“No,” she breathes. She bucks her hips against mine, desperate for me to move, but all I can think about is her ass and how good it would feel to claim it.
“Would you let me?” I nip lightly at the soft skin of her throat, licking my way down to the hollow between her collarbones. She tips her head back, inviting me closer.
“Ye-yesss,” she sighs, smiling blissfully as I suck hard enough to leave a bruise.
“Fuck,” I curse against her skin. I press my fingertip harder against her hole as I begin to rock my hips slowly.
An hour later, thoroughly spent and blissed out, we lie in bed, facing each other. We have matching kiss bruises, and my blood is rushing so hard through my veins I can hear it like the ocean in a seashell.
“Have you ever been with a girl before?”
“No,” she whispers. “I mean—the first time I met Paloma, she made out with me for a minute until I stopped her. She’s a really good kisser, actually.”
“Does she kiss you better than me?” I growl.
“N-no,” Ruth stammers. “No one kisses me like you do.”
“Good,” I say. “No one ever will, Ruth. Got it? I’m the only one who gets to kiss you now.”
“Okay,” she agrees quietly. “As long as you do.”
I lean in for a soft, chaste kiss and she returns it with a sweet smile.
“What about you?” She says after we break apart. “Have you ever been with a guy?”
I’m quiet for a moment. I’ve never kept it a secret from anyone before, and I’m not afraid to tell the truth now. But a part of me wants to wipe my history clean, to have Ruth as my first and only.
“Brad Boone. Not-so-secret fling about five summers ago, he was seasonal help on the ranch.”
I sigh quietly as I remember the way he kissed me hard at sunset one evening, backing me up against the barn wall. That was our first time, and it led to more—in the barn, in my room, in my truck, out on the ridge once or twice. And then he cut me off right before he moved on, and I never heard from him again.
Ruth leans in to kiss me again.
“Just as long as he knows I’m the only one who gets to kiss you now,” she murmurs against my lips. “You’re mine now, Ev.”
Chapter twenty-two
Ruth
Flying home has alwaysbeen the best part of any trip for me. For all my independence, I’m a homebody. I love being in London: the city that raised me, the streets I could navigate in my sleep.
But leaving Austin—or, more accurately, leavingEverett—might be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. We both shed a tear or two at the airport before I had to go through security. And once I was alone, I shed a few more. I spent most of my flight home curled up in my seat, under a blanket, tears soaking my shirt as I tried to hold it together.
Much like I’m doing now, four days later, already in my pyjamas and on the sofa at four in the afternoon. My thoughts lately consist either of Everett, or a sense of dread. A sense of being irrationally upset or angered by just about everything, and a crippling inability to snap myself out of it.
“I didn’t think it would be so hard to miss you.”
“I’m right there with you, baby girl.” His voice is a low rumble through the tiny speakers of my phone, propped against a stack of law textbooks on my coffee table. “I miss you so much it’s crazy.” I tuck my legs beneath me on the sofa, sniffling and swiping at my face with the back of my left hand. I tilt my head and close my eyes, wrapping my arms around my torso in a bid to fool myself into believing I’m wrapped in Everett’s embrace.
“I don’t know how we get through this.”
“We just do, baby girl,” he says. “What other choice do we have?” His voice is thick with emotion as he rubs a hand down his face. He’s out on the ridge where we shared our second kiss, and where I dry-humped his leg until I came in my pants, fully-clothed and desperate for him. It would be funny if it weren’t quite so embarrassing. He turns into the shade of a cluster of trees and I spot Della behind him, enjoying the scenery.
“I just miss you so much.”
Tears pour down my cheeks of their own volition, spilling over my eyelids and rolling unbidden to my chin, before making the leap and landing on my hands in my lap. My shoulders shake with the sobs I hold back.
“I wish I could hold you right now, baby,” he sighs. “Fuck, I wish—I miss you so damn much, Ruth.” His grey eyes close against the emotion rapidly choking him, and his throat bobs as he swallows repeatedly. I don’t know what he’s done to me in such a short space of time. I don’t know what he’s done with Ruth Bevan, because I’m sure as hell not a boring, pragmatic problem-solver anymore. I’m a sex-crazed cougar in love with the younger man I met in an airport lounge barely six weeks ago. And I miss him so much it’s fucking killing me.
