Beautiful Secret

She closed her eyes and I let my fingers linger at her neck, drawing them down to her collarbone. Beneath my fingertips, her skin was cool from being outside, and so smooth. I could scarcely imagine how intense it would be to kiss her, let alone make love to her. I would likely tear her clothes, as she suggested only last night. I would most definitely bite.

“But I’d noticed you before. In meetings, we’d a shared look once or twice . . .”

Ruby opened her eyes again and her expression grew dubious, as if I’d begun to toy with her. “It’s okay if you didn’t notice me. It’s also okay if this is just an experiment in seeing someone other than Portia. I promise I have my big-girl pants on.”

“It’s not . . .” I started, but then stopped when the cab pulled up at the curb.

I led Ruby inside the hotel and into a crowded lift. We exited on our floor in silence and walked down the carpeted hall toward our rooms, our steps echoing in the quiet.

Once we stood outside my door, I told her, “I have never considered having a fling. One drunk, fumbling interaction aside, sex purely for the sake of sex is not interesting to me.”

She licked her lips and gave me an impish smile. “Then you need to have better sex.”

As she continued to look up at me with her patient, playful eyes, the moment grew heavy.

“I think without a doubt I need to have better sex,” I admitted quietly.

Her brows slowly inched up in suggestion and she tilted her head toward her hotel room door. “I had a really nice time at dinner . . .”

Ruby gave me another ten seconds to do or say more before she stretched to kiss my cheek, just barely missing the corner of my mouth. “Good night, my tentative, sexy, secretive crush.”

I watched her turn and walk the ten steps to her room. She let herself inside, and the door clicked shut quietly behind her before I murmured, “Good night, my beautiful, exuberant girl.”

* * *

“What brand of imbecile are you?” I asked my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “You could have kissed her. You could have enjoyed her tonight. At the very least you could have asked her in.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath through my nose. It felt a little as if my skin were on fire, and short of walking into the shower with all of my clothes on, or barging into her room and deciding once and for all to have a go, I wasn’t sure how the feeling was going to diffuse.

I swore I could remember every time she smiled tonight, or her openmouthed laugh, head back, eyes closed. Ruby seemed to enjoy every tiny instant of her life. There was something about her that made me want to be near her, put her up on a pedestal, bask in her energy and uninhibited sweetness.

Say something filthy, she’d said. Tell me the craziest, dirtiest thing you can think of. Render me speechless.

Walking to my closet, I pulled off my jacket, my tie, my shirt. I hung up all of my clothes, feeling overheated and sensitive and wound up to the point I thought I might burst. And I felt stupid, really. Ruby wouldn’t have said no had I stepped forward, cupped her lovely face, and kissed her. She wouldn’t even have said no if I’d simply asked her, “Come inside, show me how to do all of this for real, now? I’m afraid I’ll bungle it.”

Because, sincerely, I’d never taken a leap like this. Professionally, yes: I put myself out there, drove for what I wanted. But my personal life had sort of fallen easily into place. When we were sixteen, Portia found me in the woods near my home and suggested I kiss her. When we were eighteen, she informed me that she was ready to make love. Being Portia, she was unable to resist telling her mum what we’d done, and being Windsor-Lockharts, her parents had immediately suggested we marry. From there, it all unfolded rather obediently: a grand wedding, a flat her father loaned us the money to buy (and which I repaid in under four years), a car, a dog, and a marriage built on suggestion.

Things I never wanted again.

A new plan, then. I would take this side of me—the secret side that had long been dormant: romantic, passionate, desperate to find adventure with someone just a touch wilder than I could ever be—and not let it slide back into politeness, into convenience, into routine.

If Ruby wanted me to open up, I would do everything I could to do it.

I would ask for what I wanted with her.

I would learn how to play.

I would show her that I could give her what she needed.

With this sorted, an unwinding sense of relief passed through me and I sat down in my boxers at the desk, intent on going through my piles of voice mails from the London office. Pulling out my small voice recorder, I set to making notes after each call: which required immediate follow-up, which I could have my assistant attend to, and which only provided information of note. But after only fifteen messages, my mind wandered back to dinner.