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I slid the pads of my fingers over her skin, watching over her shoulder as the smile tore from her face and registering the shock that ran through her body. Good. She keeled backward into me with a whimper before catching herself and straightening up.
“Jonah!” She ripped herself away to face me. “We’re in fucking publi—hmm.” Again, I put my hand under her top to touch her, this time with more intention, backing her up until she fell into the chair I’d been sitting in. She stared into my eyes in a way that made me want to drop to my knees for her, but I refrained.
I looked up through my eyebrows at the guys. Aaron ran both hands through his hair with a gaping grin. Briggs held his fingers over his mouth in an attempt to hide his smile. I couldn’t see Oli, June, and Thalia behind me, but I had a pretty good idea of what their faces might have looked like. I may or may not have just earned another talking-to from Oli.
“Jonah!” Kai yelled in a whisper, standing up in front of me and coming close. “We’re in public! You’re the only person who knows about that spot and now you’ve—”
“And I’m still the only person who can make you feel that way, whether I choose to or not,” I murmured. Her jaw dropped in disbelief, and I had to fight the urge not to cover her lips with my own. “If you don’t shut that mouth, Kai, I’m going to spit in it.” I really would. I wanted to devour her, not only because I wanted to taste her, but because I wanted her to have to taste me too. I wanted her to fold in half at the feel of me.
Her mouth bent into a little smile, causing my gaze to shift up to her eyes. She cocked an eyebrow.
Shit. Too sexual. She liked it. Damn me and my stupid imagination.
Instead of a response, she opened her mouth wider, sliding her tongue out of her stretched lips and crossing her eyes. I considered dropping dead in my place. My body was rock solid. “Sit down. Right. Now.”
She reeled her tongue in and smirked at me. “Maybe you should get it out of your system.”
I abandoned the conversation and offered Kai my seat as my teeth ground behind my cheeks. “Sit. June and Oli were just telling everyone how they met.”
“Oh, I love this story!” Kai clapped her hands once, her regard shifting to our friends with whom she had no qualms. Good. All I had to do was keep her attention away from me and I might survive this afternoon. “You sit,” she said before looking at June and Oli with an eager grin. I took the chair and left her to stand without protest. She was suddenly bouncing with energy, and I knew her legs would’ve hated to be trapped in a relaxed, seated position. “What part are you at?”
Aaron piped up. “Oliver fucked her in a study.”
“Oh, that’s practically the end!” Kai’s arms dropped to her sides sadly.
“What about the first time I met Jonah?” June asked.
I immediately shot her a glare that I hoped would simply kill her, our friendship be damned. The last thing Kai needed to know was that I’d been swooning over her so intently for the last decade that June’s very first impression of me was a futile affirmation that, one day, Kai and I would be together. I’d been such a pathetic fucking nerd all those years. If only I’d known the trials of adulthood and the very real consequences that come with getting what one wants.
“I’ve never heard that story,” Kai said, standing behind me now and placing her hands on the back of my chair. “Did something happen? You guys never told me.”
“I promise I’ll tell you later,” June whispered across the circle with a wink.
“You will not,” I said.
I held her gaze, but she rolled her eyes. June had been a good enough friend to me all these years not to divulge my secrets to Kai, but things were reaching a climax, and I wouldn’t have put it past her to start slipping pieces of information into Kai’s mind. June had wanted to see us together since the very first day we met. Since she saw the picture framed on my dorm room desk and uttered those words to me. “She’s beautiful.”
“Isn’t she?” I’d said, taking the frame in my hands and observing Kai’s smile as I did on so many nights throughout my stint at college.
Those days were so much easier, when the consequences of my own actions didn’t feel so close.
“It’s something embarrassing, isn’t it? Oh, I just know it,” Kai teased, rubbing my shoulders from behind and kneading out the knots at the base of my neck. She was playing nice now. I knew that, but I’d take it. I would let her drop me off the side of a cliff, quite frankly, if it meant I could be held by her as she carried me to the top. As long as I’d be dead by the time she walked away.
I tilted my head back to look up at her. She looked down at me and smiled, murmuring through her grin. “I am going to fucking kill you.”
Tempting.
Chapter 36
Jonah
I stood alone by the snack table with a new drink in my hand, taking a moment of silence before making my way back to where Oli now stood.
Unfortunately for me, Aaron approached, interrupting my solitude. “Jonah, man!” He dropped a heavy arm around my shoulders. My body solidified. “Oh. You don’t like to be touched, do you?”
I didn’t answer. He didn’t move his arm.
When we shook hands on arrival, his palm almost swallowed my digits whole. For a moment I was nervous his strength would snap them clean off. Probably better. Then I wouldn’t be tempted to further defile my friendship with Kai. Either way, his presence was downright suffocating. He was impossible to escape.
