22. Samuel
After Ruby’s date at the country club, Mr. Barron”s phone protocols were going wild. I was busy analyzing them, reading through transcripts, and exchanging information with Max when Mrs. Moron out there pulled a jackass move on the stairs.
She owes me five dollars, I realize after I dropped her off at her room like a runaway retirement home resident.
It’s pretty late by now and a look at my phone shows Max messaged me he’s going to go to sleep.
He added something about being excited about a demolition course tomorrow and I don’t know why they send him on a course like that. He doesn’t need one, should probably give one. There’s a reason his call sign is Boom. No matter how dumb I think it sounds, it fits him.
He joined the military at the ripe age of eighteen because he wanted to, and I quote him, ”be allowed to blow things up”. He’s also good at keeping things from blowing up.
As much as this overexcited golden retriever turned human annoyed the shit out of me when he joined us, I’ve grown to like him.
He’s a bit like a little brother to me, the baby in our task force. One of our strongest assets, though. That’s what we all are, after all. Assets, human weapons, forced to work behind the curtain. We don’t get the shiny medals or the honorary ceremonies.
We don’t get invited to military balls either, but that one’s on us.
I decide to go to bed too. There’s enough work waiting for me tomorrow, and I can’t seem to focus right now. Seeing Ruby hurt startled me more than I expected. People actually die when falling down the stairs and, for a few seconds, the dreaded thought of losing her shot through my head.
She continued being a pain in the ass after five seconds, but the feeling lingers. Being attached to someone is bad, at least it is for me, for various reasons. But philosophizing about shit like this doesn’t get me anywhere, so instead, I toss and turn in my bed, trying to fall asleep.
I get a few hours of sleep in before I lurch to the home gym in the early hours of the morning. On the way, I clean up the remaining shards from the foot of the stairs.
I don’t want to risk Ruby walking down there, stepping on something, and then we have to repeat the whole stitching-up shit on her foot. And I know her feet are ticklish. I would probably really need to take her out cold for that to work.
As I come back from the gym, I walk past Ruby, who is busy in the kitchen.
“How’s your hand?” I ask as I get the protein powder from one of the top shelves.
She rolls her eyes, making a show while trying to cut a cucumber. I think back to a video of a dog Max showed me a few months ago. The dog limped, and when his owners brought him to the vet, it turned out that he was just being overdramatic. Just like Ruby right now.
“Do you need help?” I reluctantly ask her before I continue preparing my protein shake.
“No, thank you,” she says with a sigh.
I’ve watched people being stabbed who made less of a fuss.
Logan got shot twice on a mission and proceeded to nonchalantly tell us about it as we boarded the helo, only to lose consciousness right after. Not to mention the time he cut a part of his little finger off. Yes, he cut it off and yes, the doctors on base were able to attach it again. Still sent him to psych evaluation after though because they thought “We were just playing five finger fillet,” wasn’t an appropriate explanation.
With a shrug of my shoulders, I walk back up to my room. Ruby seems to be grumpy, and it’s not like I have nothing better to do than watch her prepare a plate full of snacks and doing whatever she plans on doing today.
Apparently, she has her own plans, because I can work the whole day in my room in peace. I’m so focused on analyzing translations of Mr. Barron”s various phone calls and trying to find connections that I don’t realize that the sun went down at least an hour ago.
A thud on my door disturbs my focus and for a second I’m worried that Ruby did a cannonball again. Hastily, I shove the documents on my desk together before I hear a second thud, apparently a more successful one this time.
The door springs open and I see Ruby standing in the doorway. Bags of chips and sweets are in her hands, a bottle of whiskey squeezed between her arm and her tits. She’s swaying on her feet as she tries to find her balance again.
Why open the door like a normal human being, or even worse, knock?
“Movie night?” She asks, but it sounds more like a statement.
Apart from that, I’m too focused on the way her nipples peek through the thin fabric of her shirt. Not that her pants are less distracting; if something as tiny as that can even be classified as pants.
“No,” I say. “And I told you to be careful with your hand.”
She walks into my room and in a sudden wave of panic, I get up to gently shove her out again. Ruby takes that as a sign that I changed my mind about her proposal.
“I’m picking out the movie,” I say as we walk down the stairs. Just to keep her from snooping around.
Quickly, I take the bottle of whiskey out of her hands, not really trusting her on the stairs, not with full hands. Especially not when I see that she’s wearing those fucking slippers again.
“Where are your grippy socks?”
“Told you I’m not wearing them,” she says as she walks over to the kitchen to fetch herself a bottle of water.
“Bond, again?” she asks with a groan as she lets herself fall onto the couch way too close to me, but I know better than to complain.
Unfortunately, I started to like the way her body feels against mine.
“Which one is it this time?”
She”s cuddled up against me, abusing my arm as her pillow.
“The Spy Who Loved Me,” I answer, grabbing her wrist to look at the bandage around her injured hand.
“How romantic.” She laughs, leaning toward the coffee table to reach for a package of sour gummies. “Why is there no spy that loves me?”
She giggles while every muscle inside of me tenses up. It’s not because Ruby doesn”t grasp the concept of personal space, or because she sneakily shoved a sour cherry gummy in my mouth.
Lying to her gets harder with every passing day, and even worse, she’s no longer the only one I’m lying to.
I twisted the truth a bit when I talked to Rockwell earlier today. I told him I need more time, that we have to secure our sources, and that we need more information to act responsibly. Maybe I even kept audio files of a few phone calls to myself.
I wish I knew why I’m doing this.
When I arrived here, I wanted to leave this house, and this entire mission, behind me as soon as possible. A part of me still wants to do exactly that, but the other part of me—the dumb, weak part—can’t let go of Ruby.
She makes me feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. Mostly aggression and despair, but also something else. Something that doesn’t let me sleep at night while I try to come up with a solution for the misery I got myself into.
We have barely made it through the opening sequence when Ruby squirms around next to me. I know she wants something. By now, I’m able to smell her mischief in the air before she even acts on her inappropriate thoughts.
As if on command, she bats her eyelashes at me, voice sickeningly sweet as she talks over Bond being chased down a ski slope.
“Sam?”
“What?” I groan while I pull my arm away from her, realizing I had it around her for the past few minutes.
“I’m thirsty.”
“I know, you’re not exactly subtle.”
“No, not like that,” she laughs, teeth catching on her lower lip and my body has an immediate response as soon as my eyes land on her plump lips. “I mean yes, like that too, but could you give me my water bottle, please?”
She nudges my foot with hers, probably to get me into gear.
“I’m injured,” she says with a fake miserable expression on her face.
Goddam brat, too lazy to fetch a bottle that’s within her arm”s reach.
I grab it, feeling her expectant gaze on my back. Something about her alters my brain chemistry, makes me fall for her wicked little games more and more. While I tried to avoid her traps in the beginning, I’m not actively taking part in this stupid, whatever the hell it is.
Looking back, I have been entertaining her shit since the day she made lasagna.
Slowly, I open the bottle, holding it out of her reach. I wouldn’t advise her to try taking it from me.
“Open your mouth,” I say in a low tone, wanting to see how good the little brat can follow orders tonight.
“Why?”
Apparently not that good.
“You said you were thirsty.”
“Yes, but—”
“Open your mouth or I’ll make you.”
Reluctantly, she opens her mouth for me while her eyes follow every movement of my hand. I lift the bottle up to her lips and slowly tilt it. Water runs into her mouth, slow at first. She’s trying hard to swallow as quickly as possible, and it works until I tilt the bottle so much that she can’t catch up.
She flinches as the ice-cold water runs down her chin. It soaks through her shirt, turning the white fabric see-through until it clings to her tits.
I have a feeling that her shirt isn’t the only thing that is soaked, judging by the way her nails dig into my thigh. It’s only when she stops pinching and starts slapping that I pull the bottle away.
“You’re wet,” I say while I screw the lid back onto the bottle.
Ruby glares at me. She’s terrible at acting offended, and I can see how she presses her thighs together.
“It suits you.”
“You like it when I’m wet for you?”
I’m completely responsible for the misery I cause myself, and I would be lying if I said I don’t enjoy it right now.
“I fucking love it,” I growl in her ear as I pull her down with me. Her back is pressed against my chest and something about the way she gets so soft and pliant underneath my touch drives me crazy.
She’s so touch-starved and no matter how much she tries to hide it, I can feel it in every one of her movements. In the way she presses herself against me, stealing small touches whenever she has the chance.
I wish I could say that she needs all of this more than I do, but the more time passes, the less sure I am about that. I want to touch her way too often.
It’s easier to justify it by fooling around. Makes it easier to tell myself that it’s nothing more than physical attraction between the two of us. Because I can’t bring myself to think about the other reason for wanting to have her around all the time.
My hand slips beneath her tiny pajama shorts and she gasps as if she just now realized that she’s not wearing any underwear.
“See, I was right. Always so wet for me,” I whisper against her neck as I let my fingers slide over her pussy, deliberately avoiding her clit for now.
“Fuck, Sa—” Her voice dies down in her throat, the words coming out as a barely audible whimper as I push a finger inside.
“Did I allow you to say my name?”
“Did I ever care if I was allowed to say something, Samuel?” She grinds her ass against my crotch, her moans going straight to my cock as I add a second finger.
“You’re a goddamn brat. Makes me wonder what it takes to get you to behave.” My teeth scratch over her neck slightly, and she arches her back to be closer to me. “Could tease you for days without letting you finish. Bet you’d get all nice and compliant when you’re a desperate, needy mess that doesn’t get to come.”
She moans, her pussy clenching as I circle her clit with my thumb.
“I know you love it,” she pants, chasing after my hand whenever I dare to stop touching her clit for a second.
“Absolutely not,” I groan as I bury my face in the nape of her neck.
She smells like cherries, roses, and sin. It”s the scent of my inevitable downfall, and still, I can’t get enough of her.
“Tell that to your dick, I can feel it twitching,” she laughs in between moans, and this once I’m thankful for her dumb comments.
That doesn’t mean she gets to mock me though, so I press my fingers deeper inside her, but the sound that leaves her makes me think she took it as a reward.
She mewls in protest as I pull my fingers out, right until the moment I yank her shorts down. I wish I could rip her clothes off of her all the time. She’d let me, I’m pretty sure about that.
My cock throbs in my boxers and even wrapping my hand around it feels like walking a dangerous line right now. I lazily stroke myself a few times before I smear my pre-cum all over the back of her thighs. My thighs, because I fucking own that perfect body.
“Lift your leg,” I command, but she’s not moving an inch.
“Twenty days,” she says as she tries to turn her head to look at me.
“What?”
“Took you twenty days to finally fuck me,” the little dipshit says with a grin on her plump lips.
My hand comes down on her ass, hard, and I’m concerningly happy about the big red handprint that appears a second later.
“Did you count the days? You’re an even bigger psychopath than I thought.” I grab her leg because I don’t have the patience to wait for her to follow my orders. “And I won’t fuck you.”
I lift her leg up and let my cock slide over her pussy, lingering right at her wet hole for a second longer than I should.
“Keep your legs together,” I growl as I let her leg down again and thrust my cock into the space between her thighs.
Her wetness coats my cock, and she feels so goddamn good that I don’t even dare to imagine how her cunt would feel.
One of my hands is on her hips while I let the other one wander upwards, cupping her tits, when I suddenly notice that Ruby seems to try to get the award for the brat of the century.
Sneakily, she tries to angle her hips in a way that would have my cock slipping right inside of her if I’m not careful enough. And being careful really isn’t the first thing on my mind right now.
My fingers dig into her soft skin as I grab her hips to keep her from moving while I thrust between her thighs.
“Don’t you dare,” I force out, my voice laced with more desperation than I’m proud of. “Please, behave, just this once.”
She whines something in response, but at least she stops moving, even tries not to arch her back too much as I bite down on her neck. Fuck, how much I want to leave bite marks all over this pretty body.
“You’re gonna be a good girl and come for me?” I slide my tongue over the sensitive skin of her neck and her breath hitches. “Without touching yourself, just from my cock rubbing over your needy pussy? Fuck, you’re such a desperate little slut.”
Her hole clenches around nothing as she comes, her nails digging into my arms, and it doesn’t take me long to join her. My thrusts get sloppier, all that wetness causing a squelching sound with every move and soon, my cum adds to the mess between her thighs.
For a few minutes, none of us wants to be the first to move. I watch the rise and fall of her chest while I count down the seconds I’ll allow myself to stay like that with her. But my time runs out, so I hoist her up and pull her shirt off of her to clean up the mess we both made.
“Did you have to take my shirt for that?” She pouts, rolling her eyes at me, and I really thought she’d be at least a bit more compliant after she just came.
“It was already wet,” I say with a shrug of my shoulders while I keep on cleaning her up.
Why I’m even doing that is another mystery, maybe just an attempt to restart the touching-Ruby-timer in my head.
She’s shivering slightly, even with her blanket over her and I could tell her to go upstairs and get a sweater if she’s cold but no, instead I’m pulling mine off and hand it to her like an idiot. I think I lost a few brain cells during my orgasm.
Great track record for one night.
“You think we can watch the rest of the movie in peace?” I ask while I watch her putting my sweater on. There’s a smile on her face, a genuinely happy one instead of the usual I’m about to fuck things up smile.
“Mhm,” she mumbles sleepily as she cuddles up in my lap. She grabs a few sour cherries before she wraps her hands around one of my arms. I catch myself stroking over her head with my free hand.
“Never expected you to be one to cuddle.”
Adding salt to the wound, little dipshit.
“I don’t. It’s an exception.”
Must be the fifth time I made an exception for her on this cursed couch.