Chapter Twenty-Four Ruby #2
“Fun,” he said quietly. When he looked up, I almost lost my breath at the intensity I saw there.
Clutching the sheet around his waist, he prowled off the bed and strode toward me, not stopping until he was towering over me.
Without the help of my heels, I had to tip my face up to look at him.
At this proximity, the clean, spicy scent of his skin had my head swimming, and I fought the urge to sway into his chest, press my nose against his sternum and just breathe.
“That wasn’t fun,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.
I blinked a few times, my throat going tight. “It wasn’t?”
His hand shot out and gripped the back of my neck, and the sheer possessiveness of it yanked the breath from my lungs.
He dipped his head down, speaking against my mouth.
“That was fucking phenomenal.” When he didn’t kiss me, I exhaled shakily.
Unmoving, he held there, his eyes locked on mine.
“Don’t think it’s always like that, baby. Because I promise you, it’s not.”
My chest felt like it was going to explode, and I struggled to pull in a full breath. There was no possible way he could know what those words did to me, how thoroughly they wrecked me. Hollowed out the space between my ribs until the beat of my heart echoed against absolutely nothing.
Somehow, I managed a nod, my nose brushing against his as a tear slid down my cheek.
Not kissing him felt like a crime, so I cradled his jaw and pushed up on the balls of my feet to seal my mouth over his in a possessive kiss that came from somewhere deep inside me, someplace secret I’d never tapped into before this man.
His hand tightened on the back of my neck, his jaw opening as he brushed his tongue over mine and let out a small, pleased grunt.
My arms tightened around his neck, and his arms banded around my waist to lift me up against his chest. I didn’t even dare stop to breathe, thankful for the way he shared oxygen with me during that endless, searing, world-altering kiss.
He broke his mouth away from mine, resting his forehead against my own before carefully setting me back down. Griffin licked his bottom lip while he stared at me.
“You’re right,” I told him. “It wasn’t fun. It was . . . it was perfect, Griffin. You were exactly what I needed.”
For the briefest moment, there was a breathless sort of heartbreak in his eyes. I set my hand on my stomach and stared down at the ground, unable to look him in the face for much longer.
No.
There was no shying away from this.
No shying away from him and how fucking hard this was.
When I looked up, he looked like Griffin again.
There was no lingering sadness, no unspoken thing, just a cocky curl to his delicious lips.
With his mussed, golden-brown hair and the endless expanse of skin on display, he looked like sin incarnate.
Temptation that I’d never move past. Never get over.
“Thank you,” I told him again, carefully setting my hand on his bare chest as I swallowed against a dry throat. “I don’t think you understand how much this meant to me.”
“Anything for you, birdy.” He curled his fingers around mine and squeezed.
Griffin’s smile softened into something more genuine, and my pheromone-drenched brain captured it like a photograph.
I wanted to frame it. Paint it. Put it somewhere as a permanent reminder that I was the one who made him smile like that.
After a thick beat of silence, he let go of my hand, and I cleared my throat. “Well, if I find myself watching football this fall, I know who to text if I have any questions.”
Griffin’s eyes bounced between mine. “I hope you do.” Then he held up a hand. “Oh, hang on.”
With a rueful grin that made my chest clench, Griffin quickly reached down to grab his boxer briefs and tugged them up his legs, then tossed the sheet aside before he jogged around to the other side of the room.
For the record, I did not stare at his ass when this was happening.
Not really. When I dragged my eyes up from .
. . certain areas, I felt my stomach flutter.
There, on the large solid-wood dresser, was a small stack of books.
He stared down at them in his hands for a second, his back expanding on a deep breath before he walked toward me again. His crooked smile was almost my undoing as he extended the library books in my direction.
“Read them all,” he said proudly. “Does this mean I’m smart like you now?”
I exhaled quietly, too small to be considered a laugh. “Which was your favorite?”
The thick line of Griffin’s throat worked on a swallow, his eyes intent on mine. “The one you recommended. The World War Two book.”
My lips tilted in a pleased smile. “Really?”
He nodded. “Really. The legacy we leave behind is important.” His brow furrowed slightly. “You left one hell of a stamp on me, birdy. I hope you know that.”
“You did too,” I whispered.
For a moment, I worried that my body would reject my brain’s command to leave. Simply refuse. I worried that the chemicals still coursing through my blood would protest anything except crawling back into bed with him and letting the day pass without any thought of the repercussions.
We still have things to learn! those chemicals screamed. We haven’t felt sweet and slow. We haven’t experienced what his skin is like in the shower. Or how it feels to be on top of him.
We should have started sooner, I thought with a quick spike of my pulse. If we’d started right away, we would have had two weeks to enjoy each other’s company.
That was the thing, though, wasn’t it? It would be so easy to create a list a mile long of all the ways I still wanted Griffin. It would never end. Not unless I was the one to end it before anything soured. Or worse.
With one last smile in his direction, my feet moved.
So did my legs. And with the distinct knowledge that I’d lied deeply to myself to believe that I could get through this unscathed, I walked out of the room, then out of the house and into my car, with a numb sort of disconnect I’d never felt before.
Not even after my surgery, when my whole body felt like it belonged to someone else.
With that thought, in the safety of my quiet car, I sank my head into my hands and cried.