If I wanted to make love to her tonight, I could. If I wanted to feel myself deep in her throat, I could. If I wanted limits, I would need to be the one to set them. But did I truly want limits, or did I think I should want them?

My stomach cramped and I looked back to the woman at the head of the table. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ruby tilt her head and glance at me, and I suspected she was watching my every thought pass across my face. I was starting to believe she had a decoder ring and was the one person I’d known other than my brother and younger sister who could take one look at me and know just how much I was hiding.

I blinked up, met her eyes.

She studied me briefly, her expression softening as she smiled, mouthing the words, “Don’t worry,” before looking down at her notes and then up at the moderator.

At once, my shoulders relaxed, my jaw unclenched.

Let go, her voice whispered in my thoughts. We’ll figure it out together.

* * *

We walked back to the hotel, and Ruby babbled sweetly about the meeting, the oddly warm weather, the band she’d been dying to see live that was in town. She talked to me about all the wonderful nothings I wanted to hear, distracting me from my own neurosis about the impending evening.

At the Parker Meridien, Ruby steered us to the elevators, down the hall, and stopped in front of the door to my room. Turning her green eyes up to mine, she whispered, “So. Decision time. Do you want to hang out with me tonight?” She placed her palms flat to my chest. “No pressure. I can go to my room and masturbate to a Ryan Gosling movie, and you can go back to your room and beat yourself up for not getting me topless, but the choice is entirely yours.”

I swallowed, taking a few calming breaths before giving her a kiss that started at the corner of her mouth and slid over to her cheek, then to her ear. “Yes, please,” I murmured.

“So,” she said, managing to stretch the word into at least three syllables. “Dinner out, or in?”

It took no more than three seconds for me to answer, “In,” and with a bright smile, she took my keycard from my hand and let us in, bounding across the room. She kicked off her shoes, jumping on the bed and rolling until her face was in my pillow.

“Dammit, they changed the sheets. This pillow doesn’t smell like you.” She flipped back over, hugging it to her chest anyway.

“I’ll make sure to have them leave the linens tomorrow.”

Then, in a Niall Stella voice, she said, “An excellent notion,” and nodded once crisply, bringing a smile to my lips. Smiling back at me, she reached for the room service menu off the bedside table and flipped it open. “What are you in the mood for?”

I leaned against the desk, watching her. Loving seeing her in my room, on this bed, so easy and comfortable in this role as . . . girlfriend.

Sitting down to unlace my shoes, I murmured, “Hmm. Maybe a burger?”

“Are you asking me?” She looked back down at the menu. “They have a few choices. Cheeseburger and fries?”

“Perfect. And whatever dark beer they offer.”

She chucked the menu to the floor and grabbed the room phone. I heard the quiet echo of a voice on the other end of the line and Ruby laughed, cupping her hand over the receiver. In a playfully scandalized voice, she said, “They called me Mrs. Stella.”

I smiled, slipping off my shoes. Mrs. Stella was my mother, or—once upon a time—Portia. “Mrs. Stella” wasn’t this vivacious creature sprawled on my bed with her skirt slowly inching up her long, slender thighs.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? I was stuck thinking Ruby was just a little too fun, a little too pretty, a little too adventurous for the likes of me. I had a picture of what I thought I deserved, who might like me, and it wasn’t ever someone like Ruby.

If she’d been able to hear this thought, I’m quite certain she would have ripped the phone out of the wall and hurled it at me.

I listened, watching as she ordered, confirmed our selection, and then hung up. All of this was so commonplace, so easy, so comfortable; my shoulders unknotted, stomach settled.

She patted the bed, lifting her eyebrows and giving me a seductive little smile. “We have approximately forty minutes for mischief.”

“Ruby . . .” I began.

Her smile slipped a little before she picked it up again. “Why are you so afraid of being on a bed with me?” she said, and I could hear the embarrassment just beneath her laugh. “I’m not going to steal your virtue, I promise.”

“It’s nothing about being afraid. I—” I stopped, pulling my tie from the collar of my shirt and draping it over the desk chair. Whenever I wanted to explain myself, say something important—something personal—the words in my mind scattered into disarray. It’s why, with Portia, I’d long since given up.