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She runs her pink tongue over her upper lip. Her saucer eyes gaze at me with the stare of a gazelle in the sights of a hunter. “I, uh... I thought you were getting back at me for the whole Stanley Cup thing. And also you were more doing it to help Rowan and Mason then me, because you didn’t want my sister to freak out and then have Mason freak out.”
She still hasn’t moved. When she takes a breath, her chest rubs up against me.
“That’s what I told myself in the beginning,” I tell her. “But there’s nobody else in the world that I would have done this for. And realistically, I didn’t have to make you fake a relationship with me to give you that alibi. All I had to do was say you were with me the night before. Could have been a one-night stand, right? It’s not like we were worried about the detective judging us or whatever.”
I don’t say the other thing I’m thinking. I don’t tell her that when I went on television with that reporter and said that I was in love with Ruby James, that maybe, just maybe, I meant what I said. After all, as Shakespeare said, many a true word has been spoken in jest.
I can’t tell her that, though. Not yet. It’ll scare her off. She’ll bolt like a startled fawn.
Instead I take a half step and press right up against her, and she sucks in a gasp and moves back. Now she’s back up against the wall. Nowhere to go.
I put my hands on the wall on either side of her. “I lied to myself when I said I wanted to get back at you. It was a way of giving myself permission to spend all summer long with you.” I lean down and brush my lips on her forehead.
“All.” Kiss. “Summer.” Kiss. “Long.”
She stifles a moan.
“Paxton. This is crazy.”
“Is it? What’s so crazy about it?” I nuzzle her neck.
“I just . . . we . . .”
“Do you care about me, Ruby?”
“Yes. Of course. You drive me crazy, but yes.” She blinks at me. “But let’s not forget that it wasn’t so long ago that you flipped out on me and cut me out of your life because you thought I was dating a football player. I tried to talk to you about it, and you disappeared on me. It makes it hard for me to believe you won’t do that to me again.”
“So next time I get mad or upset about something, I’ll talk to you about it instead of making stupid assumptions. We both had some problems with communication back then, didn’t we?”
I seize her lower lip between my teeth and give it a gentle tug. “And you’re just making excuses, because you’re scared of me.”
“Am not,” she murmurs, but we both know that’s a lie.
Ruby is one of the most guarded women I know. She always hides behind all the banter and the sarcastic quips, because she’s afraid to let anyone in.
Well, enough. I’m going to storm the barricades and show her that I’m someone she can trust with her tender, guarded heart.
“My mother is right about you, and about us. I got mad at you back then because you hurt me. No other woman has ever had the power to hurt me.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know that now. I was being a jealous, hot-headed ass. You should punish me by having really hot sex with me.”
“How does that work exactly?”
“I don’t know. It made sense in my head when I said it.”
I tangle my fingers in her hair and tip her head back so I can kiss her—really, properly kiss her.
Her pillow-soft lips part and I kiss her hard, my tongue leading hers in an intimate duet. She tastes sweet and warm. Her breathing quickens, and she arches her back and presses up against me, my aching cock pressing into her stomach.
I finally have to release her so I can suck in a breath. My whole body is pulsing with desire for her.
“Paxton,” she gasps.
“Yes?”
She stares up at me. “I’ve wanted this so bad.”
