Exquisite Redemption (Iron Horse MC Book 3) (25 page)

“Don’t put me on a pedestal,” I hissed. “I…I was a real bitch when I was a teenager. Did stupid shit with stupid people. Drugs, drinking, sex—you name it, I did it. I…I hurt people. Innocent people that had never done a thing wrong to me.”

“What
mi riena
? Talk to me. Promise you I won’t judge.”

I decided to tell him one of my secrets, not the worst, but still a big one that could potentially run Beach off. “I had an affair with a married man.”

At that he tensed, but his gaze remained remarkably calm. “You know he was married?”

“No!” He winced at my shout and I leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek as an apology before leaning back. “Sorry. No, I had no idea he was married. He kept his family out in Connecticut. Nobody talked about them around me or anything.”

“How old were you?”

I squirmed uncomfortably, not used to talking about that period in my life with anyone. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah, baby, it matters.”

“Young, okay? I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

He studied me, then nodded. “We got time. You come to me when you’re ready and I promise you, no judgement.”

My eyes swam with tears and I blinked them back, knowing Mimi would go back into freak-out mode if she noticed I’d been crying.

“Sure.”

He searched my face while his big hand smoothed up and down my hip, relaxing me and allowing some of the tension in me to release. “That shit’s in the past. Who you are now, what you do with your life, who you chose to be, that’s important. ’Sides, we all got skeletons in our closet.”

Actually, it was more like I had a zombie in my closet. A living, breathing, drug-addicted waste that used to be my mother. Pure shame burned through me at the thought of Beach knowing some of the shit I’d done with her, and even though I know I should tell him about her, I just couldn’t.

Still, I had to try to warn him again I was flawed, imperfect, and for him to not idolize me. That was what Morrie had done, worshipped me like a goddess until he found out I was underage. Then I’d come crashing back to earth from the heavens, my heart irreparably damaged by the fall.

With this in mind I forced myself to say, “I know you don’t understand, but believe me when I say you’re better off without me in your life. Trouble follows me.”

He laughed and curled his arms behind his head, leisurely examining my body as I inched towards the bathroom. “Hate to break it to you, but I’m not exactly a saint and my lifestyle ain’t exactly trouble free.”

“Yeah, but you’re a guy. Different standards.”

“So let me get this straight, you were a bitch when you were younger.”

“Yep.”

“And now you’re not.”

“I try really hard not to be. I don’t like the person I was, Beach. It took some hard lessons to wake me up to the shit I was living in. Mimi taught me about karma, and the rule of three.”

“Know what karma is, but never heard of the rule of three.”

“Whatever you do to someone else, comes back at you three times harder, good or bad. I learned that the hard way when I was younger and decided I was going to give people all the good I could in hopes of balancing off the bad already sitting on my soul.”

His deep blue eyes softened, as did the lines around his mouth. “I already know your soul is good, ’cause I can see it shining in your eyes.”

I rolled said eyes, but still secretly felt pleased at his words. “Whatever.”

“No, you can ‘whatever’ a lot of stuff, but you need to know it’s true. You’re a good woman, best I’ve ever met, and I don’t care about any of the bullshit you’re getting ready to spew about us being strangers. I know you, in here.” He pressed his hand over his heart.

This was all getting too intense for me. I needed an escape so I crossed the room quickly while saying, “I’m going to take a shower.”

“You got five minutes to do what you gotta do before I join you in there.”

I paused in the doorway, turning back to find him looking like sin incarnate, stretched out over the bed and giving me that killer smile of his.

Refusing to be distracted by the need to rub myself against him like a cat in heat, I added some frost to my tone as I said, “No, I’m taking a shower, by myself.”

He gripped himself tight and my knees went weak at the sight of his hella-big erection pressing against his jeans. “Thought of you all soapy and slick, washin’ that beautiful body of yours, no fuckin’ way I’m missin’ this. Go wash up for your
Papi
so he can lick you clean. Haven’t had the chance to properly worship that pretty pussy yet.”

Dammit, my clit twitched when he said that and I glared at him, pretty sure he was conditioning me to get horny whenever I heard the word “
Papi”
. Or was it the thought of him “worshiping” my pussy that had my need for him tightening my belly. I had a feeling he was really, really good at pleasuring a woman with that dirty mouth of his.

“Five minutes,” he warned, and I shut the door on his laughing face then proceeded to brush my teeth, use the bathroom, and wash as fast as humanly possible before he came in.

I was working the conditioner through my hair when the shower door opened and a naked, aroused Beach crowded me into the corner. His gaze was positively feral and his upper lip curled as he muttered, “God damn you’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

In the brief time we’d been apart, I’d already begun to question what the hell I was doing with Beach, but as soon as he touched me, I was melting into him despite my best intentions to remain aloof.

He held me and a tiny bit of guilt moved through me as he cuddled me close, knowing his ass was probably cold from letting me hog the hot water. Slowly he rubbed his rough hands over my sensitive skin, arousing me to the point I found myself reaching out to the tiles in front of me to brace myself while he manipulated my clit. With each rub I ground my ass against his erection, all thoughts of anything but Beach impossible. He drowned out the world with his presence and easily enslaved me with his highly skilled touch. Little electrical pulses zipped from my swollen nipples to my clit while he pinched them.

“Fuck,” he hissed then dipped down to rub his dick against my entrance. “You sore?”

“Um…a little.”

“Too sore to take me?”

I should have said yes, but my pussy somehow hijacked my body and instead I said, “No.”

He began to press into me and it burned, but I endured it. His hands flexed on my hips and he stilled, a hard tremor running through him before he pulled out.

To my surprise, he smacked my ass, hard, like not-fucking-around hard.

“What the hell!”

I gave a half-hearted effort to wiggle out of his grip, but he held me tight. “Do not lie to me about shit like this, Sarah. You and me are only gonna work if we got honesty between us. That means no lying about shit like me hurting you.”

The distress in his voice had me turning in his arms and blinking up at him before lacing my arms around his neck, my thumbs stroking his skin. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, be honest. Why didn’t you tell me it hurt?”

“Well, it stung, but it wasn’t bad. I’ve had some bad injuries—try fucking up your knee and tell me how that feels—so a little burn isn’t even worth mentioning. I’m sure it would have felt good eventually. You’re really well-endowed and my body will have to get used to something that size being inside of me. I’m just kinda on the tight side naturally, you know? If we’re not careful your dick could get stuck inside of me like a finger in one of those Chinese Finger Torture toys. You know, the cheap tube things you get trading in tickets from play ski ball?”

He closed his eyes and I got the distinct impression he was praying for strength.

I tipped my head back and started to rinse the conditioner out of my hair. “Wash up, I don’t want to keep our moms waiting. I already feel like a skank around your mom for walking in on us naked in bed.”

“First, my mama doesn’t think you’re a skank.” I started to protest, but he gently put his finger against my lips. “Second, I don’t care how good you are at ignoring pain,
mi corazón
, you will not do that with me. Understood?”

I snorted and pulled my head away, then grabbed the soap and began to molest, I mean wash, his chest. “You can’t make me.”

He grumbled and arched into my touch like a big, happy lion. “I don’t want to make you do anything. I want you to be happy. Ignoring pain is taxing, I know this, and I don’t like to look at you and know you’re in discomfort. If I inadvertently hurt you during sex and you hid it, I would be disgusted with myself for having gone too far. I like kinky shit, pretty sure you do too, but I can’t play rough with you unless I know you won’t let me inadvertently hurt you.”

“You spanked me, that hurt,” I said in a decidedly pouty voice that irritated me.

“That’s an on-purpose hurt,” he said with a totally serious expression. “Correction instead’a pleasure.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—correction? As in you were correcting my behavior with a spanking?”

“Yep.”

I considered clawing his back while I washed it, but felt it would be a sin to harm such incredible ink over beautiful muscle. “You are out of your damn mind.”

“You put yourself in danger, you do somethin really fuckin’ stupid, I will spank you to remind you that you do
not
do shit like that.”

“Oh hell no!” My shout echoed loud in the shower. “You are not going to treat me like that.”

He blinked at me, genuinely surprised at how upset I’d gotten. “Like what?”

I drew in a tight breath, my anger threatening my self-control. I would not give in to it, I would not be my parents and lash out anytime I got upset. I was better than that, please, God, help me be better than that.

Taking in a deep breath, I slowly let it out and pushed some of my anger out with it. “I will never be your perfect puppet to play with as you wish. That will never, ever happen, and if that’s what you need in a relationship,
adios
.”

“I never said I wanted anything like that.”

“What do you call spanking me if I break
Papi’s
rules?”

“I call that trying to keep someone I care deeply about alive.”

“What?”

To my surprise, he began to run his fingers gently through my hair. “If I did something stupid, something you asked me not to do, something that endangered my life, wouldn’t you want to spank me for doing it?”

I couldn’t help it, I started giggling at the utterly weird idea of spanking Beach. “No!”

The lines around his mouth deepened as his lips lifted at the corners. “You wouldn’t wanna tan my ass?”

“I want to do a lot of things to your ass, it’s superb, but spanking is not one of those things.”

“That’s what I figured, just wanted to double-check.”

I stared up at him while he gave my neck a gentle massage that had my knees weakening. “We have the strangest conversations.”

“You’re not lyin’.”

“Beach, for reals, I need to be independent.”

“And you can’t do that with a man?”

“I…suppose you can, but I don’t know if I can.”

“When’s the last time you had a steady man in your life?”

“Umm—over a year. Everything got really busy and I didn’t have time to breathe, let alone have a boyfriend. It all happened so quick, winning the title, then
Playboy
, then the tour. I barely had time to see my family, let alone a boyfriend.”

“Sounds like you were handling a lot of shit while standing on your own two feet,
mi nina linda.
Proud of you for that, but I don’t think losing your independence is your problem with relationships. Think it’s fear.”

“What?” I tried to scoff, but my voice came out winded. “Fear of what?”

He studied me for a moment, then shook his head. “We don’t got time to deal with this right now, but we’ll talk about it.”

As he stepped out of the shower I was tempted to chuck a shampoo bottle at him. “Oh, I see, when I say we need to hurry it’s ignored, but the instant you think we need to get out of the shower it’s go time.”

He laughed, the bastard, while toweling himself off, and looking sexy as hell doing it. “I swear, you could argue the color of the sky if you got a mind to. Get a move on. Don’t want Mimi comin after me.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive right now,” I huffed.

“Don’t I know it.”

He tossed me a towel as well and we dried off quickly before returning to our room. While Beach dug through the duffel bag he’d brought with him for clothes, his muscled back all too distracting along with his damp golden hair. Turning away from temptation, I went to the dresser to see what was in there. Last night, Birdie had mentioned one of her daughters-in-law was a little bit bigger than me, and that I could borrow whatever I wanted until we could go shopping.

I found a pair of dark grey yoga pants that were more like capris on me, along with a sports bra that barely fit my chest, but kept the girls in place. It’s one thing going braless in front of a bunch of bikers, quite another to do it in front of Beach’s mom. I’d been so shell-shocked about Mimi’s appearance that I hadn’t even processed the first impression I must have made on Mouse.