The next.
It didn’t matter.
He was his work.
Without Elskov, he was nothing, a fact that had never made him flinch until now, until Ruby.
He fisted the shirt tighter in his hand and squeezed his eyes shut to keep himself from watching the frustratingly vague glimpses of her through the glass blocks. “Are you going to be much longer?”
“Why?” Her arm connected to his moved again, stopping at the height of her shoulders and then slowly in broad circles lower. “Do you need time to set yourself to rights?”
The image of her washing herself, the soap bubbles covering her tits, clinging to hard nipples, sluicing down her belly to the soft, pink cleft between her legs. Set himself to rights? His cock ached, the tip already wet for her, and it took every bit of self-control to stop himself from barging into the shower, pressing her wet, naked body against one wall, and giving them both exactly what they wanted.
Set himself to rights? She knew better.
“I’m not sure I can do that while you’re this close to me.” Or farther away. He’d wanted her since she’d strolled past him into Moad Manor smelling like sunshine and looking like sin.
She stilled her arm for a heartbeat before taking it lower. “Watch out, Lucas, that sounded an awful lot like the truth.”
“It slips out every once in a while.” What was the use in denying his hunger for her when she’d see the truth pressed against his pants as soon as she stepped out of the shower? For that matter, why was he denying it? He opened his eyes and turned to face the glass bricks separating them, giving in to the want making his body tight and his dick hard. He could watch without touching, without falling. The entire world shrank down to the flashes of her creamy flesh, distorted as they were, as she turned under the warm spray. It didn’t matter that the view was partially obscured. His brain filled in what was missing and his desire added in the fantasy.
She tilted her head back, the long column of her hair became a partially obscured multi-colored rainbow down her back. “Do you ever get tired of it? The lies? The pretending?”
Deflection came naturally. “I could ask the same of you.”
“If you did, I would tell you I am tired of it. I’m tired of it all—the manipulations, fake emotions, hidden resentments, secret agendas.” Weariness crept into her words, marrow-deep exhaustion at the bullshit of it all. “At least you were up front, in your own weird way, when you blackmailed me into coming back here.”
“That’s…” He searched for a word, but everything he came up with sounded harsh about her family, her circumstances, her life, and he drifted off.
She let out a wry chuckle. “Pathetic, I know.”
The shower turned off.
His breath caught as he watched her wipe a palm across the glass bricks, clearing away some of condensation fogging them up. It wasn’t a clear view, but her faint outline became more prominent. Cursing the still indistinct vi
ew, he couldn’t look away.
“Can we be honest with each other?” she asked as she reached up, curled her hands around the length of her hair and squeezed out the extra water.
The warning sirens went off in his head, but he ignored them. “To a point.”
She grabbed the thick white towel draped over the wall and rubbed it across her wet skin. “I won’t see you again after this is over.”
“No.” The single word jabbed into him like an ice pick to the kidneys, and he closed his eyes against it, a reflexive move to block it out.
“Then see me now.”
The taut line of the chain binding them became loose. His eyes snapped open. Ruby stood in front of him, the towel at her feet. A few stray drops of water clung to her creamy skin, calling out for his tongue to lick them up. The damp tendrils of her hair hung down past her shoulders and curled around her impossibly hard nipples, begging to be rolled between his fingers. All of that was mind blowing enough, but then his gaze managed to climb upward, and he saw the challenge in her eyes and the daring smirk curling her lips upward. God she was astounding.
“I always see you.”
“Good.” Her gaze dipped down to the outline of his cock. “Is all that for me?”
Tossing aside any pretense that this wasn’t going to happen, that he was going to fight the attraction holding them together more securely than the chain wound around their wrists, he let the shirt drop to the floor. He held her gaze as he flicked open the top button of his pants.
“I don’t know if you can take it all.” But he wanted to see her try, needed to see her lips wrapped around him as she sucked him in deep.
Something sparked in her eyes at his acceptance of her challenge, and she shook her head while whispering a quiet tsk, tsk, tsk. She closed the distance between them and trailed her fingertips across the bare skin above his waistband.