Survivor: Steel Jockeys MC (14 page)

"Really? If I was that good an actor, I'd be on Broadway right now. Seriously, do you think I couldn't keep my eyes off you all night because I liked your sweater?"

"I don't know," she responded primly. "It's a nice sweater."

"I was sure Colt was going to start giving me shit about it. Thankfully, he has more restraint than I thought."

Ruby felt the corner of her mouth turn up. Joe looked so pained and earnest. It astounded her that someone who was so self-possessed most of the time seemed to lose his cool when he was around her. There was no subterfuge to that, she decided, and there was no reason to doubt that she was starting to be able to figure him out. She thought she'd been wrong to trust him, but where perhaps she'd really gone wrong was in doubting her own ability to read people. She'd put it to such good use selling motorcycles for Fox, but it was a genuine talent, and it had spoken to her somewhere very deep, even unconsciously. She needed to trust it.

"Jesus Christ, those pants, lady. Thank God you were sitting across from me and could only see my top half, or it
really
would have ruined dinner."

Ruby laughed. "They were Regan's idea. Frankly, I thought they looked silly." He didn’t have to know the truth.

He looked down at her hand poised on the bed, and she realized his own had had brushed against it; such an innocent gesture. As she'd noticed before, his skin was cold--like his circulation was something to be desired. But that didn't mean her own hands didn't feel warm next to his.

The gesture had seemed tender, but there was a glint of something devilish in his expression. He slid up onto the bed again.

"What's silly is you pretending I don't make you feel the same way." He grabbed for her waist, trying to tip her back theatrically like some grand romantic gesture from an old movie, half-pinning her underneath him on the bed. His hair came loose from behind his ear, brushing the skin around her lips…

He was joking of course, but it wouldn't have been so amusing if there hadn't been a grain of truth in it. Joe had that strange quality of being fully aware of how attractive he was, even being cocky about it, without being obnoxious or arrogant. That was a rare gift--not that Ruby would ever let him know it.

"You bastard," she laughed as she wriggled away and sat up again. She let him get away with a lot--but she wouldn't let him get away with that.

"You want me?" he asked casually, easily catching her again by the waist, echoing her words from earlier. She watched his chest expand and contract, his cheeks a bit flush. He was excited, she realized. And so was she.

"How do you do it?" Unconsciously, she reached up to touch the lock of hair that always fell down from behind his ear and over his eye. The one that hid the healing wound on the side of his face.

She touched the tender place gently, and he closed his eyes, then opened them again. She almost literally got lost in his eyes as she watched their amber-gold fire react to her fingers on his skin. It really was hypnotizing. She was back in the place she'd been in at Desiree's, heartbeat heightened, prepared to give in. She would let this happen. She wanted it to happen, she realized. How could she not?

"What can I say?" he whispered. "A little brains. A lot of talent." He bent down and brushed his lips against her ear and neck in a gesture that resembled, if she didn't think about it too much, a kiss. Enough of one, at least, to make her feel alive under the touch of this gorgeous young man that she desperately wanted.

She was aware that his hands had migrated up underneath the hem of her shirt, and were now touching nothing more than bare skin, an inch or two below her breasts. The mere thought of that was enough to make her nipples harden. She could feel them poke out, curious, desiring. Down lower, against her hips, she felt a rock-hardness against her thigh. She gasped. This had to stop.

"Don't you understand, Joe?" she countered, as much to convince herself as to convince him. "This can't happen."

"Why not?" His tone was bit childish, like a little boy who’d been told he couldn’t have his ice cream until after dinner.

"If I let you do whatever you want, I'd only be stroking your ego. I'd be proving what you think you already know. That I can't say no to you; that I can't resist you or disbelieve you. That
no
one can. I'd be doing it all over again. Making the same mistake and expecting different results. You know what that's the definition of?"

He pulled back a little, amusement on his face. "Insanity, they tell me. But then again, my education wasn't the greatest."

She laughed. She didn't want to think about the mixed messages she was sending out. "Seriously, stop."

To her surprise, Joe obeyed her immediately.

He sat up on the bed and slumped against the wall, though she could sense his growing physical excitement--his breathing had picked up, and the pupils of his eyes had started to dilate as he watched her. Although he was trying to get himself under control, he didn't really try to hide it, either. The fact that he was obviously so turned her on by her was enough that it had aroused her further, sending up her heart rate and igniting the nerve endings on her fingers, her neck, and between her legs.

Wildly, she thought of taking back her words and grabbing his thigh. It was a magnetic, almost chemical reaction, like she wanted to crash into him and see what sparks resulted. But all of this, this desire to surrender, to let go, proved what she already knew. It was all the more reason to take this slowly. And there it was, her brain and her body fighting it out again, all because of Joseph Ryan.

"There's something I still have to know."

"Anything."

"You're going to regret you said that."

"Probably."

She forged ahead. "Did you tell Colt? The other Jockeys? About what happened that night?"

Joe sighed. "The less they know, the better. Unfortunately, the less they know, the more irrational they get. They want somebody--anybody--to pay. It's just how they are. Luckily, I've had Colt to help me talk them down from the edge. So far, anyway."

Something about the way he said the last few words, and the way he turned his eyes briefly up to the ceiling, half-closed, made her heart feel funny. She realized that Joe, in the past few days, had been through every single hardship and indignity that she had, if not more--all while maintaining constant vigilance over her. It was kind of an awesome responsibility, and one she knew he didn't take lightly. For her part, she'd still managed to catch sleep at Desiree's and earlier that afternoon, while Joe--who knew?

"When was the last time you got any sleep at all?" she asked, echoing Holly’s question to her from earlier.

"I don't need sleep," he said automatically. He immediately yawned, of course, and they both laughed. She suspected it was more like he had trained himself not to think about it. It made a little lump in her stomach, because she suspected he'd let the kind of life where he'd had to do that too often.

“It's just like you to want me to believe that you're some kind of all-powerful demigod who lives on nothing but ambrosia and beer. But I," she said grandly, "have talents, too, you know. And one of them is seeing into people. Besides, you said I could ask you anything."

"Okay," he said with mock seriousness. "I'm going to hereby come clean and admit that I am not, in fact, superhuman. I would never do that, normally, because I have an image to uphold. However, there's something about you, Ruby, that makes me want to be more honest." When Ruby cleared her throat, he added. "To
try
to be more honest. Because the more I show you of myself, the more I might get to see of you. And needless to say," he said, gazing up at her mischievously, and Ruby's body responded in kind, to know that he was switching from serious to playful in hopes that she would go along in a sign that all was forgiven--or even that
some
was forgiven. "I think there's lot more I want to see of you."

"Oh, I can imagine there is."

He laughed. "Yeah. But it's not just that."

"I fascinate you?" she teased breathily.

"A little." Although he may have not known how to express the emotions she evoked in him, he had other ways of getting it across. "It's depth, maybe. I don't meet a lot of people--women--with depth. It's like--" he took a deep breath, and she could see his mind trying to form the words. She suspected he didn't spend a lot of time talking this way to his friends. "It's like looking into a clear ocean, where you can see all the way to the bottom. But not quite."

"It's Kyle," she reasoned, trying to temper her own heart from making her lean into the almost-poetic things he was saying about her, to cling to his words like a bee to the inside of a flower, sipping up the nectar. "You're just seeing in me what you miss about him. It's as simple as that."

"Maybe," he said slyly. "But there's certain...things you offer that Kyle definitely did not."

"Oh yeah? Like what?" she asked, then added, "Besides my butt in these pants."

"If only someone would invent a way for you to sit in
front
of me on the bike."

"If they do, God help us all."

He slid off the bed, and she felt her body sink disappointingly with the knowledge that this was it--it was over for the night. She’d really turned him down. He’d go no further. But he paused, bent down, and kissed her forehead. There was nothing seductive or devious about it at all. He really just wanted to kiss her goodnight. Joe was surprising. He could be a gentleman. He could be sweet. He could be a lot of things, she thought as she yawned, suddenly sleepy. She wondered if he could ever be good.

"Sleep well. Remember, I'm right down the street."

"You jerk. That's the one thing that’s going to keep me
up."

He laughed and shut the door.

She didn't drift off right away, or even get into bed. The night had certainly sapped her energy, and a decent, normal night's sleep was what the doctor ordered. But her eyes stayed wide open as she lay fully dressed, staring at the unfamiliar popcorn ceiling, mind trying to make sense of the ridiculous situation she found herself in.

She thought about tomorrow and how she might spend it. The idea that she wouldn’t have anywhere to be was bizarre. Since she was fifteen, she’d never been without a job. She didn't know how to spend her life sitting around doing nothing, like some kind of princess trapped in a tower, threatened by dragons, and protected by a white knight. Of course, her white knight had made it more or less clear how he wouldn't mind spending their time together. She'd asked if he wanted her and he'd made it more than clear that he did. This thrilled her, both because it was exhilarating and because it was dangerous.

After all, Joseph Ryan was used to getting whatever woman he wanted, when he wanted. He had to turn
down
women--turn down
girls
, even. Yes, he may sometimes play the part of the innocent kid or the unfortunate waif, but there was no reason to think that that wasn't just another tool in his seduction arsenal. He was probably right when he said his education had been crap, but he was smart. Smart enough to spot an opening when one appeared. She was convenient, she was needy, and she was wearing tight leather.

Why wouldn't he want her? It made it all the more vital that he not get her. Yes, he was capable of being honest, but he was also capable of lying. At least she could read him. It was the only thing she had to rely on.

She stretched her limbs and arched her back, letting the feeling of relaxation wash over her and the tightness subside, though her mind flashed back to the way his hands had felt as they slid underneath her shirt and up her torso.

It was hard to get rid of the image of his eyes as they changed in reaction to her touch. How she wanted to know that place he went when he wasn't flirting; wasn't joking; when his eyes were distant and heavy. She ached to know. But she could not make it easy for him. That would be a disaster.

But tomorrow, acting natural, acting detached, acting the way she needed to act in front of him, would be torture, especially if she had to spend the day cooped up in the house, watching trashy daytime talk shows. She had to find something else to keep her grounded, to help wrestle her thoughts away from him. A job.

A
job
. That's what she needed. With that settled, she slept.

***

Joe’s confession that he had never slept well was truer than Ruby knew. Not as a young child, when he had had to wait up nights to see if his mother would stumble home, knowing she’d either be looking for someone on which to take out her drug-fueled rage, or she’d pass out on the couch for the next eight hours while he ate Cheerios for every meal and tried to get himself to school. And if it was possible for any kid to get a good night's sleep in a foster home, he'd never seen the proof.

There was always something to stay on guard against—whether it be the unwanted late-night attentions of some perverted foster "uncle," the snoring of the asthmatic kid in the bed next to him, or the knowledge that a social worker could pull up the next morning, hustle him into a state car, and drop him off in a strange house thirty miles away, where the best he could hope for was that it wouldn't be worse than where he already was.

In juvie, with a shiv under every mattress, constant vigilance wasn’t even a question. Later, when he'd joined the Jockeys, he thought he'd found some measure of security, especially in knowing that guys like Kyle and Colt had his back. But it still wasn't conducive to beauty sleep when he knew some lowlife Latin King was across town stroking his gun, plotting revenge on them for some real or perceived slight.

So what it all boiled down to was that he'd gotten good at running on empty. And yet, having to tear himself away from Ruby, leaving her sleeping peacefully in Colt's house and riding home in the state he was in, was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. He'd started with a lukewarm shower, but even that wasn't enough after the sight of Ruby's hips and ass in that black leather, rippling like some kind of inky star. It was all he could do not to grab her like an animal, not to surrender to his baser impulses.

He tried to be better than that, usually. But usually, he didn't need to be better than that. Usually, it wasn't so goddamn hard for him to get a woman to take off her pants, to spread her legs, and yield to him like a broodmare in heat.

When he got back to the bar, he'd gone straight upstairs without even pausing to have a drink with Mark Chester or the handful of bikers in from out of town. If he'd paused to explain, they wouldn't understand. They'd deride him for taking no for an answer; for not throwing her down on the bed and convincing her, with his hands and his words, if not with brute force, who was boss.

As if anyone would get away with doing that to Ruby Clarke. He had no doubt she'd use teeth, claws, and every ounce of strength she had to fight it. Besides, it would be horrible. It would kill what the two of them had started, which was to build something else together. Something he'd got by painstakingly winning her trust, and by playing the gentleman he sometimes forgot was hiding inside him.

His cock still screamed out for her, of course. It was almost unbearable now. But there were other ways. He just wasn't sure any of these other ways were capable of getting him what his body wanted without risking everything else.

After all, Kyle's sister had spent most of her adulthood hating and fearing what Joe was, blaming him for the grief she'd suffered, so much so that he worried she would never want anything to do with him. And yet she’d at last let her guard down enough to joke with him, to tease him like a friend. To treat him like a human being, and allow him to treat her the same. That wasn't worth nothing. It should be worth everything. It should be all he could dare to hope for. But it wasn't.

Which of course was why he'd gone home. Alone in his cramped room upstairs, out of the unsatisfying shower, his jacket, hoodie, and jeans draped over the post of the worn futon that sadly, was probably the nicest bed he'd ever slept in. He lay staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling, biting hard on his lower lip. Another reason he liked to avoid sleep was that he tended to have a lot of nightmares--about his mother, about his foster parents, and more recently, about Kyle's death.

In the meantime, he could touch himself, grab himself, or treat himself roughly--that's probably what he deserved. He certainly didn't deserve Ruby. Didn't deserve her, and would never have her, at least not under any circumstances he could live with. He needed to remind himself of that more often, that she was a good girl and had built her whole life around being a good girl. Because of that, she would always be out of his stratosphere. But when he closed his eyes, he focused on the strange, magic color of Ruby's eyes, of her lips parted like a gasp, begging him to get closer, and hoped he could dream of her, and that it would be enough to bring him through to morning.