Going with the continuation of the line I posted earlier . . .
She pops open the door to Cullen’s office with absolutely no regard for who or what should be on the other side of it and yells, “Bring me your thickest, most useless books.”
As the scout standing in front of Cullen turns to see her, his mouth drops open. Judging by the strangling noise coming from his throat, the sentence he’d been in the middle of curdles to death on the back of his tongue as he looks frantically around at the books in the office, wondering if he was to be the hapless recipient of death by large booking.
Cullen also looks rather startled, but as he is far more familiar with her interruptions, recovers more quickly. He clears his throat and says, “Thank you, Tomkin, that will be all” and smiles ruefully at the haste with which Tomkin exits the room.
Elanor waves at his back as she crosses to the bookshelf, already tugging at the weightiest tome she has seen in her life, with a weird eyeball on the spine.
“No, not that one,” Cullen says. “What do you need this for?”
“Which of these would you least mind having stacked on the floor?”
Cullen looks at the piles of books already stacked on the floor. “Uh, any of them will do?”
Elanor points at the one with the eyeball. “Except this one?”
Elanor drops the weird eyeball book and instead starts to shove at one of the stacks of books already on the floor with her foot. She eyeballs the stack and the distance between her mouth and Cullen’s and removes a few books, takes another estimation, and then adds one back. Finally, she steps onto the stack and beckons Cullen closer.
Cullen had looked adorably puzzled for almost the entire time she had messed with the books but he smiles as he steps in, blushing just a little as he realizes her intent. She’s eye-to-eye with him, mouth-to-mouth, and as she wraps her arms around his neck, she revels in the ability to just lean forward and press her mouth to his, without having to strain up so damn far.
He’s warm and solid along her front and she loves having so much of him at her disposal from this height. She gives into the temptation to rise up onto her tiptoes, just to feel the drag as she slides back down.
“You could have just said something you know,” he says several minutes later. His mouth is warm against hers; Elanor will never get tired of how warm he is all the time.
“I’m a problem solver,” she says, straining forward but not up, to kiss him again. “I solve problems.”