by Tessa Bailey
Her love for a man who’d neglected her, endangered her, then abandoned her.
“What…what did he want?” Ruby asked numbly.
Troy hesitated for a split second and she tensed, trying to move farther away. Visibly angry at him for even considering holding back. He gripped her arms and kept her still. “He wants to see you.” The words felt like they were strangling him. “He…it sounds like he has some sort of proposition.”
Tell her I’ve got an offer she’ll want to hear, specifically.
“Oh.”
Looking down at her shell-shocked expression, he wanted to rage at the unfairness of it. Since graduating from business school, Ruby had found an investor to get her custom pool cue business off the ground. It had taken off virtually overnight, her skill perfected by her own experience playing the game and connections she’d made with pool players over the years. After one of her designs was featured in a billiards magazine last month, an article he’d framed and hung in their bedroom, she’d been buried with requests for her unique custom designs. Troy was so damn proud of her, of everything she’d done despite the disadvantages of her upbringing. She’d finally come into her own. Now this news had swung in like a wrecking ball, threatening to dismantle it all.
Troy knew from experience he had to handle the situation very carefully. Knowing Ruby, her mind was already racing behind her stunned features. Weighing options. Making plans. Her first instinct would be to keep him out of whatever her father wanted her to do. Over my cold, lifeless body. His first obstacle would be her stubborn desire to keep him separated from her past. She was her past. It had shaped her, molded her, made her streetwise at too young of an age. Since he wanted every single part of her, keeping him out of it wouldn’t be happening.
His second obstacle would be making sure she didn’t get sucked back into her old life. While he knew Ruby was too smart to resume the illegal activities she’d worked so hard to leave behind, family could be a powerful thing. Ruby had always been too loyal for her own good.
Apprehension churned in his gut. Something in Jim Elliott’s confident swagger, his casual smirk, told Troy he had an ace up his sleeve. For now, he needed to push his dark fears aside and focus on Ruby. One hurdle at a time. It was how they approached every problem that came along with a cop and a hustler being in a committed relationship. Careful compromise.
He cupped her face, tipping it upward. Unfocused eyes looked right through him, until he brought their foreheads together. “Hey. Everything is going to be okay. We’re going to talk about this, but I need you to look at me. Actually look at me.” She blinked once, nodded. Slowly, awareness crept back over her features and Troy’s panic eased slightly. “I’m not going to try to talk you out of meeting with him.”
A dark eyebrow arched. He had her attention now. “Really.”
“Yes. We both know you’ve already decided, anyway.” Her gaze darted away and Troy bit back a sigh. “My only condition is you don’t shut me out. I go with you. You and I deal with whatever he says together.”
A battle waged inside Ruby. He could see it in every tense line of her body. She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. “No,” she choked out. “No, Troy. You have to let me handle this. He’s my father. Nothing he says will convince me to go back. You’ll have to trust me on that.”
He’d been expecting this, Troy reminded himself. No need to feel this pain over her trying to close him out. Her need to protect him, protect those she cared about, was simultaneously her greatest strength and weakness. He’d anticipated it. He’d lived through it once before. And his memory of almost losing her the first time remained too fresh. So he’d come prepared to play hardball. “You keep me involved, Ruby, or I get him put away.” He ignored the shocked betrayal radiating from her. “I trust you to make the right call, but I don’t trust him. I will find a way to keep you safe. How I accomplish that is up to you.”
She wanted to be mad at him, he could tell. But it wouldn’t stick. Not when he’d let his walls drop, let her glimpse the fear on his face. He hid nothing. It was the only way to get through to her. Let her see his determination to protect her. How much he loved her. Her rigid posture softened gradually as they stared hard at each other. A breath shuddered past her lips. “Dammit. This feels too familiar. We’re not back in that place already, are we?”
His grip on her arms tightened. “No. We are not back there. We’re here. We’re stronger.” He slid a hand through her hair, spoke against her temple. “We’ll be weaker apart. Don’t let him separate us.”
“Troy—”
He cut her off with his mouth. Perhaps it was wrong, but he was so close to gaining her acceptance that he used the last, and most powerful, weapon in his arsenal. It couldn’t be helped. He was desperate. For her promise and her body. Deepening the kiss until she moaned low in her throat, Troy braced his hands on either side of her head. He dipped his knees and dragged his wet body up against Ruby’s, tempting her back with the feel of his ready cock between her legs, sliding up her belly. He meshed them together, chest to thigh. We’re one, baby. We’re stronger together. When Troy curled his hands beneath her knees with the intention of levering her against the tile wall once more, she broke away.
Breathing heavily, lips swollen, she looked too goddamn beautiful for words. My woman. “Wait. I-I just want to say…I know it wasn’t easy for you, telling me this. To not try to talk me out of the meeting. Thank you.” Her mouth moved over his, robbing his clarity. “You’re right. This is nothing like last time. We’re better.” Hearing those words coming from Ruby felt like a balm to his soul. It comforted the insecurities he still harbored over keeping her. It must have shown, because her eyes softened. He leaned into her hand as she stroked the side of his face. “Were you feeling out of control today, Troy?”
Jaw clenched, he nodded, but didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. She’d nailed his issue squarely on the head. It was no secret between them that he craved control. Usually, he took it in the bedroom, but it often reached into other aspects of their life together. Something he’d been working on. It hadn’t been easy for him today, relinquishing the need to handle her problem without troubling her for one second with it. He’d managed to be completely open with her, knowing it was right. But he wouldn’t pretend that having her recognize and appreciate his difficult position didn’t fill him with male pride.
Nimble fingers played on his chest, stroked down over his abdomen. His breathing harshened, echoing through the shower. Her mouth followed the path her fingers made, licking at water droplets, until she dropped to her knees in front of him. From her kneeling position, she looked up at him with complete trust, mingled with need. “Take back your control, Troy.”
He groaned loudly, finally giving in to the urge to connect his fist to the wall. She knew what he needed, was giving him back his power. Fuck, he loved her. Tonight at Hildebrand’s, he’d struggled to balance himself. Meeting Ruby’s father, knowing instinctively his return could bruise their relationship, he’d played a game with Ruby. It had put him in the driver’s seat for a while longer. He should have known it wasn’t necessary. That she would see right through him.
She dragged her nails up his thighs, kissed his shuddering stomach, waiting for him to direct her. Her beauty never failed to mesmerize him, but her inner strength battered his heart. As always, her relinquishing that power shot straight to his head. Lust, already heady and thick, burned brighter until nothing existed but the two of them, surrounded by steam in their shower. The change spread through him. The transformation she’d taught him to welcome instead of dread. With a steady hand, he wrapped her thick black hair in his fist and tilted her face up.
“Mouth open. Eyes on me.”
Those beautiful red lips parted without hesitation. Only once did her gaze leave his, dropping to his heavy erection. Looking at it with a blatant hunger that sizzled through his nerve endings. When she groaned a little and shifted her hips as if impatient, his grip tightened in her hair until she gas
ped. Using his other hand, he guided himself to her mouth, but stopped an inch away.
“Tell me how bad you want it.”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Very badly.”
Dragging the head of his cock across her parted lips, the movement deliberately slow, he spoke in a deeper, more commanding voice than just moments before. “I told you to think about sucking me today while you worked. Did you do as I asked?”
She nodded, whimpering in pleasure when he slipped himself partially into her mouth, let her lips suction around him, then withdrew despite her sound of protest. Most men would find this anticipation torture, but he craved it like a drug. The longer he waited for release, the harder it rocked him. If it didn’t torture his woman in the process, he would stand there and tease her mouth for hours, denying himself. Denying her. It was another reason he’d initiated the game tonight, to delay gratification, build the need. Now, however, he couldn’t hold out. He’d been lost at sea today and pleasure wouldn’t wait much longer.
“When you thought about having me in your mouth, did you want to touch yourself?”
A hitch in her breath caused his eyes to narrow. Needing to hear her answer, he withdrew from her lips, pulse pounding loudly in his ears. So painfully aroused that his legs felt strong and unsteady at the same time. “Did you touch yourself, Ruby?”
“Yes. I was alone at the workshop…when I thought of you, I couldn’t stop. I had to.”
His erection grew more stiff and demanding with every whispered word, the need for release nearly bringing him to his knees. Images of Ruby touching herself swam in his head, each more erotic than the last. He knew from experience that when she brought herself to orgasm with her own hand, her eyes went blind and her entire body shook. Not nearly as fiercely as when she climaxed around his cock, but incredibly hot to witness and impossible to forget.
Dying for just one second of relief, reeling from her confession, Troy pushed himself past her swollen lips and sank deep, right to the point he knew she could take him. “How does that taste, baby?”
She hummed in her throat, her mouth working him in long strokes. When she took him deep, deeper into her throat than she ever had before, he groaned at the ceiling and pulled out. Any longer and he’d come. A pleasure he wouldn’t allow himself until he’d seen to her needs. Still, he allowed her to lick at the tip while he satisfied his curiosity.
“When you came today, what were you thinking about? Was I filling your mouth?”
She paused in her ministrations, appearing to choose her words. “Yes. In the beginning.”
His fascination grew. “What happened in the end?”
Her eyes locked with his, darkened. “It always ends with you inside me.”
“That’s fucking right,” he grated. “And in between?”
After a slight hesitation, she reached past him and returned holding the long-handled wooden back scrubber. Teeth sinking into her bottom lip, she ran a single finger down the smooth side of the object, then looked up at him, vulnerability and anticipation warring on her face. Troy’s stomach muscles tightened so swiftly, he groaned, nearly climaxing right then, she’d shocked and pleased him so thoroughly. He took the wooden scrubber from her hand. Based on her accelerated breathing, he knew his expression told her everything she needed to know. That she’d just sent him past the point of obsession.
“Turn around. Get on your knees and brace yourself against the wall with your hands.”
Visibly shaking, she did as he instructed. Troy took a long moment to savor the picture she made, her smooth back and gorgeous ass presented to him like a goddamn gift. He fisted his erection and squeezed, knowing when he finally got inside her, after giving her what she’d so boldly requested, he’d be frantic. As if he’d ever been anything but frantic to fuck Ruby. Every chance he got.
He traced the line of her back, the curve of her bottom with the smooth wood, letting it dip between her thighs for a moment. She moaned throatily, but he interrupted the beautiful sound with the wet slap of damp wood on equally wet flesh. He waited a beat for her reaction, to gauge the amount of strength he could put behind the strikes without taking away the pleasure and leaving only pain. She cried out and arched her back, her body begging for more. Troy gripped the wood tighter and brought it down again, harder, groaning at the pink outline it left behind. That he’d left behind.
“Daydreaming about punishment, hustler?” Slap. “Have I not spanked you enough lately?”
“You have…I-I just—”
“Do I need to start making regular trips to your workshop to spank and fuck you? If you want it raw three times a day, Ruby, just say the word. I’ll give it to you as often as you need it.”
“Yes. More. Even more.”
“Consider it done,” Troy growled.
He watched her fingers straighten and flex against the wall with each blow, her moans increasing in volume until he wasn’t so certain anymore about the neighbors not being able to hear them. Troy realized then that his own shouts of pleasure had joined hers. He could hardly stand due to the overwhelming necessity to be inside his woman.
Troy tossed the brush onto the bathroom floor and fell to his knees behind Ruby. She looked over her shoulder at him and his head rushed when he saw the blistering arousal on her face. Eyes half open, lips bruised from biting into them with her teeth, damp hair stuck to her neck and forehead. If he hadn’t already been on his knees, she would have put him there with that single look.
In one swift move, he seated himself inside her, savoring her scream. Gritting his teeth, he gave her a moment to adjust to him, something she still required whenever they made love in this position. The one that got him so damn deep. He loved it. Those few moments of forcing himself to wait for that first perfect thrust. Months ago, when they’d both gotten tested and Ruby had gone on the pill, that careful control had eluded him for weeks, but he’d finally regained it. Even if the experience of loving her without an albeit-thin barrier still rocked him to the core every single time.
One of her hands left the wall to dig her fingernails into the skin of his thigh, a silent plea for him to move. He knew neither of them would last long after the evening’s buildup, what they’d done, what she’d revealed. So he threw his head back and worked his hips in slow yet demanding circles, felt her start to close up on his cock.
“Good girl. Come for your man. Don’t make me wait.”
The backs of her thighs began to shake; her shoulders followed. Fuck, he was strung so tight after the events of the day, he couldn’t hold back. He brought his palm down on her ass with a loud smack and sent her over the edge. Troy followed almost immediately, driving into her a final time before drowning in the bliss of her. Feeling drained and fulfilled at the same time, Troy pulled her upright, back against his chest, and held her tight.
He kissed her neck, closing his eyes when she pressed closer. Drenched and kneeling in the shower, it felt as though they were two survivors of a storm. But deep down, he knew the storm was only beginning.
“I love you, Ruby. We’re going to be all right.”
He wouldn’t let it be any other way.
Chapter Three
Ruby pushed her goggles onto her forehead and turned off the wood lathe when Mya Hicks signaled her from across the workshop. She raised a questioning eyebrow at the woman who, in a short space of time, had gone from unexpected investor to friend, business partner, and coworker.
“I’m ordering lunch. You want?”
She pretended to consider a moment. “Chicken salad on wheat. Extra pickles. Diet Coke.”
“You read my mind.”
Ruby shook her head. They ordered the same thing for lunch every day. Asking had turned into a mere formality. She slipped her goggles back on and resumed her work on a cue that was due in Dallas by week’s end. The customer had requested a naked woman etched into the handle. Had even sent her a picture of his girlfriend to work with. Pool players were superstitious and often eccentric, so she’d grown
used to the odd requests. It wasn’t her place to question. With the amount of money she charged, they could ask her to carve a naked Santa Claus and she wouldn’t bat an eyelash. In fact, she’d done it just yesterday.
She glanced up from her work long enough to watch Mya hang up the phone and resume work at her desk, cataloging custom orders, filling out invoices, and ordering the supplies Ruby needed to create her designs. Not for the first time, she acknowledged how out of place Mya looked behind a desk completing paperwork. With a shock of pink running through her haphazard dark hair, and a tattoo sleeve twining up her right arm, she looked more like an artist. Or a biker. Basically, the furthest from a paper pusher that one could get. In her midforties, Mya had struck Ruby as a free spirit upon first glance. Although she looked young for her age and acted even younger, there was a knowledge in her eyes to which Ruby could relate. While Mya was certainly a beautiful woman, her looks didn’t seem to sit comfortably with her. As if she would shed them in a heartbeat if it were possible.
When her college professor came to her and claimed he knew an investor willing to take a chance on her fledgling business idea, she’d been naturally wary. The ink on her business school diploma hadn’t even dried. It had seemed too good to be true. When they’d been introduced, her curiosity had only grown. The word “investor” connoted a man with a briefcase. Not a rock star look-alike with a Korn beanie and ripped jeans. Yet they’d connected immediately. As they’d met and outlined their business model and strategy, Ruby had eventually stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mya was noticeably standoffish about her past, but then, so was Ruby. No one wanted to invest their money in an ex–pool hustler, right? And obviously, Mya had her own demons on her tail. So through an unspoken agreement, they left the past off the table.
Which meant there was no way in hell she’d tell Mya her father had returned. Or what that could mean. Thankfully, she’d had the foresight to put Mya’s name on the workshop lease, so no matter what resources he had at his disposal, he wouldn’t be able to track her down there.
