bit, and he'd press his lips together slightly.
He held my attention as he flipped the page, the crinkling of the off-white paper becoming the loudest noise in the quiet room, and he scanned his eyes down the page, pausing halfway, his eyebrows arching up marginally at some words that had apparently sparked his interest. He removed his fingers from my hair, reaching across his body towards the nightstand, picking up a black pen, and he clicked the cap, writing something in the margin of the page. When, he finished his annotation, he placed the pen cap between his front teeth, an intent look on his face as he finished the page, and deciding that there wasn't anything else substantial or noteworthy on that page, he put the pen back on the nightstand.
Then, he placed his hand back in my hair, glancing down at me as he did so, and I wanted to preserve the rare time I had to watch him read so peacefully, so I closed my eyes, but I was too late, and he caught me.
"Dahlia..." he said quietly, separating strands of my hair with the strokes of his fingers. "What are you doing?"
I smiled, opening my eyes in surrender. "Watching you read."
"Why? If I had known you were up, I would've put the book down."
"It's entertaining, though," I dismissed honestly, already knowing that I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to admire him in the same way if he'd put the book down. "What are you reading?"
"Murder on the Orient Express," he answered, turning the book so I could see the front cover.
"Agatha Christie." It was obvious that I had steered him towards her books with my suggestion of And Then There Were None, which he read per my request. "I can see that I have a bit of an influence on you."
"Maybe," he said, folding down the corner of the page to hold his place and shutting the book. He placed it on the nightstand with the pen, and then he gave me his undivided attention, bringing his left hand down to my thigh, grazing his thumb over my skin under the duvet.
