Page 158 of Ruin Me Gently

She reached out, fingers stretched toward me, palm open, waiting.

I went to her.

She turned, shifting until I was behind her, until she was pressing back against me, guiding my arms around her shoulders. Then she leaned her head against my arm, exhaling softly.

“You’re not going to break me,” she murmured. “Let’s not pretend like we haven’t touched each other before.”

I tightened my arms around her slightly, her warmth seeping through my clothes as I turned us toward the window, and we stood there, looking out at the skyline together. The city stretched before us, bathed in the last remnants of gold and burnt orange.

She sighed, her fingers tracing over my forearms. “What do you do to live in a place like this?” she asked. “Are you the head of an organised crime ring? A high-end art thief? A black-market arms dealer? Maybe some kind of underground casino kingpin?”

I huffed out a quiet laugh. “Is that what you really think of me?”

She tilted her head. “Masked. Stacked. Living in a place that looks like a Bond villain’s retreat. So you tell me—international jewel smuggler?”

I smiled and shook my head, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as I inhaled. She smelled like my shampoo. My soap. But beneath it, she still smelled likeher.Utterly intoxicating.

“I work as a higher-up for a tech software company,” I said. “But I trained in software architecture.”

She tilted her head slightly. “Like… you build computers?”

I huffed a quiet laugh into her hair. “It’s kind of like building. But it’s building the things that gointosoftware.”

She shifted slightly underneath my arms. “What does that even mean?”

I adjusted my arms around her, dropping my head down so my chin rested lightly on her shoulder. “Okay,” I murmured. “Look at the city.”

The streets below were veins, lights pulsing like artificial heartbeats, the movement so far down it barely felt real from here. From a hundred stories up, it was a circuit board, everything connecting, moving in sync.

“Now imagine every traffic light, every bridge, every subway line is a different piece of software,” I said. “Each one has to be built exactly right for the city to run. Otherwise, there’d be too many jams, too many accidents. No one would be able to get anywhere.”

She hummed. “And you build the traffic lights?”

I smirked. “I used to kind of do that. Now I make sure the people who do, don’t fuck it up.”

“So you’re like the city planner of software?”

“Something like that.” I tightened my arms around her, pulling her closer, nestling into the crook of her neck. The heat of her skin flushed against my lips as I pressed a soft kiss there.

Shemeltedinto it. Her shoulders eased, weight settling fully against me, her breath escaping in a soft sigh. A quiet hum followed. “Hmm.Silas.”

I exhaled against her neck. I didn’t think I’d ever adjust to hearing my name leave her lips. “What?”

She sighed again. “Nothing. I just like saying it.”

I liked her saying it.

The noise of her stomach growling cut through our peace. I smirked. “Hungry?”

She groaned, tilting her head back against my shoulder. “Famished.”

“Takeout good with you?”

“Sure.”

“Good.” I shifted slightly, one arm still wrapped around her, the other fishing my phone out of my pocket. “What do you want? Say the word, and it’s yours.”

Her body stilled a little. “Uh… I don’t—” she huffed out a frustrated breath.

---