His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 212: Like a Normal Couple

** Eli **

"Um, did he really hit your head that hard?" Harper asked when Eli finally released her enough to let her turn around and face him. She reached up, gently touching the back of his head with a worried frown. "Why are you grinning at me like an idiot? Are you feeling alright?"

Oops. Was he really grinning at her like an idiot? Or like one of those cartoon characters with giant pink hearts pasted over his eyes?

"I’m alright. Just absolutely blown away by how breathtaking you look when you show your sharp fangs." Eli supposed he must still be simpering. "Can I just say that I thought you were practically glowing with a halo on top of your head?"

"... Yeah, I think you might have a bit of a concussion. Come sit down, I’ll get you some water and ice."

"..."

Harper nudged him toward the sofa. For once, Eli didn’t mind being treated like a spoiled baby, and he let his halo-glowing angel pamper him to her heart’s content as she hurried back and forth to take care of his nonexistent "injury".

"I still can’t believe you let him do that," the angel said when she sat down next to him, pressing a small ice pack to the back of his head. "Don’t fool me, I know you are taller and stronger than Tyler! Why did you just stand back and let him take it all out on you?"

Eli leaned needily into her hand — he was really feeling fine, but if pretending to need the ice pack would get him more TLC like these adoring soft touches, he’d happily bang his own head against the wall every day to get extra opportunities for it.

"That fume needs a way to get out somehow," he explained in an absentminded mumble. "He has the right."

"No he doesn’t." Harper’s voice was firm, completely contrary to the careful gentleness she was applying with her hands. "You are my boyfriend. You are mine. No one gets to hurt my most precious person, especially not because they are stupid and judgemental themselves!"

Eli blinked. And blinked again. Did she just say he was her most precious person? Did she just call him hers?

Did he really get a concussion? Because this day was suddenly starting to feel too good to be true ...

"Anyway, so what exactly happened?" Harper didn’t appear to have noticed anything out of the ordinary about what she just said though. She was running her fingers over his collar, trying to smooth out the wrinkled and slightly torn fabric. "I actually came early to try to prepare a surprise for you, since I wanted to do something fun with the keys you gave me yesterday. But I have to admit that I never imagined things could get this bad! To the point that Tyler would pick a fight and even change his ticket home? Did you say something to provoke him on purpose?"

The reminder of that unfortunate trouble shook Eli awake from his second daze of the evening. "Um, it’s worse than that ..." He sighed, reluctantly switching his train of thought from his wonderful, angelic girlfriend back to her vengeful brother. "I think he saw the email I sent you with the new web novel Chapter in it, before I got a chance to tell him anything about us at all."

It took the girl only a moment to get the point. "Wait, no way ... Was it from when he was using my laptop? I flagged that email as priority at the top of my inbox, so maybe when he opened the browser—" Her hand froze, and the ice pack slipped from her grip. "Oh. Shit."

Yep, shit indeed.

"Now I see why he was so unbelievably mad," Harper muttered. "I never told him about the web novel. If that’s all he saw without any context ... Oh my God ..."

"And that’s why he wouldn’t believe anything I told him afterward. He must be a hundred percent convinced that I’m just playing some filthy game with you and trying to talk myself out of the consequences with a smooth tongue."

Harper groaned in frustration. But it was only a split moment before her eyes gleamed anew with a sly spark. "Well, gotta admit that he isn’t too far off in this particular case. You do have a smooth tongue, especially when you use it in the right places."

"..."

Good to see that someone was still in good enough of a mood to fill her mind with those kinds of thoughts.

Eli chuckled. "Is that related to the surprise you came to prepare for me?" he asked. It was getting increasingly entertaining to guess this little devil’s plans these days. This would’ve probably been another thrilling evening with new "experiments" ... if her brother had not been involved.

"Hmm, somewhat." Harper tapped a finger on the cooler she had placed next to her. "I brought a banana pudding. And ... well, I suppose you could call the other thing a bottle of peculiarly shaped candy sprinkles."

"..."

She laughed at the expression on his face. "It’s alright, I know Tyler has ruined the mood pretty royally today, so we can ... just eat our desserts like boring people for once?" She touched the back of his head gently again. "So if my brother happens to come back for answers, we can honestly tell him that we don’t only do those things you wrote in the web novel Chapter. We can be decent like normal couples too, if we try."

If they try. She said it as if being "decent" like a "normal couple" was so easy, when she could change in the blink of an eye from an angel with a halo on her head to a demon with cute horns.

Nevertheless, Eli did give it his best try. In the most innocent and decent way, he opened his arms again, wrapping them snugly around her soft warmth and burying his face into her hair like a normal, lovestruck couple would.