Chapter 26
Ruby
The private room at the end of the hall is exactly what I pictured and nothing like it at the same time. Warm lighting that's adjustable. A large bed with dark sheets. A leather chair in the corner. There's also a side table with bottles of water and towels. Clean, warm, intimate.
Nash closes the door behind us. The lock clicks. The room contracts to two people and a dress with nothing underneath it. Nash crosses to the leather chair and sits. Legs spread. Arms resting on the armrests. He looks at me standing by the door.
"Come here."
I walk to him. My heels click on the floor. Each step sends air against my bare thighs under the dress, a reminder of what I'm not wearing, and by the time I stop in front of him my pulse is hammering.
"Turn around."
I turn. He finds the zipper at my side, hidden in the seam, and pulls it down slow, the fabric loosening around my ribs, my waist. His fingers hook the straps off my shoulders, then the dress slides down my body and pools at my feet.
I'm standing in front of him in nothing but heels and red lipstick.
"Turn back around."
I do. His eyes take their time moving over my body, and the hunger in his face makes my thighs clench. He takes his time. My nipples harden under his gaze, my skin flushing from my chest to my throat.
He reaches behind him, pulls a cushion from the chair, and sets it on the floor between his boots. The gesture is small, deliberate, and my chest tightens. He's about to command me to my knees, and his first thought is making sure my knees don't hurt.
"Kneel," he says.
My knees hit the cushion before my brain processes the command. My body responds to his voice before my mind catches up. His boots are on either side of me. I look up at him, and his hand comes down, fingers threading into my hair, gripping.
"This is where it starts," he says. "You on your knees. Me in the chair. You want to understand the dynamic? This is the foundation. You trust me enough to kneel, and I earn that trust by taking care of you while you're down here."
"I'm very much enjoying the view from down here," I say. "Your thighs in these jeans should be classified. There should be a government agency—"
"Ruby."
"Shutting up."
"No. You don't shut up. You never shut up. That's not what this is about." He tilts my chin up. "I told you, silence isn't the goal. Surrender is. You can talk. You can push. But when I give you a command, you follow it. And the talking stops when I decide it stops."
"How do you decide?"
He unbuckles his belt. The sound of leather sliding through loops fills the quiet room. He unbuttons his jeans, pulls the zipper down, and frees his cock. Hard, thick, the head slick.
"Open your mouth," he says.
I do.
He grips the back of my head and guides me forward. The head of his cock slides past my lips, heavy on my tongue, and I taste salt and skin. My hand comes up to wrap around the base.
"Hands behind your back."
I put my hands behind my back, lacing my fingers together. My mouth is full. I'm kneeling with my hands behind me. The vulnerability is total, absolute. Instead of panic, there is a stillness settling into my body that I've never felt before.
"Good." His voice is rough. "Take me deeper."
I lean forward, taking more of him, my lips stretching around his shaft.
His hand tightens in my hair, guiding the depth, controlling the pace.
My jaw aches. My eyes water. I breathe through my nose and push further.
The sound he makes, low, guttural, from his chest, is worth every second of discomfort.
"That's it," he says. "That's my girl."
He sets the rhythm. Slow at first, his hand guiding my head forward and back, his cock sliding against my tongue with each stroke. I hollow my cheeks, suck harder, and his hips flex in the chair in an involuntary thrust that pushes him deeper. My throat opens around him and his head tips back.
"Fuck." The word comes out strangled. "Ruby."
I push further. Take him deeper. My nose brushes the skin at the base of his cock, and his hand fists in my hair, holding me there.
My throat constricts around him with my eyes streaming.
The control I'm giving him, the willingness to stay, to hold, to take whatever he gives me, makes my pussy clench so hard the wetness slides down my inner thigh.
He pulls me off. I gasp, spit connecting my lips to his cock, my chest heaving.
"Up," he says. "On the bed. Hands and knees."
I stand on shaking legs, cross to the bed, my heels clicking against the floor with each step.
I kick them off at the edge of the mattress and position myself on my hands and knees.
My back arches, my ass in the air, and I hear Nash behind me.
His boots on the floor. The creak of leather as he strips off the belt, then the rustle of the button-up sliding off his shoulders.
The thud of denim hitting the floor. Every sound sharpens the anticipation until my arms are trembling before he touches me.
His hand runs down my spine, from my neck to the curve of my lower back, slow, possessive.
Then lower. Over the swell of my ass, his palm warm, his fingers spreading.
He grips one cheek and squeezes, pulling me open, and the exposure in this position, in this room, in this place, makes my whole body flush.
"You're soaked," he says. His fingers trail through my folds from behind, sliding through the wetness. "You've been soaked since the supply closet."
"I've been soaked since I held Ethan's arm for four extra seconds and watched your jaw lock in the mirror. The supply closet just made it worse."
His thumb circles my clit from behind firmly, and my arms buckle. My forearms hit the mattress, my face pressing into the sheets, my ass higher in the air. He works me with his thumb, steady circles that build the pressure, while his other hand moves up my spine, pressing me flat, holding me down.
"Don't come," he says.
"You say that like it's easy. It's never easy. You're touching my—"
He slides two fingers inside my pussy, curling forward, and the sentence disappears into a moan.
His thumb stays on my clit. His fingers work inside me, finding the spot, pressing.
The orgasm starts building immediately because my body has been on the edge since the closet and four hours of anticipation has made every nerve raw.
"Nash, I can't—"
"You can."
"I've been edged ONCE today already. My body is a live wire. Asking me not to come is like asking a volcano not to—"
He withdraws his fingers. The denial sends a whimper out of me that I'll never admit to making.
"Volcanoes," he says. "You're comparing yourself to a volcano."
"I contain MAGMA, Nash."
His hand lands on my ass. A tap, sharp enough to sting, enough to send a shock through me that makes my pussy clench. My gasp echoes off the walls.
"Did you just SPANK me?"
"I corrected you."
"You SPANKED me."
"And your pussy just clenched. I felt it from here." His hand smooths over the spot, warm, soothing. "Do you want me to stop?"
The room goes quiet except for my ragged breaths. My ass is warm where his hand landed. My clit is throbbing, and my pussy is dripping.
"No," I whisper.
"No what?"
"No, I don't want you to stop."
He leans over my back, his chest against my spine, his mouth at my ear. "Tell me something."
"What?"
"Tell me what you feel right now."
"Turned on. Frustrated. Aching. Like my whole body is plugged into an electrical outlet and you keep flipping the switch on and off."
"What else?"
"Safe." The word surprises me. "I feel safe. Which doesn't make sense because I'm naked on my hands and knees in a sex club with your handprint on my ass. I should feel exposed and instead I feel—" My voice cracks. "You're holding the structure. I can feel it. And it makes everything else quiet."
His lips press against my shoulder blade. Tender. The contrast to everything he's been doing all night.
"That's the dynamic," he says against my skin. "That's what you've been looking for."
His hand returns between my legs, but this time his thumb doesn't go to my clit. It slides higher, over my perineum, pausing at the tight ring of muscle. He circles it, light, barely there, the pad of his thumb slick with my wetness.
My breath stops.
"Nash."
"Breathe."
"I've never—"
"I know. We're not going further than this tonight. Just pressure. Just sensation. Tell me to stop and I stop."
His thumb circles, slow, gentle, while his other hand slides between my legs and his fingers find my clit.
The dual sensation, the new pressure at an opening I've never explored and the familiar rhythm on my clit, creates something I don't have language for.
My body tenses, then slowly, slowly relaxes against the touch.
"Oh," I say. "Oh. That's... that's different."
"Good different or stop different?"
"Good. Really good. Confusingly good. Like my body just discovered a frequency I didn't know it had."
He adds more pressure, his thumb pressing against the tight ring, not entering, just pushing enough to create resistance, while his fingers speed up on my clit. The combination builds something in my pelvis that's wider, deeper than a regular orgasm, a pressure that radiates outward.
"Nash. Nash, that's—I'm going to—"
"Not yet."
"You are the WORST person alive."
He removes his thumb, shifts behind me, and I hear his zipper. Instead of his cock, I hear the drawer on the side table open. A click. A familiar low buzz.
"Nash. Is that—"
"The room comes equipped." His voice is dark. Amused. "Hands and knees, Ruby. Stay."
His hand returns to my pussy, fingers sliding through my folds, coating them in the wetness pooling between my thighs. Then the head of his cock presses against my entrance, thick, blunt, and he pushes inside me in one unhurried, devastating stroke.