“I know exactly where you live, and no, we’re not going to Akiva’s building, or to an apartment you share with someone else.”
“Okay, then let’s go toyourapartment.”
Her fingers were three seconds away from his belt, and he was about three seconds away from getting out his keys. “I can’t leave my brother’s party half an hour into it. And neither can you,” he added—his very last argument. If she offered one more suggestion, he knew he was going to crack.
“Fine.” She dropped her hand and smoothed down her skirt. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said, gesturing toward the stairs.“Then I’m gonna come back down here and find someone who’s interested in having some fun with a horny girl in a short skirt. Bye, Judah.”
He watched her turn on her heel and head up the steps, and it felt like he was standing at the precipice of the biggest choice of his life. Except there was no choice left to make, because by the time he realized what he was doing, he was halfway up the stairs.
Chapter Nine
She really thought he wanted her. And he did—she knew that, to an extent, he did—but she thought he felt the same “I am positively going to expire if I don’t touch you” pull that she inexplicably felt around him; clearly, she was wrong. And as if being left alone to deal with her unbearable horniness for Judah Klein—Judah Klein!—wasn’t enough, the fact that he was just chilling downstairs while she was in the bathroom, positively dying, was the entire Dead Sea’s worth of salt in the wound.
She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her libido to calm the hell down, because for all her talk about how she was going to find another guy when she got back downstairs, she didn’t want anyone else; she might as well go home, emulate Judah, and take matters into her own hands. And where did he get off telling her something that fucking hot and then doingnothingabout it, anyway? Who told a girl that and then—
Knock knock.
“Someone’s in here!” she called out, not bothering to disguise the annoyance in her voice.
“I’m aware,” came the muffled response.
Oh.
She opened the door a crack, and Judah slipped right in, his midnight eyes flashing. “We’re in a public place.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t—I don’tdothis. I am not this guy.”
“You’ve made that clear,” she said coolly. “Ididn’t tell you to come up here. Leave if you want to leave.”
“Do youwantme to leave?”
“What do you think?”
His gaze traveled down her body and back up. “Don’t ask me to think, Arielle. We both know I’m not capable of that right now.”
“Well, then I’ll lay out your options: You can go back downstairs, and we can go back to pretending nothing ever happened, or you can shut up and lock the fucking door.”
He opted for the latter without a moment’s hesitation and sailed into her, or she sailed into him, but either way he had her pressed up against the wall, his mouth swallowing her gasp, his hands rough and delicious as they slid up her thighs. Her breath hitched as his fingers found the waistband of her carefully selected lace underwear, thumb sliding over the fabric as if he were solving a mystery and needed to commit every single detail to memory.
“Question answered,” she murmured. “Unless you were wondering about the color. They’re black, by the way.”
He kissed her again, deep and dirty, before wresting his mouth from hers to whisper in her ear, his lips grazing the soft shell. “You drive me entirely out of my mind. Would you really go downstairs to another guy right now?”
“I’m not the one who keeps fighting this. Fuck, I don’t know what this even is.” This close, he smelled intoxicatingly good—the faintest hint of his single beer mixed with a fresh, woodsy cologne—and it was making her dizzy. “You were wrecked over a fully dressed kiss. This might be a terrible idea.”
“It isdefinitelya terrible idea,” he agreed, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling deeply, his grip on her skin tightening. “On so many levels. But I can’t seem to make myself care. Unless you want to stop. Do you?”
Im-fucking-possible.“I wore a skirt up to my ass for you, Judah. I’m wearing my sluttiest underwear for you. Can you please just—”
His mouth slanted over hers just as his surprisingly strong hands curved around her backside and pulled their hips together. Anyquestions she might’ve had about how on board he really was were instantly answered by the hardness shamelessly pressing into her thigh, and she dropped her head back to catch her breath, a sharp exhale of want in the silence.
“Not apologizing this time,” he whispered, nipping at her jaw.
“Good boy,” she teased, and felt more than heard his breath hitch in his throat, his cock hardening impossibly further until she worried it might snap off.
Interesting.And incredibly hot, the way two words from her wound him up. It took everything in her not to reach under her skirt and move his hands just a few inches to give her relief where she desperately needed it. Instead, she yanked his neatly tucked shirt from his jeans and sank her nails into his skin for purchase.
