The Rules of Engagement: A Lesbian Romance (Rulebook Book 2)

by Cara Malone

  “I’m not hungry,” Max said.

  “Yeah,” Ruby agreed, “thanks, but I think we’re good.”

  She bit her lip and gave Max a salacious look when neither of her parents were looking. Nick did manage to take the hint, though, and shortly thereafter he corralled his wife away from Max’s dresser.

  “Come on, hon,” he said. “Let’s let the girls get settled in.”

  They left with a hug for both Max and Ruby, and then – finally – they were alone and back in their element. Ruby flew across the room, throwing herself into Max’s arms so forcefully that they careened into the living room wall.

  She should have known that the summer apart wouldn’t be easy, but she knew now without a shadow of a doubt that Max was worth fighting for, and that she would do everything she could to make sure that Max never felt insecure or uncomfortable with Ruby ever again. She’d start by spending the rest of the day showing her just how much she missed her.

  She took off Max’s t-shirt, then peeled her sports bra over her head. The sight of her breasts, round and soft with her nipples already perked up and anticipating Ruby’s touch, was enough to send shivers through Ruby. She had been waiting for this moment ever since the last time she and Max were together, and she still remembered every inch of Max’s body, every curve and every new muscle that the summer’s work had granted her.

  Max leaned forward and brought her lips urgently to meet Ruby’s, while Ruby wrapped one leg around Max’s hip. Max slid her hand over the curve of her thigh and squeezed her, responding with just as much hunger and longing. She wrapped her arms around Ruby, holding her tight as they kissed, and then she spun her around so that Ruby’s back was to the wall.

  She bucked her hips into Ruby’s, eliciting an involuntary yelp of pleasure as their bodies connected after such a long, difficult absence. Max grinned and did it again, allowing her thigh to slide between Ruby’s legs this time. Ruby pressed her lips together, stifling another moan so that their pleasure would not be heard through the paper-thin walls of their dorm.

  Max brought her mouth down to Ruby’s neck, and then her collar bone, and then her shoulder, moving her lips with every gyration of her hips. Each time her body connected with Ruby’s, she felt her thighs squeezing and her hips canting forward, seeking more of her. Her heart was racing and her body was pulsing with desire as Max grabbed at her thighs, pulling her closer. The smooth fabric of the yoga pants she was wearing made it easy for Max to slide Ruby wherever she wanted her. She pulled off Ruby’s shirt and then yanked down the cups of her bra, dipping down to lick and kiss each of Ruby’s nipples and then glide her thigh teasingly back up between Ruby’s legs.

  Ruby let out another low moan, clapping her hand over her mouth as she thought about everyone in the hall moving in for a new year. She buried her face in the crook of Max’s neck and grabbed her ass, pulling Max closer and signaling the urgency of her desire. She was grinding her hips in tight little circles against Max’s body, and soon Max couldn’t take the teasing contact any longer, either.

  She let Ruby’s leg drop to the floor, quickly unbuttoning her pants and stepping out of them. When Ruby reached for the waistband of her own pants, Max grabbed her hands and pinned them against the wall on either side of her head.

  Then she slid down the wall slowly, kissing the bare flesh of Ruby’s breasts and her stomach as she inched her way south. Max’s lips felt so good, so soft and so perfect, her breath warm against Ruby’s skin and her fingers playing lightly over her body. Max dropped to her knees and Ruby looked down, a momentary chill running through her as she remembered Max in that same position in Chicago, holding out a tiny jewelry box to her.

  Then Max peeled Ruby’s pants down over her thighs, letting her step out of them before pushing Ruby’s feet into a wide stance and grabbing her hips. She squeezed Ruby’s ample curves and looked up at her with longing, then buried her face between Ruby’s legs. She pressed her palm against her mouth again and let out a muffled groan as warm pleasure spread from the point of contact all the way through her body, and it was hard to stand still, pressed up against the wall when all she wanted to do was tackle Max to the floor and return the favor.

  Max held her there, though, her tongue dancing over her skin until Ruby’s thighs began to shake uncontrollably and she threaded her hands into Max’s hair, closing them into fists and trying not to make a sound.

  Just as she felt the crest of her orgasm, Ruby let out a gasp and her legs gave out beneath her. She slid down the wall and her hand went immediately to Max’s wetness, gliding urgently over her even as she struggled to catch her breath. Max threw her arms around Ruby’s neck, smothering her with kisses while her palm moved rapidly between them and Max clamped her thighs shut around her hand. By the staccato sounds of her breath, she was getting close.

  Ruby pushed Max onto her back on the floor, crawling between her thighs and lapping at her with her tongue. When Max came, she gave absolutely no concern to the neighbors around them who might be able to hear it. She cried out, taking Ruby’s head in her hands and guiding her tongue where she needed it, until they were both spent and they collapsed beside each other on the floor.

  “Welcome back to college,” she said to Ruby when she’d taken a minute to catch her breath.

  Ruby put her head back and laughed, her body still quaking with the aftershocks of her orgasm. She answered, “I think it’s going to be a good year.”

  ***

  Although the school year had quite literally started off with a bang, Ruby and Max quickly settled into their old routines. They each had a full course load, with classes that kept them busy most of the day. Max had a second set of classes on top of her library science courses, and while she was working on her user experience design major, Ruby was busy running the library science student organization for one more semester before she had to turn over leadership to the new set of incoming grad students.

  In the evenings, they fell into the same old, comfortable habits that they’d grown accustomed to last year. Ruby took Max to the public library downtown one afternoon and they created a second list just like she’d suggested over the summer. Max wasn’t a big film buff, so a lot of the things on her list of all-time favorites turned out to be television shows, which was fine because it meant they’d have no shortage of things to watch in the foreseeable future.

  Ruby went to yoga now and then, but she tried to be mindful of Max’s sensitivity toward Tracy, however unfounded it was, and she didn’t go as often now that she didn’t have Mira as her workout buddy anymore.

  Mira’s absence from their lives was noticeable after a few weeks. She used to periodically drag them both out of their love nest, insisting on dinner at the Mexican restaurant or the occasional trip to a real, live movie theater. Now, Ruby and Max were becoming increasingly like hermits without her. Ruby didn’t want to wake up one day twenty years hence and realize that their entire relationship had occurred from the comfort of a couch, so she decided to implement something new.

  One Friday morning a few weeks after the semester started, Ruby turned to Max as they were getting dressed and said, “Hey, babe, what do you think of going to that new restaurant for lunch today?”

  “The one we landscaped?” Max asked.

  “Yeah,” Ruby answered, pulling on a sweater. “I have a nine a.m. class, and then I think I’m going to take an aerial yoga class. You could meet me outside the studio around noon and then we’ll walk over to the restaurant.”

  “Okay,” Max said as Ruby came over and gave her a quick kiss before grabbing her backpack and heading out of the apartment.

  CHAPTER 18

  As Max walked across campus to meet Ruby after her morning classes ended, she was thinking about the engagement ring that she still hadn’t managed to show to Ruby. It was still sitting in the back of her bedside table drawer where she left it when she got back from Chicago, and she’d never gotten up the courage to take it out again. Things were going well with Rub
y, especially now that they were back in their element and Megan was safely six hours away, and Max had been thinking more and more often about what Ruby’s response might be if she tried again. She still hadn’t managed to ask for Lamar’s permission, though, and Ruby’s family seemed like the traditional types who would want that.

  She was just on the edge of campus, near the coffee shop that shared a wall with the yoga studio, when she saw Ruby coming outside. If she hadn’t been caught up in her thoughts, Max would have shouted a hello to Ruby as soon as she saw her, but instead she stayed silent a moment too long and saw something unexpected.

  Ruby stepped onto the sidewalk and right on her tail, Tracy followed her.

  She put her hand on Ruby’s arm and it sent a shockwave through Max.

  Tracy had seemed like a formidable opponent within the walls of the yoga studio, with its darkened rooms and sweaty, humid atmosphere, but in the daylight, with a sheen of moisture glimmering on her skin, she was a knockout. Max found herself clenching her jaw as she watched Tracy touch her girlfriend once again, surprise and jealousy coursing through her and turning her to stone. Rather than intervene, Max found herself ducking into the doorway of the café to watch them. She was just within earshot.

  “Ruby, wait,” Tracy said, smiling up at her through long eyelashes.

  “Oh, hey, Tracy,” Ruby answered as the rest of the students from the class came outside and temporarily obscured Max’s view.

  She didn’t catch all of what Ruby said in response because of this interruption – all she could do was study her face and the direction of her body and try to derive meaning from it. There wasn’t much to go on, but Tracy was no longer touching Ruby and, to Max’s relief, she saw that there didn’t seem to be an intimate level of comfort between them – not like Ruby and Max shared, or like she’d observed in other couples who shared a romantic interest that she’d seen in real life or in the movies.

  “-class today,” Ruby was saying by the time the other people on the sidewalk began to clear out and Max could hear them again. “I’m definitely going to feel it tomorrow.”

  Tracy gave her a little giggle and Max felt the same urge to slug her that she’d felt when she watched Tracy putting her hands on Ruby’s hips in class. Who did this girl think she was? They shared a few more words while a noisy couple came out of the café, squeezing past Max and once again obscuring Ruby and Tracy’s conversation momentarily. Then Max caught the thread again.

  “-hope you don’t think this is too forward, but I just have to try,” Tracy said, looking down at her feet in a way that made Max think she must be nervous. Then she looked back up at Ruby and said, “I really like you. Do you think we could go out sometime?”

  Her words felt like a truck barreling full-force into Max.

  She couldn’t believe the nerve of Tracy, and that the same time she was watching her worst nightmare come true. The thing she had spent all year worrying about was finally happening right before her eyes – someone was trying to steal Ruby away from her. Max’s heart was pounding and her pulse was racing so fast that she was beginning to feel light-headed as she waited for Ruby’s response.

  CHAPTER 19

  Ruby felt her cheeks getting hot as Tracy floundered nervously in front of her, showing none of the usual confidence she brought to her yoga classes as she asked Ruby out. It had obviously taken a lot of effort for her to say what she did and Ruby wanted to let her down easy, but at the same time she was groaning in the back of her mind because of all the hours she’d spent reassuring Max that she had no competitors. Clearly she’d misjudged Tracy, and she owed Max an apology.

  “Maybe we could get coffee after class sometime,” Tracy was saying, but Ruby cut her off.

  “I have a girlfriend,” Ruby said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh,” Tracy said, looking crestfallen.

  “You actually met her,” Ruby volunteered, trying to soften the blow. “Over the summer, when I came to class with the girl with the short blonde hair?”

  She laughed, remembering Max’s clumsiness and utter lack of balance, but Tracy didn’t look too interested in reminiscing with her.

  “Anyway, that was my girlfriend, Max,” Ruby said. “I’m actually going to meet her now so I’ll see you around, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Tracy said with a disappointed shrug. Then she went back into the studio and Ruby walked away, shaking her head and wondering where Max was. She was just about to dig her phone out of her bag to check the time – Max was never late – but then she looked up the street and saw her approaching.

  “Hey, baby,” she said, giving Max a big kiss. “Are you ready for lunch?”

  “Yeah,” Max answered, looking a little bothered. “Umm, I saw you just now… with Tracy.”

  “You did?” Ruby asked, feeling embarrassment redden her cheeks. She wondered how much of the brief conversation Max had caught, and whether they were about to launch into another difficult conversation in which Ruby would have to convince Max all over again that there was nothing to be jealous over. She decided to aim for levity at first and said, “Crazy, right?”

  “She asked you out,” Max observed.

  “Yeah,” Ruby said. “Did you hear my response?”

  “I did,” Max said. She leaned in and kissed Ruby, then linked her arm in Ruby’s and turned her in the direction of the restaurant. “I told you she liked you.”

  It took a moment before Ruby realized that Max wasn’t jealous. She’d just teased Ruby about another girl coming onto her, and then moved on from it. Ruby squeezed Max’s arm and smiled at her. They’d come a long way since the beginning of the summer, and she felt proud of Max. They talked about their classes and how the semester was going, and neither one of them spared another thought for Tracy’s question.

  When they reached the restaurant, a few blocks away and deeper into the city, Ruby pulled Max over to the flower beds they worked on, pointing out the bushes and the gravel spread beneath them. She laughed and said, “Look, I’m responsible for that pebble being there, and that one, and that one. All of this is my pea gravel that I personally spread.”

  “No it isn’t,” Max said, pointing to the second flower bed closer to the door. “That’s the one you did. All this is my gravel, and I remember hauling a fair amount of yours, too.”

  “Okay, fine,” Ruby said with a cheesy grin. “It’s our pea gravel.”

  She kissed Max on the cheek, then they went inside and got a table for their first weekly date night, or afternoon as it happened to be.

  ***

  The following weekend, Ruby set a vibrating alarm on her cell phone for early Saturday morning. She slept with her phone tucked under her pillow to keep from rousing Max, and it turned out to be largely unnecessary because she’d spent most of the night tossing and turning, too excited to sleep in. Around dawn, she felt her pillow softly buzzing and she silenced the phone. Ruby crawled out of bed, trying her best not to wake Max sleeping soundly beside her.

  She moved slowly around the bedroom, careful not to disturb Max as she gathered up a pair of jeans and a sweater, then tiptoed out of the bedroom. She got dressed in the bathroom, then queued up the television, hit play, and crept out of the apartment.

  Once she was in the hall, she found that her stomach was filled with quite a lot more butterflies than she’d been expecting. She paused outside the door for a minute, suddenly uncertain about whether the plan she’d been secretly formulating for the past few weeks would work.

  What if Max slept right through the sound of the television? What if she watched what Ruby prepared for her and didn’t get it, or didn’t want to follow the instructions? What if the whole thing fell spectacularly to pieces? She’d set her plan in motion now, though, on the back of Max’s reassuring reaction to Tracy the past week, so there was nothing she could do but follow it through to the end.

  CHAPTER 20

  Max roused slightly from sleep when she felt the mattress shift, but it was still early and she ass
umed that Ruby was simply getting up to use the bathroom. Without stirring, Max shut her eyes and drifted back to sleep.

  She was awakened a few minutes later by a muffled sound coming from the living room, like a conversation the words of which she couldn’t quite make out. When the voices didn’t die down, she swam out of sleep and wondered if there were some inconsiderate people having a conversation in the hallway. She groaned and got out of bed to check, but when she got to the living room, she saw that the television had been turned on and Ruby was nowhere to be seen.

  A clip was playing that Max recognized from one of the movies they’d watched last year, Moonstruck. Nicholas Cage was on screen saying, “-I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess.”

  Max sank down on the couch and watched as the scene transitioned into one from another film from Ruby’s list. The next one was from When Harry Met Sally, the pivotal scene in which Harry says to Sally, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

  Max felt her heart beginning to beat faster in her chest and she watched the video. There were similarly themed clips from a half-dozen movies, every one of them being films she’d seen with Ruby, plucked from the list they created on the day of their very first kiss in the Granville Public Library. There were clips from Amelie and Blue is the Warmest Color, and the video ended with Luce saying, “I dare you to love me,” in Imagine Me & You.

  The screen went black for a few seconds, and then text appeared on the screen.

  Meet me in your favorite place on campus.

  Then the film started all over again with Moonstruck, the scenes playing on a loop just in case Max missed any of it. She got dressed faster than she’d ever dressed in her life, throwing off her pajamas and tearing clothes from her closet. She had no question about where to go, and by the time she made the dash across campus her heart was pounding so fast she could feel it in her ears. She felt all of her blood rushing into her face and she wondered with mild concern whether she might pass out before she reached the culmination of this event. She had a pretty good guess about what would happen at the end of it.