? seemed like bold pioneers instead of irritating gnats.
So she murmured the tragic truth with a teasing smile. “Too much bed discussion could tip me over the edge. Next thing you know, I’ll be ravishing you on this undoubtedly unsanitary carpet.”
Apparently, he hadn’t expected that, because for a moment, his face was blank as a new Word document. Dani bit her lip, wondering how he’d respond, and barely noticed the increase in whispers from their excitable observers at the next desk.
Then Zaf’s surprise melted into an expression she could only call hunger. Without warning, he grabbed the leg of her chair and jerked it—jerked Dani—closer. The breath left her lungs, and by the time she remembered how to inhale again, her seat was trapped, sideways, between his spread thighs. His arm rested over the back of the chair, and she felt its heat against her shoulders. His mouth was perilously close to her cheek, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough and changed, and it rasped over her skin the way his hands would. “Tell me what it is you want from me, Danika. Explain it to me. Slow.”
For someone so repelled by relationships, Dani sure had a lot of questions about them. But then, for someone who wasn’t interested in casual sex, Zaf sure struggled with telling her to knock this innuendo bullshit off.
He didn’t want her to knock it off.
Maybe he was imagining the way she looked at him sometimes, like he was a surprise, scary but special all at once. And maybe he was imagining the vulnerability in her, too, glittering beneath her surface like fragments of gold underwater. The problem was—call him reckless, call him led by his dick, call him a hopeless romantic, but he wanted to believe in it. He wanted it so badly that he dragged her closer and asked her straight.
“Tell me what it is you want from me, Danika. Explain it to me. Slow.”
Her teeth grazed the soft, plump flesh of her lower lip, and he felt the action in his fucking balls. Her gaze flicked over to the boys watching them, then back to Zaf. She spoke so quietly he barely heard her. “I want to sleep with you, Zafir. Don’t take it personally, though.” Her smile was painfully sexy and as sharp as an arrow. It certainly burst his bubble.
No. You’ve always known how she operates. Don’t be disappointed with the sun for setting.
Zaf took a breath as his hopes rearranged themselves into common sense. So Dani had nothing more than sex on the brain—he’d have been foolish to expect anything different, and Zaf refused to be a fool. Here was the bottom line: she wanted him back, at least in one way, and that was hot enough to singe his doubts. Everything in life didn’t have to be black-and-white, did it? There was something between searching for happily ever after and outright celibacy, wasn’t there? He certainly fucking hoped so, because it had been a year since his last relationship and right now his dick was so hard, he felt like it might break. Which definitely couldn’t be healthy.
He leaned closer to Dani, mostly to make sure his hard-on was hidden by the shadows between them. But the arm he’d rested on the back of her chair brushed her shoulders, and she sucked in a breath at the contact.
His focus on her sharpened, and he saw a lust in her eyes that felt as animal as his. She was beautiful, her chest moving with each heavy exhalation, her plump lips parted, the tip of her tongue wet and pink between her teeth. Honey-brown irises swallowed up by hungry, black pupils, her nostrils flaring, her hands gripping the desk. Coming apart at the seams right in front of him, each of her unraveled threads wrapping around him like silk.
Fuck it. Fuck overthinking, fuck playing it safe, fuck saying no when the yes on the tip of his tongue had never tasted so good. He was going to fuck her, and they were both going to enjoy it, and that would be enough. It would have to be enough. He would make it enough, because the roar of lust in him right now was louder than his usual feelings about sex. Wasn’t it?
You can’t do this, Zafir, said a voice in the back of his head. He pretended that voice was anxiety instead of reason, and shoved it out a window.
Then he ran a fingertip over