Wes peeled off the rest of the suit, showing tan cargo shorts beneath. He grabbed a white T-shirt off the corner of a desk and started toward the bathroom. “Let me clean up. I’ll just be a minute.”
Rubi watched him go, soaking in the sight of the muscle play along his spine and ribs. Liquid warmth spread through her body, but she held in a sigh of longing. He was a beautiful man—there was no denying that fact.
When he was gone, she returned her attention to Lexi and Jax. Here they were, the perfect foursome again. This whole pairing-off habit they’d adopted over the past several weeks might be why Wes had tripped that line and asked her out. She had to admit, seeing Lexi and Jax together, so happy, so in love, so…connected, had tweaked Rubi’s mind toward the idea of finding that perfect someone. But she only had to look into her past to know she wasn’t Lexi. They might mirror each other in many ways but were completely opposite in just as many. Desiring and maintaining a romantic relationship was one of those opposites.
Yes, she wanted Wes. She was human. She was female. And he was…a freaking demigod. But talk about messing up perfect friendships—breaking Wes’s heart would cause rift upon rift upon rift within this new and expanding circle of Rubi’s and Wes’s friends.
To buffer the whole double-dating scenario, Rubi turned to Rachel. “Take a break from that computer, Rach. Come with us.”
Rachel groan, pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “A break from this risk assessment sounds heavenly.”
Wes returned with his muscles stretching the T-shirt’s Hurley logo across his chest and his feet slung into worn, leather flip-flops. Rubi grinned at his surfer-boy look. But his head was still bent toward the phone in his hand, his handsome face pulled into that rare frown.
In an attempt to find equilibrium again, she teased, “Girl problems?”
He looked up with a lopsided grin and slid his phone into his pocket. “You’re the only girl giving me problems, Russo.”
He slid his hand under her hair and squeezed her neck. Tingles spread over her skin, down her spine. The touch surprised her. Unsettled her. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”
Rachel stood and grabbed her purse.
Jax pulled Lexi by the hand toward the door. “My truck’s right out—”
“I’ll meet you there,” Rubi said. “I’m going to head straight home from lunch. I’ve got a lot of work waiting for me.”
She stepped into the Los Angeles sunshine and slid her sunglasses on. At the bottom of the steps, Rachel turned to follow Jax and Lexi.
But Wes waited with a hauntingly sexy grin. “Can I drive the Ferrari?”
“Actually, no.”
“No?”
She always let him drive when they went anywhere together; it gave him such a thrill. And she’d been brimming with anticipation of this moment when she’d introduce him to her new—even faster—toy. But if she was going to keep things platonic between them, cutting back on these intimate habits would probably be a good start.
“No,” she repeated. “I traded it in today.”
“You what?” He reached out and placed the back of his hand to her forehead. “Are you sick?”
“No,” she laughed, batting his away. “I don’t need two cars.”
“What did you trade it for?”
She heaved a sigh. There was no way she would be able to keep him out of this car without being downright mean. And that would be as detrimental to their friendship as f**king him.
She pointed her key fob toward the parking lot. The Aston’s sidelights flashed with a corresponding chirp.
Wes’s gaze held on the sleek machine for a long, disbelieving moment, before he uttered, “Is that…? No…fucking…way.” His voice overflowed with awe and appreciation, then he yelled, “Suh-weet.”
He jogged toward the Aston, and Rubi couldn’t stop the soft grin that turned her mouth and lightened her heart. Jax followed, the two of them all smiles, as they opened the doors to peer inside, chattering like two-year-olds with a new Hot Wheels set.
“You haven’t mentioned wanting a new car,” Lexi said, coming up beside her with Rachel.
“You know I can’t pass up a smokin’ deal.”
“It’s…” Lexi crossed her arms and returned her gaze to the car, brow drawn. “Pretty.”
“Pretty?” Rachel said. “It’s so gorgeous we might have to leave the boys behind. Don’t know how you’ll get them out of there now.”
She smiled at Rachel’s comment, but it was the confused concern in Lexi’s voice that touched an uncomfortable spot inside Rubi. Sometimes it was great to have someone know you better than you knew yourself. Sometimes it was as uncomfortable as taking a cold shower.
Wes said something to Jax over the console and Jax laughed so hard he doubled over. The sight and sound eased Rubi’s nerves and made her smile again. “God, they’re so cute together.” She cut a sidelong glance at Lexi. “Don’t think so hard. I can hear the gears grinding.”
“What’s going on?” she asked. “You’re out of sorts today. And this…” She gestured toward the car. “Is something going on with Wes?”
“Denial and redirect,” Rachel said, crossing her arms with a huff and a teasing glare for Rubi. “That’s all you’ll get from her.”
Wes glanced through the windshield, and his gaze linked with Rubi’s. Electric current traveled between them and zapped her chest like a defibrillator—the same way it had just before the stunt.
A sudden, swamping, completely irrational sense of loneliness opened in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t have him. No matter how much she might want him. But her brain was at war with her body. And those were both at war with some intangible part of her—maybe her soul, if she had one. All the conflict created a niggling sense of panic deep in her chest.
“Nothing’s going on,” she said and forced a deep, easy breath into her lungs. “And I’m doing my damnedest to keep it that way.”
Wes’s head popped from the car. “Can I drive it? Please, please, please?”
“Damn,” Rachel murmured under her breath. “How can you resist that?”
Rubi shook her head. “I have no idea.”
He rounded the door and held onto it as if he didn’t want to let go. “Please? I’ll be really nice to her.”
“Screw nice.” Hearing Wes assign the Aston a gender as if it were a person broke any resistance Rubi had left. “Drive the hell out of her. That’s what she’s made for.”
Wes’s gorgeous face lit up like the sun. She tossed him the keys, and he whooped, fisting both hands in the air over his head.
“Damn,” she said on an exhale. “The man steals my breath. Come on, Rachel. He’s hot. And you’re totally his sweet type. Can’t you take him off the market?”
“I’m not as sweet as I look, but I still wouldn’t know what to do with all that testosterone. You may think I’m his type, but he’s not mine. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, you are all he can look at or talk about.”
She didn’t want to hear that. Rubi cut Lexi a sidelong glance. “Tell Jax to find him a damn girlfriend, would you?”
“You traded your Ferrari?” Wes jogged toward her, grabbed Rubi’s hand, and tugged her toward the car. “I put a note on your windshield this morning.”
“I got it.”
His boyish glee eased a sliver of Rubi’s discomfort. Or at least shoved it back into the dark for now. And a rush of adrenaline always soothed her nerves. Maybe this was just what the two of them needed to get back on even—friendship—ground.
“Grab a table,” he called over his shoulder to the others. “We’re taking the long way.”
Three
This wild drive might be an awesome distraction from Wes’s angst over Wyatt’s surgery, but the adrenaline rush did nothing to douse his infatuation with the woman next to him.
They’d lowered the convertible roof, and the wind grazed their skin and tangled Rubi’s hair into a dark, whipping halo. The midday sun burned down while the lightning-fast sports car gripped every curve in the road, the speed pumping thrill after thrill through Wes’s veins.
But the best part was having Rubi beside him, her laughter filling his head with every new surge. Her squeals piercing his ears with each fresh skid.
He’d known she was trouble from the moment he’d seen her at the airport, all scarlet mini skirt, crimson Ferrari, and fiery flirtation. Nothing he’d believed he’d wanted until recently. While she was everything he’d first thought—feisty, funny, and flirty—she’d also turned out to be far more than he’d ever expected—wickedly intelligent, loyal to the core, and selflessly generous.
And he couldn’t even begin to calculate her heat quotient. She was off the f**king charts.
But Wes wanted more than friendship with Rubi, and he was ready to take a hammer to those walls she kept erecting between them.
Another tight curve appeared in the road. Wes slowed into the turn, then accelerated out, jetting the small car onto the straightaway at the crest of the Hollywood Hills and leaving the thick scent of burnt rubber in their wake to the sound of Rubi’s thrilled scream.
He’d driven this desolate road hundreds of times in as many different vehicles, but this was—hands down—the best ride ever. At the steepest grade, he pulled into a turnout where they overlooked all of Los Angeles and cut the engine.
A flush softened her light cocoa skin and her hair wound around her gorgeous face in a chaotic burst of darkness. Any other woman he knew would be cowering against the door. Or ranting over his insanity. But Rubi reveled in the speed, the adrenaline, the risk. The same way Wes did.
“You crazy bastard.” She laughed the words and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Now I know how Lexi feels when I drive.”
Every time he looked at her, his brain slid sideways. He’d seen photos from her previous years as a top model, but Wes thought she was the most gorgeous in her everyday casual state. Rubi’s “casual” might be another woman’s “dressed to the nines,” but she had a way of appearing so absolutely comfortable in her own skin, she never gave the impression that much fazed her.
He’d lain awake nights trying to figure out who she resembled. She called herself a poster child for the United Nations, a mix of Caucasian, Japanese, and African-American. Wes thought she looked like an exotic version of Halle Berry with higher cheekbones and a deeper slant to her eyes when she laughed. And she had the sweetest little nose. The way it squared off at the very tip made him want to kiss her there.
Hell, he wanted to kiss her everywhere.
She spread her hand over her chest, which rose with quick breaths, and the silver bangles around her wrist clinked. “I may have to give you a speed limit, Lawson. You’ve made my heart jump out of my chest twice already today.”
The excitement glimmering in her eyes snapped his restraint. Want welled inside him, so thick, so fierce he couldn’t hold back anymore.
“Let’s try for a third.”
With octane filling his veins, he twisted toward her, stretched across the console, and wrapped his hand behind her head, pulling her in.
She sucked in a sharp breath a split second before his lips pressed hers. They were sun warmed, air dried, petal soft. She made the sweetest sound, a mix of surprise and pleasure, and the slow burn at the center of Wes’s body burst into flame. Heat whooshed over him, the same heat that engulfed him during a stunt when one of his fellow Renegades lit him on fire.
Only this fire condensed in his chest before melting lower.
He eased the pressure of his mouth just enough to tilt his head, and kissed her again. This time she responded. Gently. Tentatively. Not at all what he’d expected from this blazing-hot, ultraconfident party girl. But her tender response did confirm his theories about the real woman behind her smokescreen.
“Wes…” Her voice was barely a whisper between kisses, and her lashes fluttered just enough to expose a sparkling green hint of her eyes.
Her hand slid along his forearm and up his bicep, prickling heat across his skin. Then snuck under his sleeve and curled around the back of his arm, pulling him closer. The fist of want deep in his gut tightened.
Her lips came back to his, parted and firm. A hum of desire sounded in her throat, igniting a flurry of fireworks beneath his ribs.
Yes, yes, yes.
His focus homed in on every single detail of the moment—the warmth of the sun, the growl in his throat, the luscious need building throughout his body.
He slid his tongue along the inside of her lower lip, urging her to open. He caught the hint of mint, but he needed more. He needed the taste of pure, potent Rubi.
Instead of letting him in, she pulled out of the kiss. With her gaze tilted down toward the console separating them, she licked her lips. “Listen…Wes…”
The I’m-sorry lilt in her tone flushed his brain with panic. This couldn’t end. Not yet. He’d been fighting her resistance for a goddamn month. Had been waiting to feel her since the first moment he’d seen her. And he still hadn’t tasted her.
“No, baby.” He kept his voice soft, but it still sounded rough, needy. Sliding his hand beneath her hair, he cupped her neck and pressed his cheek to hers. His eyes slid closed, and he took a deep breath. She smelled exotic, like spice and sex. He wanted to sink into her. Deep into her. “Don’t worry…don’t think… Just kiss me.”