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 doing nothing about 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’t do this. I am not this guy.”
“You’ve made that clear,” she said coolly. “I didn’t tell you to come up here. Leave if you want to leave.”
“Do you want me 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 is definitely a 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.
Any questions 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.
“God, Arielle.” He buried his face in her neck, pushed into her again, then hissed and pulled back. “Not apologizing,” he repeated, sounding more defeated now, “but also not trying to embarrass myself. Sorry, I need a minute.”
“I can do you one better if you like.” She moved her hand to his belt buckle.
“You’re playing very dirty, Becker.”
“Not that dirty,” she said with a grin, turning them around to press Judah up against the wall. “Your pants are still on.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the tile, exhaling sharply as she made quick work of his fly. “Okay, so now you’re playing dirty.”
“Want me to stop?”
“Literally never.”
Arielle reached into his boxer briefs and wrapped her hand around him, relishing both the heavy, silky-skinned thickness and Judah’s immediate reaction. There was just something about reducing a man famous for his voice to nothing but soft moans and the prayer of her name.
It wasn’t long before his breaths grew rapid and shallow, but a quick scan of the room revealed no easy way to keep this neat, other than the rough paper towels in the dispenser, which she couldn’t bring herself to use for his first time. Instead, she grabbed a few and set them on the floor.
“What—” Judah’s eyes flew open at the loss of contact as she released him. “Are you—oh. Oh, oh, oh.” His jaw dropped with awe as he watched Arielle lower herself to her knees. “God, that’s an incredible view. But I—I’m not gonna last—”
“Just relax and enjoy, Judah.”
She held his gaze as she flicked out her tongue, teasing around the crown of his cock until his eyes rolled back in his head and he was reduced to panting, begging, his fingers digging desperately into her hair.
It was addictive, the way he responded to her, the way he ceded control, the way he wasn’t prim or proper or professional at all at that moment.
Finally, she took mercy and went all in, taking in as much of him as she could.
The sound that escaped him was entirely unholy, and it flashed through her mind that she wanted to remember this, the way she in particular made him sing, the way no one else ever had.
And when he bit his hand to stop himself from roaring as he came, she thought about how next time, she wanted to hear him at full volume.
Next time.
There couldn’t be a next time.
Could there?
“Holy hell,” he breathed, bracing himself against the hideous wallpaper. “That was…” He shook his head. “You are…”
God, he was so cute as a mess. Cute was not an adjective she’d ever imagined using about Judah Klein, but as she watched him regain himself while helping her back to standing, she wanted to capture and frame the moment.
At least until he once again decided he hated himself for it. Or her. Or both.
She turned away to wash her hands and smooth down her clothes, giving Judah the privacy to fix himself up too.
But once they put themselves back together, Ari couldn’t help wondering again whether there actually would be a next time.
“Give me your phone,” she demanded once he’d rinsed and dried his hands.
He raised an eyebrow as he handed it over, and she smiled as she put in her number, using “For a good time” as her first name and “call” as her last. “There,” she said, sliding it into his pocket.
“Next time you’re thinking of ‘taking care of yourself,’ give me a call. I am a really, really good helper.”
And then she left him behind to go back to the party, uncertain whether she’d ever hear from him but hoping way too hard that she would.
Judah left the party shortly after, but not before offering to take Akiva out to breakfast to make up for his early departure.
Unfortunately, even getting to bed at a halfway decent hour didn’t come with a whole lot of sleep.
His mind wouldn’t stop racing with the mental image of Arielle Becker on her knees, the memory of her skin under his fingertips, and the implications of everything they’d done.
He still couldn’t quite believe the speed with which he’d gone from Never Been Kissed to having gotten half naked in a bar bathroom with the hottest woman he’d ever met, and he had no idea how to process it.
He definitely did not call her when he jerked off in the middle of the night, still thinking about it, or that morning when he’d forced a cold shower to suffice.
But twelve hours later, he was still experiencing it all in hi-def in his brain, and it was A Problem.
This is why respectable holy men don’t touch anyone but their wives.
It was amazing how only a few weeks ago, abiding by every Jewish law regarding interaction between unmarried men and women had been a walk in the park for him, and now he could think about nothing but violating them again and again in a hundred different ways.
But while he wasn’t exactly proud of his inability to focus or compartmentalize, he couldn’t help feeling optimistic for the first time in a long time that maybe dating wasn’t going to be so hopeless after all—that he wouldn’t always be the perpetually single wedding singer.
Arielle Becker was a wildly wrong choice for him, so if he could be impossibly, infuriatingly, unnervingly attracted to her, surely he could find himself attracted to someone who could behave in public, who wanted marriage and babies and, you know, actually liked him.
He just never imagined that it could all be so … consuming, that a singular woman could occupy his every waking thought.
In fairness, he’d been dating for almost a decade and a half, and none ever had. But surely that was about the fact that she wore her libido on her sleeve in a way that was completely alien to him, not about Arielle herself. Her demeanor gave him confidence, was all.
Right?
“Judah? You okay?”