Finally, it looked like I was breaking through her confident, breezy shell! She shrank back from me a little, and for perhaps the first time that night, I saw the real Ruby hiding beneath her brash outer personality.
"Listen, I'm really sorry-" she began, but I wasn't having any of it.
Thankfully, outside the front of the restaurant on the other side of the block from DeMarco's, I saw a taxi, its light on – my first stroke of good fortune this evening. I made a beeline for it, still towing Ruby along behind me.
"Where to, Ace?" the cabbie asked me as I wrenched open the back seat and shoved Ruby in, following right after her.
I gave him the downtown address that I had in mind. Next to me, I saw that Ruby had her mouth open, probably ready to start shouting out how I was going to rape her or something – but her brow furrowed a little as she processed the address that I'd given the cabbie.
"Downtown?" she asked me.
"Just wait," I answered her as the cab pulled away from the curb. I felt a buzzing in my pocket, and pulled out my phone.
Text message from Marcus. "Hey, got out safe, u?"
"Got away too," I sent back to him.
"Great! Hey, there's more money here than I started with. U wanna go to another club, flash some of this around?"
I groaned, dropping the phone back down into my lap. It buzzed again after another second, just before I slipped it into my pocket.
"Hey, u get with that Ruby girl? Damn, she had some good tits, huh?"
Ruby glanced over at the phone as I sighed and put it away. "Something interesting?"
"Just someone who's less skilled at resisting your charms than I am," I answered her shortly, sitting back and letting my head rest finally against the back of the seat.
For some reason, this seemed to make Ruby smile. "I'll get through to you eventually," she murmured under her breath to me, so quietly that I wasn't even sure if she really spoke it out loud, or just somehow managed to project the words into my mind.
Dangerous, the little voice in my head piped up again, totally unnecessarily. This girl is dangerous. Keep your guard up.
But still, I'd managed to win back Marcus's money tonight, keep him safe, and rescue a girl from some angry would-be hustler thugs tonight, while still also keeping my own hide in one piece. I wasn't sure if I was ready to label Ruby as a damsel, but it wasn't too bad of a list of accomplishments for a Friday night.
So as the cab headed deeper into downtown, I allowed myself a small surge of pride before focusing just on riding out the shaky aftermath of my adrenaline rush.
Chapter Nine
RUBY
*
"So, what is this place?" I asked, as Dane half-dragged me out of the cab.
As soon as we were clear, I yanked my wrist free from his grip, shooting him a little look of annoyance. It wasn't like I was about to go bolting away from him as soon as he relinquished his grip on me!
Okay, maybe I'd considered the possibility, but the longer I spent with the man, the more certain I became that Dane wasn't actually going to just drag me off to somewhere and rape me. On the contrary – he seemed to have a much tighter grip on his actions and emotions than anyone else that I'd met. Far more difficult to manipulate than the idiots like Austin Blair that I usually encountered – but something about him stirred my own curiosity.
And besides, as I'd sat next to him in the cab, I did have to admit that he wasn't the worst looking guy, either. He had those aristocratic features that made him look like an ass who deserved a couple of slaps, sure, but they softened a little when he wasn't keeping up that stony frown.
So by the time that the cab pulled up at the address Dane had given the driver, I had made up my mind to stick around and see what else had had in mind. I followed, bemused, as he led me into a massive skyscraper with a smooth glass exterior.
"This is IDS, Integrated Data Solutions, where I work," Dane answered me. As we'd entered the lobby, my eyes had fallen on a huge sign on the back wall, big letters each a foot tall, cut out of stainless steel to spell out the name, but Dane affirmed it anyway.
"What are we doing here? You need to grab some condoms from your desk drawer, or something? Got a wild fantasy of going to town on top of the copy machine?" I waggled my eyebrows at Dane. For a moment, I almost thought that I saw a smile on his lips before he managed to crush it back down.
"Nothing like that. But you said that, if I won that poker game, I won you for the rest of the night, and I can get you to do whatever I want."
"So what is it that you want?"
Here, finally, he did smile at me as he kept his mouth closed. Clearly, he wasn't going to share the answer to that question quite yet.
"So, if you're not going to tell me what you want to do with me, how about you tell me why you were hustling those guys in that club?" I pressed him as he pressed the button for the elevator.
Dane sighed, but finally broke his silence – although I might have needed to repeat the question a couple more times before he finally spoke. "Okay. You saw my buddy, Marcus?"
"The guy that you gave all the money to?" I wasn't so thrilled on that point. I'd still been vaguely hoping that, at some point later tonight, I could find a way to lighten the weight of Dane's wallet, stop it from straining to contain all those bills.
"That's right. He works here with me, and he's my best friend, even though he's a complete idiot." The elevator doors finally opened in front of us, and Dane gestured me inside. "He heard about the poker game, and proceeded to go, drag me along, and immediately set about losing almost all his money." He reached up and rubbed his nose with two fingers, shaking his head. "And he would have gone ahead and lost the remainder, too, if I hadn't stepped in."
"So what, you were playing the hero back there, saving him?" I asked. "Trying to make me feel bad about almost taking all of your money – or his money, I guess?"
Dane smirked a little at me. "You weren't going to take all of my money. I was cheating, remember?"
"Yeah, about that." I planted my hands on my hips as I turned to face him in the rising elevator. "How'd you do that, anyway? I saw you hide a card in your sleeve, but you did it really quickly! Just who are you, Dane Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Is at IDS?"
For some reason, he looked away, as if this question made him uncomfortable. "Stanton," he said.
"What?"
"Stanton. Dane Stanton. That's my name."
"Oh." I paused for a second. "Well, you know me. I'm Ruby."
He raised his eyebrows. "Got a last name?"
Sure, but I wasn't sure that I was quite ready to share it with him yet. "Maybe. Maybe you'll get to find it out later."
He just shook his head. "Nice to meet you."
We shook hands, probably both feeling like idiots. Once again, silence fell over the elevator as it continued to rise. Just how high was IDS in the building, anyway?"
"Slow elevator," Dane finally commented, as if only to break the silence. "Everyone complains about it."
"Right." I cast my mind about for some other topic. "So, you're still not telling me why we're here, or what you're going to make me do?"
"Nope."
I moved in a little closer to him. Okay, a lot closer. I moved in until practically my entire body was pressing in against him. "Not even a tiny little hint?"
He looked down at me, and I saw that muscle in his neck twitching again. What was it with this guy? "Not even a really small one. We're almost there."
"But I want to know now!" I put my hand against his chest, spreading out my fingers as I slowly slid it downward. "Are you sure that we couldn't just find something to do right here? Wouldn't it be fun to get all dirty in this elevator...?"
"There's a camera in the corner," Dane pointed out, but my fingers had already dropped down to his waist. And there, I finally discovered the hardness that I'd been trying to bring out all evening.
"Aha! You know, I was starting to think that you might be gay or something, Dane!" I excla
imed, moving my fingers back and forth over the surface of his jeans. Now that I knew that he actually had some male parts, that he was attracted to me, I could distract him and get him to agree that yes, I did in fact deserve some of that money he'd taken off the hustlers back at DeMarco's-
But instead, his hand dropped down to gently, but still firmly, pull my fingers away. "Not gay," he said shortly. "But also not quite ready to lose my job hooking up with some girl that I just saved in an elevator."
I pouted at him. "That makes it sound like you saved me here, inside the elevator," I pointed out.
"You're right. It's bad phrasing." Finally, the elevator doors opened, and Dane tugged me out to the floor where we'd arrived. "Now come along, so I can show you what you'll be doing all evening."
"Why do I feel like I won't enjoy this?" I asked.
"Probably because you're right. At least at first." Suddenly, Dane moved in against me, breaking into a smile as he slipped his hands around my waist. Big hands, I suddenly noticed as the fingers wrapped around me, pressing into my skin through the thin layer of my sheath dress. "It can be tough to adjust. But I bet that, once you really get going, you might find that you're actually having fun, too."
Oh. Okay, this wasn't bad at all. In fact, with him pulling me close like this, me tilting my head to look up at him, I suddenly felt a wave of unexpected desire spilling through me, radiating out from his fingers. "Is this going to involve some... physical activity?" I asked.
"Oh, yes." He nodded. "You know, you were quite distracting earlier this evening. I get that you were trying to throw me off my game, but it's really rather vexing to keep on having this pretty girl flashing her cleavage at me, while I'm trying to focus on something else."
"Wait, you like seeing cleavage?" I faked surprise, while leaning my head slightly backwards to give him a better view straight down my dress. "What a surprise! I never would have thought that guys like that."
"Liar." Dane's words didn't carry any heat, however – at least, no heat of irritation. Instead, however, his words were deeper, almost throaty. I recognized that sound. That was desire, raw and simple.
And to my own surprise, I felt an answering surge of desire inside my own chest.
Not what I'd intended for this evening, to be sure, but there were worse ways to end things, I considered to myself. It had been quite a while since I'd really messed around with a guy. Most of the time, my flirting was more to lead him into handing over his wallet, rather than to actually get in his pants. And even though Dane still gave off a little bit of an asshole vibe, I couldn't deny that I felt a surge of attraction towards him. Why not let him have a little fun with me, fulfill his office fantasy? I'd actually never gotten to have sex up on a desk in a skyscraper before. Maybe this would be fun.
Dane tugged me into the cubicles, pushing me ahead of him, guiding me with one hand sitting just above the curve of my butt. I could feel his eyes watching me walk, the way that he eagerly drank me in. Okay, he definitely was a red-blooded man. He'd done an admirable job of holding back his desire while we were facing each other at the poker table, I had to admit, but I could almost feel it spilling out of him in waves of heat, now.
"This is my desk," he murmured to me as we came around a corner. "Our first destination."
"First? Oooh, I like the sound of that," I murmured throatily back to him, reaching back to cup his face with one hand as he came up close behind me, pressing his crotch in against my ass.
Admittedly, Dane's desk wasn't exactly what I'd been envisioning. In my head, I'd seen him having a private office with a huge wood desk, maybe with a huge floor-to-ceiling glass pane as a window so that he could look out on the city below him. Instead, Dane's desk looked more like a typical cubicle, with three-quarter walls made of a plain gray fabric, like carpet stretched over a skeleton. A computer sat in the corner, its monitor on top of the desk while the case of the computer's innards sat underneath. Most of the desk surface appeared all but covered in stacks of papers, one large stack threatening to collapse at any second and cover the floor in a slew of documents.
"Okay," I said, trying to keep from letting the moment slip away. We could make this work, slip down underneath the desk and have some sweaty fun in amid the electrical cables. "So what are you going to give to me here?" My eyes drifted down suggestively towards his crotch.
Dane smiled back at me, although he didn't move forward to put his hands on my body. "No need to rush," he said. "This is going to take a while, and I did win you all night." His eyes gleamed at me. "And who knows, you might be here that long..."
Here we go. That little flare of desire burned brighter inside my chest, fueled by those gleaming eyes, the hunger for me that I saw in his aristocratic face. This was about to get really interesting.
Chapter Ten
DANE
*
I couldn't keep from beaming broadly as I saw Ruby's ass stretch that tight dress to its absolute limit. "You know, I could watch you bend over all night," I commented, not bothering to hide my perusal of her body.
She glanced back over her shoulder at me – and slipped one hand back so that I could see her upraised middle finger. "Go eat a dick," she suggested. "Or maybe a dozen of them. At least."
"Oh, don't get mad," I said, still grinning at her. "You did say that you belonged to me all night, and I could make you do whatever I wanted!"
"Well, this wasn't what I had in mind. At all." Ruby groaned and dropped her middle finger, instead placing her hand on the small of her back as she straightened back upright. "Gah, my back already hurts from all this bending over. You're a sadist, you know that?"
"But you're making progress!" I said, putting on a cheerleader's perky, fake smile. "Look at how many of the papers you've already filed away! You're halfway through the stack!"
Ruby transferred her smoldering gaze over to the huge stack of papers that I'd brought from my cubicle into the records room. "And how long have I been here?" she asked.
I shrugged. "Couple of hours, maybe."
"And you've just been sitting there the whole time, watching me suffer?"
"Pretty much, yeah. Think of it as karma, your punishment for trying to scam me out of my poker winnings."
She raised an eyebrow, still looking back over one shoulder at me. "You mean the money that you were hustling out of those other guys at the table? Doesn't really seem like you're the good guy, here."
"Yeah, but they were hustling my buddy in the first place, so I was also the agent of karma for them, too!" I shrugged, giving up the multi-layered metaphor. "Whatever. The point is that I need all of these papers filed away in their employee files, and you're a free source of labor for the night. So the way that you're paying me back is by putting all of the papers in the files that match up."
"And if I hadn't been convinced to turn to a life of crime before, this would do it for me," Ruby complained, but she picked up the next sheet of paper. "Hey, look at this one. Dane Stanton. That guy sounds like an idiot."
"He'd probably surprise you, catch you off guard," I countered.
"Uh huh. What's this paper for, anyway? You've finally finished passing all your court-ordered sexual predator classes and are ready to rejoin society?"
"That doesn't even make sense!" I protested. "That makes it sound like I took the classes in order to become a predator."
"Hey, you're the twisted one who preys on helpless, defensive women, not me." Ruby gave her ass a little wiggle. "You thinking about assaulting me, predator?"
To be honest, seeing her cute, round little butt jiggle like that did give me some less-than-pure thoughts. Even after Ruby finished up with these papers, we'd still be in the building by ourselves, late at night. I could probably get into Karson Walker's office. Be a hell of a "fuck you" to my CEO to bang this very attractive, totally crooked and crazy woman right on his desk...
Nope. Cut those thoughts out, Dane. Keep your mind away from Ruby, picturing her as anything besides a shapeless, sexl
ess creature. Like a cow.
A really cute, sexy cow.
"Come on, keep filing," I said roughly, fighting against those surprisingly persistent thought. "You're more than halfway through."
Ruby sighed as she turned back to the files. "It would go faster if you helped me."
I almost didn't move, but I had to admit that she had a point. I didn't truly want to spend all night stuck in the filing room at my workplace, anyway. I heaved my butt off of the desk where I'd taken a seat, moving forward to stand next to her.
"Fine," I gave in. "Pass me a stack, and I'll file some of these away. Happy?"
"Not particularly." But she gave me a small smile as she handed over a stack of the papers and I began searching for the corresponding employee files.
A few minutes passed, filled with nothing but the rustle of papers and the occasional rattle as we tugged another filing cabinet drawer open or shut. I thought that I caught Ruby glancing over at me a couple of times, but she always pulled her eyes back to her work whenever I checked on her. I waited for her to say something, but she kept her lips shut, her eyes remaining firmly on the papers in front of her.
"Ruby," I finally said, as I slipped a paper into its corresponding file. The name on the file was a particularly disagreeable marketing guy, and I briefly considered "accidentally" reading through his employee record.
"That's my name," she agreed, still not looking over at me.
"Got a second part of it?"
She considered for a minute, pursing her lips slightly. "Bennis," she finally revealed.
"Ruby Bennis. Funny, not what I expected."
That earned me a quick flick of her eyes. "And what were you expecting?"
"I dunno," I shrugged. "Something more exotic, sounding like you just swept in to lift me of all my hard-earned money."
"Well, Bennis is the name that I was born with, and it's good enough for me." She slammed a drawer shut with a bit more force than was necessary. "There. Give me some of your files."
I split my stack into half, and she snatched the papers out of my hands. "Ugh. Just my luck, I'd end up doing something dumb like this," she complained, stuffing a paper into a file without caring about how the sheet crinkled and bent. "I should have trusted my instincts when I first saw you."
Fool Me Once: A Bad Girl Romance Page 6