Worthy of Redemption Read online

  I broke eye contact first. I felt her blow out warm air onto my chest in relief, but it was short lived when I held up the papers and business cards.

  “Someone is busy collecting numbers during her nights at work,” I said mockingly.

  “I’m ‘brokenhearted’. Not celibate,” she bit back.

  “Oh, so you’re not looking for romance with any of these men. None of them are me,” I smiled without humor when she winced slightly. “How about a compromise, Lily. You give me my keys and I’ll fuck you.”

  Her mouth fell open and she started to pull away, but I snaked my arm around her waist and pulled back to me.

  “That’s why you have the numbers isn’t it?” I asked. “Isn’t that what you want? Just sex? Give me my keys, and I’ll prove to you that what you saw earlier wasn’t my best.”

  I can’t say that I was very surprised when her hand cracked across my face in an open slap, but I was very surprised when she shoved me away just far enough to throw a punch and hit her mark. I put my fingers up to my mouth as I glared at her. I was again shocked when I saw that she had drawn blood. A lot of blood. This little Lily did not hit like a girl.

  She stood a few feet away from me, breathing fire. If I weren’t already full of so many conflicting emotions and desires, I would have thought she looked mighty hot right then.

  “So, is that a no?” I asked before pulling off my shirt. I held it to my bleeding, split lip.

  “Would you like me to repeat myself?” she asked as her fists clenched at her sides.

  “I only wanted my damn keys!” I yelled, taking a step towards her.

  “You only wanted your damn drugs!” she yelled back.

  “You would have gotten something out of it,” I said bitterly.

  “Here’s a newsflash, Kyle,” she said putting her hands on her hips. “Just because I admitted that I kind of liked you doesn’t mean that I’m ready to jump into bed with you and your half-mast dick.”

  Half-mast!

  “I wasn’t aroused!” I yelled.

  “Yeah, I get that!” she yelled. “Because I’m not Emmy or Jessyca, or any other woman you’re attracted to. You don’t have to continue to remind me that you find me completely unattractive.”

  I stared at her like she had just grown a third tit on her forehead. “I never said you weren’t attractive!”

  She used her fingers to make air quotes and said “You’re just a barmaid in a small bar in the suburbs, Lily. Maybe you need a new tattoo or a new piercing, Lily. You’ve never seen a dick that wasn’t pierced, Lily. You’re incapable of finding a guy who will want to fuck you, Lily.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say that last part,” I pointed a finger at her. “And you completely took everything else out of context.”

  “How can I take ‘you’re just a barmaid’ out of context, Kyle?” She growled in frustration and pulled on her hair. “You’ve made it pretty clear you find my tattoos and piercings and probably my hair unattractive.”

  “I never said that, Lily,” I said, already getting tired of the argument.

  “No, but you implied it. Thank goodness you didn’t actually say it; because that would have hurt a little bit more I’m guessing.”

  She kicked off her sneakers, muttering about ‘stupid vommity sneakers’ and started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, unsure if I should follow her or not. I didn’t want to get punched again.

  “To find a warm bed!”

  “Where are my keys, Lily?” I asked, with much less urgency than I did earlier. The long ass day seeking Emmy, the drinking, the emotional turmoil, the argument and punch in the kisser suddenly weighed down on me. I didn’t want meth as much as I wanted to just also find a warm bed, but if she gave in and produced my keys, I would probably wake up pretty fast.

  “You can’t have them!” she screamed from what sounded like my bedroom.

  I sighed heavily before going through the apartment turning off lights. Out of curiosity, I opened the closet next to the bathroom. Lily’s jacket hung there, welcoming me to dig through her pockets.

  “They’re not in there!” she called from the bedroom.

  Out of spite, I went through her pockets. I found her keys and more numbers.

  “How many fucking numbers did you get?” I yelled.

  “Some men do find me attractive!”

  I slammed the closet door and turned off the rest of the lights.

  “I never said you weren’t attractive,” I said again as I moved down the hallway.

  The bedroom was illuminated by the light from the master bath. Lily was in my bed, under the blankets with her back to me.

  “You know I could call my dealer to me,” I said, standing beside the bed.

  “You could if you had your phone,” she said.

  Shit.

  “Where’s my phone, Lily?”

  “In the car. I saw it there and forgot to bring it in.”

  I threw my head back in frustration. “And why do you get my bed?”

  “The bed in the guest room is a full size bed. I think I’ve earned the right to sleep in a Californian king.”

  “I was in rehab for a month,” I pointed out. “I think I deserve to sleep in my own bed.”

  “So sleep,” she snapped.

  I threw my bloody shirt into the bathroom trashcan and turned off the light before using the light of the digital clock on the table next to my bed to find my way back to the bed. I threw back the covers and got into my bed. As my head sunk into the pillows, I sighed. I wasn’t exactly content for obvious reasons, but it was nice to be in my own bed, even if I was sharing it with Little Slugger.

  “You split my lip open,” I said to her after a few quiet minutes.

  “You deserved it,” she said as she yawned. “Besides, you took your shirt off. It was a win win.”

  I chuckled, an honest to goodness real bit of laughter. Lily looked over her shoulder at me.

  “What I was trying to say before you had your temper tantrum is that even though those painful emotions may follow you for a long time, you will eventually be able to live with them. You will eventually be able to smile or…laugh. Life only seems to stop, but it only stops for you, and it’s only as long as you want it. The rest of the world will continue on without you, but you don’t want to miss too much, because then you’ll have regrets on top of your regrets. It can become a vicious cycle. You just have to try to live through it, Kyle. You have to try.”

  “But…”

  “No buts. Yes, you did awful things, but no one is going to punish you more than you are going to punish yourself, but you can also redeem yourself. If there was no redemption for anyone, then every criminal should just be executed because the time they’ll spend in prison would be pointless. I do believe you can be redeemed, despite your stupid big mouth.”

  I felt like there was an elephant sitting on my chest and a large lump had formed in my throat. I had not cried since I was a kid, but I felt myself on the verge of tears. I started taking very deep breaths to help fight it off. Lily rolled over and crawled across the bed until she was close enough to rest her hand on my bare chest. She didn’t say anything, but I appreciated the gesture. I usually didn’t like to be touched by anyone who wasn’t my mom or Emmy, but Lily’s hand was comforting at a time when I thought being comforted was impossible. Maybe because I didn’t think anyone wanted to comfort me.

  After a while, the weight on my chest wasn’t so heavy and the lump in my throat began to dissolve. Lily’s eyes were closed, but I wasn’t sure if she was actually sleeping or not.

  “Lil?” I whispered.

  “Hmm?”

  “I never said you were unattractive.”

  She groaned. “Instead of apologizing for groping my ass and yelling at me, you’re going back to that?”

  I sighed, slightly frustrated. “I am sorry, but I’m…I’m like that. I have asshole tendencies. I’ve been trying to work on it since Emmy laid into me about
it, but I don’t think it’s ever going to go away.”

  “Probably not,” she murmured. “But then again, that’s a big part that makes you so appealing and attractive to women. Some of us like aggression in our men.”

  I was once again reminded that she liked me, and now I had some idea why, but I didn’t focus on that. Not quite.

  “I’m not sorry for grabbing your ass,” I said firmly.

  “If I could open my eyes, I’d be rolling them right now.”

  “But back to what I was saying earlier,” I said, ignoring her eye rolling comment. “I never said you were unattractive.”

  “Oh yeah? What color are my eyes then, hotshot?”

  “Slate gray,” I promptly answered. “I’ve never seen eyes such a deep color of gray.”

  She appeared to freeze for a moment, but then she relaxed somewhat. “Very good. You get a gold star for remembering my eye color.”

  “You bite your bottom lip when you’re concentrating.” The words fell off of my tongue, bewildering even me. Lily froze again. I think she even stopped breathing. “When you release your lip, you lick it a couple of times with the tip of your tongue. Just the tip because you seem uncomfortable when your tongue ring comes in contact with your lips or teeth.”

  “I hate seeing people play with their tongue rings,” she whispered. “It’s gross.”

  “I agree, but I think I like yours. You don’t do that.”

  “Thanks?” she said uneasily.

  I chuckled again and patted her hand on my chest. Without much thought, I laced my fingers with hers.

  “You have a smattering of freckles across the bridge of your nose and cheekbones. It’s cute, but hot at the same time.”

  “You noticed all of this in one night?” she asked, slightly breathless.

  “I did. And I’m not even finished.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice.

  “Honestly, I always went for girls with bodies like Emmy or Jess – Jess is tall and slim, with some mild curves. Emmy, as you know is thin but pretty curvy.”

  “Are you going somewhere with these descriptions of the exes?” she asked dryly.

  “Yes. I like your body, Lily. I think you’re very attractive, especially when you’re angry and just punched a guy. So, don’t ever think that I don’t think you’re attractive.”

  “Thank you, Kyle,” she said softly before clearing her throat. “But let’s face it. You can’t get past all of the other stuff. My tattoos are never going away. I thought long and hard before each one and I have no reason to laser them off. I like my pierced eyebrow, my pierced tongue, my pierced ears and my pierced ni - ” She stopped mid word, but it was obvious what she was about to say.

  “Your nipples are pierced?” I asked in awe.

  “Yes,” she said in exasperation.

  “Is your clit pierced?” I asked.

  “No!”

  “Lily, you’re right,” I said with my own exasperated sigh. “I’m not used to all of that, and I don’t know if I ever will be, but I can’t even think like that at this point in my life.”

  “Then the conversation is over,” she said softly. “I appreciate what you said, but I’m okay with letting it drop now.”

  She started to pull her hand out of mine and roll away, but I grasped her hand and wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer.

  “Please,” I whispered the one word.

  “Okay,” she whispered back.

  As usual, while I was drifting off to sleep my head was filled with images and sounds of Emmy. Her smile, her frown, her angry face, and her sad face. Sometimes I would get flashes of me hitting her, though I could never really put all of the little pieces together to get a full picture.

  Sometimes I heard her laughter or her cries of ecstasy, but sometimes I heard her cry of fear and pain, but I couldn’t place in my mind what the scene was when she made those awful sounds that tend to haunt me into my sleep. I tried to focus on better things, like kissing her. I loved her lips and her mouth.

  As Lily shifted slightly in my arms, I wondered what it would be like to kiss her. I had never kissed a woman anything like her, especially one with a tongue ring. Now I was the one shifting slightly. The thought of her studded tongue flickering over mine sent a jolt right to my earlier insulted manhood. My brain gave me an image of Lily on her knees with my erection in her hands and on the tip of her tongue while her piercing gleamed. I had heard rumors that oral sex was that much better when the giver had a pierced tongue. I couldn’t shake the image from either of my heads, and before long I was thinking about her nipples.

  The good news was that I didn’t think too much about Emmy for the rest of the night. The bad news was that I couldn’t stop thinking about Lily.

  Chapter Two

  *~Lily~*

  My body was ready to wake up from its slumber, but I wanted to chase after the fading dream I had. I tried to force myself to sleep again, but my toes betrayed me by flexing and pointing to the foot of the bed, and my arms stretched over my head until my fingers grazed over the headboard.

  Damn stretching limbs.

  Defeated, my eyes fluttered open and stared at the windows I was facing. The mid-afternoon sun pressed against the glass, but the room darkening blinds let only the smallest traces of sunlight through. I rolled my head and shrieked. Kyle was lying next to me, on his side with his head propped on one arm as he gazed at me. His hair was damp from a recent shower, I assumed, and his beard was gone.

  “I went to sleep thinking about what it would be like to kiss you,” he said in a velvety voice that nearly made my panties burst into flames and melt off of my body. “I woke up with the same thought, but I thought I wasn’t thinking straight because I’m really fucked up in the head and heart right now. I went out for a long run and forced myself to focus on the task at hand. I took a shower, shaved, and went about trying to get on with my life post Emmy as a recovering addict. No matter what I did today, the desire to kiss you didn’t go away. Maybe it’s because you are right here…in my bed…” He ran a finger over my jawline that left me trembling. “Tangible…” His thumb dragged across my bottom lip and shamefully, I gasped.

  “So, I’ve been laying here for the past half hour watching you sleep, trying to decide if I should wake you with a kiss or wait until you wake up; or if I should be an asshole and send you away so that I wouldn’t be tempted.”

  “You should probably send me away,” I struggled to breathe out.

  “I probably should,” he agreed. “That would be wise, but I don’t always behave wisely.” His fingers traced over the stars tattooed on my neck.

  “Well, here’s your chance to prove you’re not a complete boob.”

  Hell, I really wanted him to kiss me. I had been thinking about it since the first time I had ever seen him, but I really didn’t want him to kiss me. If it weren’t for his broken heart, we wouldn’t even be discussing it, because I wouldn’t have been there. I didn’t want to be the rebound girl; especially since the woman who was making him rebound was my boss. I never actually believed any of my fantasies about Kyle would ever come to fruition. It really wouldn’t be healthy for either of us to be anything other than friends.

  Then again, it was only a kiss, and he would probably hate it or it would make him think of Emmy and he wouldn’t want to take it any further. Then again, stranger things have happened.

  While I was at war with myself, Kyle had apparently made up his own mind.

  “I hate ‘what if’ scenarios,” he said, as his thumb dragged across my lip again.

  “Well, what if I don’t want you to kiss me?” I asked in a growing panic. “What if I don’t kiss you back?”

  A small, but dangerous smile appeared on his face. “You do and you will.”

  His hand firmly – possessively – cupped my face and he brought his lips to mine. I stopped breathing and my heart stopped when his tongue smoothed across my lips seeking entrance. Stubbornly, I didn’t let him in. His
tongue swept over my bottom lip and suddenly I felt his teeth on me. He didn’t bite me hard enough to bleed, but I parted my lips in a surprised reflex and his tongue dove into my mouth. I couldn’t stop the moan that escaped my throat when his tongue found the tip of mine. When I flicked my piercing over his tongue, Kyle moaned loudly into my mouth. I reached up and grabbed the back of his head to kiss him deeper. Our tongues met again and again in an erotic tango, both of us moaning and groaning.

  Kyle shifted so that his body was over mine without ever taking his lips from mine. He had one hand at the back of my head, gripping my hair and his other hand smoothed back and forth over my waist and hip. There was a blanket between us, but there was no mistaking his erection pressed against my thigh. Whatever misgivings I had earlier were burned away by my own lust. I was at his mercy and I loved every second of it. I loved his hard body pressed against mine as his tongue battled with mine and his teeth nipped at my lips. I ran my tongue gingerly over his injured lip as an apology. He accepted it with a light moan.

  Kyle pulled away and ripped the blanket off of me. He grabbed the hem of my t-shirt and pushed it up, but stopped just under my breasts. I watched with fascination as he bent over and planted kisses across my belly. His hands released the hem of my shirt and caressed my skin. He looked at me with heated eyes and pulled off his own shirt. He finished what he started and pulled my shirt off, revealing a black, nearly transparent bra.

  “Oh my god,” he whispered as his hands smoothed down my chest towards my breasts. The palms of his hands just covered my hard buds when I saw movement from the doorway.

  I screamed when I saw a man standing there glaring at us. Kyle scrambled to cover me as he cursed.

  “What the hell are you doing here!” he demanded of the man as he got off of the bed.

  “Get rid of your whore and meet me in the living room,” the asshole said coldly and walked out.

  “Who’s the asshole!” I demanded as I pulled my shirt back on.

  Kyle pulled his own shirt on and looked at me somberly.

  “That asshole is my dad.”

  *~~~*