"No." Her arms tighten. Her legs wrap around my hips, locking at the ankle, and she pulls me in. "Don't. I want—" Her eyes find mine, direct and completely certain. "I want all of you. Inside me. Please."
I am not made of stone.
I've been accused of it. The brothers joke about it, enemies have assumed it, but Ruby Lane has just proven, definitively and permanently, that I am not made of stone at all.
I keep moving. Her legs hold me in place, her nails dig into my back, and when I come it hits me with the force of something long overdue: two shots, deep, buried inside her while she clenches around me and breathes my name against my neck.
*Jake.*
Not Havoc. Jake.
I hold her through it, both of us shaking, and the break room is silent except for our breathing and the distant hum of the casino that owns both our lives and has no idea what just changed inside one of its storage rooms.
I should move. Should start the process of returning to reality. Straightening clothes, unlocking doors, pretending to the rest of the world that nothing has shifted irrevocably in the last forty-five minutes. Ruby has tables to cover. I have a floor to watch.
I don't move.
"Hey," she says softly, against my neck.
"Hey."
"You okay?"
I think about the question seriously, which is not something I usually do when people ask it. Usually okay is automatic, reflexive, the word that ends conversations before they start.
"Yeah," I say, and mean it completely. "More than okay."
She pulls back just enough to look at my face, and whatever she finds there seems to satisfy her because the tension around her eyes eases.
She looks thoroughly wrecked. Hair completely escaped from its tie now, lips swollen, a flush spread across her chest that I'm personally responsible for, and she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
I reach up and push a curl back from her face.
She catches my hand, holds it against her cheek, and turns her face slightly to press her lips against my palm. Such a small gesture. Such a devastating one.
"So," she says, her voice still a little unsteady. "What happens now?"
"What do you want to happen?"
She considers this, her dark eyes thoughtful.
"I want to take Marcus to a park on my day off," she says. "He's been cooped up in that motel room for four days and he's going insane. I want to find us an apartment that doesn't smell like cigarettes. I want to take one nursing class at the community college before the semester ends." She pauses. "And I want to see you again. Outside of this building. If that's something you want too."
"It is," I say. "All of it."
"All of it?" Her eyebrows lift. "The park too?"
"Especially the park."
She stares at me. "You want to come to the park. With me and my five-year-old."
"Yeah."
"You know what five-year-olds are like, right?"
"No," I admit. "But I'd like to find out."
She laughs. Warm and unguarded, the first one I've heard from her that doesn't have any self-consciousness in it. I decide right then that I'm going to spend a considerable amount of time and effort making her laugh like that as frequently as possible.
