A sly smile spread across her face. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard going down on me referred to as ‘playing an instrument’ before. That’s quite the euphemism.”
“Oh, trust me, you make beautiful music when my tongue hits the right spot.”
“You fucking nerd.”
He threw back his head and laughed, and she had to bite her lips to keep from grinning proudly. It was so rare to elicit that kind of reaction from Judah, and every time she did, she felt like she should get a gold star.
No, wait. No gold stars forlaughing. Gold stars were for orgasms, and orgasms alone. It was too easy, sometimes, when she was blissed out and lying in his surprisingly strong arms, to forget that they didn’t actually like each other, that this was nothing but an arrangement between two people with a massive mutual itch to scratch.
And she couldn’t let herself forget that.
She couldn’t let herself forget that for a minute.
Chapter Fourteen
It might have been a problem that it was their very last night together, and Judah couldn’t stop thinking that Arielle Becker was the most unnervingly attractive woman he’d ever seen.
It didn’t help that she was wrapped up in his sheets.
It didn’t help that his entire apartment smelled like her, had smelled like her all week, and the dread he’d previously been feeling about going to the Pesach program by himself had been magnified by the thought of sleeping somewhere that smelled like sterile cleaning supplies and not her tropical flower shampoo.
(Hisplace used to smell like sterile cleaning supplies. A few weeks earlier, he would’ve beenrepulsedby the fact that he hadn’t washed his sheets despite spending the past few days getting them very,verydirty. But that was Normal, Together Judah, and he had no idea who the guy currently inhabiting his body was.)
It didn’t even help to know it was all just physical, and hedidknow. Guys like him did not end up with girls who wore—who evenowned—the kind of unbearably hot lingerie he’d painstakingly unhooked from her body before she slid into his sheets.
(She’d dressedupfor him. Or down. Whatever it was, it was going to star in every single fantasy of his until the end of time.)
Nothing helped when it came to ending this week with Arielle Becker. There wasn’t any point in thinking about it. It wasn’t as if he could invite her to stay for Shabbos, and he certainly couldn’t go to her place. And on Sunday morning, he’d be boarding a plane to Cancun and the rest of his Arielle Becker-less life.
But for now, the most unnervingly attractive woman he’d ever seen was, improbably, lying naked in his bed, biting her lipto keep from laughing as she leafed through an old album from his Kol Sasson days, and his heart felt too big to be contained by his chest.
Which was definitely a problem.
His brain—and his dick—might have known it was all physical, but that nagging space in between them was having some trouble keeping up.
“You know,” she said, squinting at a picture of him performing in what could’ve been Dallas or Boca or somewhere in New Jersey, “it was clear from the beginning that you were gonna be the big star of the group, but I had money on Azarya Frankel becoming the hot one.”
“You know we’re ten years old in that picture, right?”
“Yes, butIwas seven or eight at the time, and you were celebrities. My dad loved blasting Kol Sasson while he cooked.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I forgot about it until just now, seeing this picture,” she mused, closing the album and putting it aside. “It’s weird to think that my dad would probably be starstruck by the guy I’m hooking up with.”
“Starstruck enough not to kick my ass about the hooking up part?” Judah asked with a grin.
Ari laughed. “My dad was not the ass-kicking type. But probably. He would’ve fuckinghatedmy sister’s boyfriend, so you’d be the favorite by default.” Her cheeks pinkened. “I mean, not that you’remyboyfriend. Ugh, you know what I mean.”
“Yes, Arielle,” he said, despite the rebellion in his chest calling him a liar, “I know what you mean. But wait. Does this mean you had a crush on Azarya Frankel?”
“I’ll never tell.” As if her impish smile didn’t give her away immediately.
Judah swallowed the weird knot of silly jealousy forming in his throat. “He’s a good guy. Married, as you may have guessed. We’vebeen texting a bit since the old videos have gone viral. He’s angling for a reunion, but we haven’t been able to make it work yet.”
“Is he still singing?”
“Not professionally—he’s some sort of analyst now—but you know, social media.”
