The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(54)

“You all head out,” he told the rest of the team. “I’ll stay and lock up the equipment.”

Morey tried to protest, but Ethan told him the deli on Fairfax was having a sale on pastrami, and he was gone in a flash.

It didn’t take long to pack up the catcher’s gear and the bases, but when he walked back from third, Naomi was waiting for him, ice wrapped to her shoulder with gauze.

His heart felt powerful enough to walk out of his body.

Without saying anything, she took the bases with her good arm, leaving him to haul the gear and bats to the storage shed on the edge of the field that they rented along with a bunch of other teams.

Neither of them said anything on the walk over. For his part, Ethan was trying to decide what to apologize for first. He locked up everything with sweaty hands. When he finally turned to her, Naomi stood very still.

“I, uh.” He stared at the cobwebbed ceiling for a moment. “I guess you’re probably wondering what that whole outburst was about?”

“Do you have feelings for me?” The words came out aggressive enough to match her foreboding posture.

His chest went a little tight, a familiar reaction to stress. He thought about lying, even though he never lied. But not wanting Naomi was like trying to pause a hurricane. She might as well know.

Ethan leaned back against the storage bin, balancing his weight on his hands pressed against the cold metal. He sighed. “Yes.” The word stuck in his throat. “I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable. You’ve become an invaluable resource to the synagogue, and I don’t want you to think that my feelings for you have any implications for the remaining seminars. I’ll get over it. I’ve been trying to get over it, honestly. I’m sure this happens to you all the time, so you must know how hard—”

Naomi shook her head. “Shut up.”

Ethan let his eyes close in shame. Of course she didn’t want to hear any more about his unwelcome adoration.

He startled when something wrapped around the front of his uniform, yanking him into an upright position. When he opened his eyes, her face was a breath from his.

“Kiss me,” she said, voice both soft and demanding.

Oh.

He brought his hands up slowly, in case she changed her mind, but she let him cradle her jaw in his hands. Let him brush his lips against the hard, mean line of her mouth until it melted into something lush and warm. Let him slide his thumb down the smooth column of her throat, tracing her pulse, until Naomi tipped her head back and parted her lips in a gasp.

Ethan didn’t know how long this moment would last, so he took the opportunity to kiss the proud, precious crest of her cheekbone, the velvet-soft skin just under her ear, before returning to her mouth, finding it already open, waiting on a catch in her breath.

He kissed her harder this time, lips moving with the force of weeks’ worth of wanting, until the hand she had fisted in his shirt released and moved to the back of his neck, threading through the hair at the base of his scalp and pulling until he shivered against her.

Naomi ran her nails down his spine and grabbed a handful of his ass.

Ethan’s head was empty except for the word please. He moaned, desperate and delirious.

Suddenly she shoved away from him as someone rattled the handle on the door of the shed.

“You don’t kiss like a rabbi,” Naomi said, her voice full of furious accusation as she tugged him past the innocent bystander hunting for their lost keys.

Ethan focused on exhaling. “How many rabbis have you kissed?”

Naomi brought her fingers up to her swollen lips. “Evidently, not enough.”





Chapter Nineteen


EVEN IN THE days before he was a rabbi, Ethan had never considered himself a master of seduction. Whether or not it was fair, in his twenties, he hadn’t needed to work very hard to get women to fall, more or less, into his lap.

It wasn’t something he was proud of. It was just a fact.

Now that he was a rabbi, women treated him more like a detour sign on a crowded street—they drove toward him, but eventually his occupation redirected them down alternative, less demanding roads.

No one had covered finding a wife at the rabbinate. Not explicitly, at least. There were plenty of perspectives on marriage in Judaism, and some of them had been a part of his study, but the old books didn’t get into navigating modern courting rituals, or lack thereof.

Ethan knew he was on borrowed time with Naomi after he’d basically confessed his undying devotion on the softball field. He’d just expected her to let him down gently instead of kissing him and instructing him to drive them both to an undisclosed location.

Having her tongue in his mouth and her body pliant against his made him feel alarmingly alive.

It had taken him at least five minutes in the aftermath simply to gather his wits.

“So . . . can I ask where we’re going?”

“The beach,” Naomi said, pointing for him to merge.

“Oh. Okay. Is there, um, a particular reason?” Ethan’s stomach was doing a lot of dangerous swooping.

“Because the sound of the waves is soothing.”

Somehow the answer made him both more and less nervous, but, not for the first time, he decided to trust her.

When they arrived at the entrance of Hermosa Beach, they were unsurprisingly the only people in the little lot. They awkwardly toed off their shoes in silence. The April air was cool but without bite. Naomi walked toward the water, and Ethan followed her.