Ari laughed. “You say that so derisively, as if you’re not singing in fifty videos circulating on social media right now.”
“I’m not the one posting them!”
“You’re not exactly rushing to take them down,” she pointed out.
“Lev won’t let me,” he grumbled. “My assistant. He says they’re good for business.”
“Aren’t they?” He shot her a look, and she laughed again. “Look, I’m not pretending I have any idea what your professional life is like. Frankly, I don’t get it. It seems random all the time. No clocking in, no meetings…”
“I have meetings.”
“Yeah, but it’s different. Like, what’d you do today? You woke up, and then what?”
“I don’t know. I went to shul—”
He hadn’t realized he was gesturing at his tallis bag until her gaze followed his hand to it. “Yehuda Aryeh ben Moshe Tzvi. Your parents leaned pretty hard into the lion thing, huh?”
“You noticed that, huh? I think they were hoping I’d defy genetic odds and be built like a wrestler. Did not work out.”
Her fingertips traced the path of one of his barely there pecs. “You can let them know your body is greatly enjoyed as is.”
“Yeah?” he asked before he could stop himself, and then blushed. “I mean, I kinda figured the lion type was more your thing. Danny could probably bench-press me fifty times before breakfast.”
“Yes, but Danny sucks.”
“I thought he was one of your best friends.”
“He is. He still sucks.” She leaned in for what he assumed would be a kiss until she tugged his lower lip between her teeth and gently pulled, jolting his dick to attention. “You in a three-piece suit, Hotmusic. That’s my type.”
God help me.There went that stupid heart-swelling thing again. Quickly, he changed the subject back.
“Anyway, yes, shul. Then I learned with Nate—we finished the second-to-last perek of Sanhedrin. After that, I had a meeting—see? A meeting!—with Lev to go over my calendar. I worked on a new composition. I went back to shul for mincha—”
At that, she tilted her head up to look at him—really look at him—stopping him in his tracks. “Okay, I’ve really been trying not to ask you this, but I have to know. You go to shul and you learn and you are the epitome of Nice Jewish Boy, and then you come back here and just absolutely, filthily ravage me and tell me you’re okay with it. Butareyou?”
He should’ve been prepared for that exact question, especially since he asked it of himself every day, but still, it made his gut churn. “I know I’m not supposed to be. I know it makes me a hypocrite.” He cast his gaze down at the sheets, rumpled from the last hour of their activities. “But we’re notthatdifferent, are we? Unless that lunch at Akiva’s was a one-off, you keep Shabbos, no?”
“I do, yeah. I don’t make it to shul much, but I keep it.”
“And kosher?”
She gathered her curls and swept them over her shoulder. “Again, probably not as strictly as you—I’ll eat vegan pretty much anywhere—but, yeah.”
“So you’ve chosen to be observant, but clearly, this doesn’t present any feelings of religious upheaval for you.”
“That’s true,” she conceded, “but I don’t think Judaism is the same for me as for you. I love the traditions, the community, the history and culture. That’s all meaningful to me. I’m happy to have Shabbos force a break from TV and internet, and for holidays tobring my family back together. And I genuinely like that we have blessings for everything so we don’t even take being able to go to the freaking bathroom for granted. I just don’t care about things like covering up or not touching. That doesn’t elevate me religiously; for me, it feels unrealistic and unhealthy. But those thingsaremeaningful for a lot of people, and until now, that’s seemed to include you.”
Her hand closed around his wrist, solid and warm. “I’mnotjudging you—Lord knows I am the literal last person who could. You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I just can’t shake this feeling that I’m this walking, talking yetzer hora, and that as soon as you have some distance from how good this all feels, you’re going to hate meandyourself. So please, tell me, how do you not see it that way?”
Again, it was a fair question. He sighed deeply, wondering just how personal to get. Ever since she’d reacted badly to him making her dinner, he’d been trying to keep things as light and casual as possible, but this was not a light and casual question, and the thought processes he’d been having about it weren’t very light and casual either. He didn’t want her to run.
But she’d asked.
And after tonight, she was running anyway.
He met those gorgeous aqua eyes with his. “So, you know my parents are divorced?”
“Of course.”
