Chapter 7 - Ruby #2
"Thank you," he says, and that's the second sentence that doesn't come easily for him today.
"Where?" I ask.
"There's a break room off the back hallway. I'll tell Miguel you're on your break."
He vanishes into the casino floor, and my brain immediately starts its own private war.
This is insane.
I stack empty glasses onto my tray and try to look like a functioning professional person who isn't currently having an internal breakdown.
What am I doing? I should have said no. Should have smiled politely, said *I'm working, Havoc,* and turned back to my tables.
Should have kept the fragile professional distance that is the only thing standing between me and a complete disaster.
But I said yes. Because apparently I have the self-preservation instincts of a moth at a bonfire.
He's back in less than two minutes, materializing at my elbow with the particular silence of someone who learned to move without being heard a long time before this casino existed.
"Miguel's covered," he says simply. "Come on."
I follow him through the casino floor, through the employee hallway, past the lockers, past the break room I used yesterday. He stops at a different door, further along, a room I haven't been in before. Opens it, guides me inside with a hand that almost touches my back but doesn't quite.
The room is small. A desk, a table with a coffee maker that's seen better years, two chairs, a window with a blind that's been broken halfway down for what looks like decades. Storage mostly, from the look of the boxes stacked along one wall.
Havoc comes in behind me, and then I hear the lock click.
I spin around. "Did you just lock the door?"
"Yeah." He pockets the key. "I need no one walking in on this conversation." He looks at me directly, and something in his expression is wound tight, like a man bracing for something difficult. "I can only say this once. If someone interrupts me, I won't be able to start again."
My heart is going double time. "You're scaring me."
"It's not bad," he says quickly. "I promise you it's not bad. The opposite."
I stare at him. "Then tell me. Please."
He moves closer.
And God, I forget every time, I forget the sheer size of him. He's not just tall, he's built like someone who was constructed for a different scale than ordinary life. He towers over me, this wall of dark tattoos and steel eyes, and my whole field of vision narrows down to just him.
"I barely slept," he starts, his voice low and rough, like it's coming from somewhere it doesn't usually come from. "I lay there for hours thinking about—" He stops. Jaw tight. Tries again. "About the kiss."
I don't say anything. Can't.
"And I knew I had to do something about it before I drove myself completely insane." He exhales hard. "So, this morning I went to Pope."
My eyes go wide. "You went to Pope."
"I told him about the motel. About the drunk. About the kiss." His gray eyes don't move from mine, steady and unflinching even when everything he's saying is clearly costing him. "I told him I wanted to pursue this. Whatever this is. Between us. I told him I wanted to see where it goes."
The room is very quiet.
I open my mouth. Close it again.
This isn't happening. This is not a thing that is actually happening to me, Ruby Lane, who is twenty-five years old and living in a motel on East Fremont and can't afford to replace her son's shoes yet.
This older, stunning, terrifying, complicated man did not go to his club president this morning to ask permission to pursue me.
Men like him don't want women like me.
That's not self-pity talking, that's just the pattern of my entire life laid out in front of me like evidence. Charming men who wanted something and left when they'd taken it. Indifferent men. Violent men. Men who made sure I understood exactly what they thought my body and my worth added up to.
Not men who went to their presidents at seven in the morning because they couldn't sleep after kissing me.
He steps closer again, and now there's barely a foot between us, and I have to tilt my chin up to maintain eye contact.
This close, I can see details that distance softens: the exact silver-gray of his eyes, the texture of the scar along his jaw, the thickness of his lips.
There's a tiny dot just below his right eye, barely visible, like a beauty mark that got lost on its way somewhere.
Without thinking, I reach up and touch it with my fingertip. Just barely. Just for a second.
He goes completely still.
I drop my hand. "Sorry. I don't know why I did that."
"It's fine," he says, and his voice has dropped another register.
"You were saying," I manage. "About pursuing."
"Yeah." He clears his throat. "This is nothing like me.
I don't do this. I don't ask for things.
I don't—" He makes a frustrated gesture with his bandaged hand.
"I have no idea how to do any of this, Ruby.
I want to be honest about that. But I want to try.
If you want to." His eyes are direct, serious.
"And if you don't, if this isn't something you want, that's fine.
I'll respect it. I won't make it weird at work. I won't push."
I look at him for a long moment.
"You're an idiot," I say.
He blinks. "What?"
"For running last night. You kissed me and then ran like the building was on fire, and I sat there like an idiot wondering what I'd done wrong." I cross my arms. "You're an idiot for that."
"Yeah," he says quietly. "I know. I'm sorry."
"And this is nothing like me either. I don't…
I don't do this. I don't trust people quickly.
I have extremely good reasons not to trust people quickly.
" I hold his gaze. "But I want to see where this goes too.
" I pause, making sure he hears this next part.
"But you need to know something. I'm a package deal.
I come with a five-year-old who has opinions about everything and takes up more space than is physically possible for someone his size.
If you want this, if you want me, you need to be a thousand percent sure.
Because if things go well, he'll know about you.
And I cannot have another man walk away from him.
I won't survive it and more importantly he won't. So, if you have any doubts—"
"I don't." No hesitation. Not even a breath of pause.
"Jake—"
"I don't have doubts about this," he says firmly. "I got overwhelmed last night. Being that open with someone—" He shakes his head slightly. "I don't do that. Ever. It scared the shit out of me and I ran, and that was wrong. But it wasn't doubt." His eyes hold mine. "I'm not going anywhere, Ruby."
Something in my chest, some tight, guarded, long-defended thing, loosens by a fraction.
"I believe you," I say. It surprises me that it's true.
We stand there for a moment in the small cluttered room, and I don't know what comes next, what the protocol is for this particular conversation in this particular situation, and I realize I'm about to ask him *so what do we do now* in the most awkward possible way.
But he doesn't give me the chance.
His eyes close, just briefly, like a man stepping off a ledge, and then he leans forward and kisses me.
Both hands move at once, one sliding to the small of my back, pulling me against him with a gentle but unmistakable certainty, the other cupping my face.
His hand is enormous against my cheek, his palm covering from my jaw to my temple, fingers curving into my hair, and it's so warm that I lean into it like a plant toward light.
Something I can't control. Something just biological and honest.
This kiss is nothing like last night's.
Last night was a question. This is an answer.
His mouth moves against mine slowly, thoroughly, like he's decided to do this properly and isn't in any particular hurry about it. He tastes like coffee, and he kisses me like he's been thinking about this exact moment all night.
I make a sound against his mouth. Can't help it.
His hand on my back presses me closer, and I go, my hands finding his chest, his shirt, his solid warmth.
We break apart and come back together, shifting, adjusting, learning each other's rhythm.
My back connects with the edge of the desk and neither of us stops moving until we're both breathless and have to part just to remember how air works.
I'm staring up at him, lips swollen, chest heaving.
I am completely, thoroughly soaked through my underwear. Have been since approximately the moment his hand touched my face.
I am also, apparently, staring directly at his pants, because my brain has made some executive decisions without consulting the rest of me.
The bulge pressing against his jeans is significant. Visibly, obviously, impressively significant. And it's not static. I can see it, thick and straining against the denim, pulsing slightly with his heartbeat.
I made that happen.
"Ruby." His voice is wrecked.
"You need help with that," I say, reaching for his belt.
His hand catches my wrist, not hard, just surprised. "What are you—"
"You're hard," I say simply, meeting his eyes. "I can see it. I want to help."
"Ruby, we're at your place of—"
"The door's locked," I remind him. "You made sure of that." I hold his gaze. "You're hard because of me. Aren't you…"
It's not really a question, but he answers anyway, his free hand dropping to grip himself through the denim.
"Fucking hard because of you," he says, low and rough. "Since last night. All goddamn night."
I bite my lower lip so hard I nearly break the skin.
He did that. He stood in front of me and admitted that without embarrassment, without making me feel like my body was something to tolerate rather than want. He gripped himself and said *because of you* like it was just the obvious truth and he saw no reason to dress it up.
I sink to my knees before I fully decide to, and something flickers across his face. Could be surprise, want, something that might be reverence if that isn't too dramatic a word for a break room in a casino.
"Ruby—"
"Let me." I look up at him from the floor, and whatever he sees in my face makes the argument die in his throat. "Let me make you feel good."
The smirk that crosses his lips is devastating. "No fucking way I'm stopping you."
He reaches down and takes his own belt off, the leather sliding free with a soft hiss, and drops it onto the desk behind me. I lean forward and press my lips to the outline of his cock through the denim.
He inhales sharply.
I do it again, slower, tracing the shape of him with my mouth, feeling him get harder and thicker with every pass. The fabric is warm, stretched to capacity, and I can feel him straining against it, and it's the most powerful I've felt in years.
I pop the button. Lower the zipper. Hook my fingers into both denim and briefs together and pull them down enough.
His cock springs free and nearly catches my chin, and I lean back just slightly, just enough to see it properly.
Oh!
He's thick. Genuinely, impressively thick, the kind of thick where I find myself doing involuntary mental geometry and coming up with optimistic conclusions. Long too, but it's the thickness that makes my mouth water.
For him I'll try everything. I decide that right now, on my knees on a break room floor.
I wrap my tongue around the head first, tasting the salt of him, feeling the velvet heat of his skin. He grips the edge of the desk behind me, knuckles going white.
"Your lips," he grits out. "Feel so fucking good around my cock."
I've always preferred action to words.
I slide my lips down, taking him deeper, working my jaw around his thickness, going as far as I can and then going further anyway because I refuse to be defeated by geometry.
He hits the back of my throat and I gag.
Saliva spilling from the corners of my mouth, eyes watering, but I don't stop.
I hold there for a moment, then pull back, then go again.
My hand finds his balls, cupping them, rolling them gently, and he makes a sound that rewires something fundamental in my brain. Low and broken and completely unguarded. This enormous, intimidating man is trembling. For me.
His legs shake against my hands as I work him, setting a rhythm—deep, then shallow, then deep again, using my tongue on the upstroke, my hand twisting slightly at the base because I can't fit enough of him in my mouth to cover everything, and I want to cover everything.
He doesn't grab my head, doesn't push, doesn't control the pace. He just grips the desk and takes what I give him and sounds absolutely wrecked by every second of it.
I look up at him from the floor. His head is tilted back, eyes half-closed, jaw tight, the scar on his cheek flushed. His chest heaves with every breath. He looks utterly undone.
It's a beautiful sight.