‘Tell me you can taste the truth in this,’ he whispered. ‘In me.’
‘I do taste it.’
In the way he savoured her, honoured her, and in the way his touch made her tremble. ‘Tell me you won’t regret this.’
‘Never. Damon, not ever.’ As the driver kept driving and Ruby and Damon got lost in each other.
It had to end eventually. Love-making always had to end. With Ruby climaxing in Damon’s arms as he emptied himself into her. With Damon swallowing her cries of completion and groaning softly as her body grew boneless and his did too, and somehow she ended up stretched out on top of him, with Damon’s arms around her waist keeping her there.
The interior of the limo looked like someone’s messy closet. Her clothes would be here somewhere and she would get around to putting them back on soon.
But not just yet.
‘That was …’ Damon didn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence ‘… a revelation.’
‘I concur.’ Ruby pushed herself up into a sitting position, still straddling him, still very, very naked. Damon’s gaze fell to her breasts and his lazy grin turned lopsided.
‘Here’s a tip,’ he said huskily. ‘If you ever want to win an argument with me, just get naked.’
‘Something to remember,’ she murmured. ‘Are we going to argue now?’
‘No.’ He slid his hand around the back of her neck and rose up to kiss the side of her mouth. He wasn’t done with her yet, and the notion delighted her. ‘Not right now.’
She couldn’t seem to get enough of his touch. Of his kisses. ‘So what shall we do?’
‘Ladies’ choice.’ He leaned back against the seat, his slitted gaze not leaving her face as he began to harden against her once more.
‘Good. Because, right now I just want to sit back and enjoy the ride.’
They found their clothes and put them on eventually. They made it back to Ruby’s apartment building, and it was after one, and technically Christmas Day already, and Damon had places to be—like with his family—and Ruby had things to do, like go inside and figure out what she was going to do with Damon West for the rest of the undoubtedly short time he would be around.
He was as dishevelled as Ruby, but he got out of the car when it stopped at her door, and extended his hand for hers and brought it to his lips as she alighted from the limo with most everything in place, including her headband.
‘Merry Christmas, Ruby.’
‘You too,’ she murmured, and took her hand back and headed quickly for the door before she turned around and held out her hand for him to join her. Only when she was safely inside the foyer and heading for the lifts did she look back and smile at what she saw.
Damon, leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets as he watched her retreat, and secrets or not she knew more of him now and she had not met with disappointment.
He didn’t want true intimacy from her, and a wise woman accepted the things she could not change.
A wise woman took the gift of passion and pleasure that he had given her and cherished them for what they were.
Best Christmas present ever.
Damon West had as much self-awareness as the next man. He knew what he was good at, and seduction was one of those things. He knew what derailed him, and commitments of the personal kind headed that list. He’d set foot on the hackers’ path at the tender age of twelve when he’d hacked into his school’s academic database. At seventeen—with five more schools under his belt—he’d blitzed his exams, hacked the filter the department of education used to expose students of interest, and MIT had come knocking. He’d hacked into their system too and they’d sent him back a six-page mathematical proof of his predictability and offered him an education.
That education, and the one that had followed, had given him travel, a reason for being, and all the excitement he could handle and then some. All they’d asked from him in return was absolute discretion and a willingness to go anywhere, any time.
At twenty, he thought he’d found heaven.
At twenty-five he knew he had.
He would be thirty-three in January and as he headed back to his father’s apartment with the scent of Ruby Maguire on his skin and the image of her naked and open for him dominating his mind, Damon West took the time to mourn the loss of the ordinary lifestyle he’d so willingly given up.
CHRISTMAS Day started late for Ruby. Nowhere to be, no reason to get up. The two gifts beneath her tiny tree were ones she’d put there herself. A book on humanitarian imperialism—that one was supposedly from the cat. The other was a bottle of her favourite perfume. A light and woodsy scent to lift the spirits and brighten the day.
A Merry Christmas phone call came in from her mother before Ruby had found her way out of her sleepwear. A mother who sounded happy and content and who urged Ruby to come and stay a while in the New Year. A mother who asked if the courier had arrived yet, and sighed her exasperation when Ruby said not.
Ruby promised to ring back when they had.
A sashimi breakfast feast for a contented little cat followed. Freshly brewed coffee for Ruby and a butter croissant with fig and honey jam got her positively cheerful. The gourmet food hamper and the ridiculous peacock-feathered hair comb from her mother made her smile. Shoulders back, Ruby, she could hear her mother saying. Chin up, there’s my pretty girl.
It had been very important to her mother that Ruby be a pretty girl.
Her father had been the one to encourage her to use her brains.
Ruby’s mother had wanted to share custody of their only child once divorce had been imminent but, for reasons known only to him, Harry Maguire had been having none of that.
In the end Ruby’s mother had taken the settlement money and run, leaving her daughter behind with the promise that she was always just a phone call away.
Better than nothing.
Better than a laughing, smiling father who’d disappeared one day without a word but plenty of money to be going on with.
Ruby had bought him a set of pewter chess pieces for Christmas this year—how stupid was that? The gaily wrapped parcel was burning a hole through the shelf in her bedroom closet and the child in her remained hopeful that her father would contact her today. The child in her would doubtless wait all day for her charming, laughing father to arrive. Foolish Ruby.
Only a silly, hopeful child would put on a pretty azure sun frock and blow-dry her hair and pin it back with a peacock-feathered comb and make sure she had her father’s favourite Scotch on hand and his favourite food in the fridge, and then sit on the lounge reading her book while she waited for Godot to arrive.
Part
