Page 27 of True Ruin

“Don’t hold back.” Her grip tightened on the base of his cock. “Sam’s grandparents have your number. I’ll need to check if they called.”

He moaned noisily, his hips rising. “I was never…holding back.Youwere holding me back.”

Amused by his answer, she tucked her hair behind her ear, maybe to give him a better view, lashes dropping as she settled into an addictive rhythm.

Near the end, he gently fisted his fingers in her hair, unable to stop himself. He didn’t guide, but he held on. She didn’t need him to direct a thing. He gave her plenty of notice before he fell apart, the sounds of the storm outside lost to their panting breaths, his ragged groans. There was no dignity in coming that hard, shuddering, lost. The most explosive hand-slash-blowjob of his life.

But who needed dignity?

After his vision cleared, he blinked to find her still kneeling there, a half-smile on her face.God, she was beautiful.

“Fun,” she said, wiping delicately at her mouth with the back of her hand.

He shook his head, lips parting, then closing. “I?—”

There were no words.

Gabi laughed and climbed up his body, kissing his tats, his nipple, his collarbone, his neck, licking away a smear of chocolate. He reacted to each and every offer, blood bubbling in his veins. “So, Dallas True, are we going to be a thing while you’re here?”

“Do you want that?” he whispered, hands down,best of his lifestill scrambling his brain.Best. Of. His. Life.

“Yeah.” She smiled, her eyes glowing. “Yeah.”

He hooked an arm around her neck and brought her close, his lips closing on hers. His body felt celestial, his mind reborn. “I really only invited you for dinner, I swear.”

She snuggled against him, fitting perfectly into a nook he hadn’t known about. “Tell it slant,” she said, trailing her nail over the tat on his hip.

He shivered, his exhale sharp, his hunger simmering. “My early reporting used to hit the truth so hard. Brutal. No finesse. An editor once told me to think of this quote every time I started a story. Dickinson wanted to remind writers to soften the telling—‘dazzle gradually,’ I think is how she put it. That kind of thing. Although he didn’t mean for me to ink it into my skin as a reminder. That was my twenty-three-year-old solution.”

“I have to go,” she murmured into the curve between his neck and his shoulder, her breath skating across his skin. “Don’t forget, you said you’re a writer, and you’d tell me.”

His arm tightened around her as he pressed a kiss to her brow. “Not going to let me forget that, are you?”

She shook her head. “Unlikely.”

“Is there a spot for me to drop notes? Private.” Because the things he wanted to write couldn’t be read by anyone else.

She smothered a laugh against his chest. “There’s a wicker box under my porch swing. I keep gardening tools in there. No one uses it.”

“A secret box under your porch swing. That’s a locker combination away from the good old days.”

Gabi tipped her face up, amused and soft and close. His heartbeat pulsed, calling to her. “You complaining about writing notes to a girl?”

“No.” Dallas brushed his thumb over a smudge of chocolate on her cheek, images of her on her knees before him spinning through his mind. “I like knowing where to find you.”

“Then come find me.”

He wanted to. And it felt so natural. That was the terrifying part.

Dallas tried not to make a joke, because carelessness had ruined things in the past. “I want to be your friend, Gabi Wilder, in addition to the rest.”

She blinked once, lips parting.

He huffed out a laugh, embarrassed. “Don’t look so surprised. I’m not sure I’ve ever truly had one, so I’ll probably be terrible at it.”

“Leave the notes, Hotshot.”

“Yes, ma’am.”