Jett
I stripped and turned the shower on.
Every single day, I needed to get myself off to stop myself from starting something with Ruby that she might not want to finish.
I had to get some kind of relief. And every goddamn day, visions of Ruby and the way she’d looked and sounded during her first orgasm and every orgasm after that fucking haunted me.
I stepped into the shower and leaned back against the tile. “Fuck!” I cursed. How much longer was I going to be able to handle the nearly combustible sexual tension that flared between us?
Ruby was the one good thing that had ever happened to me as an adult other than the fact that I was incredibly successful because Lawson had catapulted into a tech giant, which didn’t seem nearly as monumental as the woman who had given me her trust.
Ruby had permeated my damn soul, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Her essence had become a part of me I couldn’t live without.
I craved her like an addict craved drugs, and it was pretty much torture to look at her and not make her completely mine. Primal instinct battered at me to claim her in every way possible, but because of her past, I wanted to be careful not to scare her off.
But it’s not her fault that I’m a horny bastard!
I’d already admitted to myself that maybe my hesitation wasn’t completely about her. She practically pleaded with me to fuck her every night, an event that always ripped my heart out. She was ready. But maybe I…wasn’t.
It was about me now.
I was too damn scared that I was going to end up losing her somehow.
And that was completely unacceptable.
Okay, maybe she had seen the scars on my upper body, and she’d accepted them. But my leg was a mangled mess. And I was pretty sure the whole naked package was pretty ugly.
Hell, I’d seen Ruby growing and changing while she was in counseling. She was finding her own way, and standing on her own two feet. Eventually, she’d receive the insurance money her parents had left for her. Was I fucking afraid she’d eventually leave me?
I clenched my fists, knowing that was exactly what I feared. But I was going to have to move past my own issues to keep Ruby. If I didn’t, I’d definitely lose her.
She needed to become independent, and I wanted that for her.
So I’d eventually have to find out if she was willing to accept me with all my deformities.
Or not.
Problem was, the stakes were way too high for me this time.
She’s not Lisette!
I knew she wasn’t like my ex, and maybe that was part of the problem.
Losing Lisette had been a blessing.
Watching Ruby walk away would completely destroy me.
The stakes were too damn high for me to take a risk.
“Jett?” I heard Ruby’s hesitant voice from outside the glass door of the shower.
As it started to open, a gut reaction made me spring into action.
I slammed the partially open door in her face as I bellowed harshly, “Get the fuck out! Leave! I don’t want you here, Ruby!”
Even with the shower running, I could hear her audible gasp of dismay. “I’m sorry,” she said tearfully. “I’m so sorry.”
I could see her form move toward the bathroom door, and she was fumbling to get out.
“Goddammit!” I cursed.
I’d let my own insecurities hurt the woman who didn’t deserve it.
Her loud sob gutted me, and the only thing that mattered was making sure Ruby was okay.
I was being an asshole, and I knew it.
I slammed my way through the glass door and slapped my hand on the door as she finally got it open to leave, preventing her from escaping.
“Don’t,” I growled as I pinned her body face first against the closed door. “Don’t cry.”
After I’d lived through sharing her sorrow at the cemetery, I never wanted to see Ruby hurt that way again.
The meeting of our bodies skin-to-skin drained all the resistance from me.
Jesus! She felt so damn good.
“I’m sorry. I invaded your privacy. I didn’t know it was wrong. We’re a couple,” she said through broken sobs.
She sounded scared, and I hated that. I never wanted Ruby to be afraid ever again. “Don’t be scared,” I said, my voice husky with regret. “And you never invade my privacy. We are a couple. This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
Ruby was completely naked, and was obviously ready to climb into the shower with me. My wet body had saturated hers, and we were both dripping wet.
I felt the tension start to leave her body and her backside started to melt into my front.
Nothing had ever felt so damn right.
“Then what happened just now?” she asked tearfully.
“I got scared,” I confessed after I’d swallowed the lump in my throat. It was time for me to get real with her.
She’d fucking trusted me with every horrible thing that had happened in her past, so I was done being a coward.
“Why were you afraid?”
“Because the lower half of my body is uglier than what you’ve seen on the top,” I rasped against her ear.
Something about Ruby always made me spill my guts, even when I didn’t want to.
She started to squirm so hard in my hold that she got turned around and nailed me with a glare I’d never seen before.
“Are you trying to tell me that all this is over something that is completely superficial?” she asked in a furious tone.
I locked eyes with her, and what I saw coming back at me was pure anger. It was the first time I’d ever seen Ruby really pissed off, and her fury was mesmerizing.
“You don’t know how bad it really is,” I told her roughly.
“Seriously?” she shrieked as she pushed on my chest. “Well, let me see this awful sight for myself. Get back in the shower.”
“Ruby, I’m not—”
“This isn’t about you now,” she said in an unforgiving voice. “It’s all about me and whether I’m as superficial as the bitch who dumped you. And whether or not my delicate self can handle what happened to you.”
I had no idea what had happened to the sweet Ruby I adored, but this incensed, bossy Ruby was kind of a turn-on, too.
I backed up as she gently pushed me back into the shower, and then got in herself, slamming the glass door hard enough that I hoped it didn’t shatter.
She folded her arms across her chest as she surveyed every inch of my body while my back took the brunt of the water from the shower nozzle.
“What in the hell do I have to do to make you understand that I want you? That I’ll always want you,” she said desperately. “Just tell me and I’ll do it. I’ve spent every day fantasizing how it would be if you fucked me, and I think I pretty much covered every position. I need you, but I can’t make you trust me.”
I felt like a dick. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to do anything. You’re fucking perfect, and I do trust you.”
She’d done plenty to prove that my injuries weren’t going to affect the way she felt about me. I’d just been too deeply absorbed in my own fears that I hadn’t heard her.
But her message was pretty loud and clear now.
She moved forward and put her hands on my chest. I didn’t breathe as she started tracing every one of my scars.
“I don’t always like my body, either,” she confessed. “And it took all the courage I had to show you the scars I had from my abuse. But it’s something I can’t change any more than you can fix your scars. They’re part of us. Part of our history. But they don’t have to define us if we want to move forward. Neither one of us deserved the pain we went through. But haven’t we had enough pain now, Jett? Wouldn’t it be better to let it go and look at our future?”
She looked up and I searched her face. The only thing I could see was the same fucking longing I was feeling. “I didn’t doubt you, Ruby. I doubted myself.”
“You hurt me,” she said with brutal honesty.
My gut ached as I looked at the hint of sadness in her beautiful dark eyes.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I answered.
She shrugged. “Shit happens. I doubt it will be the first time we’ll piss each other off.”
I grinned. “At least I know you’re perfectly capable of standing up for yourself.”
She shook her head. “That wasn’t just for me. It was for you, too. Your reality isn’t mine, Jett. I want you to see yourself as you really are instead of through your distorted lens. When I look at you, I see a strong, handsome man who got hurt trying to save people from death or permanent captivity and torture. You put your own well-being on the line without hesitation. And you have the scars to prove it. You’re my hero, Jett. Don’t you know that?”
I had to swallow the enormous lump in my throat before I could answer, “And you’re mine.”
Emotionally, I hadn’t been in a good place when I’d met Ruby. But she’d changed me for the better when she’d crashed into my life, healing all my open emotional wounds that I’d gotten from the accident and my agonizing recovery.
“Can I touch you now?” she asked with a sultry expression. “I feel like I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Yeah,” I croaked.
As she dropped to her knees, I wondered what I’d just agreed to, and whether I was going to live through it.