Page 26 of Someone Like You

“Isaac,” he said as soon as I stood in front of him. His eyes devoured me, scoured every inch of me, a hungry, leering glint in his inspection of me that sent warm tendrils of desire curling around me. And then what he said next completely diffused my anger and replaced it with exhilaration and a boundlesspleasure. “God, you look good,” he murmured. As if he couldn’t help himself, he leaned toward me, bowing over me, and I…

I didn’t step away. I didn’t move a muscle. I let him invade my space, let him bring his face next to mine, anticipation pulsing low in my belly, my heart beating hard in my chest, and when he inhaled…fuck, how could he get me so turned on without ever even touching any part of me? Just bylookingat me. By…smelling me. I guess I was into that now, too.

“Mm,” he hummed, drawing away from me. “Smell good, too.”

And when he smiled down at me, I just stared at his mouth. “How have you been?” I asked his lips, unable to look away. “Feeling, I mean. Since Saturday. After what happened,” I said. And even though I was talking about him being in the hospital, I realized too late that he probably thought I’d been talking about…the other part of that day.

His smile turned into a sly, knowing smirk, and damn if I didn’t want to bite it from him. “My eyes are up here, Isaac,” he said. When I finally tore my gaze from those plush lips with the piercing I wanted to lick, when I forced myself to meet his eyes, I felt a physical ache in my chest, like I’d been punched. “And I’m fine. I’ve been fine.”

I wanted to say so many things, ask so many questions, but what barreled out of my mouth was, “I’ve been worried about you.”

Because I had been. Ever since he’d told me about his heart condition, I couldn’t stop thinking about him fainting—alone—and getting worse than a concussion. What if he liked to take baths and passed out and fuckingdrowned? What if he liked to fix things and was up on a ladder and fell and cracked his head open? What if he?—

“Really?” Brody’s shocked voice pulled me from my catastrophizing, and I watched as his expression changed fromstunned to intensely satisfied. “You don’t have to worry about me, Isaac.” Then his features shifted into something serious, and he said, “Actually, I was worried aboutyou. I’m not sure?—”

Someone cleared their throat, and I wanted to punch them in said throat. I looked at the guy standing beside Brody and narrowed my eyes at him. He was shorter than Brody but taller than me and very, very skinny. I was judging him so hard because he was decked out in khakis, a button-up, and a fancy pea coat. He looked ridiculous and out of place with his gelled back hair and leather satchel. Seriously? Who carried a leather freaking satchel around? His flinty brown eyes gave me a quick once-over, a sneer pulling at his thin lips, and then he dismissed me completely and turned toward Brody. I barely restrained myself from hissing at him like a pissy cat.

“I have to get going, but you’ve got my number. We’ll talk details later,” he said smarmily.

What?What?

I felt like I’d entered a wind tunnel, and when this asshole raised his hand, clearly aiming for another squeeze of Brody’s arm, I wasn’t able to control my body from reacting the way it did. I batted his hand away before he could make contact and both him and Brody stared at me in stunned silence.

“Stop touching him,” I hissed, giving in to my newly unearthed feline nature.

“The fuck…?” the leather satchel douche muttered, holding his hand against his body as if I’d broken it. Fucking pussy.

“Isaac,” Brody snapped, sounding baffled and a little angry and making me wonder who this guy was to him. And at the same time, his stern tone had my dick perking up. “I’ll talk to you later, Paul,” Brody said to the other guy, who just gave me a nasty glare and walked away muttering something under his breath.

Then Brody gave me his full attention, and I wanted to bask under the beautiful weight of it. “What the hell was that? You can’t go around hitting people just because they touched me,” he said, gray eyes staring hard into mine.

“I don’t want anyone else to touch you when I haven’t even gotten to!” I exploded, and fuck if I didn’t sound like a toxic, petulant child.

He gave me a considering look, like he was working through something in his mind. “So that’s it? That’s what that was about? Isaac…” he said, moving closer, eyes darkening with intensity. Like storm clouds at the height of summer. His voice became softer, lower, and slid along my spine like the lightest caress. Teasing me. “You can touch me anywhere, anytime, and inanyway. You can put those pretty hands on my body whenever you feel like it. Those lips, too.” Brody leaned forward, bowing his body again, making me clench my fists so I didn’t grab him like I wanted to. His breath skittered across my cheek, a soft gasp slipped from my lips, and he said, “I have beendyingto get your hands on me, sweetheart.”

“Are you fucking him?” I blurted out, because at this point I was leaning hard into the craziness.

His lips quirked up as he pulled back and stood at his full height again. “No.”

“Are yougoingto fuck him?”

“Fuck no.”

“Well he wants to fuck you.”

“Isaac, I have no interest in him whatsoever. We got partnered together on a project for class, that’s it. I couldn’t care less what he wants, what he does, what he looks like, or how he acts. You’re the only person I want to touch. Or look at, or smell, or fuck.”

I let his words sink in, enveloping me in warmth, heating me and opening me up. “Good,” I finally said. “I have to go to work, but I’ll see you on Wednesday?”

Brody sucked his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment that felt like an agonizing eternity, then asked, “Where do you work?”

“The bookstore on campus.”

“Mm. All right. See you Wednesday, Isaac.”

I wasn’t sure if I imagined the promise in those words or not, but Wednesday couldn’t come soon enough.

Wednesday took forever to arrive,and after my run-in with Brody, I wanted to get my head on straight. I had a lot of emotions that were unsettling me, but there was one thing I was desperate to work through and I felt like I couldn’t move forward until I had someone help me untangle a few threads.

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