Chapter 25
Ruby couldn’t settle. For some reason that dinner had wound her up, despite being the sort of person who might usually revel in the discomfort of people like Opal and her husband.
There was something about Martin’s indignation, the way his gaze had turned from admiring to disdainful in the instant that he felt on the back foot – it reminded her of a child.
He had lied with such brazen outrage, as though she were somehow beneath him – and making up tall tales for the fun of it. It was galling. And then on top of that, Johan had been off with her all day. Ever since the encounter with Opal in the corridor he had kept himself at a distance.
Avoiding her stolen glances and then choosing to sit with Opal instead of by Ruby’s side. She had been momentarily buoyed by how much her low-level flirting with Martin had elicited a reaction from Johan. But then as he mirrored that very same behaviour with Opal, her triumph had soured.
Now, lying in bed, and despite the large spliff she’d smoked out the window, she couldn’t sleep. If she was being honest with herself, she knew what she wanted. She just wished she didn’t have to concede in order to get it.
At around three o’clock in the morning she managed to convince herself that maybe it was actually the feminist thing to do to go to his room. So she did.
At his door, she wavered for a moment, and then steeled herself and tapped lightly on the wood. When Johan opened the door, he was shirtless, wearing only a pair of exceedingly white briefs. She was wearing a pair of plain black pants and a faded Bob Marley T-shirt. He smiled dozily.
‘Ruby, please do come in.’ Even caught off guard in the middle of the night, he remained stubbornly unflustered.
Ruby squeezed through the purposefully small gap he’d left between himself and the doorframe.
She sat on his bed and held his gaze as he shut the door and sat beside her.
He leant in, but she stopped him, her hand clasping his jaw mere inches from her face.
‘I don’t want you to think this means I like you,’ she purred.
He raised a single eyebrow, but didn’t remove her hand as he spoke. ‘Why are you here then?’
‘I’m here because you make me hot …’ she slipped her free hand down the front of her knickers and dipped a finger inside herself ‘… and wet.’
Johan groaned. She could see the white fabric growing taut at his crotch.
‘I think that after how you’ve treated me this evening, you don’t deserve to come until I tell you.
’ Ruby still held his face firmly, but this she whispered in his ear.
She felt powerful, and there was just something about Johan that made her want to put him in his place.
She pushed him back onto the bed, lifting his legs up so he was lying flat. ‘I never took you for the kinky type.’ He was trying to sound mocking, but it came out breathy and wanting. Ruby peeled her T-shirt off. She watched his pupils dilate as he fixed his gaze on her breasts.
‘Do I have to tie your hands up, or are you going to behave yourself?’ Despite what he might have thought, this was a new role for Ruby. When she was with Jude, these had been the sorts of things he would say to her. She figured if she’d found it arousing, why wouldn’t a man?
‘I’ll behave myself.’ Johan’s voice cracked as he spoke, and Ruby felt a thrill run through her. He put his hands behind his head. Ruby knelt over him and held his gaze and she lowered his boxers. Obviously his cock was perfect. She looked up to catch him smiling at it smugly.
‘What do you want me to do with you?’ she asked coyly.
He huffed, his impatience starting to get the better of him. ‘I don’t know, fuck me?’
‘You wish.’
Instead she parted his legs and sat between them, gently caressing the insides of his thighs with her fingertips. He closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply. Slowly she moved upwards, teasing at the base of his shaft. Now he began to moan.
‘Please.’ It was almost a whisper.
‘What was that?’ Ruby asked.
‘Please, please touch me.’
Ruby held out for another minute or so and then caved.
Truth be told, she was beginning to come up against the limits of her own unmet urges.
She stroked him, and couldn’t help but lick her lips as she felt him getting even harder in her palms. He threw his head back into the pillow, and for a split second Ruby was worried she’d taken him too far. She let go.
The sound that came from his mouth sounded bestial and pained. He looked up at her with something between carnal desire and liquid rage in his eyes. Before she knew it he’d flipped her onto her back and pulled her underwear down.
‘Two can play at this game,’ he murmured into the flesh of her stomach.
He took one of her nipples between his teeth and she whimpered, succumbing all too happily to her own pleasure.
His hands snaked downwards and she held her breath in anticipation of his touch; instead he repaid the favour, stroking her thighs softly as she squirmed with want.
‘Is this how you fucked Opal?’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Johan looked up from beneath the mound of her breast, bemused.
‘Is that what this is about?’
‘Well, she looked pretty ravaged when you two came wandering out of her bedroom earlier.’ Ruby was annoyed with herself for letting her intrusive thoughts ruin the moment.
‘I didn’t fuck her, and that’s not even her bedroom anymore. Famously the scumbag husband sleeps in there. She told you, we were looking at some art.’
‘Oh please, the whole jilted wife thing, it’s an act. You think it’s a coincidence that the majority of the people she’s invited are young, fit men, and a lesbian? She doesn’t want any competition for her hunting season.’
Ruby couldn’t be sure, but it sounded almost like he was wounded by that suggestion. ‘You want to conquer me to one-up her in this wacky power play thing you’ve got going on with her?’
Funny, Ruby thought, how she’d so quickly turned from the conquered to the conqueror; reading that poem in the Thamesis Tavern already felt like a lifetime ago.
She pulled herself up onto her elbows and looked Johan square in the face. ‘All I want, Johan, is for you to fuck me into full-body spasms.’ He looked hesitant.
‘It’s all I’ve been able to think about all day,’ she said quietly, guiding his hand between her legs.
When he started circling her clit, it was her turn to throw her head back. He grazed his teeth against her neck, his words muffled. ‘I’ll give you everything you want.’
She could feel the tightening in her belly, and the ache becoming more acute.
She knew she was close because she was finding it hard to pinpoint where each sensation was coming from.
There was the wetness of his tongue and the rhythm of his fingers, but also a panting growing faster, which she couldn’t distinguish properly from her own heartbeat.
She kept her eyes shut as she climbed. And then at the pinnacle before her release, he stopped.
The breath she’d been holding came gushing out in exasperation and, as her vision came back into focus, she could make out his devilish expression.
‘You’re really onto something there. That was fucking exhilarating.’ It was him kneeling over her as her body registered its own dissatisfaction. She was a bundle of live nerve endings, reabsorbing all that pent-up energy. It was a feeling akin to pain.
Without fully registering what she was doing, Ruby reached out for Johan and in one swift motion pulled herself back on top of him.
Her mind was a whirr and she felt overcome with longing.
She lowered herself onto him and felt for a second the calming bliss of submerging yourself beneath the ocean to escape the sun’s burning rays.
And then came the hunger, which she could see reflected back at her in his eyes.
He clawed at her hips as they crashed into his.
At some point she cried out, and he brought her face close to his, clamping his palm over her mouth in a way that only made her want to moan louder.
When she felt herself coalesce once more, she pinned his hands back behind his head, determined now and delighted by the intermittent flashes of fury and pleasure on his beautiful face.
He whimpered beneath her. ‘Don’t you dare come before me,’ she hissed as she brought up the tempo once again. The large mahogany headboard had begun to rattle against the wall and Ruby was thrilled by the idea of waking the whole house up.
She imagined Opal bursting in to find Ruby astride Johan’s taut, wanting frame, and bearing witness to his shuddering release. Opal would bring a hand to her mouth in a mixture of horror and perverse excitement …
It was with this thought that the building ache burst into a trembling satisfaction. Ruby collapsed onto Johan’s heaving chest and it took a moment for the beating of blood to quieten from her ears.
Johan rolled her onto her side, so that they were facing each other, their noses just a fraction from touching.
‘Sorry, I couldn’t hold on any longer.’ Johan spoke softly, and – to Ruby’s surprise – he sounded genuinely apologetic.
‘Well, it seems you really just hate being told what to do.’ She winked at him, hoping to crack through the shroud of sincerity that had descended over their naked bodies.
Johan didn’t respond; instead he held her gaze, as though searching for something in her eyes that her mouth was refusing to say.
Eventually he seemed to give up, turning onto his back to face the ceiling. Ruby did the same, wondering if there was something deeply wrong with her. This had happened before, the expectation of men that by baring her body, she was somehow also agreeing to bare her soul.