He tapped his temple. “Your wall sweetheart.”
“Do not call me that you motherfucker! That is not a condition that is… that is… not a condition.”
“What is it then?”
“Probably you.”
“Me? God you’re killing me, stop.”
“I’m killing you? You’re eyeballs have walls in them, not my brain!” she rapped a finger on her temple.
“Isadore, I’m telling you, warning you, your anger is too much for me.” Ruin quickly rolled down his window to get away from the smell of her fury. When had it become the greatest weakness linked to his cock?
“My anger is too much for you?”
“Stop repeating me and calm down.”
“I will not fucking calm down, how about you stop this damn truck now, I’m not going another fucking kilometer with your ass.”
Ruin slammed the breaks, sending bags flying to the floorboard again. He pulled off the road, undid his seat belt, and pulled Isadore to him by the legs. “Take off your fucking clothes, now.”
Chapter Four
The power in him made his voice shudder and the whimper of need that escaped her made him dizzy.
“Ruin, we can’t . . . ”
“You need to orgasm on my finger, Isadore. Take. Your clothes. Off.” He struggled hard not to allow his power into the words that would force her. He wouldn’t force her in that.
“You’re—”
“Not making you. But do it. Now.”
Another whimper accompanied her immediate obedience and Ruin gripped the seat while she removed her pants, her hands pausing on her panties.
“Panties, too!” He was so desperate, the words rushed out on a whisper.
“What if . . . ”
“Everybody on this road just had a minor break down. Do it.” His voice strained with need but he refused to touch her, he needed her to be willing. At least to a degree. She finally sat there naked, her forearms hiding her breasts. “Don’t you dare hide from me!”
His sharp order made her jump a little and then she lowered her arms, fists on the seat next to her.
“Lean against that door and pull your knees up.”
She licked her lips then scooted and did as he said. Ruin slid closer, watching her milky thighs draw up toward her chest.
“Isadore.” Her name croaked out like a ragged prayer. “Open very wide for me.”
Her breaths blasted irregularly as she let her outer leg slowly fall open, revealing the soft pink of her secrets. Exposing herself did something for her, and she gripped the seat tight, making tiny whimpers of need and anticipation.
He let his gaze roam over her, realizing he needed to see her this way. “Where do you need me to touch you?”
She answered with a sharp “Please.”
Ruin leaned and kissed along her knee, closing his eyes with a groan. “Your smell . . . makes me crazy.” He caressed along her inner thigh with only the tips of his fingers until they grazed her full, shaven lips. “Here, Isadore?”
She nodded with a frantic, “Yes, yes.”
He stroked his finger barely over her clit. “And here?”
“God yes,” she cried in desperate need, her head thrashing.
He leaned until his mouth was next to hers and ate up her gasps. “I love to feel how much you love this.” He slid his middle finger slowly inside her. “Love to taste and feel it on my tongue.” He nipped at her parted lips that carried her errant cries. “I love the power I have over you. The sounds you’re making.” He plunged his finger fully in all at once, slamming into her core, watching her closely as she cried out. It was his favorite moment.
“Ruin!”
He caught the cry with a hungry kiss. “Yes, that, I have to have that.” His own breath shuddered through him. “I have to have you saying my name just . . . like . . . that.” He teased at that secret doorway inside her with frantic flicks of his finger, her cries turning sharp and frequent. “Why do you fight this?” He dove on her hard nipple, drawing circles on her clit with his thumb, growling as she thrust her hips into his touch. It sucked his power from his center until he had to restrain it.
What was she doing to him? With just the sound of her desire, the feel of it, taste of it. The smell of it. She was breaking him. Tearing him down into . . . into something. Something else, something strange to him, yet familiar. Something dangerously raw and powerful. And right. Yet, so very wrong.
“Do it, do it, please. Oh God yes, yes, yes!”
“Isadore,” he gasped at her mouth, kissing her as she bucked on his hand in orgasm. “Isadore, what are you doing to me?” He plunged his tongue deep into her mouth, having to taste her fully as her body shuddered and clenched his finger tight. His manhood throbbed with envy, needing that hot silk embracing it. He growled at remembering her mouth on him, just as her fingers latched in his hair and pulled hard as she arched her body toward him. He knew she wanted to touch and do more now. This is where she became somebody else, nothing holding her back. Until it was over. Then guilt and shame would come. Ruin had to get her to a place where it didn’t. A place where she wanted it so bad, she wanted it when she was lucid, not just in the throes of pleasure. When she was wide-awake—eyes, heart, and mind wide open.
He’d have to help bring her to that point. And that meant denying himself. Even as he thought it, the idea felt more right than it should, reminding him he had his own issues and mysteries to solve about himself. Why he needed to be punished wasn’t as curious to him as his need to answer it. It was near instinctual. Like judging was.
Ruin didn’t give her a chance to think long about what he’d just done. He kissed her swollen lips lightly then sucked her essence off his finger and returned to his place behind the wheel. “Get dressed.” He turned the key, started the truck and turned at hearing her gasp. “What?”
She stared at him for several moments with anger and disbelief and Ruin turned away.
“Don’t be angry because I give you what you need. Be thankful.”
“Ohhh my God,” she whispered, yanking on her clothes. “You . . . used me!”
Ruin rolled his eyes and got the truck onto the road, wasting not a second. He was more ready than ever to get to the end of this assignment. “Giving you what you need is using you? Don’t you mean I used me? It was my finger in your body, not yours. I didn’t see you do anything but . . . ” Ruin suddenly had to roll down the window for air.
“But what? Come all over like a whore?”
Ruin recalled the meaning of that word and quirked his lip. “How does whore even apply here?”
“Because there is only one person feeling good and getting off!”
“And . . . that was you,” Ruin said. “Which makes me the whore, not you. But I don’t think of that as me being a whore, but a . . . ”
“But a what?”
“Normal.”
“Normal!”
He regarded her. “Stop acting so self-righteous just because you had an orgasm and I didn’t.”
“I’m not acting self-righteous JD!”
“Izzy.”
“Don’t call me Izzy!”
“Don’t call me JD.”
“Well I’m not calling you Ruin in public, that’s not a name for public and don’t change the subject you bastard. Don’t you ever do that again, don’t you ever!” She jabbed her finger at him. “I am not a damn slut!” she yelled.
Ruin hit the gas, and Isadore held on.
“You suck at driving, too, you’re reckless!”
“Thank you,” Ruin nodded, oddly excited with the entire driving experience. “I like driving.”
“How can you like driving, you’ve never driven.”
“I’m driving now.”
“Now yes.”
“How long do I have to drive to know I like it?”
“Longer than two minutes. It gets old, trust me. Like a fuck gets old.”
Ruin raised his brows. “A fuck can age?”
“Yes, it can, the experience can.”
“How so?”
“Stop acting all studious. Fucks are experiences and experiences get old.”
“I can’t fathom a fuck getting old, sorry.”
“Well you’d be wrong.”
“Or you’d be wrong.”
“I’m not, trust me. I’m right. Fucks get old, people get old, feelings run out and wear down like the rubber on a tire.”
“Wow, really.”
“Shut up. Don’t you ever touch me again. If you do, I’m leaving, I mean it. I will leave your ass while you’re in the bathroom at a gas station, don’t think I won’t. I will. In a motherluvin heartbeat I will. ” She yanked one of the bags off the floor and mumbled how she’d kill him too while digging through it. Pulling out a package, she ripped it open with her teeth and half the contents flew everywhere. “Shit! Damn shit!” She shook the remaining contents at him. “That’s what you deserve. Worse than that. Much worse.” She yanked another item out of the bag, something small and rectangular. She opened it up, pulled a slender flat piece out and unwrapped that then shoved it in her mouth. She chewed with a rabid fury while digging through the other bags, still mumbling. Whatever she chewed on seemed to never get to the point of digestible. She suddenly puckered her lips and pushed her tongue slowly out of her mouth then a strange transparent orange bubble appeared then popped. She devoured the busted matter and continued chewing with renewed vigor. She looked at him. “What!”
“What is that in your mouth?”
“Gum,” she said, exasperated.
Gum? The stuff from trees? That was edible? She suddenly threw the pack at him with murderous force and his curiosity won over his instinct to throw it back. Taking a slice from the pack, he used his teeth to open it and put it in his mouth. A fruity flavor erupted on his tongue as he chewed. Twenty chews later and the flavor gradually disappeared but the consistency of the food only seemed to grow denser. Odd food. He swallowed it, not caring for how it felt going down. It couldn’t be good for a body. “Why do you even eat that?”
She regarded him. “I don’t, I chew it.” She stopped chewing. “You swallowed yours?”
He glanced at her, realizing he wasn’t supposed to. “You didn’t tell me not to.”
“Well I didn’t know you didn’t know not to.”
“How would I know not to?” he exclaimed, “Is it poisonous or something? Why are you looking like that?”
“No, it’s not poisonous it’s just . . . ” she busted out laughing and Ruin didn’t appreciate the feeling it gave him. “You don’t swallow or eat gum. It’s just for fun to chew!”
“For fun to chew? How is that fun? I don’t get it. You know I don’t know things.”
She howled her laughter. “Well I forget that, Mr. Ruin, Mr. Supernatural smart person who doesn’t have memory of all his awesomeness but instinctually knows he’s right about everything!” She pointed at him. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
“You’re still angry about that?”
“I will be angry forever about it!”
“Until the next time,” he mumbled.
“There will be no next time, I assure you, I have self-control, I have self . . . worth! You need to accept that and quit trying your damnedest to make me do things I don’t want to do.”
Ruin regarded her. “There will be a next time. Sorry.”
She gasped. “Ruin! You cannot do that to people.”
“I have to.”
“Why!”
“You need it. You don’t understand it yet but I do. And I have to give you what you need, I’ve told you this. It’s not like I can help it,” he reminded, annoyed.
She sat there, choking on her breath it seemed. “Wow. I mean wow,” she said in light amazement. “I’m stuck with a-a being who insists that molesting me is for my good. Perfect. You are definitely not an angel, we’ve established that much.”
“No,” he was more sure than ever, “I am an angel.”
“Well not a very good one.”
“Maybe not,” he mused, hating the remaining puzzles. “I don’t feel like I’m bad.”
“Well it is bad to molest women, Ruin, that is plainly in the bible.”
“Do you really want to use the bible as your reference source when it comes to right and wrong and sex? I don’t mind, it’s rather in my favor.”
“Shut up!” she snapped. “I use the New. Testament!” She stabbed the dashboard. “I told you already. One man, one woman,” she hacked her hand through the air. “For. EVER.”
“You say that like it’s a judgment.”
“It is for some my friend.”
He didn’t like that term. “Friend.”
“Yes, friend, nothing more, and friends do not put their fingers in a woman’s privates without . . . ”
“Getting married.”
“Being in love and yes, getting married, which you don’t do unless you’re in love.”
He sighed, checking his mirrors. “Back to the love thing now.”
“Yes, back to the love thing, back back back. That’s where Go is, and you do not pass go, you do not collect two hundred dollars unless you pay that toll!”
“Two-hundred dollars?”
“Stop changing the subject!”
“You said it. I’m just trying to understand.”
“The only thing you need to understand mister, is there is no touching this body without love, comprehenday?”
“Um.”
“Do you understand!”
“I do but—”
“But nothing, there are no buts here.”
“I just don’t agree.”
She threw herself against the seat and stared out the window. “You have no choice.”
There had to be a better way to go about this with her. “Okay, okay. Got it. No more touching you without love.”
She regarded him. “What kind of shenanigans are you trying to pull now? Don’t try to tell me you’re in love with me.”
Even though Ruin could hear it in her voice—the desperate need for him to say he was—he could not. He didn’t understand her convoluted concept of love enough to know if he was or not. He didn’t understand the world’s concept and definition of love, the closest thing he came to understanding love, was with her jealous God who wanted his creation only to love Him. Ruin was vaguely connected to that concept in some way with Isadore. But he needed time to discern too many things and variances. “No, I’m not trying to say I’m in love with you. I’m saying I’m not going to touch you anymore.”
Silence ensued for a span of five seconds. “Well thank. You.” She jerked her whole body toward the door and proceeded to stare silently out of the window. It took all of Ruin’s power not to add that he wouldn’t touch her anymore until. Until she was well aware that her concept of love was not needed or necessary for him to give her pleasure. The only person hurting or suffering when he touched her was him. And when he didn’t touch her . . . they both suffered. But it was her suffering he couldn’t live with. And he wouldn’t repeat that he had to meet her needs, it was falling on deaf ears. He’d just have to meet them some other way. She wanted to know he loved her, whatever that was to her and he wouldn’t lie to her. But he was getting very good at telling the truth in clever ways.
Chapter Five
Isadore watched the twilight landscape silently pass them by. Only she saw none of it, she saw various shades of fury.
“We need to sleep and we don’t seem to be close enough to our destination yet,” Ruin announced.
“Look for a hotel,” she muttered. “Well get two rooms.”
“Okay.”
He was being all nice and sweet. Of course he was. He didn’t like the no touching rule. Too bad. He’d have to deal. “Next exit says it has facilities. Take the next exit. It’s the one—”
“I read the sign. I got it. One point six miles.”
“Well excuse me for trying to help. I don’t say a word for twenty
miles and the second I do, you’re jumping down my throat.”
“We’re getting a slang dictionary on this exit. I’m weary of not getting two-thirds of what you say.”
She snorted. “You’d need an Isadore slang dictionary, bunny cheeks.”
“Bunny cheeks,” he muttered. “Got it.”
“No you don’t,” she muttered back. “Go to that hotel,” she pointed while eyeing the cheaper one. “That one costs less, but price is quality when it comes to hotels and I’m not sleeping in disgusting crusty human filth covered with sprays and sexual perversions camouflaged in dark colors.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
Damn right it did. “And we’re getting two rooms.”
“Yes, you said that.”
“Just reminding you in case you forgot.”
“Not at all. I like solitude.”
She burned with anger. He liked solitude? She hated that he didn’t lie and that she didn’t know what he meant by that. He meant something she could tell. Something weird. “Maybe you can watch TV and learn a few things.” Like what love was. She remembered what else you could learn on the TV. “Second thought, you better not watch it, I don’t need you learning the wrong things. You seem to know plenty about that as it is.”
“My judgment tells me what’s right and wrong.”
She couldn’t hold back her snort. “Sure. Do what you want. Park there.” She aimed her finger to the entrance.
Ruin got her there in a second and she hated that he was so good at driving he managed not to jolt her when coming to an abrupt stop. Mr. perfectly imperfect perfectionist.
“I’ll be right back, just wait here.” She got out the truck and slammed the door, hoping it broke his eardrums. She’d not been able to shake her anger ever since he’d done that to her. Again! That was the, what, fifth time since they’d met that he didn’t share the experience with her! Or near that amount.
Well never again. That was for damn sure. He thought she needed him, but ooh was he wrong. She’d show him. She’d show him. And there were plenty of men that would love her the way she required. Maybe she’d prove that to him, too. Maybe Mr. Ruuuuin needed to see that in action to help him learn it? Even if she didn’t find anybody to do that with her, there were plenty of people in love around them that she could show him what that looked like, what it meant. Not that she needed him to learn, who cared if he learned or didn’t learn? That wasn’t part of his need to know. She’d show him because obstinate idiots needed to be shown.