Page 34 of I Hate You More

“No.” He shook his head. “Caleb and I have an agreement. That agreement exists regardless of whether he’s here to witness it.”

It was such a Spencer thing to say that Ruby couldn’t help feeling irritated. What happened to the man who was finally starting to unbend? “What if I was choking?” she asked.

“You’re not.”

“What if I keeled over and had a heart attack sometime in the next five minutes?”

“Then I’d help you, but only if I was sure you weren’t faking it. Medical emergencies are the exception to the rule, but itisstill a rule.”

She took another step back. “Spencer.”

He didn’t move. “Ruby.”

“It’s a pretend line.”

“It’s asymbolicline,” he countered. “Just like stoplights are symbolic traffic signals. They only mean something because we believe in them. If everyone decided one day not to recognize them anymore, there’d be chaos.”

He wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t make Ruby feel any more charitable toward him. If anything, it only made her more annoyed. She was having a moment here—an actual human moment fraught with emotion and desire and all those things that made life worth living. Andstillhe wouldn’t admit that he was having it, too.

“So unless I’m having a medical emergency, you won’t come over here,” she said, stating it more as fact than a question.

“No.”

“No matter what I say or do.”

“You already know the answer to that.”

“Okay,” she said and reached for the bottom of her tank top. “Suit yourself.”

She had her shirt whipped off before Spencer even realized what was happening. She could tell because she watched as the implication sank in. The moment her skin hit the air, his eyes widened and he went perfectly immobile, like a deer caught in the lights of a strip club.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice rough. Rubyhopedit sounded like that because he was pleased by what he saw, but she wasn’t as sure of herself as she’d have liked to be. Removing clothing in front of a grumpy, reluctant man wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

It helped that she was wearing a cute neon-pink bra today—and that nature had enabled her to fill it. She no longer had the taut, carefully honed body of an eighteen-year-old beauty pageant contestant, but she’d never had any complaints, either. She dipped where men liked a woman to dip and swelled where they preferred a little padding.

“Whatever you’re trying, it won’t work,” he said, not moving. He was staring, though, which was the most important thing.

She jutted her hip to give her dips and swells more emphasis. If nothing else came of her long tenure on the stage, at least she knew how to position her body so it looked its best. Spencer’s eyes never left her, and he licked his lips with a slow, meaningful deliberation that did much to boost her confidence. Sheknewshe couldn’t be alone in this attraction or that the push and pull between them hadn’t left him just as shaken and exhilarated as it left her.

“I think it might be working a little,” she countered.

He shook his head. “I’m not the man you think I am, Ruby. I know what you’re trying to do, but I can’t. I’m not built that way. I’m not like—”

He didn’t finish his comparison. Now that Ruby’s tank top was tossed unceremoniously to the floor, she reached for the top button of her favorite high-waisted jeans. She didn’t intend to removeallher clothes and had decided on nothing more than a teasing show of the top line of her panties, but Spencer decided he’d had enough. With a jolt that reminded her of Wheezy chasing after a piece of bacon, he dashed forward.

Across the line. Over his principles. Past his better judgment.

His hand touched on top of hers. No other part of his body came into contact with her, his whole frame held in deliberate abeyance, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. His fingers caressing hers, preventing her from removing her pants—beggingher not to—set off something wild inside her.

“You don’t really mean it,” he said, his voice hoarse. His gaze was no longer trailing over her naked upper half; it had locked on hers with a desperation that caught in her throat. “You’re only doing this to me because you can.”

On the contrary, she was doing this because she was no longer capable of pretending she had any self-restraint. She knew it was the contrarian in her who needed to see such a precise, intellectual man come undone and that there was no way he’d ever look at her with the respect she yearned for, but none of that seemed to matter right now. While they were alone in this living room, both of them breathing as hot and heavily as if they’d run several miles to get here, there didn’t seem to be any chance of escape.

“It looks like you crossed a line, Spencer Wilson,” she said. Her own voice sounded raspier than usual. “So much for those rules you love so much.”

“You don’t really mean it,” he repeated. “Not with me.”

This time, she read in it a question—aplea. It would have been so easy to reassure him, to tell him that she’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted him right now, but she wasn’t sure that was the answer he was after. From the expectant way he was watching her and the tightening clasp of his hand over hers, it was almost as though he was begging her to say no.