His fingers tightened their pinch on her nipple and she gasped. He winked, amusement turning up the corners of his lips. She wanted to be angry that he was doing this to her while he was on the phone, but she couldn’t. She bit her lip to suppress the smile and pressed her breast deeper into his hand. He smirked, but the person on the phone – Noah – must have said something he didn’t like, because the curve dropped from his lips at the same time as his hands fell from her breast.
“Mario’s,” he said as he lifted the strap of her dress back up over her shoulder, covering her chest. “And Noah, you don’t even know how much you owe me,” he said before he hung up, dropping the phone back into his jacket pocket.
“Everything okay?” she asked, her breathing still labored.
Liam stroked her cheek and cupped the back of her neck, leaning his forehead against hers. “My friend is on his way here. He’s been having a hard time lately. He sounded… He shouldn’t be alone right now.” He sighed, looking up at her through impossibly long eyelashes. “I’m sorry, baby.”
“It’s okay,” she said, trailing her fingers over his chest and the sharp ridges of his sculpted abs beneath his shirt. His breathing stuttered as her fingers fell away. “You’re a good friend to make sure he’s alright.”
He groaned and pressed his lips to hers again. “Tell me we can continue this later.”
She smiled. “Oh, we’d better.”
Liam chuckled before stepping back and helping her right her dress and smooth her hair. He adjusted his still-obvious erection, wincing. She mentally promised to relieve the ache for him later. Multiple times, if she had her way.
She took his hand, letting him lead her back out to a table where Lulu took their order for another round of drinks with a knowing grin while they waited for his friend. Through her post-orgasm glow, she registered a new heat curling in her belly, the fresh rush of desire at the idea that Lulu – and maybe others? – knew what they’d done in that hallway.
By the time they’d finished their drinks and moved on to water, Liam’s friend arrived and Min had managed to regain some semblance of control over her own desire. Her back was to the door, but she saw Liam wave Noah over.
She heard him before she saw him.
“There you are, asshole,” Noah said.
Min knew that voice.
Shit. Sheknewthat voice.
“You’re the one crashing my date, jackass,” Liam laughed as he stood to greet his friend, clapping him into a hug.
She could barely breathe. She refused to turn and look because sheknewthat voice.
“Didn’t know you were on a date,” Noah said.
Once she turned, once she saw him – and he saw her – there would be no pretending. If that voice was who she thought it was (and she knew that it was) then she was about to have the most awkward conversation of her life. She pulled on her fingers where they rested in her lap, wishing she had left before Noah arrived, wishing she had not just ridden Liam’s fingers to the best orgasm of her life.
“You’ll forgive me,” Noah said. He rounded the table to drop into the free chair opposite Min. She kept her eyes glued to her water glass, but she could feel the air shift when Noah saw her.
“Noah, this is –” Liam began.
“Melynda?”
Fuck.
She lifted her eyes to meet Noah’s shocked gaze, his eyes so wide it looked painful. Dr. Noah Van Aller, her theory professor.
Dr. Van Aller, apparently the friend of the man she had been ready to fuck in the hallway of a bar.
Dr. Van Aller who was looking at her smeared lipstick and Liam’s mussed hair like he was trying to make sense of something completely impossible.
“You know each other?” Liam asked, hesitantly, his hand closing possessively over Min’s thigh beneath the table. Noah tracked the movement and his eyes narrowed.
“Hi, Dr. Van Aller,” Min mumbled, the blush rising in her cheeks like fire.
Liam reeled back as if he’d been slapped, his hand falling from Min’s thigh to dangle uselessly at his side. She felt the loss of his touch as if she’d lost a limb, the ghost of it lingering but she knew it was no more than a phantom.
And unlikely to ever return.
“Melynda is one of my students,” Noah said, his voice rough. He had clearly worked out how the night had gone before his arrival and, given the way his jaw clenched, he was barely containing all the things he wanted to say. He turned to Liam with a pointed stare. “She’s about to start her junior year at Burnett.”
