He catches my gaze for a second. “Good,” he says, and bumps back, causing sparks up my thigh and a sentence so nonsensical that I need to rewrite it for a third time before Isend the email off to my student. I lose complete track of what I was doing when Lewis’s knee brushes mine again, softer now, and then stays there. But his face is impassive, fingers flying over his keyboard again.
“Seriously?” I grumble.
Lewis keeps typing. “What?”
“You were all against digging into each other’s current research when we made this pact, but then you resort to… cheap tactics of manipulation and distraction to keep me from doing my work?”
He peels his eyes away from his screen. “What?” he repeats, dumbfounded.
I draw back my leg, and as I knock it into his, he must finally understand, because he frowns and sits up.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize.” Seconds later, though, his face morphs into a smile, and he cocks up a brow. His sole taps against the side of my shoe. “So, you’re saying this distracts you?”
I glower at him over the edge of my laptop. His eyes dip, no doubt tracking the flush that climbs up my throat.
“Don’t be smug,” I bite out. “And don’t tell me you’re not doing it on purpose.”
“Doing what?” Eyes wide, he runs his fingers along his hairline, drawing my attention to another extremely attractive feature about him. At this point, I find everything about him attractive.
Physically, that is.
“This.” My voice echoes loudly in the silent library, and I quickly bend forward to mutter, “All this teasing you’re doing.”
He mirrors my posture, and although there’s still half of the table between us, he feels provokingly close.
“And why,” he wonders quietly, “would I be teasing you?”
Under the table, his knees slot around mine. The pressure triggers a flash of electricity deep in the pit of my belly.
“Explain it to me,” he insists as his hands spread wide over the surface of the table. The muscles in his forearms flex and shift, and when I look up again, I catch the glint in his eyes.
Playful. Challenging.
“You’re nervous,” I state. “About tonight. You’re nervous about seeing your family, about pretending in front of Ada, and lying to Alice, but you’re deflecting.”
His eyes are unwavering, but the air feels heavier now, as if my observation has pulled it tighter around us.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
He works his jaw.
“You know, you could just tell me that you’re nervous,” I say. “And we could take care of it. Prepare better for tonight, make up a secret code so I can drag you out of any inconvenient situation.”
His gaze slides to my mouth. “Yeah? How would you do that?”
I could kiss you.
The idea slams into my mind, unforeseen, but so blazingly clear that I have difficulty thinking of anything else. I tug at my collar, my skin lit up by his attention. It takes me a moment to realize that heistouching me, that he’s lengthened his finger to drag it from my wrist to the knuckle of my middle finger.
My eyes, hell-bent to lead this conversation without me, dip to his lips. God, the set of his mouth should be forbidden.
He smirks when he recognizes my intentions. “You wouldn’t dare,” he says in a deep rumble that prickles down my spine.
His challenge stokes the fire in me. I want to show him how much Iwoulddare. I want to see how far he lets me go in our weird new ceasefire friendship.
My chair scrapes over the floor as I stand and round the table. Lewis catches my hand—to keep me away or to pull me closer, I don’t know.
“What are you doing?”
