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It’s just my name. But the way she says it, all soft and desperate, like this day did something to her too, makes my heart thump harder.
Fuck, I need this woman.
Need so much more than this narrow window, this list.
But I try to shake those thoughts from my head and zero in on the moment.
Nighttime. Music. The way she moves beneath me.
That is all there is. The physical. The now.
She lifts her hips and I give Ruby what she wants, sliding a hand between her legs, losing my mind when I feel how wet she is.
How ready she is.
And she feels fucking incredible, all slick and soft.
I bury my face in her neck, kissing and sucking as I stroke and glide, and soon she is bucking and writhing in my hand.
Then, coming hard and fast, in mere minutes.
I want to thump my chest, pat myself on the back. But more than that, I want to give her another orgasm.
“Need you now,” I groan.
“Have me,” she says in an echo, grabbing a condom from the nightstand and thrusting it at me.
I cover myself as she parts her legs.
And I nearly die of desire.
The way she opens herself. How much she wants me. How she gives me her body.
It’s all too much and never enough at once.
I wedge myself between the paradise of her thighs, rub the head of my cock against that wetness, then slide inside her.
She gasps gorgeously, arching her back at the same time.
And that, right there.
I want to capture that. Remember that.
The way she wants me.
And the way I want her.
I sink all the way in, filling her, my chest against hers, my arms wrapped around her shoulders.
I can’t get close enough to this gorgeous woman.
“Yes,” she moans.
I move in her, heeding her call, giving her what we both want—connection, closeness, contact.
I run my hands up and down her back, and she sighs and moans with every touch. She loves to be touched. She responds to each sweep of my fingers, each press of my palms.
As she wraps her legs around me, hooking her ankles over my ass, I let myself forget that we’re not a couple.
This will all end very soon.
But right now, it feels like we won’t ever stop.
Later, when she’s sound asleep in my arms, I play out scenarios in my mind. I imagine possibilities.
Maybe I’m stupid for not seeing this coming. I should have considered this kind of trouble before we started working our way through the list. But jumping through all those hoops with her, watching her take chances, push herself, surprise herself . . .
It’s like reading a great book for the first time.
Or the fifth.
You don’t want to put it down. You just want to keep turning the pages, to discover its secrets, to see if it’s still as good as you remember—and it always is.
Ruby is the book I want to keep reading, the person I want to know, inside and out.
I park my hands behind my head, stare at the ceiling in the dark, questions flickering before my eyes.
But they all start and end with bridges I don’t know how to cross. I have a plan, a path, and I’m too far down that road to turn back now.
I’ve resigned myself to the list. Just the list.
And then I’ll let her go.
19
RUBY
Must draw cartoon pies and adorable animals eating said pies.
Must not draw Jesse’s face or Jesse’s hands.
But those hands . . .
My God, he sets my skin on fire with those hands.
I think I’m in love with them.
For a few minutes, I give in, sketching his fingers, recalling their shape, their length, their feel.
The way he skims them over me.
How my skin sizzles and my heart trembles.
I draw and I draw and I draw.
I sit back in my chair, brush the loose strands of hair from my face, and study the sketch.
A man holding an orange and the words squeeze the day.
I smile. It’s 100 percent not workable for the menus at Sweetie Pies, but maybe I needed to get it out of my system.
And maybe I need to get this one out too.
I draw a quick sketch of a cartoon figure woman tossing a heart at a man and saying take it.
Yes, Jesse. You make me want to squeeze all the days, throw my heart at you, draw you all day long.
You’re a muse.
And that’s not what I need since you’re leaving.
And I have menus—freaking menus—to illustrate.
Sweetie Pies relies on me for my drawings, and I can’t let my parents down.
Must focus.
Focus.
I give myself a continuous mental pep talk, but it still takes me nearly two hours to finish the new illustrations for the fall menus and send them to the printer. I’m too distracted. Not only by Jesse’s many sketchable parts, but by the man himself, tromping around in my bedroom, pawing through my drawers, packing God only knows what for our trip.
