He was in my bathroom for less than ten minutes. Maybe more — I couldn’t say. Stalking the clock didn’t feel particularly appealing anymore. He washere.In my space. And I didn’t know what to do with myself. Time was meaningless.
He came out drying his hands on the small towel I kept on the rack; the very act was so casually domestic it made something in my chest do a… thing.
“Needs a washer,” he said. “I can have it fixed by Monday.”
“Okay,” I said and noticed his t-shirt was drenched.
He noticed me noticing. “Want to take it off?” He grinned.
I think I may have short-circuited then.
Our eyes met. His pale grey against my green.
“What?” I blinked.
“You keep looking at it. I figured maybe you want it as a souvenir.”
Was that a… joke?
I felt heat rise to my cheeks, realizing he'd caught me staring. Something shifted in the air between us, charged and electric.
“I wasn't—” I stopped myself. No point in lying. “I've just never seen you dressed so... normal.Andthe tattoos!”
His lips quirked into a half-smile. “Disappointed?”
“No,” I said too quickly. “Just surprised.”
He walked deeper into the apartment, looked around — at the furniture, at the walls, at the everything in between — and went straight to the adjoining kitchen. Didn’t say anything, though.
“I… Uh. You want sweet tea? I just made some before you came over—”
“No.”
He turned around fully and leaned back against my kitchen counter and finally looked at me.
I stayed where I was.
“You going to stand in the hallway?” he asked.
“I'm considering it.”
Judah smirked and did something that outdid all the other somethings that left me speechless in the past fifteen minutes. He reached for his collar and pulled the t-shirt over his head.
I froze. Wasn’t sure I wasn’t hallucinating. The heat could’ve scrambled my brain — cooked it real good.
I blinked. Still there.
Shirtless. Inmykitchen. “Come here, Mercy.”
And the thing was — the truly damning thing — was that my feet moved before my brain had finished the sentence. Two steps into the kitchen, close enough that I had to look up at him, close enough to smell the cedar and the heat off his skin, and I stopped.
“Closer,” he said.
“I'm fine here.”
“I didn't ask if you were fine.”
My heart was doing something inadvisable. “Judah—”
