The Redemption (23 page)

“And the Twelve Days of Tasty Treats for you.”

“Jonas, you give me tasty treats every single day. You’re not proposing anything new or different here—”

“Just play along, woman. Why on earth do you feel compelled to boss me around and spoil my fun? You’re so goddamned bossy.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m sorry. Okay.” I click back on the fellatio options on the side of the page. “Let’s pick your inaugural blowjob.” I click on an animated diagram labeled The Jackhammer. “Well, I don’t even understand how this one would work. I’d have to pull your penis all the way down in the wrong direction to my mouth. Wouldn’t that hurt you?”

“I don’t know—I guess we’ll find out.” He grins broadly.

“And this one—Snake Charmer—can you even do a handstand?”

He laughs. “I’m willing to try.”

“Now that’s the kind of can-do attitude I like to hear, baby. I tell you what. Let’s start with The Peep Show, since that’s what got me so hot and bothered in the first place.” I grab his shaft and caress it.

He trembles.

“Welcome to the Twelve Days of Blowjobs, baby,” I say softly, fondling him.

He yelps with excitement.

“I love you, Jonas,” I say.

“I love you more than life itself,” he replies. “My Magnificent Sarah.”

“Now quit stalling and lie down on your side. You’re mine to do with as I please.”

He lies on his side, grinning from ear to ear, his erection straining.

“Okay, good.” I glance at the computer screen again, trying to understand how this particular game of Twister is supposed to work. “And now I’m supposed to thread my head and neck through your thighs from behind.” I get myself into the correct position, singing as I do, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a blowjob in a pear tree.” He laughs with unfettered glee, and so do I. “Deck the halls with boughs of blowjobs,” I sing merrily from between his thighs, cracking up. “Fa la la la la la la la la.” I give him an enthusiastic lick. “Mmmm,” I say. “Even better than figgy pudding.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “God, I love you, Sarah.”

Jonas
 

I wake up to Sarah jerking and shrieking in my arms.

“No!” she screams at the top of her lungs, her voice raspy. “No!” She thrashes wildly.

“Sarah, wake up. You’re dreaming.” I grip her. “Sarah. You’re having another nightmare.”

She jolts awake, her breathing ragged, her eyes wild.

“You were having another bad dream.”

She clutches me and bursts into tears.

“Shh, baby. You’re safe. I’m here. It was just a dream.” I caress her hair. “Shh. You’re okay. I’m right here.” After she calms down a bit, I pull her into me and kiss her cheeks. “The Ukrainian Travolta again?”

She nods. She swallows hard and catches her breath. “Only this time, Max was there, too. He was raping me while Travolta held the knife to my throat. And Max kept saying, ‘He’s gonna kill you when I’m done fucking you,’ and I screamed and tried to break free, but my arms wouldn’t work and my legs were paralyzed and I couldn’t move—”

“Baby, it’s okay. It was just a bad dream.”

She whimpers again.

“You’re safe.” I hold on to her fiercely. I swear to God, I’m going to kill those motherfuckers.

She takes a moment to gather herself before she continues. “And then...” She pauses, apparently visualizing something. “My father appeared, out of nowhere.” She shivers. “And for a split second, I felt
relieved
, like I thought he was there to
save
me—but then he leaned into my ear while Max was pounding into me and he said, ‘Paybacks are a fucking bitch, huh?’”

My blood runs cold.

She trembles. “God, I haven’t had a nightmare about my dad in years. I guess all this stuff with The Club has opened up some old psychological wounds.”

I stroke her arm. “You used to have nightmares about your father?”

“All the time. For like a year after my mom and I ran away from him, I used to look over my shoulder, afraid he was gonna come up behind me, throw a bag over my head, and drag me away.” She inhales deeply and exhales loudly. “And now I keep having that exact same feeling about Max and Travolta—like they’re right behind me.” She stifles another whimper. “I keep thinking they’re coming to get me.”

I squeeze her tight.
I’m gonna fucking kill those motherfuckers.
 

“Damn. I thought I was done with nightmares about my dad.” She wipes her eyes.

“You saw your dad do some horrible things, huh?”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “He used to beat the crap out of my mom—and then he expected me to act like he was father of the year.”

“Did he ever hurt you?” She once told me her father had never laid a hand on her, but I wonder if that was completely true.

“He never touched me. I was his princess.”

I exhale. I’m hugely relieved to hear that.

“But Jonas.”

I wait but she doesn’t continue. “What is it?” For some reason, I’m nervous.

“There’s something I haven’t told you—something I’ve never told anybody.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“What did I tell you about my dad? About how we left?”

I think back to what little she’s told me. “You said your dad hurt your mom and that the two of you escaped him when you were ten.”

“Yeah, that’s all true.” She sits up onto her elbow and looks down at my face. Her hair falls around her shoulders. “But there’s something I’ve kept secret my whole life. I didn’t mean to keep a secret from you—it’s just something I’ve kept hidden from everyone.” She touches my face. “But I don’t want there to be any secrets between us anymore, about anything, big or small.”

My skin breaks out in goose bumps. Is she talking about my secrets or hers? My heart suddenly pounds in my ears. Did Josh tell her everything about me? Is that what she’s hinting at?

“When I told you my mom and I ‘escaped’ my dad, that was true. He used to beat her up all the time.” She pauses. “And then came this one horrific night when he beat her unconscious—to a bloody pulp,” she says. “She was in such bad shape, I truly thought she was dead.”

I hold my breath. I have no idea what she’s about to reveal to me.

“When I told you my mom and I ‘escaped’ my dad, I tried to make it sound like my mom grabbed me and we fled—as if she’d finally decided enough is enough and we ran away.”

I nod. That’s exactly the scenario I’d envisioned.

“That’s the story I tell myself. That’s how I make myself remember it. But that’s not how it happened.”

My blood pulses in my ears.

“The truth is that I did it.”

I look at her quizzically.

“He beat the crap out of her one night, so bad I thought she was dead. And when I realized she was alive, I was so relieved, just so frickin’
relieved
, I thought, ‘That’s it. No more. I’m not letting him kill her next time—I’m not gonna let there
be
a next time.’” She exhales a shaky breath. “So I drugged him and took her someplace where he couldn’t find us. She was too weak to fight me on it.”

I’m confused—wasn’t she
ten
?

“I’d been stashing supplies in this old abandoned toolshed a couple blocks away for weeks, just sort of dreaming about running away, I guess—but I didn’t really have an actual plan or anything. And then that night came and all bets were off. So I crushed a bunch of sleeping pills into his beer, like, you know, Tylenol PMs or whatever, and when he passed out, I dragged my mom to that shed. We stayed there for a few days, not making a peep, while she got her strength back. And then one day she woke up and looked me in the eye and said, ‘From this day forward, I am reborn.’ And that was that. She was done.”

“And you were how old?”

“Ten.”

My mind is reeling. I knew Sarah was a badass of epic proportions, but this proves she was
born
that way. Jesus.

“For the longest time after that, I worried I’d killed him by accident, like, maybe I’d given him too many sleeping pills—and I kept having nightmares the police were at the door to arrest me. When my mom finally filed for divorce, I realized he must have lived, but then I started having horrible nightmares that he was coming after me to get his revenge.”

 “When did the nightmares stop?”

“When he remarried and had a son with his new wife, we never heard from him again.” She sighs and wipes her eyes. “That’s when I slowly started feeling safe.”

“Wow, Sarah. That’s a lot of stress for a little girl.”

She looks at me, astonished. “Says the boy with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.” She touches my cheek.

I blush. I didn’t mean to make this about me.

She sighs. “I’ve never told anyone about how I drugged him—not even my mom. She was so out of it, she never asked me for details about that night. Later, I think she was so ashamed she’d taken so much shit from him for so long, she never wanted to talk about him or what happened. And once she’d started devoting her life to helping other women and counseling them to leave bad situations, I didn’t want to reveal the scandalous truth that it was her ten-year-old daughter, not her, who’d actually gathered the courage to leave. Well, just at first. My mom was plenty courageous after that.”

“You were so brave, Sarah. Wow.”

“No.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“I was more like
determined
. Isn’t brave when you know you’re doing something scary but you do it anyway? It was more like nothing could stop me. I never stopped to be scared. I just put blinders on and did what had to be done.”

I smirk. “I think I’ve witnessed your ‘determination mode’ a time or two.”

Her mouth twists into a shy smile. She leans down and kisses me. “I’ve never told anyone that story.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of. You should be proud of that story.”

“I’m not proud. I mean, I’m not sorry I did it—maybe my mom would have died the next time if I didn’t—but the story kind of proves I’m terminally fucked up, doesn’t it?” She smiles. “Or at the very least a wee bit crazy.”

Is she trying to get me to tell her about how I’m a wee bit crazy, too? Did Josh tell her about me? Is that what she’s hinting here?

“Do you still love me even though I drugged my father and stole my mother out from under him?” She grins at me.

I try to smile back at her, but I can’t. I’m suddenly racked with panic. What does she know? Is she trying to tell me something?

She kisses me. “Wow, it feels so good to tell you that.” Her hand strokes my bare chest. “I feel so incredibly close to you, Jonas.” Her lips press against my neck. She grinds against me. “I’ve never told anyone that.” She kisses my lips. She’s obviously getting aroused.

But I’m distracted. Now that she’s told me her secrets, do I have to tell her mine? If I don’t tell her everything right now, right this very minute, is that the same thing as lying to her? Isn’t that what she just implicitly told me? Shit.

Her hand caresses my bicep. Her naked body presses into mine. My erection springs to life.

If I don’t come clean right now, isn’t that just like when I checked in with Stacy at The Pine Box and didn’t mention it to her? What did she say about that? “Secrets create dark spaces within a relationship,” she said. “When one person keeps secrets, the other person fills in the dark spaces with their fears and insecurities.” She said my silence about Stacy had created a dark space between us—a reason for her not to trust me. Fuck. Will my silence now about my secrets create another dark space?

Her hand caresses my cock and of course it responds to her touch like a champ, as usual.

She moans. “I love you,” she says. She wraps her thigh around me, grinding into me.

A normal man would confess his secrets right now. This is the moment for me to come clean. She just told me her deep, dark secret and said it made her feel closer to me to confess it. There are no do-overs for this moment. My heart is pounding. Is not telling the same as lying? Yes, it is. Maybe not before this very moment, but something’s changed. I can feel it. I have to reciprocate. That’s what she needs from me—what she deserves. And it’s what a normal man would do for the woman he loves.

“I feel so close to you,” she mutters. “I want you deep inside me.”

She kisses me voraciously, but I don’t kiss back. I’m paralyzed with fear. I promised not to lie to her. I promised to tell her anything and everything, except maybe relating to The Club. But this doesn’t have anything to do with The Club. Shit.

She grips my cock and pulls on my hips, inviting me to make love to her. “Come on, Jonas.”

“Sarah, wait.”

There’s an awkward silence as she looks at me, her eyes wide. She releases me.

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you—several things, actually. Things you need to know about me.”

Sarah
 

For the last hour, Jonas and I have sat in our PJs on the bed, talking about the aftermath of Jonas’ mother’s death. I’m afraid to ask too many questions—the man’s opening his heart to me like never before and I don’t want to break the spell.

When Jonas tells me about his beloved Mariela, I ask if he ever looked for her later in life. He shakes his head sadly. “I never even knew her last name. I was too young. She was just Mariela to me—my Mariela.” The ache in his voice is unmistakable. “I don’t even remember her face. The only things I remember are her brown eyes and beautiful brown skin.” He sighs. “And the way she sang to me in Spanish.”

I suppress a grin. The first woman Jonas ever loved besides his mother was a Spanish-speaking, dark-eyed Latina with ‘beautiful brown skin’? Um. Hello.

When he explains how he didn’t speak for a whole year after his mother’s death because he’d wanted the last words his mouth ever said to be ‘I love you, Mommy,’ my heart smashes into a thousand pieces. It takes all my restraint not to burst into ugly tears at the realization that this gorgeous, sensitive, poetic man let those precious words escape his mouth again for
me.