Worthy of Redemption (4 page)

“
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 Cal
ifornian 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 b
efore 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 v
icious 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 co
mment. “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 chee
kbones. 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. Som
etimes 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.

~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 tra
ces 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 ar
e 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 b
ehave 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 mi
sgivings 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 fascin
ation 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.”

~~~

I stood just inside the bedroom door listening to the escalating argument in the living room. It had been ten minutes since father and son began yelling at one a
nother. I thought Kyle had a bad temperament, but his father reminded me of a fire breathing dragon.

“I don’t
want
her and I’m fucking done pretending that I do!” Kyle yelled.

“This isn’t just about you! Martin Venner has every intention of handing that business to Jess – your marriage would have ensured - ”

“My life is not a fucking business transaction, Walter!” Kyle roared. “This isn’t just about you getting their business. You think that I don’t know the shit you’ve done!”

There was a moment of silence and then Walter asked “It was you? You’re the one scre
wing with my accounts?”

“Yes it was me,” Kyle said and then roared once again. “
What the hell is wrong with you? Do you realize how much shit this company is in because of your greedy actions!”

“You told Emmy,” Walter yelled. “
That bitch would love to destroy me!”

“The only thing she knows is that you’re a cheating, dishonest, asshole,
Dad
. I didn’t tell her any of the details.”

“You’re lying! She specifically said that she knew I was doing bad business! Where would she have heard that, Kyle?”

“You paid her a bribe, Walter! It doesn’t take a genius to understand that isn’t the first shitty thing you’ve done!”

A bribe? Why would Emmy take a bribe? She had plenty of her own money.

“Who else knows?”

“It doesn’t matter! I didn’t throw you under the fucking bus if that’s what you want to know. I’ve been cleaning up your fucking mess as quietly as possible, ris
king my own neck.”

“I guess I should thank you,” Walter said very reluctantly.

“I’m not doing it for you,” Kyle spat. “I don’t care about you.”

“Fine. You don’t give a shit about me and I don’t give a shit about you, but you better go fix this thing with Jessyca.”

“Jess can go to hell,” Kyle said through a clenched jaw.

“Obviously you learned what you did from Jess. So you know she can make
this entire thing blow up in our faces.”

“I’m done caring! I lost everything trying to fix this and I’m done!”

“You haven’t begun to lose, you ungrateful bastard,” Walter said in a threatening growl. “I should have never claimed you as my son. No son of mine would be such a fuck up. I should have let your mother run off with the fucking loser that fathered you.”

Oh shit!

“I’ll keep that in mind when the FBI comes knocking.”

I heard some shuffling and grunting and the
unmistakable sound of fists hitting flesh. I ran from the room and nearly froze when I found Walter pushing Kyle around and throwing punches at him. What gave me pause was that Kyle was not fighting back. He blocked what he could but he was allowing himself to get his ass kicked.

What the hell!

“Stop!” I yelled, running into the room. I ran full force into Walter, shoving him so hard he fell back onto the dining room table. “Get out of here!” I yelled even though it wasn’t my home.

Kyle grabbed me around the waist and pulled me away from his faux father. Walter stood upright. He was glaring at me, but he spoke to Kyle.

“Nice guard dog,” he said. He walked past us to the door. “You’re fired for illegal drug usage and fucking your assistant,” he said to Kyle. “You’re banned from the estate and I will find a way to cut your ass off.”

“I don’t doubt that you will,” Kyle said dryly. “Now get out and leave your key.”

Walter reached into his pocket and then threw a key on the floor before slamming the door.

Kyle released me and I spun around to look at him. His mouth was bleeding again and there were bruises forming on his cheek. His right eye was already tur
ning colors and starting to swell. This time I pulled off my own shirt to hold to his lip.

“Why didn’t you fight back?” I asked as I led him to a chair. I made him sit down and hu
rried into the kitchen to make him an icepack. I almost felt let down that he didn’t fight back. I never believed Kyle Sterling to be someone’s little bitch to beat up on. Not even close.

“I wanted him to get it out of his system,” he said when I returned with the icepack. I car
efully put it over his eye and held it there.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He won’t go home and beat the shit out of my mother instead,” he said darkly as he stared straight ahead.

I felt like he had just punched me in the chest. While this was new to me, it most likely was not a new development in the Sterling family. Most likely Kyle had been witnessing such b
ehavior since he was a child and probably experienced a good deal of beatings himself.

“Even if I knew that beforehand, I’m not sure if I would have been able to just
stand there and watch him do that to you,” I admitted reluctantly. I felt sick knowing that it was a possibility Walter Sterling had not finished getting “it out of his system” and he would finish with his wife.

In well under twenty-four hours, I had learned that Kyle had beaten Emmy, but he couldn’t remember it because he was high and drunk. He was an addict, still struggling to stay clean. He had a brother that died as a child and Kyle believed he was responsible. His father was defrau
ding some people. Kyle couldn’t dump Jess and commit to the woman he really loved because he was trying to fix the mess and keep Jess from bringing it to light. Walter Sterling was an abusive husband and
clearly
an abusive parent, but apparently he was only Kyle’s parent in name only because Kyle was fathered by someone else.

It was a lot to learn about a man who seemed to live a fairly private life. I was never meant to know any of it, but now that I did, I didn’t know what to do with it. It should have been a clear indication that he had too much going on in his life, and now with his faux father out to destroy him, things weren’t going to get any easier anytime soon. I had my own problems and demons to fight and skeletons in my closet. I wasn’t sure if I could be helpful, if he even wanted my help. We had made out, but it didn’t mean he wanted anything more from me.

Kyle slid a hand over my hip and down to my front pocket. He slipped his hand into the pocket and pulled out my cell phone.

“What’s your password?” he asked in a dead voice.

“Um. Anna.” When he looked up at me with discerning eyes, I looked away.

“Who’s
Anna?”

I gave a small shake of my head. I didn’t want to talk about it, at least not right then. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to discuss anything as serious as
Anna with him. I was sure he was going to be done with me soon enough. I didn’t want to waste the pain it would cost me to tell that tale for someone who was probably already losing interest in me, and someone who had enough of his own problems at the moment.

Kyle sighed and then unlocked my phone. He quickly dialed a number. I heard a woman a
nswer on the third ring.

“Eliza, it’s Kyle,” he said and the
n stood up, disregarding the icepack. He tossed my t-shirt onto the chair he had just vacated. “Remember what we spoke about before I went on leave?” he asked her as he walked away from me.

Kyle went into business mode, talking to this Eliza person. He went into the guest room where his office was set up. The desk was covered in files that he was rooting through as I walked by to go find a shirt that didn’t have blood all over it.