RUIN - Part Two (The RUIN Series Book 2) (6 page)

I stare at his handsome face. There's no way I ever would have known that his perfect nose was broken at one time.

"Do you think I'm good looking?" He turns sharply, catching my gaze with his. "You're staring at me."

"I think you may be the best looking man in this room."

He throws his head back in laughter. "I'm the only man in this room."

He is. He came to my place after he'd finished a very long shift. Now we're lying in my bed, after sharing a shower. I'm eager to feel him inside of me but I want to savor this moment for as long as I can. It's quiet, calm and I can tell he's relaxed.

"I need to go to Boston this weekend." His lips rest against my forehead. "I don't like the idea of leaving you here."

"I can come with you." It's an eager offer. I'm growing more and more attached to him as each day passes. I feel closer to him today than I ever have before and I know, logically, that a big part of that is tied into the conversation I had with Noah. I haven't brought it up with Ben because I don't know how to. I need to at some point. I can't keep everything I know about him a secret much longer.

"It's a boring medical conference." His hand moves from my shoulder to my back. "You're busy with wedding plans anyways."

A flash of disappointment races over me. He's right though. The wedding is fast approaching and I haven't been giving Alexa the time or attention she deserves. I need to get my mind back into that place where helping her is my priority. This wedding is her dream come true and I want to make it as special of a day as I can for not only her, but Noah too.

After Noah had told me about what happened after his stabbing, we'd said goodbye with an embrace. He'd held tight to me, burying his face in my hair asking me to wait until he could talk to Alexa about things before I told Ben. It was a repeat of the day he barged into Ben's apartment and started throwing accusations out about his role in their mother's death. I can't help but feel I'm headed towards another cliff like that without any brakes to slow me down. I just want this all to be over. I want Noah and Ben to sit down and work out their differences.

"You're drifting somewhere again." His hand races down my back towards my ass. "I need to do something to get you to pay attention to me."

I lean back wanting to feel his lips on mine. "Kiss me," I whisper as I look into his eyes.

He shifts his body away from mine slightly, freeing his other hand. He brushes my chin, pulling my face to his before his lush lips glide over mine. His kiss is wet, deep and hungry. I open my mouth to let his tongue slide next to mine. My hands run over his smooth chest, stopping to soak in how hard every part of his body is.

He rolls me over with little effort until I'm on my back. His mouth leaves mine, traveling with slow, languid licks to my neck. I whimper from the brush of his lips against my flesh, knowing that he's on a path to my nipples.

I arch my back as he pulls one tight, hard bud into his mouth. His teeth clamp down on it; drawing every sensation my body has to offer to the surface. I feel my legs fall open, my sex is wet and needy and aching to have him inside of me.

"Your cunt is already so wet." His eyes travel down my body. "I love how greedy it is for me."

I moan from the weight of the words. They're full of desire. "Fuck me, Ben."

His hand cups my sex. "You want me to fuck this?"

I groan into the still air, my hips grinding into the mattress, searching for more stimulation. "I need to come."

"You need to come with me inside of you." He moves slowly and deliberately, dragging his large body over mine. "I have to get a condom."

His hand leaves my pussy and I whimper from the lost touch. My hand jumps down to replace it. I pull my fingers through my folds, moaning loudly.

"Christ," he growls as he pulls the condom over his erection sheathing it. "You're making me want to blow my load already. Do you touch yourself like that when you're thinking of me?"

I own it. I need to own it. "I do."

He crawls back onto the bed, stopping to kneel next to me. "Show me more."

I circle my clit with my index finger before I slide it deeply into my slick channel. "I do this when I think about you fucking me."

"I'm the only man you think about when you fuck yourself?"

I nod, my voice lost as he climbs on top of me. I reach to grab hold of him. I'm desperate for his touch.

His hand dips into my sex, pulling his fingers through it. "You're so wet. I'm going to slide my cock into you. I'm going to fuck you so hard."

I pull on his shoulders. "Now."

"Now." The word comes from the deepest part of him as he drives his cock into me in one motion.

I open my eyes, stare into his and let my body take all the pleasure he's giving to me as he fucks me hard and fast until we scream each other's names as the rush of an orgasm washes over both of us.

"I want us to go out more." He runs his hand over my leg. "I love this but I want to do things with you."

"We just did a bunch of things I really like doing with you." I breathe the words into his chest.

"I liked every one of those things."

After Ben and I had made love, I'd fallen asleep in his arms. He'd woken me shortly after three when his tongue lapped over my folds. I'd held tight to his hair in the darkness as I rode his face into another climax.

I'd drifted back to sleep after that only to be awoken by his erect cock tracing a path over my lips. I greedily accepted it, pulling his desire into me after he'd fucked my mouth at dawn. I slept in his arms the entire night but feel more exhausted now than I did when I first closed my eyes.

"Do you have to work today?" I snuggle into his side, pulling my arms around his waist. "I wish we could both skip work sometimes and spend the day in bed."

"It's hard for me to do that." His hand strokes my forehead. "I can take a day off after I get back from Boston and we can spend it at my place."

"I'd like that." I would. I'd love that in fact. It's becoming harder and harder to pull myself from his arms in the morning to shower and get ready for work. Our schedules don't sync up as well as I'd like but that's part of dating a doctor. I'm quickly learning that. I take his time as it's offered, knowing that when he is with me, all of his attention is focused completely on what's going on between us.

"Are you worried about Noah seeing us together?"

The question slaps me across the face. I've done well with avoiding any questions about Noah for weeks now. Any time his brother's name did fall into the conversation it was related to the wedding. I hadn't brought up the fact that I'd seen Noah at all. Now, lying naked in Ben's arms I feel a sense of betrayal.

I shake my head against his chest. "I don’t care if Noah sees us together." It's my truth. I don’t care at this point. Noah knows how I feel. I've explained it to him. He knows that I have no intention of ending my relationship with Ben.

"You don't care?"

I can't tell if there's genuine surprise in his question or not. "No, Ben. I don’t care. Noah has to accept this."

He sighs heavily enough that my body moves from the motion of his. "You're not worried that he'll go off the rails again and tell you what a fucked up excuse of a man I am?"

Ben is softer than Noah. His soul isn't as jaded and on guard as his. "I know you." I tap my hand against his chest. "I know what's inside of here. You're a good man."

His hand catches mine. "You don’t know how scared I was after Noah and Alexa were at my apartment that night."

I do know. I was just as scared. I'd already started falling for Ben at that point and Noah's pointed accusations had made me question everything I knew about him. If I would have listened to his angry words then, I never would be in Ben's bed now. "They were just trying to protect me."

"They care about you a lot. I saw it then."

There was no masking it that night. The heated words and the need to pull me out of Ben's apartment was evidence enough of how much both Alexa and Noah worried about my safety. "They thought they were protecting me."

"I'd never hurt you, " he says the words softly. They're completely unnecessary. I know, without question, that Ben would never do anything that would cause me harm. I have even more faith in that belief since Noah told me about what happened in his hospital room. I still feel my emotions running on high speed whenever I think about Ben standing in silence while his brother beat him.

"I know, Ben." I graze my lips over his chest. "I feel safer with you than I ever have before."

"I want you to always feel that, Kayla."

"I will, " I say it with every promise that the words hold. "I will."

"There are things I need to tell Ben and Alexa before I get married."

I'm doing it again. I'm meeting Noah in a public place while trying to hide everything from the people I care about. If this is what it feels like to have an affair, I know that's never something I'm going to do. I already feel like shit keeping these meetings from Ben and Lex.

"What things?" I ask because I deserve to know. I've been following Noah through a confusing maze of discovery the past few weeks. I've listened as he's confessed to misjudging his brother and I've been witness to him breaking down from guilt or maybe just the weight of the hatred he's been carrying inside of him for more than a decade.

His eyes float past my face before they settle on some children racing towards a set of swings. We’re sitting on a bench at the edge of a park in Brooklyn. I had to deliver a package to a client for Vivian and Noah was doing a child's portrait in the neighborhood. Meeting here seemed like the logical thing to do.

"I should tell you about Sammy."

You should, Noah. You really fucking should.

"I've been wondering about her." That's not true. It's been more than wonder. I'd searched the alumni of Noah and Ben's high school website looking for anything I could find about a woman named Samantha or Sammy. Student records were protected and since it was obvious that she didn't play any sports or participate in any clubs, her name was nowhere to be found. More than once I was tempted to ask Ben about her, but I wanted to have something more substantial before I jumped into that conversation with him. Right now, my only place to navigate from is that she was Ben's first lover and Noah obviously knew her.

"Sammy was my girlfriend."

"What?" The volume of that one word is a clear reflection of what I'm feeling inside. Two women sitting on a bench near us crane their necks to see what I'm screaming about.

He looks down at me. "You're surprised."
What was your first clue, Noah?

"The Samantha Ben slept with that day was your girlfriend?"

"Technically she was my ex-girlfriend when they were together in the guesthouse." He takes a deep drink from the water bottle in his hand. "Or we were on the verge of breaking up."

I'm not sure how to respond. I'm slightly confused about why Ben left out that detail when he was telling me about that day. I can only assume that it's because he was embarrassed that he slept with a woman who was involved with his brother. "I had no idea."

"I met Sammy during my senior year of high school." He stares straight ahead. "She was a party girl. She was already in college. At the time she seemed out of my reach so I chased her until…"

"I understand," I cut him off. I don't want to hear it. I don't need to.

"We partied for weeks. We'd smoke weed and then spend hours at her place. She was a total freak."

I feel the muscles in my stomach knotting. "How did she end up with Ben?"

"Things between her and I started to fall apart right around graduation. She wanted me to take her to senior prom and I wouldn't." He pushes the water bottle against his thigh, smoothing out the fabric of his jeans. "I wouldn’t take her anywhere. I was embarrassed."

"Embarrassed of her?"

His hand jumps to his forehead, his index finger scratching his hairline. "Maybe it was her. Ben was dating the perfect girl. She was smart, sweet, and beautiful. He was always talking about how perfect she was. He spent a lot of time at her house helping her parents with odd jobs. I was dating a girl who was on the verge of dropping out of school. Her entire life consisted of getting high and getting fucked."

I cringe at the words. "So you broke it off?"

"That would have been the right thing to do." He bites his bottom lip. "I wasn't into doing the right thing back then. I just stopped talking to her."

"What do you mean?"

"I ignored her. I hooked up with other girls. I just pretended she didn't exist anymore." His tone is cold. "I was such a fucked up asshole."

"You were a teenager," I say, not to assuage his guilt but to move him past it so he'll tell me more about what happened.

"She confronted me in front of my house one day." He rolls the water bottle between his palms. "I didn't want my dad or Ben to see her, so I pushed her into my car and we took off."

"They didn't know you'd broken up?" I'm trying to string the pieces together.

"It wasn't that." His eyes dart over my face in a flash, never settling on my eyes. "I never introduced her to them in the first place. I told them I had a girlfriend but I didn't bring her around."

"I understand." He was ashamed of his choice. I'd felt the same way about some of the boys I dated in high school. I don't think anyone can fault Noah for that.

"We had it out that day." He stares at the ground. "I told her I didn't want anything to do with her. I told her to stay away from me."

"How did she take that?"

A small chuckle pours out of him. "Not well. She told me I couldn't just drop her. She said it wasn't all my decision."

The words bite into a part of me that now feels foreign. I'd thrown some of those same words at Parker when he broke up with me. I may have been older than Sammy was when Noah broke her heart, but the maturity level of the pain was on par. Rejection is a bitter pill for anyone to swallow, regardless of their age.  "She was hurt."

"I didn’t realize how badly I hurt her," he mutters. "I didn't know until you told me she was the woman Ben was with when our mother died."