She looked up and he could see in the soft porch light that her face was swollen and blotchy. She shook her head and buried her face in the blanket.
“Here.” He handed her the roll of tissue.
She reached for it blindly and hoarded it under the blanket like a squirrel with an acorn. She still didn’t look up.
“Can I sit with you?”
Her head bobbed up and down, so Ruben eased in close to her, wrapping his arms around himself. It was freezing. “Do you want to tell me?”
He saw her stir in her cocoon and heard her blow her nose with gusto. She raised her head.
“Ruby, it’s coming back.” Her chin shook. “It was the dancing, I think. My body remembered who it was, what it did, and my mind started to follow. Do you understand what I mean?”
He leaned forward to encourage her to continue. “Sure I do. What did you remember?”
“It’s going to sound ridiculous.”
“No it won’t. I promise.”
“I didn’t kill anybody, Ruby. I didn’t do it.”
He gave her a tender smile. “I’ve always known that,” he whispered. “I knew it was impossible.”
She blinked at him. “But I was there, Ruby. I saw it.” Her face knotted up and she turned away. “I’m sick of crying. I swear it feels like all I do is cry!”
Big, fat tears rolled down her face and Ruben reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingers. “Tell me, please.”
She straightened up and took a jagged breath. “This is going to sound so strange, but I see it. And it’s real. You’ve got to believe me.”
“I do. Tell me.” Ruben watched how the faint light played on her hair.
“There was a man in a mask, like a party mask, that glittered with all different colors.”
Ruby frowned at her.
“See I told you it was…”
“Go on.” Ruben brought his palm to her cheek and she leaned into his hand and closed her eyes.
“I saw him.” Her eyes suddenly flew open and she moved his hand away. “It was someplace where the floor was covered in paint, speckles of paint everywhere. He used a sword with a red handle, like I said, and the blade was this exotic shape, wide and almost squared off at the end.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to be there, Ruby! I shouldn’t have been there when it happened!”
She started to sob.
Ruben found an edge of the blanket and tugged it free. He put his arm around her and pulled her close, then adjusted the blanket around them both.
He held her while she cried and cried. He had no idea what time it was, but the geese were now honking in response to the noise. They might wake up Gina, and that’s all he needed right now is another lecture.
“Tell me the rest,” he whispered. He found himself kissing the spun gold of her hair.
At first she spoke muffled words into his chest, afraid to look at him. “I went to the dead man. I panicked. I tried to…” She looked up, terrified. “Ruby, I touched him! I tried to fix him, put him back together. I know it sounds so stupid but I wasn’t thinking straight.” She wiped her eyes. “And there was blood all over me, Ruby, all over my hands and my arms and all down the front of me!”
“Oh, shit.” He pulled her tight to him but she pushed away.
“Listen to me. That man with the sword. Ruby, that’s the man I told you about today, the one I feel is part of me—or was part of me.” She pressed her open hand against her heart. “He’s the killer.”
“Okay…”
“And I was running from him when I crashed. He’s coming for me, Ruby, he’s coming for me!”
Chapter 9
Tuesday, March 21
It was dawn when Zia woke in Ruben’s bed, in Ruben’s arms. How long had she cried? How long had she been asleep?
She slowly turned her head to look at him. She didn’t want to wake him. She watched him breathe quietly in sleep and she smiled at the way his thick lashes fluttered in a dream. Who was this man, she wondered? What did he really want from her?
Ruben’s mouth was splendidly sexy, full and strong. She’d only kissed him once, but it had been a long and thorough kiss, to say the least. And it had been enough to give her a taste of what Ruben knew about women.
He seemed to know an awful lot.
And after that kiss, when she’d needed to be by herself and then when she’d asked him to hold her, he’d given her nothing but patience and gentleness. She thought that said even more about him, about the kind of lover he would be. And it made her shiver.
She admired the clean bones of his cheek and jaw and the glossy black hair that lay against his temple. She gazed at his soft, golden brown throat. She raked her eyes over the capable shoulders of this cowboy-turned-reporter. She looked at his gentle but strong hands. She followed the line of his hip beneath the comforter.
Ruben would be a demanding lover, she knew. He would be a patient lover. He would know what to do.
She slipped away from him and slid to the end of the bed and onto the floor. She was shaking with need. She wanted Ruby. She wanted him badly. And this time she wanted it all, not just his warm touch, but his heat and his hard flesh and his demands.
Zia let her head fall back against the bed and tried to open her mind to the information she needed. Her name. Her life. Her heart. But she encountered nothing but confusion and need.
She suddenly knew what to do. She took off her clothes and pulled on the tights, then the leotard. She found a rubber band and tied up her hair in a messy lump. She sat on the floor and secured the pink satin straps of the pointe shoes around her ankles.
She looked at her cast with surprise and realized she’d learned to work around it. It was just a part of her now, like Ruby.
Zia quietly rooted through Ruby’s drawers for a sweatshirt, then padded out the front door and walked into the first light. Sandia Peak loomed in indigo against the pale pink sky and she took a deep breath of New Mexico wood smoke and dry desert air. The cottonwoods shimmered. Ruby’s little house began to glow with the promise of morning.
She pulled the old bench to the edge of the plaza and used its back as the barre. She warmed up slowly, feeling the muscle and sinew respond to her every request, rejoicing in the familiar demands she made.
Arm high, long line. Arm out, proper carriage. Plie, releve, tendu. Stretch. And again. Yet she still wanted him, and pictured him asleep in the bed she just abandoned. And again. She still wanted him. She smelled his clean skin and felt his warm palm spread against her back when they danced.
She began slowly, and let her body take her to where she could let everything go, set it free. Her body knew the way to soothe her, and she followed, and felt the sorrow, felt the power, felt the solitude.
She shed the sweatshirt and threw it beneath one of the pear trees. Her breath was deep and even. Arabesque. Glissade. Sissonne’. Grande Pirouette. Feel the strength. Feel the grace. Say the prayer.
Jete’ enbreloue’.
Ruben woke up to the emptiness. He immediately saw movement outside the window, and he stared.
Fouetté. Another fouetté. And another.
What was going on, Ruben wondered? It was beautiful to see—no amazingly beautiful! But it was desperate, frightening, and the tears were pouring down her face.
She was up on the toe, then whipped around by the momentum of her other leg as it sliced through the air, then down on the foot, then on the toe again, around and around in a kind of exquisite violence.
He ran down the hall and flung open the front door. She stopped, and stood with her hands on her knees, breathing hard, staring at him in the doorway.
“Oh, God, Ruby.”
Their eyes locked for just a moment, but Ruben looked away. He couldn’t do this another second. If he looked at her now he could not stop looking. If she came near him he could not stop himself.
She moved toward him, her chin held high, her breasts heaving with exertion and emotion.
“I don’t want to
stop this from happening,” she said simply. She took another step closer.
Ruben met her eyes then. “Then don’t stop it.”
“I don’t know –” she pressed her broken wrist against her heart and tried to speak through the tears. “I don’t know what I have in here to give you.”
“Whatever you have will be enough.”
Ruben looked at her standing in front of him, her eyes filled with fear and longing, the sweat rolling down her flushed face and neck, and Ruben knew he had never needed a woman the way needed her. He hadn’t even known such need was possible.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” he said.
They came together then, with the knowledge that there was no turning back. Ruben sheltered her in his arms.
“Come to our bed, Zia,” he said.
They walked hand-in-hand to the edge of Ruben’s unmade bed, and Zia turned toward him. She saw tenderness in his eyes, and desire.
She helped him pull off his shirt, and felt the warmth of him wherever her fingertips encountered skin. His hands went to her waist and guided her on to her back.
Ruben leaned over her, hovered for a moment, and placed a knee firmly between her legs. Her quick breath was from anticipation now, not exertion.
Zia let herself really see him. Ruben’s chest was full and smooth, dusted with dark hair, and his nipples were a deep mahogany. She spread her fingers over him and the contrast of her pale hand against the rich brown sent a tremor through her.
He was so different, she was sure of it. But different compared to what? To whom? To the man she remembered?
Ruben’s hair fell down around his face and he smiled at her. She searched his eyes for guidance. What would this man take? What he would give? His knee pressed firmly into her and she gasped. She was clearly about to find out.
“You’re beautiful,” he said
“I’m sweaty.”
“This is not a problem for me.”
Then Ruben dropped his lips to beneath her jaw, down her throat, stopping for teasing bites and slippery flicks of his tongue in the most tender of places, places she didn’t know she had.
He’s tasting me! A shiver went from the top of Zia’s scalp to where his knee thrust between her legs, and she moaned.
“Do you taste this good everywhere?”
She moaned again.
“Oh, so you liked that?”
Oh God. Yes she did. And suddenly his mouth was so close to hers, and Zia melted beneath him at the touch of his sumptuous, warm lips. Her mind raced, her blood pounded, and she realized this kiss was taking up exactly where the last one ended two days before–hot, electric, and so very hungry.
Then Ruben’s kiss went sweet and tender, then hard again, then he asked for her response. Zia knew this was a conversation without words, and she was willing to tell him everything–how she needed him, wanted him, craved him.
Ruben peeled down the thin straps of her leotard and she felt her breasts spring free, pushed up high by the stretchy fabric.
He pulled back to look at her.
“Oh, my God.” She felt his words hot on her skin.
Ruby’s mouth went to her nipples, and the searing wet heat of his lips sent a jolt deep into her belly. As he sucked and nipped, his hands skillfully worked the black spandex down her body.
“Oh, my God,” he mumbled again. His hands were on her belly, then hips, and he devoured her breasts until she reached for him, pulling him to her mouth one more.
She caught his lips with hers, and this time the kiss was deep, intense and serious, a slick, hot union that whispered of things to come.
Ruben’s mind was a roaring, rushing, and empty place, and the only truth he heard above the din was this: She feels so right… she feels so right…
He moved his lips to her puckered nipples again and admired how at the root they were puffy and lush, yet ended in the hard little buds now between his teeth. They were the color of the Sandias at sunset, he thought, the color of ripe, summer watermelon, and just as sweet.
Ruben’s fingers hooked inside the stretched rim of the leotard and dragged it, along with her tights, all the way to her ankles. He did it slowly and let his hands trail along the swell of her hips and the hard muscle of her legs. Then he fell to his knees and carefully untied the toe shoes, set them aside, and dropped everything to the floor.
He rose up slowly, allowing his eyes to take in everything she was, this time with her full knowledge and permission. It was a strong and lean body that still managed to scream female, the slight swell of her hips, her smooth belly, her breasts an ideal round handful. He was in the presence of a masterpiece, made all the more beautiful because it was her, Zia, the woman with the genuine smile, the sadness, and the true-blue eyes.
He looked in those eyes now and saw doubt.
“Do you want to stop?” He whispered his question, aware that at this point, stopping would be agony for him.
“No! I just want… I want you to like what you see.”
Ruben very nearly laughed, but he managed to smile at her instead.
“I’m in awe of what I see,” he whispered. “You are so lovely, Zia.”
He dropped to his hands and hovered over her, kissing her gently and melting as her hot hands went to his sides, his back, then to the button of his jeans. He supported his weight over her and felt her fingers flutter at the tender base of his stomach. He watched her unzip him, peel away the layers, and saw her hands catch him the instant he was free. He watched her eyes fly open in delight, then she raised her face to him.
“Ruby. You’re beaut—”
His lips were on hers so fast and so hard that she couldn’t finish the words.
Ruben tried to slow down—God how he tried—but he trembled with the effort required to be gentle. When she tugged on his jeans and cupped his butt, his brain screamed out the need for quick and rough satisfaction, but his heart wanted to savor every instant of contact with her, every square inch of her hot, silky skin. And the privilege of it all.
Zia came up for air and pulled his head down so she could whisper to him, but the words came out more desperately than she intended. “Ruby, please love me. I need to feel you love me.”
He let out a soft cry of yearning as he began to trail his lips and tongue down between her breasts, to where her ribs parted like butterfly wings, and down into the vulnerable plain of her belly. She remained still beneath him as he shifted his weight on his arms.
The blond wisps did nothing to hide the lush, swollen flesh that called to him, and Ruben placed his hands gently on the inside of her thighs, spreading her legs wide.
“Ruby…” she breathed his name as he his mouth offered her the most intimate of kisses. She quivered under his alternating rhythm of slow licks, quick nibbles and precise flicks of his tongue. She shook. She was crying.
“Zia?”
All was lost. She was going under. She could barely speak. “It just feels so good, Ruby.” She reached down to stroke his hair. “I feel alive. Don’t stop… oh God, I need to feel alive. I need to feel you.”
He didn’t stop, and instead began a new combination of pressures and rhythms that caused her to arch into him, beg for it, and Zia thought she would die when she felt him put his hands under her bottom and lift her up to his mouth, making a meal of her.
This was too much, she thought. It was pleasure so sharp that it was pain, pain that shot through her heart and blinded her to everything but the hard point of hot, slick pleasure. She gasped when his fingers entered her, strong and skilled, moving in agonizing harmony with his relentless kiss.
She heard her own choking sob of surprise and joy as the heat lashed through her, the blackness inside burst into white- hot light, and the loneliness crumbled beneath the wave of connection.
She was no longer alone.
Zia had to have him with her right that second, and she pulled his hair, pulled his arm, pulled him up to w
here she could extend her soft and willing body beneath him, and open her mouth to his.
Ruben hovered over her for a moment, gazing into her wide eyes, darkened with sex, and he kissed her lips swollen from his demands. When she opened her mouth to him he licked long and slow into her, giving her the knowledge of herself.
“This is who you are, Zia.”
She stared at him, shocked, and the tears streamed down her face.
“I know you now. This is you.” Ruben gathered her in his arms and she clung to him, hard.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. She could only feel him hard and hot against her and the wholly unfamiliar rush of need that slammed through her veins.
He rolled to his side and held onto her. She pressed into him. And after many minutes, Zia raised her head and pulled away, locking her eyes on his.
“I want you inside me,” she said.
She reached over and pressed his shoulders to the bed. Then she knelt next to him, seeing Ruben for the first time fully exposed, erect and hungry for her. She gasped.
“Hold on. I’ll be right there.”
Ruben chuckled. He was charmed by this innocent directness in her, and more than a little surprised by the raw need he felt. And it was need, in both of them, like a need for air. It was beyond desire. It was…incredible… and she was ripping off his jeans and straddling him.
Zia leaned her good hand upon his chest and looked into his eyes. “Inside me now,” she breathed, lowering herself onto him in a long, slow penetration that slid from the beginning and end of him to the beginning and end of her.
“Don’t move. Please.” Ruby clasped his hands on her thighs to hold her in place. “Give me a second.”
She smiled down at him, watching him lie so very still, trying to calm himself. This man was inside her, filling her, forcing her to make room for him, and her blood was roaring with the sensation of it. Did he know how completely he filled her? Did he know how big he felt inside of her, how much he was asking of her body?
“You are beautiful, too, Ruby,” she whispered, immediately hoping she didn’t sound foolish. She wished she could think of another word for the way he looked right then, all gleaming skin and muscle and dark heat, but it was the only word that fit. His eyes were closed, his strong face ruled by pleasure beneath her.
Collision Course: A Romantic Thriller Page 10
