[Rulebook 01.0] The Rules of Love

by Cara Malone

  So as hard as it was to deny her body the release it craved, she summoned up the willpower to push Max away. When she looked up with a confused look on her face, Ruby put her heel on Max’s shoulder, shoving her to the floor. Max let out a confused whelp and before she had the chance to get up, Ruby followed her off the couch.

  The thin gray carpet was scratchy and stiff but she was enjoying the spontaneity of the moment. Ruby lay down next to Max, propping herself on one elbow as she leaned in to kiss her. She could taste herself on Max’s lips, and she was getting excited all over again at the idea of tasting Max in other places.

  Ruby ran her hand over Max’s full breasts, squeezing them as she pressed herself against Max’s hip and moaned into her ear. Max put her hands around Ruby’s face, holding her in the kiss as their tongues entwined. Then Ruby continued down Max’s stomach. Her fingers played over the waist of Max’s jeans and then she undid them. As her hand slid beneath Max’s underwear, Ruby felt a slight quiver of her belly and the hitch of her breath.

  “You okay?” She whispered against Max’s lips, not breaking the kiss. Her hand paused at the top of her pubic bone.

  “I’m fine,” Max said breathily, then put her hand on top of Ruby’s and added, “I’m fantastic.”

  Then she plunged Ruby’s hand between her thighs, her hips coming up to meet her, and Ruby held her palm firmly against Max.

  “Ohhh,” she moaned, the sound escaping her lips as her eyes popped wide open in response to Ruby’s hand. Delicately, Max removed her own hand and sank into the rough gray carpet as Ruby gently slid her fingers into her wetness.

  She spent a long time teasing an orgasm out of Max, and every time she tried to withdraw her hand, or scrunch Max’s jeans down over her hips, or dip down between Max’s thighs to use her tongue, Max kissed her and held her tight. She clung to Ruby as she shivered and quivered beneath her touch, and the whole thing became very intimate.

  Ruby didn’t notice the shift from feral to gentle right away, and when she did, she didn’t mind it... at first. She liked the way Max’s body reacted to her, as if every touch was a new sensation, and she’d completely shed every bit of self-consciousness the moment they laid down together. She liked Max’s mouth on hers and her tongue rolling over her skin, and she liked the way it had felt to look down and see Max’s head between her thighs.

  But she’d shoved her way into Max’s dorm room with the sole intention of fucking the hell out of her and then going their separate ways, and at some point it had turned into a tender lovemaking session.

  That wasn’t what she wanted, and the longer she lay here letting Max gaze into her eyes while she rolled her fingers in slow circles over her clit, the more it was bringing up emotions that Ruby did not want to deal with right now. She didn’t want to feel amorous, or let Max look at her like she was falling in love. She didn’t want tender, romantic sex. She wanted to fuck and she was wondering how the hell this had gone so sideways – she’d chosen Max because they hated each other’s guts, didn’t they?

  So why was she dealing with an emotional tidal wave surging up in her chest?

  She pulled away from Max’s grasp and sat up, yanking the jeans roughly off Max’s hips and tossing them aside. It was time to take control of this situation and steer it back to where it should be – getting off and going home.

  Fifteen

  Max

  Ruby crawled over and put her knees on either side of Max’s head so that she could just reach Ruby’s clit with her tongue. This sudden dominance sent a thrill through Max and she eagerly grabbed Ruby’s hips to pull her closer.

  She felt Ruby’s hand sliding down her stomach again, her fingers going between Max’s legs. The heat was beginning to build in her core, radiating all the way out until even her scalp was tingling with desire. Max just kept stroking Ruby with her tongue, her pace matching the movement of Ruby’s fingers. It grew more and more frantic, Ruby’s fingers fluttering over Max’s clit while she kept pace with her tongue, until finally she felt something swell and then overflow inside of her.

  Max climaxed, dropping her head back to the floor and squeezing Ruby’s thighs with all her might as the spasms of her body took control over her. She moaned as her thighs shook wildly and Ruby kept rubbing the pad of her finger over Max’s clit until, finally, every ounce of tension in her body released and she relaxed, feeling like her body had become one big puddle on the floor.

  She didn’t even notice the way Ruby was moaning and bucking her hips, caught up in her own paroxysms, until she stopped and rolled onto the carpet beside Max. They lay head to foot beside each other for a minute or so, both of them working hard to catch their breaths. Max stared up at the ceiling and felt the residual contractions of her orgasm deep inside of her, then let out a little laugh.

  “What?” Ruby asked, lifting her head to look at Max.

  “I just never knew it could feel like that,” Max said, and immediately wanted to bite back her words.

  That made it sound like she’d never slept with anyone before, which – while technically true – was not something she wanted to broadcast to the goddess herself immediately post-coitus. Besides, she felt like she’d made a pretty good showing, and it didn’t seem like Ruby had any cause for complaint even if she did decode that statement. Max decided to let it stand rather than bringing even more attention to it by trying to explain it away.

  Her heart was still beating a little faster than normal, but her breathing had stabilized and the fine sheen of sweat all over her body was beginning to give her a chill. She sat up and turned around to lean against the couch, reaching for her weighted blanket which was folded and draped over the arm. She spread it out while Ruby dragged herself into a sitting position next to her, then threw it over both of their laps to ward off the cool air.

  “This blanket is heavy,” Ruby commented, running the fabric through her fingers and inspecting it.

  “It helps me sleep sometimes,” Max said. “I also find it relaxing to use on the couch if I’ve had a rough day.”

  She didn’t need to relax right now though – she had Ruby. Max put her arm around Ruby’s shoulders and pulled her into the crook of her arm – a move that she’d seen in a few dozen television shows after the characters finished having sex. Max thought that it felt about as nice as it looked on TV. For once, Ruby wasn’t talking and it didn’t seem like she was waiting for Max to say anything either, so she could enjoy the silence. She pulled the blanket up over Ruby’s shoulders to keep her warm, then rested her head on the cushion of the couch.

  Max thought back on the way Ruby pushed her way into Max’s dorm. That was the moment she realized without a doubt that Ruby was seducing her. Max always imagined that in a moment like that, a million anxious thoughts would race through her head, choking any possibility of actually enjoying herself. Sex seemed like something that, by its very nature, would require a thousand micro-decisions every step of the way – decoding each other’s expressions and movements and words and non-verbal groans – and up til now Max had been completely paralyzed by the thought of navigating all of that.

  Ruby proved her wrong though, in a big way.

  It was all Max could do to keep from crying with relief when she felt her instincts kicking in and her body taking over for her brain. There were no decisions to make as long as she just kept doing whatever would bring her and Ruby the most pleasure.

  In the afterglow, her mind was taking the wheel again and all of the exhausting thoughts and concerns and questions involved in a social interaction – like how long they should sit on the floor, or whether Max should offer Ruby her shower to clean up, or a meal – were beginning to trickle back in. The respite was heavenly but short, and Max couldn’t wait to seduce Ruby all over again to feel that sense of calm and belonging.

  “Can I use your bathroom?” Ruby asked, breaking the silence.

  Max felt a brief flutter of anxiety at the thought of their bodies separating, but she just nodded and poi
nted to the corner of the room. “Sure. It’s right there.”

  “I know,” Ruby said. “I live one floor above you and my apartment looks just like yours.”

  “Oh,” Max said. She watched Ruby slip out from under the blanket and cross the small living room still completely nude. Max thought that she was a knockout the first time she saw Ruby, but she doubted that anything could beat this post-coital version of her. Ruby’s wavy hair was slightly flattened and her skin was glistening with sweat, but she crossed the room with such confidence that Max’s eyes lingered on her naked form.

  Then Ruby closed the bathroom door and Max heard a voice inside her head say quite clearly, Cede the presidency.

  It was like the one that spoke from deep in her gut the first time she saw Ruby – the one that bid her to go talk to her – except this one was coming from even lower, near the tingling sensation that lingered between her thighs.

  The next GLiSS meeting was coming up this week, the one in which they were supposed to give a speech and begin their campaigns. Max had been working on hers for days already, and she’d delivered her speech to Mira about a half-dozen times, tweaking it with her suggestions each time. But now that she knew what it felt like to have Ruby in the crook of her arm, to shut her mind off and just be with someone, making an adversary out of her for the sake of a student organization presidency just seemed stupid.

  Max had never done anything like this before – academics and intellect and her resume had always trumped everything else – but then again, she’d never felt this way about someone before. She’d never been with someone, sexually or romantically, and Ruby Satterwhite was the kind of girl that made her want to try.

  So Max decided that she’d throw away her bid for GLiSS president for a chance to make Ruby happy.

  Sixteen

  Ruby

  Ruby didn’t really need to use Max’s bathroom. She went into the small, stark white room that was exactly like the small, stark-white room in her own apartment and stood in front of the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, and she could have been standing in her own bathroom but for the fact that the toothbrush on the counter was hanging over the edge of the sink instead of standing upright in a holder, and the towels on the wall behind her were green instead of pink.

  All of this added to the sense of dysphoria that was coming over Ruby, and she was pretty sure that this was what the beginning of a panic attack felt like.

  Everything had been okay for a little while – as long as Ruby kept her attention on the fucking, the physical act itself, she was having a good time. But every time it started to become tender, memories of Megan washed through her head and made her pulse race. By the time Max pulled Ruby into her arms against the couch, the walls were starting to close in on her.

  Now she was standing in Max’s bathroom, wishing for the thousandth time that she’d gotten some kind of closure when her relationship crashed and burned. One day she was happy and excited to graduate and planning how to navigate the challenges of a long-distance relationship while Ruby came to Granville and Megan stayed at Northwestern for grad school. Then all of a sudden Megan was saying she couldn’t do it, she wasn’t willing to make that kind of commitment, and she was too young to ‘limit herself’ by staying with her high school sweetheart.

  That’s all there was – nothing else to explain this seismic shift in Ruby’s life. Megan wanted the Evanston apartment so Ruby came home to Chicago to spend the summer in her parents’ house before she could move to Granville. Without a real reason or an explanation, Ruby was left to wonder. Did Megan fall out of love with her? Was she ever really in love to begin with? Was there someone else? What the hell could she do to avoid this exquisite hurt in the future, if she didn’t know what went so horribly wrong in the first place?

  And every time Max looked at Ruby with stars in her eyes, it made her stomach hurt at the thought of going through all of it again.

  So she came into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face, careful not to disturb Max’s precariously hanging toothbrush. It did help a little bit - the water cooled her flushed cheeks, and when the pounding heart and racing thoughts subsided, she started to feel better.

  Ruby leaned against the counter and looked at herself, willing some semblance of peace back into her heart. What sort of can of worms had she opened by coming into Max’s dorm? She clearly hadn’t been thinking through all of the possible ramifications, but how was she supposed to know that the girl who scowled at her nine times out of ten would end up being so romantic with her in bed (or on the couch, or the floor)?

  After a few more deep breaths, Ruby decided there was only one thing to do – gather up her clothes as quickly as possible and go back to her own apartment. She would never speak of this again and Max would figure out that it had been a one-time, meaningless thing.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, Max was still waiting for her under the blanket, although she’d moved up to the marginally more comfortable university-issued couch. Ruby almost let out a groan at this sight – she’d been hoping to find that Max had gotten dressed and moved on from the moment, doing something mundane like homework or reviewing the data from this afternoon. She hoped they would both be on the same page about the fact that it was time for Ruby to go.

  This was not the case, so now Ruby was forced to walk around the living room, picking up her bra and panties and clothes one by one.

  “What are you doing?” Max asked. “Don’t you want to stay?”

  “I-”

  Ruby could have told the brutal truth – hell no – and gotten it out of the way. She should have told Max that she couldn’t bear even the smallest bit of intimacy after the emotional damage Megan wrought, or that she was still feeling conflicted over the fact that, until about an hour ago, she’d only ever thought of Max as a rival. Ruby even thought Max could appreciate a little radical honesty, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to break with the time-honored tradition of white lies.

  “I have an essay to write for History of Library Science,” she said, quickly stepping into her clothes. Max looked disappointed, but Ruby didn’t get to see the expression for long because she turned and walked briskly out of the room before Max could answer.

  When Ruby got back to her apartment, she closed the door and let out a ragged sigh. It had been a very long day full of unexpected developments, and she felt exhausted and satisfied and emotionally ravaged all at the same time. There was no essay to write and she’d finished all of the readings for her next set of classes, and for that she was grateful. What she needed now was a night spent curled up on the couch, watching mindless television while her subconscious processed all the things that happened today.

  A good night’s sleep would probably help, and after that it might even be possible to confront what had happened with Max – the snuggling, the tenderness, the look of longing in her eyes – head-on instead of answering it with white lies. After all, the sex had been incredible, and it would be a shame to turn her back completely on that just because the snuggling afterward almost sent her into a panic attack.

  She went over to her own stiff orange university sofa, which she’d tried to dress up with throw pillows and blankets, and flopped down. She turned on the television and cast the room into a red glow as Netflix loaded, then she reached into her backpack in search of her phone. Ruby had gotten into the habit of calling her mother in the evenings after she noticed the huge void in her social life that an absence of Megan and Delta Zeta had left behind, and it was at least a couple of hours past when she normally called home.

  Ruby checked her phone, expecting to see a missed call from her mother wondering where she was, but instead she saw a voicemail waiting for her. A voicemail from Megan.

  Ruby ignored the television as Netflix prompted her to choose a show. She tossed the remote onto one of the throw pillows, where it slid to the floor with a clunk, and took her phone in both hands. This was the first time Megan had reached out to R
uby since the day she left Evanston.

  What did she want?

  Ruby’s heart leaped into her throat – her first thought was that Megan realized how stupid it was to break up, and she missed Ruby, and she was willing to give long-distance a try after all. It was only a five-and-a-half-hour car ride from GSU to Northwestern, and Ruby would have figured out a way to make that drive every single weekend if it meant keeping her girlfriend.

  She was terrified to listen to the voicemail, though. Their breakup had been so swift and painful, so final, she couldn’t imagine Megan saying those words - I want to be together again. As much as Ruby wanted to hear it, that was so unlikely.

  Ruby settled for looking at everything about the message instead of actually playing it. The timestamp, for instance, said that Megan had called her about fifteen minutes after Ruby and the rest of the group got back to campus – right around the time when Ruby and Max were bursting into Max’s dorm. That meant that Ruby could have spoken to her – actually heard her voice live – if she hadn’t given in to the heat that had been building inside her ever since she met Max on her first night here.

  She looked at the message length, too. It was only eighteen seconds long. What could be said in eighteen seconds? Ruby found herself counting the time in her head, trying to get a feel for it. Could she even call her mother and tell her that Megan left her a message in that amount of time?

  Finally, there was nothing left to do except listen to it.

  Ruby took a deep breath, turned on the speakerphone, and hovered her finger over the play button, closing her eyes as she tapped it. Megan’s voice filled the room, and Ruby could feel a lump forming in the back of her throat.

  “Hi Ruby,” the recording said, Megan’s voice tender and slightly tentative. She paused for a moment and then said, “It’s me. I hope library school is going well. I’m having a great time in med school… Well… I just wanted to say that I was thinking about you… Bye for now.”