Page 116 of Absolute Certainty
When her eyes slowly fluttered open, he didn’t hide the fact that he’d been staring at her. He’d even put his glasses back on to ensure he wouldn’t miss a single detail. Every scar, every freckle, every birthmark. Every rise and fall of her chest.
“Hi,” she said, voice low and honeyed.
“Hi, sunshine.”
“How long was I out?”
Jay pressed a kiss on her forehead. “Not too long.”
Sitting upright, her hands ferreted through the sheets. She couldn’t find what she’d been wanting, her bra, maybe? Instead, she plucked his T-shirt from somewhere in between them and pulled it over her head. “You know what I really want? That Iknowyou’ll have?”
The corners of his mouth angled upward. “Ice cream?” he drawled.
Sahar’s smile was so luminous, so fucking bright, it could make the sun combust. “Yes.”
“I want to make you dinner. How about afterward?”
She brought her fingers to his hair, carding the strands lightly. “But I want it now.”
He held her face in his hand and brought his lips to hers in a deep, needy kiss. And then he sprang out of the bed, beelining to his kitchen. When he returned to his bedroom, Sahar had kicked the sheets off, and the sight of her visible, long legs underneath his T-shirt made him ravenous again.This woman.
Wrapping his arm around her shoulder as he slid back down onto the bed, Jay handed her a spoon and a pint of coffee-flavored ice cream.
Sahar shuffled in her spot, making herself more comfortable as she shifted to face him. She scooped some up and brought the spoon to him. Holding her gaze, Jay opened his mouth and licked.
“Can you do something unappealing for five seconds because I actually don’t think I need to be any more attracted to you than I already am,” she voiced.
He threw his head back with a laugh and then watched her take a spoonful into her mouth, undoubtedly surethat he died right on the spot. “Welcome to the club, sunshine.”
Tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear, he continued. “On the afternoon of theCluenight, you walked into the coffee shop wearing some lavender dress, and then you drank from your straw right in front of me, so I spent the rest of the shift yelling at everyone for no reason because all I wanted to do was rip that dress off you and make you scream my name in a thousand different ways,” he paused, “I don’t know how I would’ve lasted through the night if you hadn’t changed after work.”
She brought the spoon back into her mouth, popped it out, and licked her lips. “This is an excellent bit of information. I’m buzzing about how I can torture you with it in the future.”
He seized her mouth then, savoring the taste of coffee ice cream on her lips like his own personal serving of heaven. When she deepened the kiss with her tongue, a growl ripped from his throat.
Cursing under his breath, his fingers grazed up her thigh.
She broke their kiss, averting her attention back to the dessert. Another spoonful to his mouth, then back into hers. He would never think about ice cream the same way as his teeth sank into the slope of her shoulder and his fingers clenched her thigh. He was seconds away from begging her to let him drop to his knees again when she pulled his hand up.
“Sahar, please let me—”
Her eyes darkened, and she interrupted his plea by scraping some of the ice cream off the spoon and onto his index finger. His heartbeat collapsed as she brought his finger to her mouth and sucked. Slowly.
Jay’s head fell back against the wooden bedpost with a thud, another audible curse lunging out of him. “You’re going to kill me,” he breathed.
Brimming from somewhere deep inside her throat was the most intoxicating laugh he’d ever heard. Sahar pulled one more lick before she pressed a resounding, needy kiss back onto his mouth.
All at once, the mattress he had for years felt softer with her beside him, warmer and more comforting. Generic cotton sheets felt otherworldly.
He thought back to their two-in-the-morning conversation and how, in the hours when he learned that her favorite ice cream flavor matched his own, he was so sure that Sahar would only be his in his dreams.And he had dreamed of her that night—his mouth all over her, her body swaying with his.Except he was fully awake now, and she was carefully twisting herself in his arms, reaching over and placing the pint on his bedside table while her mouth stayed pressed to his.
And for a moment, he felt like his world was actually fucking perfect.
“You’relucky I picked up my work tote before coming here because there was no way I’d stay without my essentials,” Sahar said, slowly limping back into the bedroom.
“You know, there are these wonderful things called stores? I would’ve gotten you whatever you needed.”
She gave him a big smile. “I really hope the rain stops by tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to be here when your family’s back.”
