Crushed Ruby, page 20
Ruby could practically hear her sister’s eye roll. “You’re so corny,” Sapphire said. “You just want me to leave, so I can’t interrupt Ruby and Judah.”
“Smart and a princess; I knew there was a reason I fell in love with you.”
She could hear Sapphire laugh as the front door closed behind them, leaving her and Judah alone. He didn’t waste any time. “I thought we could pick up the massage where we left off the other night. There were a few parts I missed.”
Heat pooled in her stomach.
This was all so new to her. She hadn’t felt this way about being intimate with a guy since she was seventeen years old.
As soon as Judah scooped her up into his arms, her lips moved to his like they were magnets. Upstairs in her bedroom, he laid her down on the bed, then stretched out above her, balancing his weight on one elbow while his other hand hovered at the hem of her sweater.
She knew what he wanted to ask, and it took her only a second to make her decision. “I think the massage will be better without the sweater.”
Judah’s cornflower blue eyes twinkled as he pulled the sweater up and over her head, then dropped it onto the floor beside them. His lips returned to hers, and his free hand began to brush lightly across her stomach. His fingertips tickled, but weirdly, not like when she and her sisters used to tickle each other when they were kids. This kind of tickling took that heat in her stomach and made it grow and reach out around her body until she felt like she was on fire. A good kind of fire.
As if he could read her body and her mind, Judah’s hand rose until it was brushing the underside of her breast. She still had her bra on, and suddenly, she wished she was naked, so she didn’t miss a single second of how good his hands were making her feel.
When Judah’s hand closed over her breast and began to knead, Ruby moaned her pleasure into his mouth, and without realizing what she was doing, her body arched off the bed.
Time blurred into nothingness as they kissed, and Judah played with her breasts, giving attention to one and then the other. She offered no protest when his fingers found their way inside her bra and began to tease her nipples, making them turn into hard little pebbles.
This was how intimacy with a man should be. It should make her feel good and desirable. It should have her wanting more.
And she did want more.
She could feel that Judah wanted more too.
Proof of that was pressed against her thigh.
Even though she didn’t want it to, her mind snapped back into what it had been trained to do. It wasn’t her place to receive pleasure. It was her place to give it. That’s what she was supposed to do.
Those thoughts pulled her out of the moment, and Judah noticed and instantly stopped kissing her, his hands lifting, so they no longer made contact with her body.
“Do you want to stop?” he asked her.
“That’s hardly fair,” she said, indicating his erection.
“It’s fine.” He smiled at her.
“You’ll be uncomfortable,” she reminded him. She was an expert at pleasuring a man. She’d learned to be if she didn’t want to be killed. She could give him what he wanted. It wouldn’t take long, and then he’d go to bed satisfied tonight.
“That’s my problem, not yours,” he told her, standing and picking her sweater up off the floor, carrying it to the en suite and dropping it into the hamper, before returning with the oversized T-shirt she slept in. “Arms up,” he ordered.
Staring at him in shock, she did as she was told, and he slid the T-shirt over her head. Once she was covered, he slipped his hand inside, unfastened her bra and took her arms and put them through the sleeves, dressing her like she was a child. He picked her up and stood her beside the bed and removed her jeans before pulling back the covers, laying her down, and tucking her in. Her jeans joined her sweater in the hamper, and then Judah took off his own jeans—folding them neatly and hanging them over the back of the chair—and came and lay on the bed beside her, on top of the covers, spooning her. His erection pressed into her back, and yet, he didn’t ask her to do anything about it.
“What are you doing?” she asked, confused.
“Going to sleep.”
“But you need to come.” Just because she knew that Judah wasn’t like the men who had used and abused her when she belonged to Igor, didn’t mean that she wasn't confused by his behavior. She was used to men taking what they wanted from her and not caring about what she wanted and needed. And yet, here was Judah, who was clearly turned on, saying that what he needed wasn’t as important as the fact that she wasn’t ready to take that step yet.
“I told you, I’ll be fine holding you in my arms while we sleep. That’s what I want. Everything else can wait. I don’t want sex until you want it too, and I don’t want you to do something because you were trained to think you have to. When you do that, I want it to be because it’s something you want, something that brings you as much pleasure as it brings me.”
She did want it.
She really did.
And yet at the back of her mind was a tiny niggling doubt.
“Judah?”
“Yeah?” he asked, his breath warm against her neck.
“How much about my past do you know?”
“I know that you and your sisters were sold by your parents to human traffickers.”
“Do you know that they used me as a prostitute?”
Judah tensed, his arms inadvertently tightening around her. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t want his pity; she wanted his understanding. “I was there for four and a half years … that equals a lot of men.” Fear and uncertainty and embarrassment almost had her stopping there, falling short of what she actually wanted to say. “After being used like that so many times, I don’t think that I should like it,” she blurted out.
“Sex?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, then held her breath as she awaited his response.
“Why should that make you not like sex? I mean, that’s fine if it did. I can see that messing with your head, but that doesn’t make wanting it wrong. What those men did to you wasn’t sex. It was rape. And when you’re ready to take that step with me, that won’t be sex either. That’ll be making love. What you went through was horrendous, and I wish I could erase it from your past, but there isn’t a right or wrong way to deal with it. You are strong and sweet, and you care about others. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already a survivor, whether or not you ever want to have sex again. Ruby …” His fingers traced up and down her arm. “I care about you, and I want to be here with you. I don’t care about anything other than you. I’ll wait as long as you want to. This is about developing something real, not about a hot night between the sheets.”
“You’re amazing, you know that?” she said, as tears began to drip from her eyes.
“You’re the amazing one.” Judah pressed a kiss to her neck and then pulled her closer.
It was still early, but she was drained and tired, and being snuggled in Judah’s arms like this had sleep already lapping at the edges of her mind. Ruby gave into it, secure in the knowledge that she and her heart were safe in the hands of the man who held her.
* * * * *
10:57 P.M.
“And then there were two,” Skull said as he locked Black Cat’s bedroom door. He didn’t want anyone interrupting them tonight.
Not that he minded an audience.
It had turned him on knowing that Nicole was watching them earlier, but she wouldn’t be the one interrupting him tonight. She was in prison, and the only people who might walk in were Black Cat’s parents. They wouldn’t just stand quietly and watch as Nicole had done because she was too afraid to turn around and leave after he’d ordered her to stay.
If Black Cat’s parents found him doing their precious little daughter, they would throw him out. And while he could always just kill them, he knew that wouldn’t make his pet happy, and he loved his little pussy cat.
At the moment, she was stretched out on the bed. Her shoulders were propped up on some pillows, and her legs were crossed at the ankles. She had her phone in her hands, and she was flipping through it, no doubt scrounging up every piece of news she could find on their crimes. She liked to follow it all, soak up the attention. He, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about the attention. The only attention he wanted was from his beautiful cat, his loyal followers, and his victims.
But tonight, there would be no more victims. They were nearly finished with what they started, and it was too late to bring anyone else into it. His loyal followers were both in prison now, and he knew they were both too smart to turn on him, so he wasn’t worried about them saying something they shouldn’t.
Which just left him with his cat.
She was naked, and her pale skin looked stunning against the black quilt. Her dark hair was fanned out across the white pillows, and her dark eyes were riveted on the screen in front of her.
But he wanted those eyes somewhere else.
On him.
“I said, and then there were two,” he repeated, stalking over to the bed. Sometimes it drove him crazy that his girl didn’t quiver in fear when she was in his presence. He loved fear. He loved it even more when that fear was directed at him. Wilson hadn’t understood why he didn’t want to torture their victims, but it wasn’t that he didn’t want to; it was that he didn’t need to. He already had what he wanted. Their fear was enough to sustain him, invigorate him, give him a rush like nothing else could—not even Black Cat.
But his girl wasn’t like anyone else.
“Mmhmm.” She nodded like she was only half listening to what he was saying.
He didn’t like that.
He wanted her attention riveted on him and him alone.
He reached out and twisted one of her nipples between his fingers until she squawked and finally stopped what she was doing to look at him.
“That hurt.” She pouted. He loved that whenever it was just the two of them, they walked around naked. Her parents didn’t know that, but they also didn’t know that most nights, as soon as they went to bed, he scaled the house to sneak into their daughter’s second-floor bedroom where he spent the night. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them, but easy access to Black Cat’s body was going to hurt her if she didn’t stop playing with her phone.
“And it’ll hurt worse next time if you don’t put that away,” he warned. He wasn’t above hurting the girl he loved if it was the only way to get what he wanted.
“Fine.” She sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically as she set the phone on her nightstand and fixed him in a sharp stare. “Happy now?”
“No, not yet,” he said, reaching out to take her hand and wrap it firmly around his already hard length, encouraging her to squeeze. He always concentrated better when she was touching him.
Black Cat began to purr as she rearranged herself onto her knees, so she had better access to him and began to stroke him with a mixture of harder and softer, faster and slower movements.
“We need to decide our next move,” he told her.
“I thought it was finishing what we started.”
“It was … it is … but Nicole messed up, and now it’s going to be harder to get to the Hatcher house, and we still don’t know where the baby is.” He was still angry with Nicole for snatching the infant and hiding it so he couldn’t finish off the Kendrick family. He hated loose ends, and now, because of that stupid safe room and that idiot Nicole, he had two left that needed to be attended to. If that girl was here, he would have given her a lesson she would never have forgotten. She and that guy of hers seemed to enjoy forcing others to perform sexual acts against their will, so maybe he would have done that to her, seen how she liked it.
“You’ll figure something out,” Black Cat purred.
He should be flattered by her words, but he was getting to the point where he could no longer form a coherent thought.
The heat was building inside his body, ready to send him bursting into flames any second now.
Flames.
Fire.
They’d stolen a car, turned the engine on, put a brick on the gas pedal and sent the car slamming into a telephone pole where it burst into flames.
It was just meant to be a distraction so Nicole could kill Ruby Hatcher, who would now no doubt be under constant police supervision so they couldn’t get to her.
But maybe they didn’t have to get to her.
Maybe they could blow the house up, taking out Ruby and anyone else who happened to be there.
Satisfied that he had indeed figured out a way to get what he wanted, he grunted as he came. Black Cat’s skilled hands drew out every last drop of pleasure until he was spent and empty.
“You have a plan,” she said as she stretched back out on the bed.
“I do,” he agreed.
“And then, once we finish, we can finally end things,” she said, a relaxed look floating across her face.
Killing others was his part of the plan, but killing themselves was hers.
That was how much he loved her.
They were a Romeo and Juliet of sorts. Young, in love, obsessed with one another to the point where it had consumed them.
When the Kendrick baby and Ruby Hatcher were dead, then they would end their own lives. That way, the two of them would be together forever. Nothing would be able to separate them—not the cops, not Black Cat’s parents, not Wilson and Nicole, not even life. In death, they would remain united for all eternity.
“I love you. You know that, right?” he asked as he scooped her into his arms and lay down on the bed on his back, draping Black Cat across his front.
“I know,” she said, twirling her fingers through his hair.
Sometimes he was afraid that she didn’t. That his obsession with his plan, and taking from her without always giving her something in return, that she might not know that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
He didn’t have the same kind of family that she did.
He hadn’t been loved by his parents.
His dad was a former military man who ran his house like they were his soldiers—not his wife and kids. Three basic meals a day, no toys, no video games. When they weren’t at school, they were expected to be doing chores or learning some skills he thought was necessary. There was no fun, no warmth, no guidance—just orders to be followed.
His mother was a loyal soldier who obeyed her husband’s every command. She didn’t speak out of turn, she kept the house as though it were a museum, she had no friends, limited contact with her family, and zero interest in being a real mother to her children.
His brother was the good son, the one who did as he was told, who followed those orders as though he felt it was his place in life. He got perfect grades, mastered every skill their father asked of them, never spoke back, never complained, and he never fought to be his own man.
But he was different. He was his own man. He was in control of his destiny, and he was going to make sure that he was as far from the man his father wanted him to be as he possibly could.
There was only one thing that destroyed a man like his father.
Disgrace.
He didn’t have a smart, obedient, loyal son. He had a cold-blooded killer for a son.
His father could take his stupid rules and stuff them. He was getting what he deserved. He would be dead, and his father would have to live the rest of his life, knowing what his son had done.
Stroking his hand up and down Black Cat’s spine, he let himself drift off to sleep, anxious for the next day to arrive so he could finish what he’d started and then step out of this world and into the next.
October 25th
9:17 A.M.
“I think I found Nicole Trent’s family.”
Judah looked over to his partner, who was grinning back at him. Finding who the kid was had proved difficult. There were a lot of Trents in the area, and all of the Trents they’d contacted had denied having a teenage daughter named Nicole. While it had been frustrating—especially now that they knew the gang did indeed intend to come back for Ruby—as soon as he’d gotten back to Ruby’s house last night and spent time with her, all that frustration melted away.
He’d had the best sleep of his life last night, just holding Ruby in his arms, her warm body snuggled against him, feeling her chest rising and falling evenly with each breath she took, knowing that she trusted him.
That was more important to him than that she had feelings for him.
He had always known that she liked him, no matter how much she wanted to avoid those feelings, but given what she’d been through, to know that he had earned her trust meant something.
When he’d left for work this morning, he made sure that there were two cops with Ruby. One would stay outside, and the other would stay inside—neither would leave her for anything. There would be no more distractions to try to lure them away and leave Ruby unprotected.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“Looks like they have different last names,” Zeb replied. “Eric Mariano reported his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter Nicole Trent missing late last night. Whoever took the report obviously didn’t take it very seriously because if they’d looked into it, they would have seen we had the girl in custody.”
“They probably thought she was just another runaway.” It was sad, but that was the way it usually went—most teenagers ran away; they didn’t get kidnapped. “But at least we know the family is looking for her. Mom not in the picture?”
“According to the report, the stepdad said that he thought there was a chance that Nicole had gone looking for her biological dad. Apparently, he ditched her and her mom when Nicole was a baby. Mom remarried but sadly passed when Nicole was four. The stepdad has been raising her ever since; that’s why when we were contacting people with the last name Trent, we didn’t find her family; she kept her name when the mom remarried. The stepdad remarried when Nicole was seven and now has three kids of his own. He says Nicole often talks about feeling left out and like she’s not really wanted or really part of the family, and he thought she might have gone to find her place in the world with her biological dad because she talked about him a lot.”
