“Hell no.”

I blinked. “No?”

His entire expression changed, and Aaron set the beer down on one of the side tables. “I haven’t liked you dating other people in months.” He spat the words out with so much disgust I couldn’t help but fall even more in love. “It’s making me mad right now just thinking about it, Ruby,” he said in that low voice. “I was jealous when I hadn’t seen you, when I didn’t know how much I like having you close by… when I hadn’t heard your voice….” He swallowed. “Even if you didn’t… look the way you do, I would’ve been here, feeling this way about you. Does that help you understand?”

He was feeling what kind of way?

My confusion must have still been apparent because those brown eyes bore into mine. “You’re my Ruby girl. And if we would’ve met and hadn’t kept hitting it off, then I’d feel differently, but I don’t. That’s not how it worked out between us.”

I shook my head slowly, watching his face, lost, still confused and a little overwhelmed.

“I’m not going anywhere. Today or tomorrow. We can do this at whatever pace you want. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re going to move forward, but we can do it when you want to,” he explained.

“Just to make sure I’m not misunderstanding you…”

He grinned and I smiled.

“Just to make sure,” I reiterated. “We’re talking about sex?”

Aaron tipped his head back and laughed before looking at me once more and cocking it to the side, grinning wide. “I was talking about holding hands, kissing you, sex, too, I guess.” He laughed again. “What am I going to do? Tell you no?”

I snorted. I couldn’t help but watch him, suddenly feeling in control for the first time in forever and not really sure what to do with it. “Do you want to have sex with me though?”

The tips of his fingers went up to press into the space between his eyebrows as he laughed and peeked at me from the side of his hand as he kept on cracking up.

“Why are you laughing at me? I want to make sure I understand,” I cried.

“I know you are, but it’s making me laugh when you call it sex.”

“Why? That’s what it is.”

“Damn it, Ruby,” he said, laughing again. “I thought we’d be having this conversation months from now.”

“Why?”

“Because!”

“Because what?” I asked him, too amused to be embarrassed. “Why are you being shy?”

Aaron blushed even as he grinned and shook his head. “Come here.”

I felt myself perk up. “Where?”

With both hands at about chest level, he motioned me toward him. “Here.”

I eyed him and blinked, and that only made him grin more.

“Come here and we can talk about sex.”

My entire body went hot and red. Definitely red. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if my eyeballs had bulged out of their sockets, and all I could do was laugh. “This sounds like the kind of moments my mom used to warn Jasmine about when she started having boyfriends, and she worried she’d end up pregnant.”

“She didn’t have those talks with you?”

I scowled at him and shook my head. “No. Not once. That actually makes me feel kind of crappy now that I think about it. She never had the sex talk with me. I’m twenty-four years old and I’m still waiting.”

Aaron laughed. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

I groaned, and that only made him laugh harder. “You’re awful. You’re doing this to me on purpose.”

He shook his head, grinning so wide that dimple of his could have been a star. “You know I am. I know, Ruby girl. I know you. This is on you, as long as you know I’m not going anywhere. I’m not giving you up. I was ready to go fight those guys you were dating if it would’ve gotten serious.”

Maybe it was wrong of me to flash him the biggest smile I was capable of, but I didn’t care.

He tipped his face down, his expression suddenly going serious. “This isn’t for this weekend. This isn’t for the rest of the month.” My expression must have been skeptical because he motioned me toward him again, his face solemn. “You don’t make a dress in a day, right?”

With a lump in my throat, I nodded. “Usually.”

“Your best ones take you hundreds of hours to make, don’t they?”

“Yes.” Where was he going with this?

“A business isn’t successful overnight. You don’t get promoted in a week. Everything takes time. Everything that is important and good and worthwhile, takes time. I’m not the kind of man who doesn’t know that. Just looking at you makes me happy. Listening to you makes me happy. So come over here if you want, but only if you want.”

He was killing me. Maybe he already had and this was some alternate dimension. Or heaven. I could see this being heaven if Aaron was saying what he was saying and all the arrows pointed at me. Maybe I was na?ve. Maybe I’d been incredibly stupid in my life in the past.

But I wasn’t going to be now.

So I got up and went to stand in front of him while my heart beat, beat, beat, frantic, frantic, frantic.