Flirting With Intent (7 page)

Ruby knew when to cut her losses and go with a superior plan, only by the time they arrived at Russell’s high rise the plan had changed again.

Ruby didn’t even see it coming until Russell alighted and helped Lena and Poppy from the car, and then leaned back down and asked Damon to see Ruby home, and by then the limo door was closing, and the limo—with her and Damon in it—was pulling smoothly away from the kerb.

‘Old fox. He planned that,’ she murmured, and Damon responded with a smile. ‘And you let him.’

‘My father has a chivalrous streak,’ countered Damon.’ Surely you know that by now.’

She did know that. ‘And you? What kind of streak do you have?’

‘Right now I’m going to have to go with masochistic,’ he said with a twist of his lips as he leaned his head back against the black leather interior of the limo. Had Damon known how intimate this ride would be with the others gone and just the two of them in here now?

And then he turned his head towards her and the seat space she’d made sure to put between them seemed to disappear. ‘I tried to answer your question,’ he said quietly.

‘I know.’ And in doing so he’d got to her. Again. ‘Did you think it would get you into my bed?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Then why do it?’

‘Maybe I just wanted to know what it felt like to be that open.’

‘And what did it feel like?’

‘Wrong.’

They lapsed into silence again, a brooding, swirling silence that complemented the black leather seats and the cavernous limo interior. Ruby rested her head back against the seat and closed her eyes against the pull of him.

She’d wanted honesty from him. She hadn’t realised just how much it would hurt.

‘Maybe it’ll get easier,’ she offered quietly. ‘Maybe you just need to find the right person.’

‘Maybe.’ But the word held a world of defeat in it, and Ruby opened weary eyes and turned her head and held his gaze.

She edged a little closer, moving slowly. It was the only way she knew to approach such a wild and wary thing. He didn’t move towards her, but he didn’t move away. Just watched in silence and when she set gentle lips to his he shuddered in silence too, before pulling slowly away.

‘What was that for?’ he whispered.

‘That was for you. For trying, because I asked you to, even if it didn’t go so well. Consider it my Thank You.’

‘Oh.’

This time he was the one to initiate the meeting of lips, and although he had no way with words he knew exactly how to pour emotion into a kiss. Longing and regret and she knew he still wanted her in spite of his inability to be open with her, and it made her want to cry.

‘That was You’re Welcome,’ he whispered.

And then he kissed her again and she wound her arms around his neck and his hands were gentle on her waist as he drew her onto him, over him, and pressing up into her with a sensuality she’d always known he commanded.

Not just kisses any more but the slide of her body against his and the rapid beating of his heart beneath her hand. He had a connoisseur’s touch and she had a powerful need for that touch tonight. Did it really matter that she knew next to nothing about him and probably never would? She knew he wanted her—wasn’t that enough?

Passion fed and passion burned as their kisses grew deeper and more urgent, and when the limo started to slow and Ruby looked out of the window through glazed eyes and saw her high rise up ahead she groaned, and Damon groaned with her.

‘Drive with me a while,’ he whispered, and she knew what he was asking and she’d resisted him before but there was no resisting him now.

Slowly, she lifted her hand to her headband and slid it from her head and dropped it to the floor. ‘Yes.’

Damon reached for the intercom switch
and said, ‘Take us for a drive,’ and the limo moved off.

Time enough now to loosen Damon’s tie, and the buttons on his shirt, with her forehead pressed to his and their breath mingling as he slid the straps of her dress down her arms with gentle fingers.

‘Tell me you know what you’re getting us into,’ he muttered. ‘Tell me you know what you’re doing.’

‘I know what I’m doing.’ While the top of her dress peeled away from her body and she drew his head down to the curve of her breast. ‘So do you.’ As her strapless bra came apart beneath his fingers and he claimed her nipple with his lips and set her to arching back and biting her own.

He explored every hollow and worshipped every curve and before too many minutes had passed he had her beneath him on the seat, half naked and wholly mindless as he moved inside her, every stroke a revelation.

‘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.

C
HRISTMAS
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 of her
knew
he wouldn’t come.

But another part waited and waited some more.

The day loomed empty ahead of her, with nothing to do except wonder whether Poppy and Lena had liked their gifts and whether Damon liked his.

She’d shopped again on his father’s behalf seeing as he’d taken to wearing the clothes they’d bought the other day. A lightweight travel bag that would be useless to anyone with more than a single change of clothes, and in one compartment she’d added a couple of pairs of the plainest no-name underwear
she could find, and in the main compartment she’d placed a Panama hat. Everything the modern happy wanderer would ever need.

It was Lena who phoned through to thank Ruby for her gift-buying efforts, but it was Damon who got hold of the phone after that.

‘Merry Christmas, Ruby.’ Damon’s voice came through smoothly polite. ‘Your touch is everywhere here today—and we wanted to thank you for it.’

‘Have the caterers been in?’

‘In and gone, with a week’s worth of leftovers in the fridge,’ said Damon. ‘Which is no reflection whatsoever on the quality of the food. The food was fantastic.’

‘And your sisters liked the clothes?’

‘They did. Now Lena’s heading to her room for a nap, my father’s heading to the study to disguise his nap as a work effort, Poppy’s just started watching
It’s A Wonderful Life
and I’m about to head out for a while.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. Why? You looking for something to do?’

‘What, and miss out on
It’s A Wonderful
Life?’

‘How many times have you seen it before?

Trust me, you know how it goes. Downtrodden man reflects on his life, realises how many people depend on him and decides not to top himself. The End. And then you cry.’

‘Still not sure we’re living in the same universe, my friend,’ said the woman who’d just started a fiercely competitive chess game with a half-grown cat. ‘What sort of counter offer do you have in mind?’

‘A walk. Just to get some air. Doesn’t necessarily have to be fresh.’

‘Good thing too, this being the city,’ she murmured. ‘Chater Garden’s not that far from you. There’s greenery, topiary, a water feature or two … Ignore the concrete.’

‘Sounds like I need a guide.’

‘You really don’t,’ she said, smiling.

‘But what if I want a guide?’

‘Tell you what,’ she said, feeling generous. ‘What say I meet you at Chater Garden in half an hour? I’ll be the one wearing the peacock feather in her hair.’

‘One of these days I’ll ask you why,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll be the one in the Panama hat.’

Damon didn’t know what had possessed him to seek out Ruby Maguire again today. Last
night had been enough, more than enough to let him know that he should leave this one alone. Not for him a woman who could strip him bare. Never for him a woman who could access the secrets he kept in his soul.