Trashy (22 page)

Adam

I heard her keys in the door all the way into the bedroom. She wasn’t really being loud; I was just so in tune with her I couldn’t
not
hear her enter the condo.

I stepped out into the living room in time to see her at the kitchen island, dropping her keys and what looked like a bunch of paperwork and some kind of booklet.

Her dark hair was hanging down her back, and the boots that rose to just below her knee totally turned me on.

“Hey,” I said, and she looked up.

Her smile was almost blinding when she turned it on me. “Hey.”

She crossed the room, and I opened my arms to her and she came into them willingly. “I like your outfit,” she said, letting her fingers travel over my lower back to tug at the towel I had wrapped around my waist.

“I just got out of the shower,” I said as she pressed against me a little closer.

I closed my eyes and willed my body to keep it cool, but my cock had other ideas. She felt so damn good up against my skin, and the way she was plastering herself against me was totally testing my self-control.

Who was I kidding?

The past couple weeks had been testing my self-control.

It had been almost two months since I made love to Roxie, since before she was assaulted and almost raped at the club. Because of the violence with which she was attacked and the injuries she sustained (broken ribs, bruises, puncture wound due to bite marks, a concussion…), we took sex off the table.

I still wanted her more than ever, but her body and mind needed time to heal. Her bruises were faded, the bite marks on her chest were healed, and the concussion had long since passed. Basically, her physical injuries were mended, but her mind wasn’t quite there yet. I think at first she was worried I might be upset if she wasn’t ready to have sex, but just having her in my life was enough for me.

She still stayed here most nights, and she always curled into my arms, sometimes our make-out sessions got a little heated, and some days she seemed like she needed more space. I never pushed, but I was always here when she needed me.

She still had nightmares sometimes. They were becoming less and less, but there were still times she would wake up screaming or I’d have to wake her because she was crying.

It made me glad I killed the son of a bitch who tried to rape her and the asshole who set it up.

No charges were pressed against me for shooting and killing Craig and the rapist because it was determined it was all self-defense. Craig shot at me, which gave me the right to shoot back. Plus, he was on property he’d been legally ordered to avoid.

The man I didn’t kill, the one with the camera, was currently sitting in jail, charged as an accessory. I hoped he rotted there.

After the investigation, it was strongly suggested that Roxie and I seek counseling for everything we went through. I encouraged Roxie to go, but I didn’t go.

The thing was I didn’t feel sorry for what I did. Maybe that said something dark about my character, but it wasn’t as if I killed two innocent bystanders. One was a rapist. I mean, his dick was literally hanging out when the coroner carted him away. And I had to look at his teeth marks on Roxie’s flesh for weeks.

And Craig…

Well, I kept my word to Roxie. I didn’t go after him. He came after me, and I finished it. The end.

In my mind, I took two lives, but they were lives that did nothing but create misery. And at least this way, Roxie wouldn’t have to look over her shoulder every time she left the house.

I pulled back and looked down at her. “How did registration go?”

“It was good,” she said, going over to the window to stare out. “There were a lot of people there and I was nervous, but I did it.”

“Yeah?”

She looked over her shoulder and gave me a big grin. “Yep. I’m officially a college student. In two years, I’ll be a registered nurse.”

I scooped her up and spun her around in a circle. “Damn, you are gonna look so hot in a nurse’s outfit.”

She threw back her head and laughed.

“I’m proud of you, sweetheart,” I told her when her laughter died away.

“I’m proud of me, too.”

“And you’re sure you want to keep working at the club? Think you can handle both the class schedule and nights at the Hatter?” I asked. It still amazed me that she even went back there to work. It took her a couple weeks, but then she faced her fears and went back to the club. She said she wouldn’t let one bad incident take away all the good memories she had there.

Of course, I had security out the ass now. She was never alone there. Never.

“I’m sure,” she said. “If I change my mind, I’ll have to put in a call to the boss.”

“Hmm,” I said, lowering my head. “You can call him anytime.”

I captured her lips in a slow and sensual kiss. I kept it light and undemanding, I never wanted her to feel smothered. But this morning, Roxie wanted more. Her fingers dug into my waist and she pressed herself closer, deepening our kiss.

I groaned in the back of my throat as emotions and desire swirled up inside me.

I licked into her mouth, caressing her tongue with mine and nipping at her lower lip. In the back of my head, I willed myself to cool down, but it was so fucking hard.

Her kisses had increasingly become a little more demanding every time. Her touch seemed to burn me a little more, and it was getting harder and harder to pull back.

Roxie slid her hands down my waist and delved her fingertips in the towel at my waist. I stilled and waited for her to pull away.

She didn’t. In fact, she gave the soft material a little tug.

I lifted my head and looked at her.

Her fingers continued to tease the edge of the fabric. I put my hand over hers. “Sweetheart, are you trying to drive me crazy?”

“I’m trying to make you want me,” she whispered.

My hand jerked over hers. “I always want you. You don’t even have to try.”

“Even since…?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” I drawled. “Nothing could ever make me not want you. You know I’m just giving you the space you need to heal.”

“And I love you for it,” she said.

I smiled. I never got sick of hearing her say that. It felt like I won the lottery every single time she said those three little words.

“Adam?” she said, stepping a little closer. “I don’t want space anymore.”

My chest rumbled with the growl that ripped from deep within me. “Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent,” she replied.

Anticipation zapped my nerve endings as she led me into the bedroom. The bed was still unmade from this morning, and she stopped at the end.

I lowered to help her tug off her boots, but when she reached for the button on her jeans, I sat on the end of the bed because I wanted her to set the pace.

She slid them off inch by delicious inch, and the towel wrapped around my hips turned into a tent. Her eyes heated when she saw how badly I wanted her, and she quickly pulled off her top and bra.

Her body was perfect. Smooth, creamy skin, curves and full breasts, my hands itched to touch her.

She stepped up in front of me and took my hands, lifting them to her body. I was all too eager to touch her. It seemed as if it had been forever, and I relished the moment and the trust she had in me.

Unable to stop myself, I leaned forward and licked down the center of her abdomen, trailing kisses across her middle. Then I moved over and paid special attention to the tattoo she’d gotten.

“I love this,” I murmured, tracing the heart outline with my finger. “I never get tired of seeing this on your body.”

Her hand palmed the back of my head and pressed me into it just a little bit harder, and I sucked at her flesh.

The day of the attack, she’d gone to a tattoo parlor before work and had the fading note I’d casually drawn on her made permanent. The word
beach,
had faded away worse than the heart, so she didn’t have it put on, but the heart and the
xoxo
were there forever.

She was disappointed she didn’t get to surprise me the way she wanted to. Instead, I saw it at the hospital when she was getting treated for her injuries.

But no matter how I first saw it, I loved it. It was a permanent mark between us. The proof that she’d totally become mine.

She told me later that when she’d gotten out of the shower that morning and saw it would disappear soon, she had to do something to save it. She wanted my writing on her forever.

And so it was.

“I love you, Adam,” she whispered as I kissed over the heart one more time.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” I said as she pushed me back and pulled away the towel.

She climbed over my body and straddled my waist. Her naked torso arching up over me was one of the most beautiful things I would ever see.

“I’m going to drive today,” she said as she wrapped her hand around my throbbing cock with a wicked gleam in her eye.

“I’m all yours.” I grinned.

“Forever?” she asked.

“Even longer,” I vowed.

It was the easiest promise I ever made.

Look for
TRACE
, coming fall 2014

I was a girl who vanished without a trace…

I grew up on a tree-lined street, tire swings in every yard and rose bushes lining the white picket fences. As an only child, I was spoiled and the center of my parents’ universe. They loved me and I loved them.

Then my dad got sick. He needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. Like any loving daughter, I got tested, knowing deep down I was going to be a match. Knowing I would be the one to save his life.

The day the results came in, I learned I was wrong. I wasn’t a match.

But that isn’t all I learned.

I also learned he isn’t my father.

On his deathbed, he made his confession. He told me who I really was.

I was a girl I’d never met. A girl I didn’t know. A girl I now wanted to discover.

I was a girl who was born as someone different and then vanished without a trace.

My name is Keegan Ross, and this is the story of finding me.

*Due to the voices in my head this may or may not be the next release, but rest assured something good is coming soon!

This was probably the hardest book in the
Take It Off
series I’ve had to write to date. My husband would say I say that about
every
book I’m writing at the time, but this one really was the hardest. Up until this point, I would have said
Tempt
was the hardest—if you read my author’s note in the back of it, you will know why.

So what made
Trashy
so hard?

Well, first off let me just say (oh boy, I think I’m about to get longwinded… grab onto your hat) that I always said I was going to write a trashy novel. Ha-ha-ha. I think the book itself isn’t really a trashy read. It’s not one of those books you have to, like, put inside another book when you’re out in public so people don’t know what you’re really reading (at least I hope not!), but I suppose it’s my version of a trashy novel, which is basically a guilty pleasure.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it forever probably, but I write to entertain. I write to give readers a place to escape to from everyday life and reality. That’s what I hope you get most out of my books—escapism. Yes, I try to put some underlying emotion in them, but I think all good books need that.

Anyway, even writing to entertain is hard. Some people think writing is easy. I don’t agree with that. The only thing easy about my job is that I can do it in my pajamas. That isn’t to say I don’t love my job, because I do, but some days are really hard.

Trashy
is the most requested book in this series. Readers fell in love with Roxie and Adam in
Tease
, which was my second
Take It Off
novel. This book is number ten in the series, so clearly, it took a while for me to get to it, and people have been asking for it for eight books now.

You’d think that would make it easy to write. Wrong. That’s one of the reasons it was so challenging. Because Adam and Roxie are so loved, I felt intense pressure to get their story right. I felt intense pressure to deliver Adam the way I know everyone wanted him. He’s truly book boyfriend material, isn’t he? I had to make him live up to that.

I sort of psyched myself out. I went round and round with the plot on this one, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I changed my mind several times. I had conflicting thoughts. Usually, I get a plot and run with it. Not so with this one. I worried over this one so much that, as many of you know, I pushed it back a couple times and wrote something else first. Then I got to the point where I was like,
Enough already!
People wanted Adam and I wanted to write him.

It was a struggle to get started. I still wasn’t sure where I was going, and I felt like Roxie was somewhat a mystery to me. Her voice was fairly quiet in my loud mind. But I started anyway, and a few chapters in, I decided I needed Adam’s point of view. So I started to add him in. And then I realized I didn’t know that much about Adam either. I think the biggest question that plagued me about Adam is
why?
Why did he feel the need to get married four times? What makes a guy do that? I didn’t want to go the usual his parents had a bad marriage and it affected him. I felt like, for Adam, that was a copout. I didn’t want to give him commitment issues, because Adam isn’t the type to shy away from hard work or being loyal to the woman he loves. Plus, what man with commitment issues would get married four times? Clearly, he doesn’t have commitment issues; he just has problems holding on to his relationships. I was convinced I needed a reason for his marriages, but the more I wrote, the more I wondered if having a reason was really even necessary. Maybe he’s just been trying to make that part of his life work, maybe the right girl hadn’t come along (until Roxie of course!), and maybe that’s all it was. Maybe I was trying to create a big back-story where there wasn’t one.

That was hard to accept because part of me is all like, “There needs to be drama!” Maybe Adam is just a drama-free dude. I think we can all appreciate that. Besides, Roxie has enough drama for three people.

I also worried about the plot on this one. I know many of my
Take It Off
novels are action packed, and they start from page one and go, go, go, but like
Tryst,
this one is a little different. Yes, Roxie is struggling against Craig and breaking free of that relationship, but really,
Trashy
isn’t about the suspense of what Craig is going to do to her, because he’s already been doing crap to her for years. It’s more about her internal struggle with it all, how to get away from him, how to accept she can’t save everyone. About how to let herself love someone again.

I don’t expect everyone to get this book—and trust me; that’s hard to say because I want everyone to love Adam and Roxie. But I think when we are dealing with this kind of abuse, not everyone understands the reasons a woman stays. I hope with Roxie, I evoked that kind of understanding of the kind of struggle she went through. She knew it wasn’t right, but she just couldn’t get out.

Breaking that kind of cycle is hard, especially at that young of an age. And yeah, I’m speaking from experience. More experience than I planned to put into this book, but out it came, and I realized I related to Roxie on a very deep level.

On that note, I really hope people don’t criticize her, because I will likely take it personally. On another note, NO, no one ever tried to make me do a porn. LOL! That part is made up. Ha-ha-ha. Drama, people, drama. (Oh, and I’ve never been a stripper either.)

But the more I wrote, the more poured out of me. Along about thirty thousand words in, I started to become obsessed with this book. I walked around with bloodshot eyes (my kids thought I was sick) because I was so in my head that being in the outside world was too hard. It’s a juggling act, trying to live in two different worlds at once. I started worrying less about the plot and just wrote it the way Adam and Roxie told me.

Still, I’m a little nervous to put this baby out into the world. Adam and Roxie… they’re my favorite
Take It Off
couple besides Nathan and Honor in
Text
. Adam (to me) is so swoon worthy, and I really, really hope I did him justice for you guys. I hope I gave you everything you wanted in this book, because Lord knows y’all have been asking for it, and I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to get it right.

Oh, and by the way, is the cover not absolute perfection?

My kids might disagree with that only because they wanted me to put LSP from
Adventure Time
(it’s a TV show) on the cover. LSP stands for Lumpy Space Princess (I’m so serious right now, lol) and she is basically a purple cloud with arms and she talks like a Valley girl (no offense to all you Valley girls!). LSP likes to say she is going to “write a trashy novel” and it’s going to be “like soo trashy.” So in my children’s minds, LSP would have been the perfect candidate. Ha-ha-ha.

But seriously. This cover is like epic (even without LSP). Thanks to Regina at Mae I Design for creating the beauty.

And thanks to my editor Cassie for making it read good. :-)

I
gotta tell you, it feels good to get this book off my list. I really hope you all get where I was going with this story. And I hope you keep reading my books.

I’ll see you next book!

XOXO —
Cambria