Page 28 of True Ruin

After she left, with a promise to call him when she got home, Dallas stood in his warm kitchen, her taste in his mouth, her fragranceeverywhere, thinking about a wicker box under a porch swing.

Thinking about hidden desires.

Thinking about falling and not even trying to catch himself.

NINE

1979–The Smashing Pumpkins

Five days had passedsince the night Gabi found a part of herself she’d thought was gone. She’d never known such pleasure ingivingpleasure.

Never felt empowered. Confident. Sensual. Not like that—a tigress or something.

As she stacked muffins in the Grill’s pastry case, the encounter with Dallas came back to her in a series of flashes. His sweat-slicked skin, her gasping breaths, her lips closing around him. His fingers tangling in her hair, body arching off the couch as he came. He’d been starved for her, then so unexpectedly sweet afterward. Raindrops clinging to his eyelashes as he kissed her goodbye beneath the cottage’s portico, his cheeks flushed while he apologized for not seeing her home. Driving with his ankle wasn’t safe. He’d even made her promise to call when she got home.

The combination of recklessness and tenderness was driving her wild.

Being cared about was something she’d have to get used to.

And—Gabi giggled into her fist—Dallas was, to put it mildly, not small in the package department. After having him in her mouth, feeling the thick weight of him, she’d spent long hours imagining him thrusting inside her. Imagining how much of him she could take. Whether he’d be gentle or lose that calm precision if she teased him enough.

Two years was a long time to go without sex. She hadideas.

Cheeks flushing, she glanced to the back corner of the diner, but Dallas wasn’t in his booth.

“He was in earlier, hon,” Verna Mae said with a sniffle. “If it makes you feel any better, he looked up every time the bell on the door jingled.”

Gabi shrugged, her gaze glued to the muffins. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Verna Mae poured a cup of coffee and slid it across the counter. “Sure you don’t.” Humming softly, she continued down the line, offering refills, asking about the weather, about the chances of winning Friday’s game. Small-town life, gossip, pie orders and football scores and everybody knowing who you hoped would walk through the door.

Not enough excitement to keep a man with a job in Cairo interested.

No matter how much he seemed to want her.

The first note had arrived the morning following their date on a sheet ripped from one of Dallas’s notepads. Then another every day after that. One on a Grill receipt, another on a napkin. The latest, today, on a piece of newsprint still holding the smell of ink. As if he’d stopped in the middle of whatever he was doing because she’d interrupted him. A wilted purple wildflower was taped to it.

And,oh, the words.

I keep thinking about your lips.Not only on me. Though, Jesus, Wilder. That too. You were my first kiss, did I tell you that? And so far, only you have compared.

I keep thinking about the sounds you’d make if I had more time and fewer clothes between us.About your hands in my hair.About putting my mouth on you and learning exactly how stubborn you are when you’re trying not to beg. I want to make you beg. Hands-tied-to-a-headboard beg.

Do you go quiet when you’re close? Did you feel like you needed to be?

If so, Sparkle, I’d like to ruin that lesson.

Thoroughly.

With a soft sigh, Gabi gave up any semblance of work and climbed onto the stool, cradling the coffee cup in her hands. Today’s note was in her pocket, his words pulsing like a heartbeat between her thighs. Dallas had kept her in a constant state of inconvenient arousal all week, and it wasn’t only his messages that were stirring her.

He’d done it crossing Main Street, one hand lifted in a lazy gesture as a truck rattled past between them, his limp more pronounced by the end of the day, his glasses catching the sun. Then the truck passed, and he was still staring. Not smiling exactly, but his gaze saying he knew what she sounded like when pleasure overtook her.

Because he did.

And then at the mill yesterday, sweat darkening the back of his T-shirt (today’s saying:Objectivity is a Myth) while he helped Ransom haul a stack of old lumber out of the side entrance. He’d caught her watching, hair damp at his temples, forearms roped and dirty, that compass rose curving around his skin. For one hot second, his face changed, and his gaze dropped to her mouth, then lower, before he dragged it back up with visible effort.

The kicker, though, was Sam’s game. He’d shown up with Campbell, Kit, and Luca, a folding chair tucked under one arm, a paper cup from the concession stand in his hand, as though watching a nine-year-old miss grounders was a perfectly reasonable use of his afternoon. Sam had waved at him from second base, and Dallas waved back, solemn as a judge before leaning toward his cousin and muttering, “I assume heckling is frowned upon.”