Chapter 24
Ruby
The boy has East's jaw. The girl has Darla's nose.
They're both so small that Nash's hands dwarf them completely, his tattooed fingers cradling a head smaller than his palm, and the sight of Nashville Sutton holding a newborn against his chest while a second one sleeps in the crook of his arm is doing permanent structural damage to my cardiovascular system.
"You're staring," he says.
"You're holding two babies and your face is doing the soft thing. I'm allowed to stare. This is a medical event. My ovaries are staging a revolt."
"Your ovaries are not staging a revolt."
"They are. They're holding meetings. Drafting a formal proposal. The proposal involves you, your arms, and the way you just adjusted that baby's head without looking." I press my hand to my chest. "I should leave this room before I say something I can't take back."
Darla is asleep with her hand still wrapped around East's fingers.
East hasn't moved from the chair beside her bed, his eyes red and swollen, his jaw clenched against whatever keeps threatening to surface on his face.
Sloane left an hour ago after checking vitals one final time.
Knox took Maggie and James home. Kyle is slumped in a waiting room chair with his mouth open, and Amelia is in the chair beside him, holding a magazine she hasn't turned a page of in twenty minutes.
Nash hands the boy to the nurse's waiting hands, the transfer slow, careful. Then the girl. His thumb brushes her cheek before he lets go, lingering on the soft skin for a beat. My chest does something I'm not going to examine in a hospital room.
"Let's give them some time," I say.
We walk down the hospital corridor, Nash's hand low at my hip, thumb hooked into the waistband of my jeans as if he has no intention of letting me drift too far.
Fluorescent lights buzz. My boots squeak on the tile.
The hallway smells like antiseptic and the vending machine coffee someone spilled near the elevator.
"Nash."
"Yeah."
"I need to tell you something."
"That sounds ominous."
"It's not ominous. It's embarrassing." I push through the exit door into the parking lot.
Warm night air hits my face. The sky is clear and wide above us; his bike is parked under a light at the far end.
"I need to confess the number of times I wanted to climb you while you stood at that wall at Amaranth. "
His hand tightens on my waistband. "How many?"
"Conservatively? Every single day."
"Every day."
"Every. Day. You'd stand there with your arms at your sides doing the perimeter thing and I'd be trying to tattoo a straight line while my brain ran a parallel program that was exclusively about your forearms." I glance at him.
"Do you know what your forearms do to me, Nash?
When you cross them? The way the tattoos shift when the muscles flex?
I almost put a line through a client's butterfly because you rolled up your sleeves. "
"You never said anything."
"Of course I never said anything. You were my security detail. You had the emotional availability of a cement wall. I wasn't about to announce that I was having graphic sexual fantasies about the man assigned to protect me while he scanned the street for threats."
"Graphic."
"Graphic. Vivid. Detailed. Multi-positional.
" We reach the bike and I turn to face him, leaning against the seat.
"I had one where you bent me over my tattoo chair after the shop closed.
One where you pinned me against the supply shelf and the bottles fell everywhere.
One where you pulled me into the back hallway during a client's lunch break and put your hand over my mouth so Frankie wouldn't hear. "
Nash's jaw locks. His eyes darken. His hand stays on my waistband, fingers pressing into the denim.
"And there was the one at Vesper."
His chest expands on the next breath and holds a beat too long before releasing.
"I don't even know what Vesper looks like inside," I say. "But I built the whole thing in my head. Dark rooms. Low lighting. You in a chair. Me on my knees." I hold his gaze. "I'm ready, Nash."
"Ready for what?"
"Vesper. The tour you promised. The real one." I trace the tattoo on his forearm with my finger, following the ink from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. "I want to see it. To see you in that space. I want to know what it feels like when you're not holding back."
He steps forward, his chest pressing against mine, pinning me against the bike. His hand slides from my waistband to my hip, fingers digging in.
"I'm never not holding back with you," he says. Low. The register that turns my thighs to liquid. "What I've shown you so far is the surface."
"Then show me the rest."
He kisses me hard, possessively, and his hand pulls my hip into him until there's no space left. I grip his cut with both fists. The parking lot, the lights, the bike against the backs of my thighs, all of it disappears. When he pulls back, my lips feel swollen. His breathing is rough.
"Tomorrow," he says. "I'll talk to Arden about the schedule."
"Tomorrow."
"But Ruby." He holds my face in both hands, tilting my chin up so I can't look anywhere except his eyes. "When we walk through those doors, the dynamic changes. What I do there isn't gentle."
"I don't want gentle. I want you."
His thumb traces my bottom lip. "Then you'll have me."
Amaranth opens at noon the next day. Frankie at the back station. Me at mine. Nash at his wall near the front, where he can see the door, the window, and the street beyond both.
He runs perimeter sweeps in the same methodical rotation I've watched for over a year.
But now when he crosses his arms and his forearms flex, I know exactly how those hands feel wrapped around my throat.
When his jaw clenches, I know the sound he makes when I grind against his cock.
When his eyes sweep past my station, I feel the gaze land on my skin like heat through glass.
My one o'clock is a guy named Ethan. Mid-twenties. Nice arms. He wants a half-sleeve extension on his right forearm, tribal work connecting to a piece someone else started. I consult, sketch, and position the transfer.
I check the mirror behind my station. Nash is still at his wall near the front, eyes on the street.
I lean closer to Ethan than the transfer requires and wrap my fingers around his forearm to position the paper. His skin is warm under my palm. I hold it. One second past the placement. Two seconds.
In the mirror, Nash's eyes leave the street.
Three seconds. My thumb presses against the inside of Ethan's wrist, adjusting the angle of the transfer.
The touch is professional, competent, and completely unnecessary.
My pulse kicks up. Not from Ethan. From the man in the mirror whose gaze just locked onto my hand like a scope finding its target.
His jaw clenches.
Heat blooms in my stomach. I hold for a fourth second, tracing the edge of the transfer with my fingertip, taking my time, because the jaw clench in the mirror is sending a current straight between my thighs and I'd like to see how far I can push before he breaks position.
His weight shifts forward. Half an inch. He catches himself, locks his stance, and the effort of the correction is visible in his shoulders.
I almost grin. Almost. I keep my face professional because Ethan is sitting right here and has no idea he's a pawn in a game between me and the man at the door, but my body knows.
My body is keeping score. My nipples are hard under my shirt, and there is a growing situation in my underwear that has nothing to do with tribal half-sleeves and everything to do with the way Nash's hands just flexed at his sides.
"That looks good," Ethan says.
"Just making sure the alignment is perfect." My hand stays on his arm. I can feel Nash watching without looking at the mirror. I can feel it on my skin, the weight of his attention, focused, sharp, possessive.
I let go. Start the machine. Work the outline with steady hands and a pulse running faster than the needle.
For two and a half hours I work clean lines into Ethan's forearm while the man at the wall watches me and I pretend I'm not soaking through my underwear from the memory of his jaw turning to stone.
Ethan leaves at two-thirty. I wipe the chair, cap my inks, and organize the bottles on the shelf.
Behind me, Nash's boots cross the floor.
Each step lands heavier than the last. I hear him close the distance, and I don't turn around because not turning around is part of it.
Because making him come to me is the game, and I'm learning that I love this game more than I've loved anything in a very long time.
"Ruby."
"Hmm?" I cap the cerulean and set it on the shelf. My hand is steady. The rest of me is vibrating.
"The arm hold."
"What arm hold?"
"You held his arm for four seconds past the transfer. Standard placement is two."
I turn. There are two feet between us. Sandalwood and leather fill in the space. "You timed it."
"I time everything."
"That's either dedication or an incredibly specific obsession." I tilt my chin up and watch his eyes track the movement. The tilt does something to him. I've cataloged it for months, and I'm only now understanding why. "Are you jealous, Sergeant-at-Arms?"
"I'm observant."
"Observant." I step closer, close enough to see his pulse beating in his neck. "And the jaw thing was just a facial exercise?"
"What jaw thing?"
"The thing where your entire face turned to stone because another man's forearm was in my professional vicinity.
" I take another step. His body heat seeps through my shirt, warming my chest and stomach.
"You know, for a man who can make me beg with one word, you have very strong opinions about where my hands go during business hours. "
His hand lifts toward my waist and stops midair, hovering.