Page 44 of Just Like in the Movies

He let the comment about the screening go. Why she felt responsible for his dad’s suicide he had no idea. But …

‘Attacking me?’ he repeated her words like a dummy, but he couldn’t seem to get his blood-deprived brain cells – or what was left of them – to engage with the massive disconnect that had just occurred.

She thought she had attacked him? Molested him? Was she for real?

‘Yes, I …’ She stuttered to a halt. Her chin dropped to her chest again.

Goddamn it, she was actually serious.

‘Ruby …’ He tucked a knuckle under her chin brought her gaze back to his. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. And you sure as shit didn’t molest me.’

The shadows brightened. ‘Are you sure?’ Her brows puckered and the shadow darkened again. ‘But you begged me to stop? You sounded tortured.’

‘Only because I was enjoying it too much,’ he said. ‘And I wasn’t begging.’

He had totally begged, but he was more than emasculated enough by her insistence on taking the blame for something that had been entirely mutual.

At least her misplaced guilt and the mention of his dad’s suicide had managed to wilt the New World Trade Center of boners, he thought ruefully as he dropped his hand from her face. Touching her was not a good idea. It had already gotten him in way over his head.

‘How could you be enjoying it too much?’ she asked, the guileless look back, and no less captivating. ‘If it was consensual?’

Because I was within seconds of shooting my load in my pants.

‘Ruby, it was consensual, will you just take my word for it,’ he snapped, frustrated with her now as well as himself.

But damn, this was the freakiest conversation he’d ever had in his life with a woman – and they hadn’t even got to second base yet.

Not that he wanted to, he told himself. But he couldn’t even convince himself of that anymore when she wetted her lips and his dick started to perk up again.

She blinked at his curt tone. ‘Okay, if you’re sure.’

‘I’m sure. In fact, I’m one hundred and ten percent sure.’ Why did he have to keep stating the freaking obvious?

‘But then why did you stop me?’

Seriously? They were back to that again? ‘Because I was about two seconds away from tugging off your sweats and burying the New World Trade Center of erections deep inside you.’

She flinched – he would guess at his nasty potty mouth – but he resisted the urge to apologise for it. He needed her to know exactly how close he’d come to losing it. So it wouldn’t happen again.

Because what had been dirty fun had quickly become … well, he wasn’t even sure what it had become it had happened so fast, but he’d never experienced anything like it before, her touch like a torch paper setting light to his libido. The slow burn was his usual style with women, not hot, hard and horny. He guessed that was probably because he’d spent longer in Ruby’s orbit in the last week than he had with most of the women he’d dated.

‘Oh.’ Her tongue darted out to lick her lips, which was not helping him in his battle to keep the blood flowing in the right direction.

‘Yeah, oh.’

Now she was starting to get it.

Or so he thought, until her brow puckered again.

‘So why didn’t you, then?’

Oh, for … ‘Because you and me, Ruby, that’s not happening.’ On that point, he was definite – he’d given it a lot of thought since … well, since inappropriate thoughts about her had become a regular occurrence. He wasn’t even sure when that had happened, but he needed to stop pretending it wasn’t happening because then he did dumb things like offering to rinse her hair.

He couldn’t sleep with Ruby because their relationship was complicated enough already. His libido would just have to get with the programme.

‘But why not,’ she said. ‘If we both want to?’

Damn but she was persistent. ‘That’s just it, I don’t want to. Not with you.’