Page 76 of Holding You
Her slight hand reaches forward, taking the vibrators from me.
“You don’t have to answer me.” She looks down. “Your gray sweatpants are giving you away.”
Shit.
“To be fair, while you’ll be downstairs thinking of me and my toys, I’ll be thinking of you in these sweatpants.”
This isn’t us. This isn’t how we act.
“Fair’s fair, right?” I ask.
“Sure. Anything else you want to know before I put these back?”
The words fall from my mouth before I can think better of it.
“Do you use them at the same time?”
A slow smile forms on her lips.
The same lips that have me captivated and wishing that I would have stolen a taste of them the other night.
She takes a step backward. She isn’t going to answer me.
Then she turns and starts to jog up the stairs.
“Wait!” I call out when she gets to the top step. “I got you something.”
Now is as good a time as any to change the subject before I do something one of us might regret later.
“Okay,” she laughs. “Let me just put these away first.”
She hurries to her room as I grab the computer from my truck. She’s just reaching the bottom of the stairs when I step in the door.
Her eyes drop instantly to the box.
“What’s that?”
“I got you a new computer. While I recovered files yesterday, I have a feeling it’ll happen again. This way you’re all?—”
“I don’t want it.” She crosses her arms and steps back.
“You need a new computer, Ruby.”
“Then I’ll buy one myself. I ... I don’t have anything to offer you in return, and right now I can’t?—”
“It’s a gift. I don’t need or want anything in return.”
“Everything comes at a price, Declan. I can’t take it.”
“This,”—I hold the box up—“does not come with strings. It comes withyou being a gifted graphic designer who built herown company, which is pretty badass by the way,who needs a computer that works. I know computers, and this one is perfect for what you want to achieve.”
She just looks at the box and then at me again. I can see in the way her mouth twists and the way her fingers drill against her arms that she’s thinking it over.
“No strings?” she asks softly.
“Not a single one.”
She nods slowly and then steps toward me.
