The feel of his thick cock pressed against her sex, made her instantly hungry again. She spread her legs wider, lifted into him, craving the feel of him filling her.

“Open your eyes.” His voice was soft but demanding, and Rubi obeyed. But she hadn’t been prepared for the storm of emotions she found. Lust, yes, but so much more. Deep, burning affection. Acute awareness. Serious intention.

Only after she’d read those emotions did he push inside her, holding her gaze. His cock burrowed into her with a slow, deliberate slide until Wes pushed all the way home, the head of his cock nudging her deepest barrier. A guttural sound of satisfaction echoed deep in his chest. He hovered above her, pressed up on his hands. The muscles of his shoulders, chest and arms rolled and flexed. Pleasure tightened the skin across his cheekbones. His jaw muscle twitched with restraint.

Without pulling out, he clenched his ass and thrust deeper. He leaned in and kissed her, his tongue circling hers as his hips pulsed. Slow. Maddeningly slow. She couldn’t control any of the movement with the weight and pressure of his lower body securing hers in place. She could only taste him and squeeze the metal until it dug into her fingers and he drove her insane with pleasure.

This orgasm took her by surprise, swift and sharp. Her muscles clenched quick and hard. Her mind blanked behind a spray of hot sparks.

The intensity lingered and Rubi drank in every last fizzle of pleasure. When she finally opened her eyes, Wes was watching her, fire in his eyes, sweat gleaming on his skin and dampening the edges of his hair.

“Damn,” he whispered. “That is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Wes…” She drew out the word as the last sweeps of lingering pleasure fluttered down her legs and through her belly. “What are you…” she murmured between breaths, “…doing to me?”

He bent his elbows and lowered to kiss her in a push up. “Making love to you, baby. Way more intense than sex.” He gazed down the length of their bodies and exhaled heavily with a little shake of his head. “Never been this good. Never.”

No, it had never been this good for her either.

Was that the difference? Making love versus having sex?

“Will you ride me, baby?” He reached above her with one hand, released the bungee hooks and pulled her hands out. Then rubbed his fingers over a gentle sting she hadn’t noticed before and brought her hands to his lips for gentle kisses over her wrists. Ride me so I can watch your body move? Nothing turns me on more.”

She pressed a hand to his chest, easing him back while she sat forward. “I have to warn you,” she said, rolling with him so he stayed inside her until they’d switched positions, “I was a rodeo star in a former life.”

His laugh was low and appreciative. He gripped her hips and rocked her deeper. “Uh-uh.” She pulled his hands from her ass and pressed them over his head, curling his fingers around the headboard’s iron scrolls. “This is my show. Hold on, handsome.”

As she straightened, Rubi dragged her hands down his muscled arms, his damp chest, his ribbed belly. “You are one hunk of fine man, Mr. Lawson.”

Gripping his waist, she tossed her hair to one side and lowered her mouth to his chest, licking one flat, bronze nipple, then biting the other. He lifted his hips and pushing deeper. She used her knees to lift off him, letting him slide slowly along her wet walls. He ground his teeth, his hot gaze watching his length leave her body. She couldn’t remember ever seeing so much desire in a man’s eyes. Maybe she’d simply never paid that much attention, but Wes’s pleasure was all she could focus on now.

She shook her hair back, arched her spine, and lifted her hands, pulling her hair up and off her neck as she sank slowly back onto him.

“Yes.” He drew out the low, rugged word. “So gorgeous.” He lifted one hand from the bedframe and pressed it against her face in a sweet gesture somehow at odds with the intense sex. “Love you, Rubi. Love you so much.”

Heat washed Rubi’s chest—not exactly raw fear, but not anything she recognized as love either. But how would she recognize love when she didn’t know the first thing about it? Pushing the discomfort to the back of her mind, Rubi rocked her hips, pumping his cock in rhythmic, wet strokes, her body undulating hips to shoulders. Hips to shoulders. This she knew. This she understood. This she could give him.

He grabbed for the headboard again, head bowing back on a sound of raw need. His fingers flexed and clenched around the iron bars.

She leaned back, braced her hands on his thick thighs, continuing her ride. His head came up, gaze dropped to her pussy, to the sight of him gliding in, drawing out.

“Fuck, Rubi…” he rasped, his tone nearly painful. “Too much.”

His biceps rippled and his hips bucked, driving his cock deep. Rubi fell forward, catching herself on his chest. Wes took her face in his hands and held her there, staring into her eyes as his hips rocked, driving her higher and higher. He pulled her down until her mouth covered his and kissed her, mirroring the movement of his body.

“Come with me, Rubi.”

His hand slid down her body, curved around her ass, and held her tight as he plunged and plunged and plunged. He filled her. Stretched her. Drove her. In a way, she didn’t understand, he completed her. Rubi fell against his chest and held on tight as the orgasm ripped through her. As Wes continued to thrust, delivering extreme heights of pleasure. Their climaxes clashed, blended.

Wes called her name with such exquisite pleasure, Rubi’s chest tightened. Emotion, thick and warm and overwhelming, rushed in, swamping her.

She went limp, melting on top of him. He was sweaty, warm, slick and hard, his body a slab of heaving, hard muscle. His hands swept gently up and down her back, then rested at her hips.

“God damn, Wes.” She whispered the words against his chest, unable to catch her breath.

“Right?” he agreed, his heart beating hard beneath her. “We are so fucking good together.”

A small smile turned her mouth, all she could manage. The pleasure’s intensity ebbed into sinfully sweet decadence and flowed through Rubi’s veins like melted gold. “We sure are.”

Twenty-Seven

Rubi lay against a bevy of pillows, knees up, laptop against her knees. She was almost done with the fixes and upgrades to Wes’s father’s sensor program. Wes snoozed beside her, coming awake to answer questions, kiss her, touch her, then fall back to sleep. His hand now curved over the top of her foot, warm and sure. He created a calm inside her similar to the one that came over her near the ocean. Well, sometimes. Other times he created more of a turbulent storm sensation—some good storms, some not.

She was just writing the last section of code for a mini app she’d created to monitor the sensors when the front door opened downstairs, followed by footsteps and voices. Susie was home with the kids. Rubi’s blissful privacy with Wes was over, and disappointment closed in.

He rolled to his side, opened his eyes, and squeezed her foot. “Guess we have to face the world again.” He didn’t sound thrilled with the prospect either. “When we get back to LA, I want to take you away somewhere for the weekend. Just you and me for forty-eight, maybe even seventy-two hours straight.”

Rubi smiled and combed her hand through his hair. That soft, relaxed, comfortable look in his eyes seemed to reach inside her and squeeze, infusing her with happiness. And like a conduit, that happiness immediately brought fear. Completely irrational but very real. She had to find a way to break that circuit.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, is there something going on with Emma?” Rubi lowered her knees. “She’s a lot shyer than Abby.”

“She’s borderline autistic,” Wes said. “Or at least that’s the label they’ve given her so she can get special help at school. But she’s high-functioning, meaning she has fewer problems on the autistic spectrum, and she’s absolutely brilliant. Does math at a high school level. Has a high capacity for anything structural. She just doesn’t communicate well. But she’s a real love once she warms up to you. Very affectionate.”

“Hmm.” Rubi felt a pang of pity for the girl. This world was harsh—at least in Rubi’s experience—especially for anyone outside mainstream society. “She’s lucky she’s got such a great family to back her, then.”

Wes sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “How’s the program coming?”

“Almost done. I added code to measure soil moisture, temperature, alkalinity, salinity, CO2, and nitrogen levels. If he wants to add something, he just needs to cut and paste the code with a few minor edits. And I’ve almost got an app created he can use to monitor it all on his iPhone.”

Wes’s gaze took on that hundred-yard stare. “How long was I asleep?”

“Off and on for a couple of hours, why?”

“You did all that in a couple of hours?”

A slow smile lifted her mouth. She glanced down over the T-shirt and jeans he’d pulled back on before passing out—just in case someone came home unexpectedly. “All that and more.”

He reached out, cupped her neck, and pulled her in for a kiss. Soft and sweet and loving.

“Love you, Rubi. Love you so much.”

She must have grown accustomed to the confession, because while it still jolted her system when she thought about what it meant, the words no longer completely freaked her out. They only sort of freaked her out. What did still really freak her out was the thought of telling him the same. She’d already half accepted the fact that she was experiencing the emotions associated with the words. But saying them meant committing to them. And not only was she unsure she could, she didn’t fully understand what that entailed.

“Wait till my dad hears about this program,” Wes said, pushing to his feet. “You’ll have a lifelong invitation to Thanksgiving and Christmas at the Lawson homestead.” He ran one hand over his head. “Damn, I’m really going to have to step up my game now.”

“Wes?” His mother’s voice coincided with her footsteps up the stairs. And she didn’t sound like her normal, happy self. She sounded tense with worry.

Wes must have registered the tone too, because his smile dropped and his body stiffened as he turned toward the door. “Yeah, Mama. In with Rubi.”

Before he reached the door, his mother appeared, her face creased with stress.

“What’s wrong?” Wes asked.

“It’s Wyatt. Tori called me at class, said when he woke, his lower legs were very swollen, twice the normal size.”

Rubi didn’t know what that meant, but it seemed like Wes did. “He needs to go back to the hospital.”

“Your dad’s still in St. Louis, and Wyatt isn’t moving well enough for Tori to—”

“I can handle him,” Wes said. “I’ll just put him in the truck and take him back.”

His mother darted a glance at Rubi. “Hi, sweetheart. Did you enjoy the drive?”

“Very much.” She swung her legs off the bed, feeling awkward and helpless. “Can I…do anything?”