Worthy of Redemption Page 15

  I didn’t bother pulling my jeans off before I pressed her back down to the floor and without warning, I slammed into her. Lily screamed, but she wrapped her legs around my waist, inviting me to go deeper inside of her hot, moist, sex. I pulled her arms back above her head as I slammed into her again. Unable to keep my mouth off of hers, I swallowed her screams as my cock assaulted her again and again.

  When I relinquished her mouth to kiss and nibble at her neck, Lily cursed and prayed and called out my name as her next orgasm hit her. Her body rocked up to meet my thrusts as she came. As her pussy squeezed at my cock, I felt my own orgasm approaching. I looked into her eyes and held back the words that hung on my tongue and groaned deeply as I began to spill inside of her. Lily’s legs tightened around my waist, holding me inside of her as I shot stream after stream deep inside her.

  When I had emptied myself inside of her, I released her arms and kissed her tenderly as I stroked the side of her face. After a minute, I rolled off of her onto my side and wrapped an arm around her waist.

  “Did I hurt you?” I asked, looking down at the bright mark on her thigh.

  “I hardly noticed,” she murmured, snuggling closer to me and resting her head in the crook of my arm.

  I kissed her once more before pulling away to gaze down at her. “You’re fucking beautiful,” I whispered to her.

  Her eyes had closed, but she smiled sleepily. “I guess you got used to the tattoos and piercings after all.”

  “I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

  She seemed content with that. Soon her breathing slowed and her body relaxed. Once I was sure she was asleep, I got up to go take care of Vic.

  Chapter Ten

  *~Lily~*

  I opened my eyes in a panic. I could tell by the light filtering through the blinds in Kyle’s room that it was much later than my usual waking time of five-thirty. It’s still dark at five-thirty in the morning. Before looking at the clock behind me, I guessed it was probably about eight or later.

  “Eight-thirty!” I groaned, pushing myself up in the bed.

  I didn’t remember getting into his bed. I remember falling asleep on the floor, but Kyle must have moved me during the night. I was impressed. I wasn’t obese, but I wasn’t a light weight either. The fact that he could lift me was kinda hot, and he was kind enough to pull a pair of his boxers on me so my bare ass wasn’t hanging out.

  “Hey,” said the hot guy as he exited his bathroom, buttoning the sleeves of his dress shirt. He looked sexy with his tie just hanging around his neck waiting to be tied, his muscles pressing against the fabric of his shirt, and his hair still damp from a shower.

  “You let me oversleep,” I said groggily, swinging my legs out of the bed.

  “I’m giving you the next two days off,” he said as he stood in front of his mirror.

  “That’s not funny,” I snapped and rushed for the bedroom door. “There’s a lot going on today. You should have woken me up.”

  “I’m serious, Lily,” he said in a firm tone just as my feet crossed the threshold.

  I turned around and looked at him. He was tying his tie now. It wasn’t the best looking tie.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, rubbing my tired eyes. “You wouldn’t even let me have the afternoon off last week for a doctor’s appointment. Why are you making me miss work?”

  “When was the last time you had a day off?” he asked, watching me from the reflection in the mirror.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “It’s been a few weeks.”

  “It’s been six weeks. Six weeks without a day off is too long, even by my standards.”

  I was about to ask him how he knew when I was last off since it was on a Sunday, but I forgot for a moment that he had stalked me for a long time.

  “I can’t take any time off now. You just told me not that long ago how busy we are, and your schedule is insane this week. I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll catch a cab or something. You don’t have time to wait for me. You have a nine-thirty appointment.”

  I started to move down the hallway, but Kyle’s stern voice made me pause.

  “You’re staying home today,” he said. “Beth can follow your itinerary and step in as needed.”

  I poked my head back into his room. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Extremely serious,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Thank you.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. The rushing and panicking had filled in any possible awkwardness, and a day of hard work was sure to do the same, but now there was nothing to stop things from being awkward. I wasn’t sure what kind of mood Kyle was in, even after his generosity of giving me a couple of days off. Was he angry at himself again? Was he angry at me? Was he going to treat me with indifference? Or was he going to treat me like a burdensome piece of property?

  I went into my room and slipped on a sweatshirt. The house was pretty warm most of the time, but I was a little chilly. I pushed my feet into a pair of slippers I rarely got to wear and went downstairs. Kyle was already in the kitchen, eating a cold leftover slice of pizza. I prayed that there was coffee somewhere in the kitchen. I opened a cabinet and discovered K-cups on the top shelf, way out of my reach. Before I could formulate a plan to reach them, Kyle’s body pressed against mine. He slipped an arm around my waist and reached over me to grab the coffee. He dropped the box on the counter, tilted my head, and swept my hair off of my neck. His lips and tongue on my neck sent tingly warm sensations across my neck and radiated down my spine.

  “Something about you in my boxers is extremely hot,” he murmured against my neck.

  “Why do you think I’m still wearing them?” I teased and then sighed when his tongue flicked over my earlobe.

  “No working today,” he warned.

  “I can log in and work on a few things,” I suggested.

  “No, you cannot,” Kyle said. “Take a break. Watch a movie. Do a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t care what you do, as long as it does not constitute as work. If you need to go anywhere, call and wait for Corsey. Don’t go off by yourself. I mean it.”

  “I don’t like having a babysitter, Kyle,” I said, getting a little aggravated.

  “I know, Lil, but it won’t be forever.” He kissed the top of my head and released me. When I turned around, he was already walking across the living room towards the door. He gave me one last wave and left me alone in the huge penthouse.

  I started my cup of coffee and looked around. I had not had an actual day off in more than I can remember. When I wasn’t working for Sterling I was working in the bar. When I wasn’t working in a bar I was working for Sterling. It had become one hectic, tiring circle, but as reluctant as I was to quit my job at Steve’s, I had to admit that it was the best thing for me before I ran myself into the ground.

  With a cup of coffee in hand, I went upstairs to shower. I smelled like sex, which made me grin like an idiot, but I’d rather smell like soap. When all the sex was washed off of my body, I carried all of my dirty laundry downstairs to the laundry room. I figured since I was doing laundry, I may as well do Kyle’s.

  “How domestic of you, Lillian,” I said out loud and rolled my eyes after I put in my first load.

  I went back upstairs to get Kyle’s dirty laundry. I found an overflowing hamper in his bathroom. With a sigh, I started to pick up the items that had fallen to the floor. I was muttering about Kyle having pockets deeper than Scrooge McDuck and as much class as the Royals, but still unable to keep up with his laundry when I picked up a blue shirt with bloodstains on it. It was very similar to the shirt Kyle had on the night before. In fact, I was positive that it was, but when I last saw him in it, it was blood-free.

  I sat down on the edge of the tub, trying to process what I was seeing. The shirt not only had blood on it in several places, it was torn at the collar, as if someone had grabbed it in a struggle.

  “Damn it, Kyle,” I said as understanding set in.

 
After I was asleep and dead to the world, Kyle must have gone to try and kick Vic’s ass.

  It’s not that I didn’t think that Vic needed an ass whooping, because he did. I just didn’t want Kyle to be the one to administer it. Vic was obviously off kilter, and years of steroid abuse was setting him up for a murderous rage. While Kyle’s body muscle was impressive to say the least, Vic was almost twice his size. I am clear proof that size isn’t everything, but me taking down a few drunken guys or even handsy assholes wasn’t the same as Kyle trying to take down a roid-enraged crazy man. The opportunity for him to get hurt or even killed was high. If he made it out alive and unscathed – which he most likely did since I didn’t really see any indication on him that he had been in a fight – there was still a legal issue.

  I’m not a saint. I seriously don’t abide by all laws, and I’ve been in enough fights of my own in my lifetime, but the last thing Kyle needed was trouble with the law. His superiors within the company still didn’t fully trust him, and I often heard murmuring about what part he had played when business at Sterling went to hell in a hand basket. Many believed that he was just as much a criminal as Walter. He didn’t need to give people anymore reason to question him.

  While I was very much aware and forgiving of Kyle’s violent past with Emmy, I was having a hard time with parts of past Kyle sifting into present Kyle. He was drunk and high when he hurt Emmy, but last night he was clean, sober, and angry. And if he really did go after Vic, especially after what we did on his bedroom floor, it told me that Kyle had the ability to be cold and calculating. That scared me.

  I shoved the shirt into the hamper and dragged it down to the laundry room. I was so tempted to call Kyle and yell at him or to go down to the office and confront him, but I needed to get my thoughts and feelings together. Instead, I picked a random box for the kitchen and began the process of unpacking Kyle’s home.

  *~~~*

  Kyle’s fridge only contained the necessities in a healthy bachelor’s life – a few eggs, cream for the coffee, carrots, lettuce, and bottled water. I wasn’t a rabbit and I didn’t eat like one. When I texted him and told him I was going to have Corsey drive me to the grocery store, he insisted on taking me himself. His last meeting of the day was canceled, so he was going to skip out of work a couple of hours early.

  Since it was my day off, I had dressed in some skinny jeans, a t-shirt, one of Kyle’s hoodies that I found in his closet and the DC sneakers he had replaced more than two years after his vomit destroyed the identical pair. My hair was back to its normal wild and curly state, but I skipped the makeup. After months of applying only light makeup for the corporate world, I had learned that I really liked my natural, speckled skin. I still went heavy on the eye makeup when I was working at the bar, but since I was only going to the grocery store, I didn’t see the point in bothering with it.

  I was waiting on the couch watching the early edition of the news when Kyle came in. I waited a couple of minutes for him to change his clothes before he took my hand and led me out the door. In the elevator, he pulled me into an embrace and gave me a quick and gentle kiss on the lips. It was a small sentiment, but it made me smile despite the uneasiness I was feeling inside. I had not mentioned to him in any of the text messages or phone calls of the day what I had discovered in his hamper. He would figure out that I figured it out eventually.

  “How was your first full day off?” Kyle asked as we cruised down the cereal aisle.

  “Fine.” I shrugged and stopped to grab a box of Capn’ Crunch. “I got a lot done around the house. The kitchen and dining room are completely unpacked, and the living room is more than half way finished.”

  “I said no working,” he said sternly, but then leaned over and gave me another peck on the lips. “But thank you.”

  This Kyle was awfully affectionate. I should have been giddy about it, but it made me even more uneasy. What if he was affectionate because he released all of his anger on Vic’s face?

  “We have to get laundry detergent,” I said more to myself and wrote it on the list I had made earlier. “I almost forgot.”

  “Right,” he agreed, a little distracted by the array of disgusting healthy cereals. “I was almost out last time I did laundry.”

  Which must have been a century ago.

  “Well, now you’re out completely. I did my wash and yours.”

  His head swiveled in my direction. “You washed my clothes?”

  “I thought I may as well since I was washing my own,” I said casually. I pretended to be very interested in oatmeal. “I had to throw away your shirt. The ad for the laundry detergent lied. It does not wash out blood.”

  I rounded the corner before him and moved into the next aisle. Top forty music played from the speakers above us. An older man further down the aisle had a cart with a squeaky wheel, and in the main aisle behind us a mother wrestled with her three small crying children. There was noise and activity all around us, but between Kyle and me was a big silent bubble.

  I put a bottle of olive oil in the cart. A minute later Kyle put a small box of natural sugar next to the cereal. We finished the baking aisle in silence and moved on to coffee, tea, hot cocoa and soups and gravies. I grabbed a bottle of Hershey syrup and Kyle grabbed coffee. We continued on in silence for another aisle. In the dairy department, we stood side by side looking at the vast array of coffee creamers. At the same time, we both chose a different flavor and put them in the cart.

  “I had to do it,” Kyle said when I had started to move on to the cheeses.

  “You know, I actually kind of give a damn what happens to you,” I said, as I inspected a package of cheddar. “He could have seriously hurt you or even killed you. Not to mention the legality of the whole situation – you could have screwed up your entire life because you wanted to be a vigilante. And what scares me is…” I trailed off. I had not planned on telling him what scared me.

  “What scares you?” he asked after a thoughtful moment.

  “Never mind,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Lily,” he said, enclosing my wrist in his big hand. He pulled me away from the cheeses and off to the side so that we weren’t in anyone’s way. “Tell me what scares you.”

  A woman a few years older than me was pretending to look at the yogurt, but every few seconds her eyes would turn back to us. A college kid was restocking a display of Snack Packs, but he didn’t seem to be paying us any mind.

  “Your mind wasn’t compromised by drugs and alcohol this time,” I whispered to him. “What you did was carefully calculated. I don’t condone what you did to Emmy, not by a longshot, but I know you didn’t mean it. This time you were very aware of what you were doing. It scares me that you can willfully and knowingly become violent like that.”

  He got very close to me, almost nose to nose. “If someone had come after me and kicked my ass up and down the eastern seaboard after what I did to Emmy, I would have not only deserved it, I would have welcomed it,” he whispered harshly. “In fact, I’m still waiting for it. If it takes ten years for someone to knock the shit out of me for what I did, I’ll deserve it no less. I wish someone had. It actually pisses me off that no one has. It makes me think they don’t love her enough to do it.

  “Vic hurt you, Lily,” he said and his jaw clenched. “He is dangerous and he was prepared to do much worse than bruise your damn thigh. Trust me on that. I had to make sure he understood that hurting someone I love is not acceptable.”

  I was stunned. I looked everywhere else but at his face, because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know whether or not to address the fact that he wishes someone would kick his ass for what he did to Emmy, or if I should address the fact that he knew so much more about Vic than I realized. Hell, I didn’t even want to touch the love thing with a ten foot pole.

  I noticed that the woman at the yogurt was paying way more attention to us than the yogurt, not even having the shame to look away when I caught her staring.

  “What the fuc
k is your problem?” I snapped at her. That made her pay attention to her fermented milk.

  “Come on,” Kyle sighed, ushering me along with one hand on my back to keep me from willfully and knowingly kicking the yogurt lady’s ass.

  We moved on a little ways. I stood by the cart with my arms crossed over my chest while Kyle grabbed eggs. We left the dairy and moved into meat and seafood. We discussed what cuts of meat to buy for a quick meal after work, what to eat over the weekend, and had a small, hostile argument about what brand of chicken to buy, but neither of us brought up the previous conversation in the dairy department.

  At the front registers while we waited in line, Kyle pulled me into his arms and without any hesitation, he bent his head to meet my lips for a full on tongue to tongue public display of affection. Whatever iciness that had lingered from his earlier speech was instantly melted away by his sexy mouth. After a moment, the kiss ended, but his lips were still lightly pressed to mine. I could feel the smile on his mouth.

  “That’s a first,” Kyle said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Kissing my girl in public.”

  My heart did a stupid flopping thing at his words. “I understand why you couldn’t make out with Emmy in public,” I said. “But what about Jessyca?”

  “Jess was an ice queen,” he said with finality. “I don’t want to talk about Jess or…or Em…” His brow pulled together as he struggled to say her name.

  “Okay,” I conceded. Reluctantly, I turned away from him to start loading up the conveyer belt.

  When we got back to the penthouse, we had to make a second trip back to the car to get the rest of the groceries. As soon as we got through the door, Kyle dropped his bags on the floor, put his hands on my face and kissed me again. I dropped the bags I was holding, knowing damn well one of them was holding the eggs. I slid my hands into his jacket, over his hard chest and up his bulging arms and started to take it off of him. He released my face and allowed me to strip him of the jacket. He hurried me out of the hoodie, only breaking the kiss long enough to pull the hoodie and t-shirt over my head. I in turn pulled on the hem of his t-shirt and pulled away quickly to rip it off of his head and toss it aside.