Ruth's POV
Taking one last look at myself in the mirror, I took a deep breath and turned to leave. I had no idea why I was so tensed suddenly, but I had to take a moment to compose myself.
Most of the night had passed, anyway. Soon, I'll be back to my apartment with Shy, waiting for my parents to unleash their wrath on me for not calling them back. I sighed, but it will have to happen sooner or later.
As I walked out of the restroom, I wondered if Caleb will stay over tonight as well. After spending all evening exchanging heated looks with him, I knew it was certainly a possibility.
And he was stone cold sober tonight, so who knows what tonight might lead up to. Maybe I'll get a chance to wear my lingerie again?
The thought made my stomach cramp with excitement and I knew that was exactly why I had packed it in my overnight bag.
I frowned at the reminder of my overnight bag. If Leo had planned to mess with us all along, then why did he make us pack an overnight bag?
I had always known men were complicated, but Cross family men took it to a whole new level.
I shook my head and turned down the corridor that would lead me back to the dining room, only to look up and stop dead in my tracks.
From the first moment that I had set eyes on Caleb, I had known that he was hot. Smouldering hot. But finding him leaning against a pillar next to the double doors leading out to the dining room made me wonder if there was ever a word invented to describe him.
Dressed in purple turtleneck and faded jeans, he looked more sophisticated and suave than the men on the other side of those glass doors who were dressed in a 3-piece suits.
That was the obvious thing ofcourse. Anyone else would get that same impression just by looking at him until they looked him in the eye.
I swallowed as my gaze locked with him and he gave me one of those looks that really should be reserved for very private moments. Because it held nearly every emotion that I was capable of naming.
Heat, possessiveness, and gentle tenderness all reflected in his gaze as he looked at me and I stood stuck in my spot a few feet away from him.
For a moment, he seemed at stuck as I was, unable to move a muscle. But then he straightened, and slowly walked up to me and stopped a few inches away.
"You wanna go back in there?" He murmured, his dark gaze sweeping over me like a heat-wave, making me forget everything else. Vaguely, I knew I should say yes.
Leo was probably waiting for us back there afterall. But even when I replied by shaking my head, I knew it was an honest answer. My throat felt too dry to say anything else, so I swallowed again and watched a smile light his face up.
"Me neither." He replied, then took hold of my hand in his and started pulling me away from the door. Without a single protest, I followed him as he led me to another one of the long corridors made of glass and marble.
My stomach bubbled up again, nervous excitement wiggling in the pits of it, but I took a deep breathe to calm myself. I had to maintain my composure. Leo would be joining us at any moment afterall.
It wasn't like we would be all alone with each other no matter what my wild imaginations looked like. Leo was here.
"Oh, by the way," Caleb looked at me for a second, before looking ahead and continuing, "Leo asked me to convey his goodbye to you."
I felt Caleb's arm jerk and he looked back. Only then did I realise that I had stopped walking again.
"Leo is gone?" I asked in too hoarse a voice and cleared my throat discretely. Caleb frowned at me, worried. "That's a problem?"
"That's a surprise."
"Well, he did what he came here to do. Besides, he says there's another surprise waiting for us upstairs."
I raised my brows at that. "I hope its not as, uh, grand as his last one."
Because I liked Leo and all, but I didn't think I could go through another one of his surprises without snapping.
"Its not. Atleast I hope its not. We'll find out soon enough."
"After the stunt he just pulled on you, you're still willing to go along with his surprise plan again?"
Caleb had always struck me as a learn-his-lesson kind of guy. And the fact that he was willing to go along with another one of Leo's plans did not fit that description.
"I do. Because despite the fact that pulling stunts on me is one of his only entertainments in life, he is one of the very few people who has never betrayed me, and has always had my back. And he is probably the only guy, family or otherwise that I know I can blindly trust."
"That's.. oddly emotional of you." I tilted my head at him and smiled. To be honest, I quite liked seeing this side of Caleb.
"Why is it odd?"
"Because you're not usually so emotional. Or loving." I shrugged and Caleb raised his brows at me.
"Maybe you haven't been paying enough attention, love."
His voice was barely an octave above the whisper, but I heard him loud and clear. What he said, and especially what he didn't.
'And I so love you, Ruth Brooke.'
His words from last night came back to me and right then, I saw those same words shining bright in his eyes. Honestly, they were in every single thing he did for me. O maybe he was right. Maybe I really haven't been paying attention.
He pulled our entwined hands up to his lips and placed a soft kiss on my knuckle before turning back ahead again. I followed him willingly, but my mind was busy looking back at every moment since we met.
And suddenly, those words were right there. Everywhere. They were in the lurking laughter in his eyes when he read my email.
They were in that elevator where I nearly had a panic attack, they were in that desperate kiss in the dead of night.
One after other, every moment since then flashed into my mind. The plane ride, my kidnapping, him taking care of me at the hospital, the bonfire.
And that look he gave me after he came back. Whether he knew it then or not, his love for me was scattered in every one of those moments.
At the end of the corridor, we turned and walked into another brightly lit open space and Caleb muttered something about power-plants and retina injury but I couldn't bring myself to pay attention.
I couldn't even concentrate when we entered a spacious elevator and he produced a golden keycard as if by magic, entering it in the card slot. The elevator climbed smoothly, and so did my thoughts.
I had expected them to be scary, but they weren't. I had expected them to be complicated, but they were really quite easy. Easy to accept and easy to confess.
The elevator pinged and the door glided open silently, letting us onto a narrow, lounge-like area. The walls on either side were adorned with several oil paintings depicting scenery in beautiful splashes of colour. We stepped out onto he carpeted area that led down to a single door at the end of the hall.
"Leo was right," Caleb murmured, looking around him, impressed. "This really is a great investment."
I hummed in agreement, but my focus was solely on the door at the end of the hall. It could just be my exaggerated imagination, but I felt like whatever was bubbling was inside me had to be told. And told before we crossed that threshold.
That is why when Caleb placed his hand on the doorknob, I covered his hand with mine, stopping him. He looked down at me in question, and then paused to study me closely.
I had no idea what expression was on my face, but whatever it was made him frown in concern. "Ruth? Something wrong?"
"Something is." I told him and turned to face him. "There's something I haven't told you. Something that needs to be said."
His face looked slightly blurred and I realised that my eyes were welling up.
"Ruth, what is it? What's wrong, love?" He turned to me and cupped my face in both of his hands.
"Do you want to go home? Are you unwell? Do you .. did I do something?" He fired questions one after other but I couldn't respond him straight away. It wasn't that I was crying.
It was just that I felt foolish for not seeing what was so obvious since the beginning. And now that I did see it, I was overwhelmed at the realisation of my feelings for him.
Feelings that I had felt yesterday, but had failed to name it then. When I didn't answer, he prompted again. "Ruth?"
"I so love you too, Caleb Cross."
He blinked at my confession and a delighted smile broke onto his face, only to fall immediately. "And that makes you cry?"
"No, that makes me deliriously happy. You really have no idea how much."
He shook his head and started, "but then why are you—" but didn't get a chance to finish as I caught hold of his t-shirt and pulled him down to kiss me.
*
In the last few months, there have been many times when life has felt surreal. Sometimes, it felt so off-track and unreal that it had made me question my own sense of judgement.
At times, I wasn't able to understand how things could change so drastically by the entry of just one person in my life.
I had both blessed and cursed the day Caleb Cross had run into me, leaving a mark more prominent than a mere coffee stain. And so far I have been lost, unable to decide if all of these things were the good things that were finally happening to me or just an unfortunate event to add to the list.
But right then, in that one moment everything came into perspective. As if a key fitting into the lock, unlocking mysteries that were once beyond my understanding. As if the puzzle piece is falling in its rightful place to let me see the bigger picture.
Suddenly everything was right in the world, and what wasn't right just didn't matter.
For a split second after I pulled him down to me, his lips remained stiff as if he wasn't quite sure what had happened. But then they melted against mine and moved, making me forget everything else in the world.
"I so love you, Caleb," I murmured again, as if willing the words to sink in, but they still felt like a dream. And that was okay as long as I got to feel warmth wafting off Caleb's body, which was brushing against mine. Touching, but not quite. His thumbs stroked my cheeks as he let out a small sigh of contentment.
"I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing you say them," he murmured and then tilted my face up to kiss me properly, pressing his body closer to mine and deepening the kiss, making me moan against his lips.
I wasn't sure what time or day it was, I didn't care whether we were alone or in the center of a crowd, whether we were late for something or early. All that mattered was Caleb and how close he was to me.
He groaned, a deep, rusty sound, that made my toes curl and let his hands slide down to my neck and shoulder, before gliding them over my arms.
He entwined his fingers with mine that, until now, were blissfully resting against his chest, feeling his heart thump beneath my palms and pulled them up so that my arms were wrapped around his neck.
His busy hands continued gliding down until they were wrapped firmly around my waist, pulling me flush against him.
His taste, so familiar and yet so new was driving me insane. I let out an involuntary moan and felt Caleb's hand clawing desperately against the back of my dress.
I was so lost in all the sensations his closeness was causing in my body that I yelped when I felt myself hoisted up.
"Wrap your legs around me," he murmured the command, and as if on autopilot, I wrapped my legs around his waist. I knew I wasn't as weightless as Caleb was making me feel like and my grip around his neck tightened.
He held onto my waist with one arm and gripped my thigh with other. The feel of his warm hand against my exposed skin was enough to make me forget the precarious position I was in, but a tiny fear still slithered its way in.
That was until I realised Caleb hasn't moved an inch and was looking down at me with a carefully neutral expression.
"Scared?" He asked in a rusty, lust-filled voice, but his eyes searched my face, and for some reason his look reminded me of that faded canopy incident so long ago.
That day when he had carried me to the bedroom, and even after reaching there, I had been more focused on watching where and how we were going, rather than paying attention to what we were doing. I hadn't even realised when he had stopped touching me altogether.
Today, as we stood in nearly the same position in the corridor of a penthouse, I had an epiphany. I finally knew why I was so distracted that day. It wasn't that I was not attracted to him. It was just that at that time, I didn't trust him.
But now when I looked up at him, taking his wide stance as he stood holding me up by the waist, waiting patiently for my answer, I knew that things had changed. Drastically so.
So I looked into his onyx-like eyes that were glittering in the sedated lights around us and answered him honestly.
"Not one bit."
His answering smile was faint, and for one moment it felt like we were on the same wavelength, and he somehow knew that my answer held more meaning than what it sounded like.
He swooped down and gave me another kiss, but this one held more tenderness than passion.
He gently probed my lips, as if letting me know how much he appreciated my trust, and I melted into his body losing myself in the sweetness of his kiss that made my heart ache.
I felt him move, and a second later something strong and unyielding pressed against my back. I felt him let go of my thigh and a minute later a beep rang out loud and clear behind me.
He broke the kiss for a second, "shall we?"
Even though my brain was scrambled from his kisses, I somehow understood what he wanted me to do.
Just so I could make myself focus, I took a few deep breathes and blindly reached behind me, fumbling and patting around until I felt the intricately carved, cool metal of the doorknob. I twisted it, and with a click the door lock opened letting a blast of warm air out to heat up my back.
I could barely focus on that though as I continued to hold his intense eyes before replying, "We shall."