Chapter 18
Nash
Her small hand is warm in mine. Her fingers curl around my palm and hold on. The contact after a week of nothing sends a current straight through my chest.
I lead her up the stairs. She follows without speaking, which is how I know she understands this is serious. Ruby fills silence the way other people breathe. When she goes quiet, the air changes.
The spare room at the end of the hall. James and Maggie's blankets are folded on the bed, neatly. Precise. I close the door behind us. Ruby stands in the middle of the room with her arms crossed, sleep-rumpled, the oversized T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, her hair tangled, and eyes wary.
"Sit," I say.
She sits on the edge of the bed. I stay standing. I need the distance to get through what I'm about to say.
"Naya." I watch her face. "She's not what you think she is. She's my contact for an investigation I've been running for the last two years."
Ruby's jaw tightens. Her arms stay crossed.
"Naya has a sister. Her name is Sera." I press my thumb into the headband on my wrist. "Sera disappeared three years ago. She was seventeen. She got pulled into a trafficking pipeline connected to Donovan Castiel and Alice Brighton. By the time I found the thread, she was gone."
Ruby's arms loosen. Her eyes move to the headband.
"This is Sera's." I hold up my wrist. "Naya gave it to me after Sera disappeared. I told her I'd find her sister. I wear it because the promise isn't finished."
The room is quiet. Ruby stares at the faded red fabric.
"Naya touches my arm because she's asking if there's news about her sister. I press the headband when I'm with Naya because being near her is the closest I get to Sera. The guilt of failing that girl sits in my chest every time I look at her sister's face."
Ruby's chin trembles once. She presses her lips together to stop it.
"You saw me with Naya and you thought she was mine." I crouch in front of her so my eyes are level with hers. "She's not. The headband is a promise to a missing girl. Naya is a sister looking for answers. That's all they are."
"Then why did you pull back?" Her voice is rough. "After the hallway. Why did you spend three days treating me like a perimeter if it wasn't because of her?"
"Because kissing you scared me more than anything I've faced in three years of this investigation.
" The words come out raw. "Because I have things I'm carrying that I can't put down yet, and crossing that line with you means letting you close enough to see all of it.
I pulled back because I was trying to protect you from the weight of what I'm holding. "
"I don't need protecting, Nash."
"I know."
"I knew you were close to her." Her voice is rough.
"I'd seen her name come up. I'd watched you go to those fights.
But I never thought anything of it, Nash.
I didn't. Then you kissed me and pulled back.
You told me you were going to Vesper, but went to the fight circuit instead. " Her eyes harden. "You lied to me."
The words land. She's right.
"I watched you through a window standing in a hallway with her, pressing that headband while you looked at her face.
And I thought, this is why. This is why he pulled back.
This is why he said not like this. Because there's someone else, and I was just the woman on the couch he lost control with for ten minutes. "
"Ruby—"
"I spent a week sitting three feet from you thinking I was a slip you corrected." Her eyes are bright. Her voice shakes. "Do you have any idea what that felt like?"
"Yes." I reach up and cup her jaw. Her skin is warm under my palm. "Because I spent the same week watching you pull away from me and thinking I deserved it."
"You lied about Vesper."
"I know."
"You looked me in the face and told me you were covering Arden's rotation, then you went to a fight circuit to see a woman you couldn't tell me about."
"I know."
"Don't do it again."
"I won't."
Her breath hitches. Her hand comes up and grips my wrist, fingers wrapping around the headband, holding on.
"You're an idiot," she whispers.
"Noted."
"A massive, stubborn, emotionally constipated idiot who could have told me this a week ago instead of standing at a wall like a decorative gargoyle while I ate my feelings in gas station candy."
"Also noted."
"I hate you."
"You don't."
Her eyes flash. The spark I've been missing for a week ignites behind her irises, and her chin lifts in the way I've memorized, the angle that means she's about to push.
"Make me take it back," she says.
I kiss her.
My hand slides from her jaw into her hair, fingers threading through the copper tangles, pulling her mouth to mine. She gasps against my lips. Her hands grab my shirt, fisting the fabric, dragging me closer until I'm over her, one knee on the mattress, her back pressing into the bed.
She bites my lower lip. I grip her hair tighter. She moans into my mouth, and the sound vibrates through my chest. My free hand finds her hip and pins it to the mattress.
"Stay there," I say against her mouth.
"Make me."
I press her down with one hand flat on her sternum, holding her against the mattress. She looks up at me, breathing hard, her lips swollen and eyes dark.
"You keep saying that," I say.
"Because it keeps working."
I lean down, brace my hands on either side of her thighs, and bring my face close to hers. Close enough that my breath moves her hair.
"Take off your shirt."
She pulls the oversized T-shirt over her head and drops it on the floor.
No bra. Her tits are small, perfect, her nipples already hard.
Freckles scatter across her chest, her shoulders, and the tops of her breasts.
Every one I've watched appear and disappear under her necklines. Now they're all mine.
She watches my face while I look at her, chin lifted, defiant, daring me to react.
I run my thumb across her nipple. Ruby shivers. I hook my fingers into the waistband of her leggings and pull them down her legs, over her bare feet. She lifts her hips to help.
No underwear.
She was downstairs. On a couch. In a room full of people. My people. With nothing under these leggings.
"Ruby."
"What?"
"You were sitting in that room all night with nothing on under these."
"I didn't exactly pack an overnight bag, Nash. Rider grabbed whatever was in my drawer."
My jaw locks. She sees it. Her mouth curves.
"Does that bother you?"
"We're going to talk about it later."
"That's a yes."
She's bare and flushed, her thighs pressed together, freckles trailing down her stomach. The sight of her on this bed, watching me with those green eyes, makes my hands shake.
I pull my shirt over my head. Her eyes drop to my chest, tracing the tattoos that wrap my ribs and climb my shoulders, then down to my abs, the cut of muscle at my hips. Her tongue wets her bottom lip. She reaches for me.
"Hands down."
Her eyes narrow. "Nash."
"Hands. Down."
She puts her hands on the mattress, fingers gripping the sheets, her jaw set in the way that tells me she's obeying and furious about it.
I kneel between her legs and part her thighs with my hands. She's wet, slick, her clit swollen, and the sight of her open for me punches through every wall I've built. I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh, and she jerks.
"Stay still."
"I can't stay still when you're—"
I drag my tongue through her folds, slow, flat, from entrance to clit, and the rest of her sentence disappears into a moan that she tries to muffle with her hand.
"Don't cover your mouth." I pull her hand away. "I want to hear you."
"Nash, I swear to god—"
I suck her clit between my lips and her back arches off the bed. Her hand flies to my hair, gripping hard, and I let her because some rules are meant to be broken when the sound she's making is that good.
I work her with my tongue, slow circles that tighten, cataloging what makes her hips roll, what makes her thighs clamp against my ears, what makes her voice climb until she's saying my name on every breath.
"Nash. Nash. Oh fuck, Nash, I'm going to—"
I stop. Pull back. Press a kiss to her inner thigh.
"What the FUCK?"
"Not yet."
She lifts her head off the pillow. Her face is flushed, and her hair is wild. Her eyes blazing with the specific fury of a woman who was ten seconds from coming and just had it taken away.
"Nashville Sutton, if you don't put your mouth back where it was—"
"Ask nicely."
"I will END you."
"That's not nicely."
She stares at me. Her chest heaves. Her thighs are trembling against my hands.
"Please," she says. The word comes out rough, stripped bare. Her eyes hold mine while she says it, her chest heaving, her fingers gripping the sheets.
I hold her gaze. "Please what?"
"Please make me come. Please, Nash. Please."
I lower my mouth back to her, but I don't give her the rhythm she was chasing. I start slow. Soft. My tongue traces the length of her, tasting her, and the taste of her settles into my bloodstream and stays. She's salt, heat, and something sweet underneath; I desire to live here.
Her hips lift, searching for pressure. I press them back down with my palm and keep the pace mine.
"Nash, please—"
My tongue flattens against her clit, holds there, letting her feel the warmth, the pressure. Her thighs tremble against my jaw. The flush on her chest spreads up her throat, pink bleeding into the freckles I traced with my eyes for months. Her skin is hot under my hands.
One finger slides inside her. Slow. She clenches around it, and the sound she makes is low. Broken. It's the sound of a woman who is done pretending she doesn't need this. My knuckle curls against the spot that made her back arch the first time. I press, and her whole body rolls toward my mouth.