“Oh wow. You’ve been reading them?” It’s a stupid question seeing as he was sitting here doing just that only minutes ago but the question falls from my lips anyway.
“Yeah, I’m learning all sorts of things about her that I didn’t know.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“Like this.” My movement toward his desk is halted when he holds a piece of paper out for me, forcing me to walk toward his bed so I can take it and see what it is.
“What... oh,” I breathe, seeing a bank statement with quite an impressive figure at the bottom of it.
“Turns out I was wrong about a lot of things.”
“Oh?”
“Dad was sending money, a lot of it. Mom was just putting it away. We were going to move here after I graduated, apparently. Well, to Maddison. She wanted me to be close to my dad, get a fresh start.”
“Wow,” I breathe, not really sure what to say. “W-would you have let her uproot your life like that?” I ask, thinking of the life he had in Seattle, it might not have been ideal, but it was his life, nonetheless.
“I don’t know. I’ve wondered that a lot the past few days, but I don’t think I have the answer. Not that it really matters now. I’m here.”
“I guess. What are you going to do with this?” I ask, handing the paper back to him.
“Use it for college, I guess. It’s what she wanted for me, so I may as well see it through.”
“You want to go to college?” I sit down on the edge of his bed, now too invested in this conversation to worry about our proximity.
“Yeah, I guess. It was never really an option before, so I just dismissed it. But now... Dad’s right. This is a second chance. Going back and having to redo the year sucks but in the long run, it’s probably for the best. I know I didn’t have a future in Seattle. If I stuck with the boys, then I’d have ended up dragged farther into their world, or I’d have ended up dead.”
My fingers tighten in his sheets as he says those final words, a move he doesn’t miss.
His eyes lock on my hand for a second before it trails up my arm until he finds my eyes. I swallow nervously, waiting to see what he’s going to say next.
“So, I guess it’s just all about the future now.”
I nod. “And what do you want for it?”
“You.”
I gasp at his honesty, our eyes holding as my heart rate increases.
He reaches forward and places his hand on mine. “I meant what I said earlier, Ruby. I’ll wait as long as it takes for you to realize that I’m serious.”
I nod, unable to speak past the lump in my throat.
“So… chemistry,” he says with a laugh, immediately breaking the suffocating tension that’s filled the room with his confession. He drags his textbook over and flips it open to the page we were working on earlier and grabs a notebook.
“I was thinking...” I stare at him and it’s as if I’m seeing him for the first time with his head shoved in a book like a real student, not a boy who’s too consumed by his own anger to think about anything but the shitty hand life has dealt him. He doesn’t notice my attention and continues to talk about our assignment like he actually cares.
I realize that he probably does and all the bad boy anger and hatred at the world was just his way of coping with the shit that had been thrown at him.
Smiling at him, I crawl up the bed toward him and sit beside him, reaching for his free hand in the process.
He doesn’t say anything about my contact, his words barely falter but I hear the waver in his voice the second he feels my warmth.
Together we complete the assignment before moving on to others we were both given in our other classes.
“Let’s see your schedule then. I can warn you about the teachers.”
He digs it out and passes it over, but before I look at any of his teacher names, I look to see how many classes we actually share. My stomach clenches when I realize that it’s not just chemistry. Today, it seems, was a one-off because we’re going to be spending a lot of time together for the rest of the week. Maybe this truce really was the best thing to do.
“What?” he asks when I don’t say anything for a few seconds.
“N-nothing. We have a lot of classes together,” I admit.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, leaning over and tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “Looks like I might not graduate after all then.”
“W-why not?” I spin my head to him and find him staring back at me, his eyes full of heat and his bottom lip pulled into his mouth.
“Because I’ll spend more time studying you than what I should be.”
I can’t help but laugh at him despite the deadly serious expression on his face. “Cheesy much?”
“Don’t care. It’s true. You’re so beautiful, little one.”
My cheeks flame red hot at his compliment.
“Ash,” I warn, knowing that if he pushes too hard that I’ll end up throwing caution to the wind and diving in with both feet again.
“You know what I want, Ruby. I’m not going to hide it from you.”
“I-I know but...” I swallow down my nerves and drag my eyes from his hypnotizing ones.
“Don’t hide from me, little one.” His hot fingers find the edge of my jaw and he tips my face back so I have no choice but to look at him. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I think... I’m not ready for this.” I gesture between the two of us.
“I’m not asking you to marry me.” He chuckles and the sound makes all my muscles south of my stomach clench with desire.
“I-I know but... there’s so much I don’t know about you, and you’ve just moved here and—”
He reaches out and as if I weigh no more than a feather, he lifts me from my place beside him and plonks me on his lap so I’m sitting astride his thighs.
His hands slip under my hoodie, but they stop at my waist, holding me in place.
“Ruby,” he sighs, sitting forward until we’re chest to chest. “You’ve seen me at my very lowest, I’d be tempted to say that you know me better than anyone. You witnessed that, you embraced that, and you helped me put the pieces back together. You’re still fucking here. That tells me everything I need to know.”
“That—”
“Hey,” he says softly. “Look at me.”
I drag my eyes back, afraid that if he looks too hard, he might find everything I’m battling to keep down.
“I’m not asking you for anything other than for you to give me a chance.” His thumb caresses my stomach and despite the fabric of my pants in between us, my skin pricks with goose bumps. “Trust me when I tell you that I want you, and only you, Ruby.”
“Ash,” I sigh, feeling myself getting swept away with his words and the honesty in his eyes.
“We can start again. Start fresh. It seems to be my thing right now. I’ll take you out, treat you properly. You don’t even have to give it up again… yet.” He winks at me, although his joke is kinda ruined by the fact I can feel him hard against my thigh. “I don’t care how long you make me wait. I just want this. I just want you.”
His lips graze my jaw and my entire body shudders with pleasure.
“Oh God,” I whimper as he kisses toward my ear.
The heat of his hands, the gentle brush of his lips. They send me spiraling into a place I remember all too well.
“I missed you, little one. I hated it when you left. I’ve never been so alone. I hated that apartment without you. All I could think about was you.” His lips trail down my neck as he keeps talking, telling me all the things that I’ve been desperate to hear but never thought I would.
“You saved me, Ruby. And if you’ll let me, I’ll spend forever trying to pay you back for what you did that week.”
“Ash, I didn’t do it to receive—”
My words are cut off when he licks up the column of my neck.
“I know, but I want you to have everything you deserve. I sure as shit know that I’m not it, but I’m a sel
fish fuck who’s not going to let you go, Ruby.”
“You deserve everything.” My hands brush his arms until I thread my fingers into his hair and tug, successfully pulling his face from the crook of my neck. “Everything, Ash,” I repeat to ensure he heard me.
His eyes shutter as he takes in my words and his head shakes slightly, but I tighten my grip on his hair and stop him from refusing to accept my words.
“Fresh start, yeah?” I ask, bumping the tip of my nose against his.
This time, he nods. “Okay, yeah. Fresh start.”
Closing the space between us, I press my lips to his. We don’t move for the longest time, just holding on to each other, but after a while, my need for more gets too much and my lips part, my tongue seeking entry into his mouth.
“Ruby,” he groans, accepting my kiss and tangling his tongue with mine. “Fuck, I missed you.”
In seconds, my back is pressed against his bed, and he’s looming over me, staring down into my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, for all the bullshit, for all the pain.” The honesty in his voice, on his face, rips me wide open.
Reaching up, I cup his cheek with my palm, loving the roughness from his scruff against my skin. “It’s okay.”
“Fuck, I don’t deserve you.” He dives for my lips again, stretching his body out against mine and pinning us together so tight I have no choice but to feel his length pressing against my stomach. Heat pools in my core but I tell myself that no matter how good this is right now, we really are starting fresh, and that includes going all the way.
As desperate as I am to slide my hands under his shirt, to feel his burning skin, his hard muscles against my palms, I refrain. We’ve got all the time in the world for that, but we only get this chance to start over once and I want to do it right, take it slow, enjoy getting to know each other properly.
We kiss until we’re both breathless and when he pulls back, he only goes as far as resting his forehead against mine.
“Ash?” I ask, a thought slamming into me. “Those photos you said you had on your cell—”
“You want to see the photos I have of you?” he asks, amusement crinkling at the corners of his eyes.
“Uh...” I’m not sure how I feel about potentially looking at images of me from that night in whatever position I might have been in.
He rolls away from me for a beat to grab his cell from the nightstand. He opens his photo app and hands it over to me.
“Go on,” he encourages.
I scroll through his camera roll and in only a second I gasp in shock.
“Oh my God, you didn’t.” I keep scrolling, seeing image after image of myself. Only, they’re not what I was expecting at all. “Ashton, this is creepy.”
“Is it? I just thought you looked too beautiful not to capture it.”
I shake my head as I look at all the images of me sleeping in his bed in Seattle. There’s nothing dirty or seedy about the images. There’s not even any nudity, just my face illuminated by a stream of sunlight from the partly closed curtains.
I keep scrolling, knowing that Halloween was a long time ago now, but I don’t find anything. Just normal teenage boy drunken party pictures and a million memes.
“It was bullshit, Ruby. I don’t have anything from that night other than my memories.”
“Oh God, that might be almost as bad.” My face flames. “I can’t believe I let you do that to me that night.”
“That? You mean that you let me eat you until you were screaming my name?” He brushes his nose against mine, taking his cell from my hand and discarding it on the bed somewhere. “You don’t need to be embarrassed with me, little one. I’ve been all up in there since.”
“Ashton.” I slap his chest lightly.
“And...” He drops his lips to my ear. “I can promise you that I will be again too.”
My thighs rub together at the thought.
“What happened after... that happened. I don’t remember ever getting off the piano, let alone getting home.”
“What do you think happened?” he asks, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
I shrug. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking,” I say with a raised brow.
“Okay, so after you came all over my face and ruined me for every other woman on the planet, I covered you up, lifted you into my arms and carried you downstairs and out to Dad’s car that I’d... borrowed... and brought you home. I tucked you into bed, kissed you, and walked away knowing that my life was never going to be the same again.”
His honesty makes my heart hurt.
“Why didn’t you stay, the next morning we could have—”
“I knew how I felt, but there was no way I could have accepted it back then. My life was... a disaster. And I lived in Seattle, nothing would have worked, and I would have refused to have you in Seattle and around the people I hung out with for any length of time.”
“What do they do, the Kingston boys?” I ask, the question has been eating at me since Willow dodged the question the night of the funeral.
“Anything illegal that happens in Seattle, you can guarantee they had a hand in it somewhere. Those you met are just the kids. Their fathers. They run that city, and the boys just do their dirty work.”
“So drugs?”
“Yeah, and everything else you’re probably thinking of.”
“I can see why your mom wanted you to get out.”
“Trust me, I understand too.”
“So they just let you walk away?”
“I never got in deep enough to be a threat to them, and I’ve never given them a reason to worry about my loyalty. As long as I move on, keep my head down, they’ll never bother me again.”
“Were you actually friends with them?” I ask, thinking of his obvious distaste for Axel.
He laughs. “Yeah, there are some good guys in there.”
“And girls?” I ask, broaching the subject.
“Just one. And don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been talking to her.”
“Willow?”
“Yeah. I know all about your budding friendship.”
“I like her,” I admit. “And she cares about you.”
“She’s a good girl. We’ve had each other’s backs for a few years now.”
“I’m glad you had her, and the others.”
“Mm-hmm... and I’m glad I’ve got you.”
He tugs me so I’m right under his body. His hand skims up my thigh and once again disappears under my hoodie and stops at my waist.
“Thank you,” he whispers against my lips.
“You already said that,” I point out.
“Yeah, well... I mean it.”
35
Ashton
When I wake the next morning, I think it was a dream and the reality is that I’m in my bed alone, maybe with just my chemistry textbook for company, but then a light snore comes from beside me and my eyes fly open.
She really did spend the night in here with me.
I stare at her for a few long seconds. Her dark hair is in a mess around her face, her eyes are closed with her long lashes almost resting against her cheekbones, her full, red lips are parted slightly and she’s laying with her hand propped under her cheek.
Reaching for my cell, I open the camera and take a few pictures of her. Just like that morning in my bedroom back in Seattle, I can’t help myself. She’s too beautiful, too perfect I feel like I need to capture it in case this is all one big joke, that this isn’t my life and that she’s not real.
Knowing that I woke up early for a reason, I reluctantly climb from the bed without waking her and pull on my sweats that I lost at some point last night. I know that under my covers she’s dressed similar to me in just her underwear and it makes my morning wood ache for her.
But I made her a promise to start over and to take things slow—as slow as her sleeping in just her underwear in my bed, of course—and I intend on seeing it through.
She’s wo
rth it. Worth it and more.
I understand that I need to prove myself to her, and I’m more than willing to do so.
I slip from the room as quietly as I can and make my way downstairs. I grab an energy drink from the refrigerator before making my way down to Dad’s home gym.
The last thing I want to do while she’s almost naked in my bed is a workout, but I have a feeling that Jake isn’t going to go easy on my ass in the coming weeks as he tries to prove I’m not Rosewood Bears material, but I’m determined to prove him wrong.
I sync my cell to the wireless speaker and get to work. I let things slip after the season finished on a devastating loss for my old team, so I’ve got some work to do to get ready for tryouts and hopefully a new season.
I push until my skin is dripping in sweat and my muscles burn. It feels good, but still nowhere near as satisfying as being with my girl right now.
I slow the treadmill, kill the music, and head upstairs, knowing that I’ve still got a whole day and a Jake conditioning session after school to get through.
The house is still in silence as I climb the stairs and when I push through into my bedroom, I find Ruby still fast asleep in my bed, only she’s rolled over and the covers are nowhere near covering her hot little body. Her ass is out, her high-cut panties showing off the fullness before I run my eyes up to her slim waist, up to her peacefully sleeping face.
Reaching down, I palm my quickly swelling cock, but with a shake of my head, I walk toward my bathroom to wash the morning’s sweat off me.
I drop my sweats and boxers and step into the shower, allowing it to blast me with ice-cold water before it begins to warm up.
Tipping my face toward the torrent of water, I try to push thoughts of her from my mind and focus on other mundane things like classes and homework.
It would be so easy to reach down and give myself the release I crave, but I don’t want it to come from my hand. The next time I come, I want it to be with her... for her.
A tingle of awareness runs down my spine and my cock jerks. I don’t need to look over my shoulder to know that she’s just walked in and that she’s watching me.
“You planning on joining me, little one?”
FURY: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Rosewood High Book 6) Page 29
