“Oh baby,” Wes murmured, his voice low and tight. “Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
The same thing it does to me.
She glanced at the thick, rigid line his erection created beneath his pants, remembered the feel of it in her hand. Against her ass. And grew wet. “I…think I might.” But changed the subject quickly. “What’s your next step with this?”
“Work those pants a little lower in front of your cute little nose, and I’ll show you.”
The will to keep him at arm’s length—okay, maybe finger’s length at the moment—was quickly fading. It took so much damn thought and effort. So much more than she had to give any other man.
“Because you’re crazy about him. Because you care. Because he matters. None of the others did. That alone should tell you everything you need to know.”
Lexi’s words filled her head, and she suddenly forgot why—exactly—she was holding him away instead of grabbing this damn contraption and using it to haul his c**k into her mouth.
The thought caused an unexpected bubble of laughter to roll from her throat.
“What’s that about?” he asked.
She lifted her gaze to his. “Nothing.”
He reached out and skimmed the back of one finger over her cheek. “Give me a peek into that wicked mind, precious.”
“Dangerous.” She was growing freaking sick and tired of thinking about why she couldn’t allow herself to have this decadent man. “So where are you going with this contraption next?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I’ve taken it as far as I can on my own, and even implementing your suggestions, which were amazingly intuitive, by the way, it’s still not what I envisioned, and I don’t think it’s going to be what Wyatt needs.”
She pulled her lower lip through her teeth as she finished securing the remaining straps. She had her hands pressed to the inside of his thigh when she glanced up. His gaze looked more blue than gray tonight.
“There’s a lot of untapped potential here,” she said, slowing her hands to appreciate the hard muscle of his thigh beneath his pants. His thighs were rock hard and thickly muscled. Same with his calves. He had great legs—all three of them.
“To make the hinges stronger and allow more control over their movement, I’d suggest adding the computer chip I mentioned. You can use a software program to collect data from the muscle through electrical sensors on the skin. Then write another program to instruct the motors in the hinges to deliver two or four or a thousand times the energy the program collects and rotate the hinges.”
Fastening the last strap, she inspected the rig, her mind unfolding connection ideas. A spark of excitement grew as she took a closer look at the canvas straps he’d used. “You could use the same elastic belts they use in polar transmission to—”
“Hold on,” Wes said. “Polar transmission?”
“You know the way those heart monitors work, the ones runners strap to their chest to determine heart rate?” She waited for a nod, then said, “That’s polar technology. It simply uses an elastic band to hold the imbedded chip that collects heart-rate data against the skin and transmits back to the main unit.”
His gaze cleared, and a hot smile curved his mouth. “If I said your ingenuity was making me hot, that would be weird, right?”
She laughed and sat back on her heels, imagining the setup. “Wow. Now that would be slick. If you imbedded the force sensors into the band, you wouldn’t have to worry about wires or—”
“Force sensors?” His eyes were wide, a little overwhelmed but intent.
“Force sensors will give you more specific pressure measurements than regular ones, allowing for more complicated and precise programming.”
“Oh, man,” he breathed. “Say polar transmission and force sensors again. That f**king turns me on.”
She laughed, pushed to her feet, and crossed her arms.
“Move in it,” she said, stepping to the side to watch the action of the uncovered hinge.
Wes crouched slowly, then straightened and bent at the waist.
“Okay,” she said when the mechanism moved as she’d expected. “But that’s not how you’re going to be using it, right?”
“No. Melissa’s given me a list of exercises he’ll be doing.”
“Melissa?”
“His physical therapist. And for the first week or two, he’ll only be walking when she does home visits.”
“Okay, then, walk into the living room, lie on the couch, and show me a couple of the exercises.”
He took a step toward the kitchen’s exit. Rubi reached out and stopped him by the arm with a laugh. “Slow down. Walk like he’s going to walk.”
“Picky, picky,” he teased, but slowed and shortened his step on the path to the living room. Rubi watched how the metal moved with Wes’s body, watched how the straps interacted with his thighs and calves. So she didn’t understand what Wes meant when he said, “This is an even more incredible view than Jax’s.”
She looked up and followed Wes’s gaze to the wall of windows that faced the ocean. Only one light shone in the living room, so the darkness outside wasn’t completely masked by the internal glow. The ocean beyond and the developing white caps were fully visible through the dark windows.
“It’s a beautiful location,” she said. “And the ocean calms me in a way I’ve never found with anything else. I love this house.” She pointed to the sofa. “Lie down.”
Wes turned a salacious grin toward her. “I love the way you think.”
“Shut up and lie down.”
“Damn, I think I love it when you get bossy too.” Wes glanced at the crimson velour and hesitated. “I’m sandy and wet… And just looking at that…makes me want to test this rig out in all kinds of unintended ways.”
“Just do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Wes stretched out, his long body swallowing the length. With a dramatic sigh, he clasped his fingers behind his head. The rig held tight to his pants, and they pulled lower on his hips, exposing that delicious area way below his flat belly button. Yes, definitely commando under there. Not a hint of boxer waistband anywhere.
“Like what you see, precious?”
She sighed, but it came out as a groan. “That body should be a registered weapon, Lawson.”
“You’ve just made every five a.m. workout worth it.”
“Get to work.”
She forced her gaze to his legs as he pulled one knee at a time toward his chest. But the flex and release of his abs with the movements made her want to lick the dip and swell of every muscle on his body. Curl, release. Curl, release. She dragged her lower lip through her teeth. Lift, lower. Lift, lower.
She put up her hand in a stop gesture. “Fine. Enough. I have what I need. Just e-mail me a list of the exercises he’ll be doing. I’ll program the rest.”
He rested his legs against the sofa. Kept his hands behind his head and stretched out. “What’s the matter, Russo?”
“Not a thing,” she said, voice heavy with sarcasm, and bent to take one last look into the open hinge. Wes reached out and grabbed her bicep so fast, she started at his touch. By the time she’d enacted some resistance to his tug, it was way too late. Wes dragged her on top of him.
“Wes.” Rubi dug her knees into the sofa, straddling his hips, and pressed both hands against his chest, trying to push off him, but Wes was too strong.
“Relax. Stretch out. It’s been forty-eight long-ass hours since I felt that beautiful body against mine. Besides, my head is killing me. I’m in no condition to maul you.” All the humor had disappeared from his eyes. They were smoky gray and sensual, serious. “But a kiss would make me feel so much better.” He eased her closer. “Just…one…kiss…”
Rubi’s mouth hovered within a breath of Wes’s, his steel-blue eyes looking deep into hers. “This is really what you came over for,” she said, “isn’t it?”
“Actually no.” He lifted a strand of hair off her forehead, then let his finger slide over her cheekbone, down her jaw. “I came over to pick that amazing brain of yours, but baby, I think I’ve just run out of strength to resist you.”
A warm spot opened in her chest, and with it, a flutter of panic. She was thrown into that impossible catch-22 again—wanting him, yet terrified of him.
And instead of continued coaxing, he simply lifted to meet her. His lips closed over hers in a possessive but gentle, kiss. And when his lips moved against hers, she couldn’t fight the sensual feel of them. Or the craving that exploded at the feel of his tongue teasing her lips open. For a moment, Rubi forgot why she couldn’t enjoy him. Forgot all about their differences, their challenges, all the reasons she needed to push him away. And her lips parted.
His tongue slid into mouth like it belonged there, and he sighed into her mouth. An unfamiliar sensation washed through her body, one that softened her muscles and eased her mind. She released the lock on her elbows, sinking into the kiss. He had a beautiful mouth. A sensual way with that tongue. His hands came up and framed her face instead of feeling her up. He held her there while he lightened the kiss, pulling his mouth from hers to sip at each lip, then trail kisses over her jaw and behind her ear.
Tingles spread across her skin, and Rubi shivered. She shivered. She never shivered.
“Wes.” She sounded breathless and dazed, because, well, she was. The panic had softened, overtaken by the soft intimacy between them.
“Hmm…” he murmured as his lips started down her neck.
His teeth skimmed gently over her collarbone, and a sound ebbed from her throat, half sigh, half moan. Her sex ached, and she had to force herself not to lower her hips and press herself against the erection she knew was rock hard and waiting.
One hand moved down her back. She waited for him to grab her ass—that would be what she needed to wake up. To do what she knew she needed to do. But his hand shaped and molded her waist, her hips, back up to her ribs, floated down her spine. Never going for the take. He turned his head and planted soft kisses to the opposite collarbone. Rubi forced her eyes open. She was dizzy with lust. With affection. That warm space inside her continued to grow, and with it, an intangible sense of dread.
She needed to stop. He needed to stop. They needed to stop. Before this went somewhere it shouldn’t and their friendship fell apart.
“Wes,” she said again, searching for the strength in her arms to push back. “What do you want from me? I need to know. Are we going to just f**k and be done, or are we going to stay best fr—”
He tipped his head back and kissed her mouth again. Hungrier this time. Fierce. Possessive. Despite the shot of need traveling down her spine, Rubi pushed back.
Wes’s eyes eased open, heavy-lidded, and he gazed up at her through his light lashes. “It doesn’t have to be either-or, baby. We can have both.”
Rubi stared down at him a long moment while her mind struggled. “You can have both,” she said. “I can’t.”
“You’re wrong.” A familiar steely determination settled into his gaze. “You’re damn wrong, Rubi. You know it, and that scares the shit out of you.”
Damn right she was scared. She couldn’t think when he was close. He had a way of getting under her skin and making her believe. Making her hope. And belief and hope had always ended in pain.
Rubi needed to break this damn spell he cast over her every time they were close.
She called in reinforcements. “Rodie,” she said, still looking at Wes. “Kiss, kiss.”
Rodie, who’d been lying beside the sofa, jumped to his feet, tail swinging, and planted his paws on the cushion. He went for Wes first—probably because Rubi was usually lying in that position when she set her computer aside and asked Rodie for kisses. His tongue rolled out and stroked Wes’s cheek, his nose, his lips.
“Oh shit.” Wes turned his head away, wiping his mouth with a grimace and laughing a groan as he released Rubi to fend off Rodie. “No. Down, Rodie. Stop!”
As soon as Rubi climbed off Wes, Rodie jumped up, and Wes’s laugh rolled from his chest as he tried to hold the seventy-pound dog away from his lower body.
With his arms wrapped around Rodie, and Rodie still licking his face in thrilled frenzy, he pinned Rubi with a hot gaze. “You coward, using your dog like that. You should be ashamed.”
She pushed the hair that had fallen from her ponytail off her face. “I like to think of it as smart, not cowardly.”
“Pffft. Whatever.” Wes pulled at the Velcro to take the rig off, while her gaze scanned that luscious body and she imagined him wrapped around her.
“Hey.” His exclamation pulled her gaze up. He reached over and picked up the spoon off the ice cream carton’s lid. “That’s why you taste like chocolate. And eating straight from the carton, weren’t you? Just admit it, Russo.”
“So what?”
“So did you at least save some for me?”
She waved toward the kitchen. “Go ahead, take the rest home. You’ll be saving me from myself.”
He grinned, the sparkle back in his eyes. “If I can’t have you, ice cream is the next best thing.”
He jumped off the couch and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Rubi shaking her head and smiling more than she had in months. She really had to get rid of him before she, he, they did what they both really wanted.
“I should have known you’d have some froufrou shit,” he said from the kitchen around a mouthful. “Still, ice cream is ice cream, right?”