Chapter 3
Ruby
“YOU’RE WELCOME.”
I lifted my eyes to the brown-eyed, smirking six-foot-something of maddening self-control and, apparently, unexpected timing.
In a navy blue T-shirt, jeans that fit just right, the cool and calm engineer he was now looked wholly unbothered, like he hadn’t just stepped off a flight from Houston.
And just like that, my pulse spiked.
I’d been expecting—no, bracing—for the usual Sebastian tomorrow. The one who always came into my space like gravity itself had pulled him there. Who kissed first, spoke second, and made me forget all the reasons I didn’t want anything beyond our arrangement.
But this version of him was now scanning the inn like he was already calculating loads, angles, and stress fractures, or other engineering gibberish I’d heard him speak of over the years.
No grab, no kiss. Just a quiet assessment and a nod toward the corner of the roof, like he’d just X-rayed the problem.
And dammit, somehow that did something to me even more than usual.
“It doesn’t look good.” He shook his head, then looked at me. “How are you?”
“Not great.” I looked away. “This place survived forty years of salty air and foggy nights, but one freak storm and a clogged gutter, and the roof decided it was done holding up its end of the deal.”
I waved to Sandra, who peeked out the front door of the main house. “I have to decide how to handle this. Do I close entirely for the Fall season? Do I let my staff go?” Tears stung the corners of my eyes. I wasn’t a crier; the only thing that could drive me to tears was this place closing down.
“I’ll help.”
I brought my gaze back to him. The afternoon sun was hiding behind a cloud, and I didn’t have to squint. “It’s not a space shuttle. It’s a building. Buildings. Plural, because two family-size cabins need pretty extensive work, too.” I sighed.
“I can do the calculations for any 3D structure. I’ll just make sure gravity is a given in this case.”
“That’s the NASA equivalent of dad jokes, right?” His dry humor usually made me laugh, but I was beyond humoring now. “I don’t have the U.S. government funds to invest here, unlike the space program.”
“I can help with crunching the numbers for that, too.”
“And when exactly are you planning to do all that?” Sebastian usually only stayed a day or two. That was the point of us.
“I need to take a thorough tour of everything, assess the damage, and estimate the needed work myself,” he said, ignoring my question. “How many contractors did you get to look at it?”
“Three, technically. The first bailed five minutes in—said he doesn’t work well with owners breathing down his neck. Translation: he couldn’t handle my big mouth.”
I was used to people leaving because of my big mouth. Even my own dad.
“He clearly didn’t know what a privilege your mouth is,” Sebastian said.
He said it dryly, but our gazes locked with a knowing look. Because we both knew exactly what our mouths could do to each other—and mine was seconds from forgetting we were supposed to be talking about contractors, not how fast I could fall apart on his tongue or vice versa.
I shifted my weight from one leg to another, as if a simple movement could shake off the heat pooling between us. “Another came in the morning and said he’ll bring an engineer tomorrow. That gave me a pretty clear indication that it’s not a simple project.”
“Let’s go to your house and talk it through.”
By now, I didn’t even have to ask myself why I was feeling a pulsation between my legs when he said go to your house. This man worked at NASA, but he knew how to make me see stars in my own bed.
WE WALKED INTO MY COTTAGE like we’d done a hundred times—which we had. But never quite like this. Not with a house falling apart and my life riding on someone else’s calculations.
Sebastian took a look around, his gaze doing that quiet sweep it always did, like he was mentally blueprinting the place.
I took my jacket off and let it drop on a kitchen chair. I then grabbed the planner from the counter. My inn's bible, filled with marketing scribbles, Post-Its, guest listings, staff rotations, and holiday booking plans.
“I thought if I started after Labor Day weekend, I’d be done in time for Halloween, but now I’m not sure anymore.”
He motioned for me to hand it to him.
No one else saw this version of my bible. Reception had their clean guest bookings copy. This one was mine. And mine alone. Like the inn.
Sebastian flipped through it like it wasn’t messy at all. “Cabins seven and eight are blocked out?”
“Leaky roof corners,” I said. “But nothing as bad as the main building.”
He nodded like he was already formulating a plan. “If we stagger the repairs, you could stay open at half-capacity.”
There was no we here, not really. And yet, somehow, it lifted a corner of the weight off my chest.
I couldn’t allow that. I didn’t lean on anyone for better or worse. Because we or us came with a cost—strings attached, feelings everywhere, heart apocalypses.
“Guests don’t appreciate staying next to construction sites,” I said.
Sebastian set the planner down and looked at me. “Guests appreciate special deals. And you’ve already drafted a few ideas in there.”
“You think you know everything?” I countered.
He stepped in closer. I didn’t move back. “When it comes to you, I usually do.”
I didn’t want to smile, but I did anyway. “Not this time.” The familiar scent of his body, all warm, all clean cotton and travel and light aftershave, wrapped around me like it always did.
“I’ll do this with you,” he said. Not offering. Declaring.
My fingers hooked the collar of his T-shirt before I even thought about it. “You really think you can show up and say shit like that?”
His hand landed on my hip, strong fingers splaying and pulling me closer. “When it comes to you, I usually can.”
That was all it took.
I pulled, he stepped, and we crashed into each other like two magnets tired of pretending we didn’t know what we were. His mouth found mine, his taste finally filling me, his body caging me against the wall.
He didn’t fumble, didn’t hesitate. He unzipped, palmed, slid under fabrics like I was a riddle and he was solving me. In a way, he did. Because while he was touching me, everything faded—the world, my bank account, the leaks and crumbles, the million things that could go wrong.
He made it all quiet in my head while heat roared through my body.
And God, I needed that.
We’d done this before. Many times. But it still knocked the air out of me when he got like this—quiet and commanding, like my pleasure was his mission.
He had the topography of my body all mapped out, and he knew exactly where to start.
He dragged my shirt up and over my head, and before it even hit the floor, his mouth was already on me. Hot lips, stubble, breath. He kissed his way down my collarbone like he had all the time in the world.
But I didn’t. I pulled off his shirt, letting my greedy hands and mouth claim what they wanted—warm skin, hard chest, muscled arms. I inhaled and kissed him like I needed this to breathe.
Then I reached for his jeans.
He let me, but only just, before grabbing my wrists and pinning them behind my back with one hand.
“Tell me you need this,” he rasped in my ear, his voice low, sending shockwaves racing through me.
“I need this.” It came out sharp and breathless. Because I did. God, I did. I needed the way only he could touch me. And maybe that was why he wanted to hear it.
He didn’t waste time. Dropped to his knees, shoved my panties aside—my jeans were already at my ankles—spread me with hands that knew exactly how to part thighs, how to angle hips, how to make me come apart with nothing but a firm grip and his mouth.
He didn’t tease. He didn’t test. He devoured.
Licked me like it was the only thing he flew across the country to do.
My fingers gripped the edge of the nearby counter as heat surged through me. I moaned his name, soft and low, but he didn’t stop, just doubled down, like he hadn’t heard it right the first time and needed me to say it again.
I wasn’t ready for how fast it hit. One more long, slow drag of his tongue, then two fingers sliding inside, curling just right, and my back arched off the wall.
“Fuck. Sebastian—”
His name ripped out of me aloud like a reflex. He groaned into me, like hearing it turned him on more than anything else, and he didn’t stop. Just sucked and licked like he was starving, and I was his goddamn meal.
I came hard, legs shaking, thighs clamping around his face.
He stood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and kissed me. Deep and messy, letting me taste myself on his tongue.
Then he turned me around.
“Hands on the counter,” he said, his voice like gravel.
I didn’t think. I just obeyed.
His jeans hit the floor, and the next thing I knew, he was behind me, inside me—thrusting deep, hitting that perfect spot, because he knew exactly where it was.
I let out a choked moan.
He fucked me hard. Fast. Each thrust made my elbows buckle against the countertop.
No sweet talk. No slow build. Because he knew exactly what I needed and when.
We didn’t speak. We didn’t have to. We both knew exactly what we were doing.
And we were very, very good at it.
Just skin, breath, my lower back against the hard wall of his abs, the slap of his hips against my ass, and that delicious stretch of being full of him. Over and over.
My second orgasm hit before I could catch my breath from the first. I gasped his name, and he wove his fingers into the back of my hair, pulling until my head tipped back to rest against his collarbone.
“Yes, come hard for me, Ruby. Fuck, you’re even tighter like that,” he rasped low into my ear and let me hear him coming with a groan that undid me even harder.
We stood there for a beat, still joined, breaths ragged, hearts pounding, his arms holding me.
Then he stepped back, tucked himself away, and handed me a tissue from a box on the counter like this was any other day.
Which it was. For us.
It was perfect just like that. And that was the problem.
Perfect things didn’t last forever.