Rebel (4 page)

Even at five-nine and wearing three-inch heels, she had to tilt her head to look into his eyes. His gaze was heavy-lidded, but sharp, serious and scorching. Those full lips had lost their grin and his jaw ticked with pent up energy. There was definitely a more intense side to this easygoing country boy, born and raised in the heartland—one that coaxed her interest and ramped her desire.

But she held her emotional ground and pushed through the chore with all her shields firmly in place.

Balancing herself with pressure against his chest, Rubi slowly lowered. Keeping her gaze pinned to his, sending the silent message that her will was just as strong as his, her hands slid down the hard wet muscle. God, he was utterly delicious.

Curling her fingers into the neoprene at his waist, she used his body to steady herself and rocked to her knees.

Troy, Keaton, and Duke egged them on with whistles and a husky, “That’s what I’m talking about,” “Looking good there,” and “Mmm-mmm, getting hot in here” encouragement. Rubi let it all fade into the background.

Wes’s gaze had transitioned into something primal. Something hungry. Predatory. Rubi let herself imagine what he’d do to her now if they were alone. How he’d slide his big hands into her hair, guide her mouth to his cock, and draw her forward until he was buried to her throat. A telltale tickle signaled growing moisture between her thighs.

Lexi grabbed Rubi’s hands, moving them to a pair of raised round components on the harness at either side of Wes’s hips. “Hold these right there.”

“Will do.”

Wes let a hand fall to his side. He traced the tip of one finger across her forehead and lifted a lock of hair, setting it aside. The move was so intimate, tension balled in her stomach.

“You look good right there, Russo.” His voice, low and thick, rolled over her skin like a warm breeze. “Really good.”

He traced a tingling path down her cheek and across her jaw. Then his hand opened, and his thumb swept the angle of her cheekbone. A decadent sensation made it hard to keep her eyes open.

Footsteps sounded on the trailer’s stairs. “Are we ready for lunch?”

Jax’s question, clearly asked before he took in the scene, made Rubi grin.

Wes pressed his thumb against the center of her lower lip, dragging her mouth open a touch. “Just say the word…”

And I’ll be your lunch.

He didn’t need to say the words for her to know what he was thinking. What they were both thinking.

“Russo.” The disbelief in Jax’s voice finally drew Rubi’s gaze. “What the hell are you doing?”

“A favor for Lexi.”

“Okay,” Lexi said. “You can get up, Rubi.”

“Thank you,” she said with an infusion of
thank God
.

Wes leaned down and slid his hands up her arms. With a firm grip on her biceps, he lowered his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Tonight I’ll be dreaming about finishing what we started here.”

So would she. But she kept that to herself.

Rubi pushed against his chest and—reluctantly—eased herself from his grip.

Lexi glanced at Jax and gestured toward Wes. “What do you think?”

Jax leaned back with that easy, negligent stance, dark brows pulled as his gaze inspected the harness.

“Yeah.” He moved to Lexi’s side and swung an arm around her shoulders, then reached down to fit the fingers of his other hand into the space between a circular contraption and Wes’s hip. “That’s a much better fit.”

Wes’s phone double-chimed in his pocket, but his hands were busy fitting and refitting the Velcro strap holding the apparatus low on his waist.

“You asshole,” Jax said with the same tone he’d used with Rubi over her attire. “You know you shouldn’t have your phone on you while you’re running stunts.”

“Yeah, yeah.” A new intensity pulled Wes’s forehead and mouth into a frown. He lifted one knee, and the straps around his thighs drew the metal strips along with the movement, pivoting at the hip joints. Then he lifted the other, crouched slowly, straightened. “I hope this thing works.”

He
hoped
? The fact that he would simply
hope
a piece of safety gear would work shot the heat of anger along her spine. But Rubi kept her mouth shut. She certainly wouldn’t have nagged Troy or Keaton or Duke about their equipment. Or even Jax. And she wouldn’t start with Wes.

“It will. It’s a really nice rig.”

“We’ll see.” Wes turned away and ripped off all the straps, dragging the thing off.

His phone chimed again. He pulled it from a pocket beneath the neoprene and became engrossed in a message.

Jax stepped behind Lexi, wrapped his arms around her, and lowered his chin to her shoulder. Those blue-green beauties met Rubi’s and turned innocent—which meant he was about to pull something.

“Where are you taking us for lunch?” he asked, hopeful.

“Us? Who said you could come?”

Before Jax answered, Rubi glanced at Lexi, who offered a lopsided grin.

Rubi’s shoulders sagged. But she forced a smile and more enthusiasm than she felt. “Of course. You’re a package deal now, right?”

Jax straightened, his gaze traveling to Wes, who was now leaning against a free desk, feet crossed at the ankles, blond head bent, his thumbs busily texting. Jax darted a questioning look toward Rubi. Over the last couple of months, they’d all developed the ability to speak without talking, and now he was silently asking if he could invite Wes along.

Rubi lifted a shoulder. What was she supposed to do? Say no when they’d been doing everything together for two months?

Jax’s phone chimed, and he pulled it from his jeans’ pocket. His gaze lifted to the other Renegades. “They’re ready for you on set.”

Troy, Keaton, and Duke rose from their seats and grabbed water bottles from the fridge before exiting the trailer.

When they were gone, Jax said, “Wes, come to lunch with us. Let Rubi distract you for a while.”

He glanced up from his phone, his eyes glazed over in concern. “I’m filthy. You guys go ahead.”

His disinterest swept a cool breeze of hope through Rubi. Maybe he wasn’t as into her as he’d seemed. Maybe he’d been joking earlier. Her mind shot back to the intensity in his eyes. No, he hadn’t been joking.

“The Crossroads has a patio,” Jax said. “Okay for you girls?”

Not what Rubi had in mind at all, but… “Sure.”

Wes peeled off the rest of the suit, showing tan cargo shorts beneath. He grabbed a white T-shirt off the corner of a desk and started toward the bathroom. “Let me clean up. I’ll just be a minute.”

Rubi watched him go, soaking in the sight of the muscle play along his spine and ribs. Liquid warmth spread through her body, but she held in a sigh of longing. He was a beautiful man—there was no denying that fact.

When he was gone, she returned her attention to Lexi and Jax. Here they were, the perfect foursome again. This whole pairing-off habit they’d adopted over the past several weeks might be why Wes had tripped that line and asked her out. She had to admit, seeing Lexi and Jax together, so happy, so in love, so…connected, had tweaked Rubi’s mind toward the idea of finding that perfect someone. But she only had to look into her past to know she wasn’t Lexi. They might mirror each other in many ways but were completely opposite in just as many. Desiring and maintaining a romantic relationship was one of those opposites.

Yes, she wanted Wes. She was human. She was female. And he was…a freaking demigod. But talk about messing up perfect friendships—breaking Wes’s heart would cause rift upon rift upon rift within this new and expanding circle of Rubi’s and Wes’s friends.

To buffer the whole double-dating scenario, Rubi turned to Rachel. “Take a break from that computer, Rach. Come with us.”

Rachel groan, pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “A break from this risk assessment sounds heavenly.”

Wes returned with his muscles stretching the T-shirt’s Hurley logo across his chest and his feet slung into worn, leather flip-flops. Rubi grinned at his surfer-boy look. But his head was still bent toward the phone in his hand, his handsome face pulled into that rare frown.

In an attempt to find equilibrium again, she teased, “Girl problems?”

He looked up with a lopsided grin and slid his phone into his pocket. “You’re the only girl giving me problems, Russo.”

He slid his hand under her hair and squeezed her neck. Tingles spread over her skin, down her spine. The touch surprised her. Unsettled her. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”

Rachel stood and grabbed her purse.

Jax pulled Lexi by the hand toward the door. “My truck’s right out—”

“I’ll meet you there,” Rubi said. “I’m going to head straight home from lunch.
I’ve got a lot of work waiting for me.”

She stepped into the Los Angeles sunshine and slid her sunglasses on. At the bottom of the steps, Rachel turned to follow Jax and Lexi.

But Wes waited with a hauntingly sexy grin. “Can I drive the Ferrari?”

“Actually, no.”

“
No?
”

She always let him drive when they went anywhere together; it gave him such a thrill. And she’d been brimming with anticipation of this moment when she’d introduce him to her new—even faster—toy. But if she was going to keep things platonic between them, cutting back on these intimate habits would probably be a good start.

“No,” she repeated. “I traded it in today.”

“You
what?
” He reached out and placed the back of his hand to her forehead. “Are you sick?”

“No,” she laughed, batting his away. “I don’t need two cars.”

“What did you trade it for?”

She heaved a sigh. There was no way she would be able to keep him out of this car without being downright mean. And that would be as detrimental to their friendship as fucking him.

She pointed her key fob toward the parking lot. The Aston’s sidelights flashed with a corresponding chirp.

Wes’s gaze held on the sleek machine for a long, disbelieving moment, before he uttered, “Is that…? No…fucking…way.” His voice overflowed with awe and appreciation, then he yelled, “Suh-
weet
.”

He jogged toward the Aston, and Rubi couldn’t stop the soft grin that turned her mouth and lightened her heart. Jax followed, the two of them all smiles, as they opened the doors to peer inside, chattering like two-year-olds with a new Hot Wheels set.

“You haven’t mentioned wanting a new car,” Lexi said, coming up beside her with Rachel.

“You know I can’t pass up a smokin’ deal.”

“It’s…” Lexi crossed her arms and returned her gaze to the car, brow drawn. “Pretty.”

“Pretty?” Rachel said. “It’s so gorgeous we might have to leave the boys behind. Don’t know how you’ll get them out of there now.”

She smiled at Rachel’s comment, but it was the confused concern in Lexi’s voice that touched an uncomfortable spot inside Rubi. Sometimes it was great to have someone know you better than you knew yourself. Sometimes it was as uncomfortable as taking a cold shower.

Wes said something to Jax over the console and Jax laughed so hard he doubled over. The sight and sound eased Rubi’s nerves and made her smile again. “God, they’re so cute together.” She cut a sidelong glance at Lexi. “Don’t think so hard. I can hear the gears grinding.”

“What’s going on?” she asked. “You’re out of sorts today. And this…” She gestured toward the car. “Is something going on with Wes?”

“Denial and redirect,” Rachel said, crossing her arms with a huff and a teasing glare for Rubi. “That’s all you’ll get from her.”

Wes glanced through the windshield, and his gaze linked with Rubi’s. Electric current traveled between them and zapped her chest like a defibrillator—the same way it had just before the stunt.

A sudden, swamping, completely irrational sense of loneliness opened in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t have him. No matter how much she might want him. But her brain was at war with her body. And those were both at war with some intangible part of her—maybe her soul, if she had one. All the conflict created a niggling sense of panic deep in her chest.

“Nothing’s going on,” she said and forced a deep, easy breath into her lungs. “And I’m doing my damnedest to keep it that way.”

Wes’s head popped from the car. “Can I drive it? Please, please,
please
?”

“Damn,” Rachel murmured under her breath. “How can you resist
that
?”

Rubi shook her head. “I have
no
idea.”

He rounded the door and held onto it as if he didn’t want to let go. “
Please?
I’ll be
really
nice to her.”

“Screw nice.” Hearing Wes assign the Aston a gender as if it were a person broke any resistance Rubi had left. “Drive the hell out of
her
. That’s what
she’s
made for.”

Wes’s gorgeous face lit up like the sun. She tossed him the keys, and he whooped, fisting both hands in the air over his head.

“Damn,” she said on an exhale. “The man steals my breath. Come on, Rachel. He’s hot. And you’re totally his sweet type. Can’t you take him off the market?”

“I’m not as sweet as I look, but I still wouldn’t know what to do with all that testosterone. You may think I’m his type, but he’s not mine. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, you are all he can look at or talk about.”

She
didn’t
want to hear that. Rubi cut Lexi a sidelong glance. “Tell Jax to find him a damn girlfriend, would you?”

“You traded your Ferrari?” Wes jogged toward her, grabbed Rubi’s hand, and tugged her toward the car. “I put a note on your windshield this morning.”

“I got it.”

His boyish glee eased a sliver of Rubi’s discomfort. Or at least shoved it back into the dark for now. And a rush of adrenaline always soothed her nerves. Maybe this was just what the two of them needed to get back on even—friendship—ground.

“Grab a table,” he called over his shoulder to the others. “We’re taking the long way.”

Three

This wild drive might be an awesome distraction from Wes’s angst over Wyatt’s surgery, but the adrenaline rush did nothing to douse his infatuation with the woman next to him.