“There’s nothing you can do, you’re right. But we are going to fix this. We’re going back downstairs now, and you’re going to dissolve a couple of those…” He tapped the pill bottle with his index finger. “…in my tea. Then I’m going to take a long drink, and you’re going to get the hell out of Dodge.”
Ruby actually laughed. She didn’t intend to, it just bubbled right up out of her. “That’s ridiculous, Jude! This isn’t a movie; that’s never gonna work in real life.” She stared at him, eyebrows up, lips curled and parted in disbelief.
Jude didn’t blink, didn’t smile, didn’t acknowledge her response. “That’s what you’re gonna do, Ruby.” A statement of fact. An order, not a suggestion.
“But…” She faltered, dropping her head. She sighed heavily. When she raised her eyes, there were tears shining in them. “Why are you doing this, Jude? Why are you taking this risk for me? I don’t understand. Why don’t you just turn around and walk away?”
“Remember high school, Ruby? Remember? I do. I remember like it was yesterday. I loved you. I was going to marry you. I didn’t just flip the switch when you left. I didn’t stop loving you. I couldn’t stop you from leaving, believe me…I would have done anything to make you stay. I would have gone with you, if you had asked me to.”
She shook her head but didn’t raise it. “I…I didn’t leave you, Jude. I left me.”
Jude bit back the question that had burned in his gut for the past decade. He couldn’t ask her why. Why she’d left him. Why she’d chosen someone like Jack instead. Why she couldn’t let him love her. Well, he couldn’t do anything about it then, but he was damned if he was going to roll over and give up twice. Maybe he should have followed her then. Who knows? But he knew what had to happen know. This time, he wasn’t getting left. He was pushing her away. She’d go, and this time, it would be his idea.
He lifted one hand and gently took the pill bottle back from her. Ruby didn’t resist.
“That’s my girl.” He rose up on his knees, was moving to stand, when she surprised him by leaning forward and pressing her lips to his. Her hands lighted on the sides of his face, and she opened her mouth against his, whispering, “I’m so, so sorry.”
He didn’t answer her. What could he say? He just moved forward again, this time taking her mouth. She responded immediately, opening her lips and meeting his tongue, her hands moving in his hair, her breath coming in quick gasps.
He put his right hand behind her, spreading his fingers, firm and warm, against her back, and rose up over her, lowering her to the bed. Her hands left his face and went to his belt, working at the buckle until the leather strap came loose. She had her fingers on the button of his jeans, had nearly undone it, when he stopped her, his hand coming over hers and clasping her fingers to still them. He kissed her again, pressing his lips hard against hers. He tasted her mouth, breathed in her breath, filled his lungs with her. He forced himself to forget…the past, the future, everything that wasn’t now. He couldn’t accept the futility of this embrace, the void of a future that couldn’t exist between them. She was already a ghost.
“Let me,” she whispered against his mouth. “Jude, please let me.”
“No,” he answered, making himself speak the word when every particle of his body screamed the opposite. He moved his hands to her breasts, feeling her hard, eager nipples. He slid down her body, taking her hands, entwining his fingers with hers, and placing them against the bed, on each side of her head. He sucked one swollen nipple into his mouth through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. She gasped when he closed his teeth around it.
He moved his lips to her other breast and freed one hand to slide down her slender thigh. He pressed outward on the inside of her knee, widening her legs, and slid his hand back up the length of her leg, roving over every inch of her. She released his other hand and took his head between her hands again. She drew him upward so her mouth could take his again. She kissed him deeper now.
He pulled back and she put her hands between their bodies, quickly unfastening her jeans and sliding them down her hips, pushing them away from her. He helped, pulling them from her feet and tossing them aside.
His hand found her panties and he slid his palm over her, slowly, with delicious pressure, feeling her wetness through the spiderweb silkiness of the fabric. His clever fingers pushed aside the lace and parted her, and she gasped into his mouth as his fingertips found her swollen, aching center.
“There it is…Ruby’s pearl,” Jude said, grinning against her lips. She smiled, her eyes brimming with tears, at this reference to a private joke shared by two teenagers, remembered now. Their backseat fumblings, their touching and tasting and trying to understand the forces that pulled them together in spite of her wandering heart. He had given her a pearl ring on the night of the prom. A promise ring. They’d satin the back of his truck, windows fogged with their breath, her dress up around her thighs. He’d been bare-chested and smiling. He’d reached into the front seat for his tuxedo jacket, then pulled the little velvet box from the pocket and snapped it open in his palm.
Ruby had gasped with pleasure…it was beautiful. He’d waggled his eyebrows roguishly and told her, “This is my pearl.” And then he’d slid his warm, callused hand slowly up her smooth thigh, all the way to her panties. And he’d cupped her in his hand, kissed her, and whispered through a grin, “I showed you mine. Will you show me yours?” And then he’d laid her, laughing, back on the seat, his jacket behind her head, and she’d spread her legs, pushing aside the foamy confection of crinolines, to let him find hers.
She tried again to unfasten his jeans. This time, he said, “Ruby, no. I don’t want this to be like that.”
Her face looked stricken for a second, confused, and he realized that she’d misunderstood. He dropped a kiss on her mouth, pausing against her lips. He spoke softly. “This isn’t about me. This isn’t even about us. I want this to be for you, Ruby. To help you remember—”
“But Jude, I do remember!” she interrupted. “I remember everything…I was so stupid, so selfish. I never should have lef—”
He cut her off. “Stop. I want you to remember why you need to be free. I think you forgot that there’s more to it than not getting beat. I want you to remember what being loved feels like.”
Then he moved down her body, going back to his knees, and slid her panties all the way down her legs, lifting her feet out and freeing them. He placed his large, warm hands on her hips and drew her toward him to the very edge of the bed. Leaning over her again, he kissed her mouth firmly, then her chin, her neck, the crest of each breast, lingering there. He lifted the bottom of her T-shirt and kissed her navel, then just below it. Then he kissed a burning trail down to where his fingers had been playing over her most sensitive flesh. For an agonizing moment, he was still. He pressed his mouth to her slick sweetness, branding her with his kiss.
Jude used his fingers to part her, then brushed his lips over her pussy, pausing for the briefest second to breathe her in, closing his eyes for a moment. Desire flooded his body on a wave of her scent. He found the pink pearl in the center of her, then touched the tip of his tongue to it, light as a whisper. Ruby sighed helplessly. Jude sensed her abandon and it excited him to cause this response in her. He drew his tongue over her, licking, tasting. Ruby moaned and moved one hand to the back of his head. She knotted her fingers in his hair, and tipped her hips up, opened her thighs more. Dipping his chin, Jude pushed his tongue into her and she groaned with pleasure, rocking her hips, urgent for release. She moved her hands over her body, over her belly, her breasts, lost in the magic his mouth was creating. Her fingers found her taut nipples, teasing, pinching them, and he groaned in appreciation.
He gripped her ass and lifted her off the bed, cradling her so he could go deeper, harder. He thrust his tongue in and out of her, and she fell into the rhythm unconsciously, rocking and moaning without realizing that she was doing either. She slid a hand through his hair, gripping with just enough fo
rce to make his scalp sting. Her other hand went to her sex, her fingertips wet with her own desire and the ministrations of his mouth. She spread herself for him, and he felt his cock stiffen painfully in response to the sight of her touching herself.
He wanted to take her. To push himself into her, over and over, to fuck her until they were both sweaty, shuddering wrecks. Intoxicated with her taste, her scent, he was transported. Memories crashed over him, a tidal wave of raw joy and wild hope. It seemed not a decade, a year, a single day had passed. He was right back between her legs, dizzy with passion and promise and whatever passed for adolescent love. Never once had he suspected it would fall apart. Being with her now, his mouth pressed to her sweet, silken flesh, he was that boy again, and she was his.
His groin throbbed, aching with desperate desire. He fought the urge to free his straining cock and slide into her. To find relief in the sweet sanctuary of her body. His entire world narrowed to this craving. Sweat dampened the hair at his temples, his hips flexing unconsciously, his appetite for her ravenous. His fingers fumbled with his zipper. Then, suddenly, he remembered…she wasn’t his to take. She’d chosen another man, and then chosen none at all. He didn’t want her surrender. He wanted to free her.
It took all his strength to deny the demands of his own body and see to her. Her body grew rigid, and he could feel the small muscles in her thighs begin to tremble. Her back arched and her grip on his hair tightened almost painfully. She rocked against his mouth in time in the rhythm of her pleasure. He continued to press his mouth to her intimate heat as wave after wave coursed through her.
When it subsided, she lay back and released him, weak in the aftermath of her climax.
“Jude,” she whispered.
“Beautiful Ruby,” he said softly.
She pulled herself up and kissed his mouth, tentatively at first, then more forcefully. He answered her with equal pressure, their kisses burdened with emotion.
“Jude.” In one word—his softly spoken name—he heard so many things. Entire conversations unsaid. Regret for the choices she’d made. The choice not only to leave, but to stay away, then to give herself to a man like Jack when he, Jude, had waited, loving her.
Jude hated the apology in her eyes. Her reckless self-absorption had hurt her much worse than it had hurt him. She didn’t need forgiveness from him; she needed it from herself.
He only wanted her to be free. Free from everything she thought she’d had to run from. Including himself. She’d chased some sort of wildness, only to trap herself. But how could he say such things without sounding recriminating? What he wanted to convey to her was too profound for speech. He couldn’t make it all fit into ordinary syllables, vowels, and consonants. So he didn’t say a word. He withdrew from her lips and touched her cheek with his index finger.
Jude bent low and kissed the inside of each of her thighs, and then he stood. He held out a hand to her. She took it and he helped her pull herself off the bed. She bent and grabbed her panties, stepped into them, and pulled them up. He stepped back and let her cross in front of him, walking to the door. He followed her, keeping his eyes on her straight shoulders and the flaming scarlet locks that hung down between them. He did not look again at the scars marring her pale skin.
In the kitchen, they sat at the table, not talking but not avoiding speech, either. He held her hand across the table. After a few moments, Jude dropped a few of the pills into his glass. They waited for the pills to dissolve.
“You won’t be able to pack much. It has to look like you ran out in a hurry,” Jude told Ruby, stirring the tea. “And you’ll have to tie me up, at least my hands. You can use these.” He unclipped the handcuffs from his belt and slid them across the table toward her. “Take my keys and drop them outside somewhere. Maybe put them in the mailbox, so they’ll get found.”
Ruby nodded. “I don’t want much from this place anyway. I’ll just throw a few things into a backpack,” she answered. “I’ll take the asshole’s bike, leave the car. The only thing I care about here is…” Her words fell off.
“Do you have someplace to go? Don’t tell me—in case they put me on a polygraph. I don’t want to know anything specific. Just…just tell me you have someplace safe to head to.” He lifted his glass of tea, swallowed, and settled his eyes on hers.
Ruby shrugged. “It doesn’t matter where I go. Anywhere is better than here.”
Jude wasn’t mollified. “I need to know you have a place. That you’re not just wandering around out there, looking for trouble.”
Ruby looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “Ouch.”
“Come on, Rube, you know what I mean. I wasn’t talking about the past. I’m talking about the future.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t make the same mistake twice, Jude. I’ve got friends to go to. Besides, I’m not afraid of anything the outside has to offer…here was the most dangerous place.” She reached for his hand, her green eyes glowing. “Thank you, Jude. I can’t thank you…enough…I will always be grateful to you.”
Jude took another sip of the tea, looked down at her hand on his. Then he took it and brought it to his lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t help sooner, Ruby.”
Ruby laughed. “Like I would have let you.”
Jude shook his head, conceding with a rueful smile. “Fair enough.”
Ruby’s hand left his and touched the side of his face for a moment. “I need you to know that I really mean it. Thank you. For this…” She gestured to the glass he was sipping from. “…but even more for upstairs. It’s…it’s been a long time since…” She faltered. She shouldn’t have tried to put it in words. It was all coming out wrong.
“Since someone treated you like you deserve?” he supplied.
“I don’t know about that, Jude. I don’t deserve a lot of good. But you made me feel human again. Like I might be okay, a real person and not just a fuckup who screwed everything up so royally. And now I’ve got to leave, and it just makes me hate myself more for leaving the first time.”
“Ruby—” Jude started, but she cut him off.
“I made some real shitty choices, Jude. I ruined everything. If not for you, then definitely for me. I believe in accounting for my lousy judgment, and I have. So I’m not looking for sympathy or even forgiveness. I did what I did, and I am who I am. I just wanted to believe that I have more than a pebble inside my chest for a heart.” She was looking at him with a steady, clear gaze. No tears. “You make me think that maybe I do.”
“You do.” He reached out and touched her chest with the backs of his fingers, trailing them for a moment on the bare skin revealed by the V in her neckline. “You have a heart, and it’s a beautiful one. Rare, beautiful, precious as a pearl. Don’t forget it, Rube.”
Ruby rose and bent over to kiss him. She pressed her lips to his forehead, his cheek, and, finally, his mouth. He kissed her back, his lips firm on hers. He whispered against her mouth, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Ruby.” And he felt, rather than saw, her smile.
END
~ About Arianna Archer ~
Arianna Archer lives in Las Vegas, NV. When she’s not writing, you can find her running trails, spending time with her loved ones, and reading her way through a hoard of books that is threatening to avalanche and bury her one day. She believes writing is a form of alchemy.
Arianna is currently at work on the sequel to The Alchemist.
Discover more about Arianna Archer here
Facebook: Arianna Archer
Twitter: @Arianna Archer
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.ariannaarcher.com
Coming Soon from Arianna Archer
The Alchemist
Red's Wolf
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Valentines Heat II
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Valentines Heat IV Page 10
