Authors: Kendall Ryan
When I Surrender (15 page)
Chapter
Twenty
Knox
“Do you want to talk about it or are you going to keep moping around
here like someone kicked you in the balls?” Jaxon asked, glancing up from the TV.
“Are you going to watch the game or are we going to pretend this
is Oprah?” I asked.
He smirked.
“Fine. But the guys know something’s up. You’re not yourself. You’ve been acting like a dick ever since McKenna took off. Care to tell me what’s really going on?”
The feeling that I’d
lost McKenna churned in my gut. I couldn’t sleep. Food didn’t taste right and when I tried to drink to numb the pain, I couldn’t even catch a buzz. Luke had taken Tucker to the public library, so it was just me and Jaxon at home today. “I talked to McKenna. She’s coming home soon.”
“That’s a good thing
, right?”
“Yeah, I mean, I think so.
But she said we have to talk when she gets back. I think she’s had some sort of realization about her past and finally accepted that her parents were killed by a drunk driver and not because of anything she did.”
“And?”
Jax drew out the word.
Apparently I needed to spell it out for him. “And she doesn’t know I was arrested for drunk driving and that my sentence was what brought me into her class in the first place.” Not mentioning
it at the time was an omission – it just never really came up, but keeping it from her now felt like a deceitful lie.
“Shit. That sucks.”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “Tell me about it.”
Jax flipped the channel on the TV. “That’s why I don’t do love. As soon as you let your walls down
, shit falls apart and then you’re the one sitting there feeling like shit. It’s easier to hit it and quit it.”
“Nice, Jaxon.”
He shrugged. “It’s just the truth and you know it. You lived that way for years.”
I couldn’t argue
; he knew my history too well. “Well, sometimes feeling something is a good thing. It reminds us that we’re still human.” I’d rather be having no sex with McKenna than be sleeping with a bunch of random girls, but I knew nothing I said would get through to him. He’d have to figure all this out on his own one day, too.
Jaxon rose from the couch and handed me the remote. “I know I’m not good at this shit, but you know you have to talk to her, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks, bro.”
I knew I needed to talk to her, but I wasn’t sure that would make a difference. With her new-found clarity and anger toward the drunk-driver who killed her parents – what could I possibly say?
Chapter
Twenty-One
McKenna
I couldn’t wait any longer. After the four hour drive with nothing but the radio to keep me company, I couldn’t resist going straight to Knox’s place. With darkness settling in, I parked on the street and grabbed my overnight bag from the backseat before jogging to the front door. I’d been planning on coming home tomorrow, but as the morning had stretched on, I became more and more anxious to see Knox. I’d hastily packed, said my goodbyes, and hit the road. I wanted to surprise him.
Tucker answered the door a few moments later.
“Kenna!” He latched himself around me, squeezing tightly.
“Hi, bud. I missed you.” I leaned in and kissed his forehead.
“I missed you, too. Are you back for good?”
“Yep.
I sure am.” Following him inside, the cozy familiar feeling of being home settled over me. A tower of Legos was half-built on the living room rug and the TV was playing cartoons. The house even smelled the same. I inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of boys. “Where is everyone?”
“Luke and Jaxon went out somewhere, but Knox is here.”
My heart picked up speed. I couldn’t wait to see his deep soulful eyes, to kiss his scruffy jaw, inhale his masculine scent. I’d missed him so much. “Where is he?”
“Knox?” Tucker asked.
I nodded.
“
He told me to wait down here. He brought a girl upstairs.”
My stomach dropped like a stone and I broke out in a cold sweat.
“McKenna? Are you okay?”
I pulled in a lungful of air. “I’m fine.”
I couldn’t let him see the blood rising in my cheeks or the sheer panic in my eyes. Turning from Tucker, I marched up the stairs. The journey up the three flights of stairs felt like an out of body experience. I floated above myself and watched my legs climb each step, my shaky fingers gripping the banister. My pulse thundered in my ears as I waited outside his closed bedroom door. With my heart pounding way too rapidly to be safe, I raised my fist to knock. Then stopped. And listened.
Low feminine moaning followed by Knox’s voice
giving some type of command.
Bile shot up my throat and I swallowed, forcing the sickness down. With tears clouding my vision, I reached for the door knob and pushed open the door.
What I found inside the room was the last thing I’d expected to see. I fell to the floor, my legs giving out beneath me as the adrenaline in my bloodstream rioted.
“McKenna?” Knox’s confused voice asked in the distance.
The moaning hadn’t stopped and I brought my hands up to cover my ears and squeezed my eyes closed. Footsteps crossed the room toward me and I felt Knox’s strong arms close around me, and movement as he lifted me from the floor.
“Breath
e, angel,” he whispered into my hair. “Amanda, clear a spot on the bed….” I felt him place me on his bed and I began to thrash, trying to sit up, to move but his hands held me firmly. “Stay put. We need to talk.” His low authoritative voice whispering my name was the last thing I heard before I let the blackness pull me under.
When We Fall
Coming May 26, 2014
In this third installment of the much loved When I Break series, Knox’s and McKenna’s relationship has reached a critical impasse. The mistakes and secrets of their pasts have caught up to them and threaten their future happiness. Can McKenna trust that Knox’s sexual addiction is behind him and make a life with this beautifully troubled man? And when Knox reveals the full truth about his past, will McKenna be able to put her own fears aside and accept him?
When We Fall
is the conclusion to Knox’s and McKenna’s story.
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There are so many wonderful people dedicated to bringing my books to life… thank you to my editor, Sara Biren, my wonderfully patient cover design Helen Williams, my beta readers Holly, Rachel, and Sarah, and a tremendous thank you to my street team on Facebook, Kendall’s Kinky Cuties. You guys keep me going and help me make this all possible.
To my readers, both new and old….
Never stop believing in happily ever afters. They do exist.
Exclusive sneak peek of the New York Times & USA Today bestselling erotic romance, Hard to Love by Kendall Ryan
About the Book
Cade’s always taken risks…
Cade takes cares of his sick younger sister by doing what he does best—cage fighting and starring in adult movies, his newest harebrained moneymaking scheme designed to pay for his sister’s growing medical bills. But when his latest gig finds him admitted to the ER sporting an erection from hell, thanks to the little pill given to him by the director, he can’t get the pretty little nurse who treated him out of his
head, even though he knows she’s so far out of his league it should be illegal.
Alexa’s always played it safe…
Tired of being pigeonholed as the sweet, innocent one, hardworking nursing student Alexa has been looking for ways to break out of her Goody Two-shoes image. When her friend suggests the outlandish idea of losing her virginity to the sexy and sure-to-be-skilled porn star, Alexa is mortified. But then when Cade refuses her proposition, she finds herself pissed off and embarrassed.
When she tracks him down to give him a piece of her mind, she isn’t prepared for what she finds. Watching him care for his little sister tugs at her heart, and suddenly it’s no longer just about losing her virginity, but about helping Cade. Because Lord help her, she might just be falling for a porn star…
Cade
Dammit
. I knew a four-hour erection wasn’t normal. I shifted uncomfortably in the cab of my truck and debated what to do. The emergency clinic was open twenty-four hours so that wasn’t the problem. It was embarrassment over my condition that had me stalling in the parking lot. But damn, this thing was fucking painful. I tugged on my jeans, trying to create some room and adjusted my erection yet again.
Fuck it.
I was going inside.
I stalked across the dimly lit parking lot, trying to walk as normally as possible, but each step tested my sanity.
When I reached the reception desk, an elderly woman looked up and asked if she could help me with something. I struggled to keep a straight face while I explained my problem. She thrust a clipboard of forms at me with a dour expression, not wanting to hear another word. I headed to the waiting room, holding the clipboard in front of my groin.
To make matters worse, Rick, the director I’d been working with on the set, came barging into the emergency room to join me in the waiting area, saying he wasn’t about to let one of his actors go through this alone.
Just fucking
g
reat
.
Once I turned in the paperwork, I focused on thinking about anything that would
tame this monster of a hard-on. The Chicago Bears, how much I hated hospitals —anything non-sexual. Nothing helped. It was full-on throbbing by the time they called me back thirty minutes later.
I had hoped for a male doctor, so we could handle this man-to-man, but as I stepped behind the curtained room and saw a young female nurse waiting for me, all my hopes went up in smoke. Rick followed me inside the small room and positioned himself in the corner to observe. I was convinced he was here for the sole purpose of having a good laugh.
The nurse glanced at me, her eyes widened and her breathing hitched. She looked young, too young to be a nurse, and was pretty in an innocent, sweet way that I didn’t normally go for.
“Hello.
Caden Ellis?” she asked. Her voice was soft and laced with concern.
It took me a second to respond. “Cade.”
“Please have a seat.” She gestured to the white-paper-covered exam table and began flipping through my chart. “My name’s Alexa. I’m a nursing student and I’ll be assisting the doctor tonight. Do you mind if I ask you a few simple questions before we move on to the hard stuff?” Her eyes shifted nervously to my lap, and I couldn’t help but grin.
“Sure.”
She nodded astutely. “Fine, then. Let’s begin.” She sat down on the rolling stool beside me and wheeled herself closer. “Your weight?”
“Two-ten.”
“Height?”
“Six-one.”
She scribbled it down on her file. “And your age?”
“Twenty-two.”
She bit back a smile, though I didn’t really know why.
Her hair was somewhere between blonde and brown, and she had large blue eyes that matched the color of a crystal-clear sky. She was petite yet shapely, nicely filling out her blue hospital scrubs with curves in all the right places. She had a full rosebud mouth and a small upturned nose, and even in her work uniform she looked polished and put together – giving the impression she’d been raised to be poised and proper. A far cry from how I grew up.
She finished the forms and busied herself with the medical equipment to check my vitals. Even though her presence was professional, it did nothing to help weaken my erection. In fact, I think my damn cock became even harder just to taunt me.
She placed a stethoscope over my heart and listened for several moments before jotting down a few notes. I watched her work, a smile tugging on my lips.
“So, Cade.”
She smiled up at me with straight, white teeth while she attached a blood-pressure cuff to my bicep. “What seems to be the problem?”
Fuck
. She was going to make me say it. “It’s there…” I tapped the clipboard she held. “On the forms I filled out in the waiting room…”
She looked down, a frown tugging at her mouth. “Yes. I see that. But if you could just please explain… um, how this happened. Is this the first time, you’ve, um…experienced this?”
“I’ve never taken performance-enhancing drugs before if that’s what you’re asking.” The words from the overplayed commercial rang through my head.
“If you have an erection lasting longer than four hours, seek immediate medical help.”
I tore my eyes from the thin fabric stretched taut across her chest, but not before she caught me looking. She looked down at her chest to see what I was staring at and frowned. She pulled an oversized Q-tip I hadn’t even noticed from the pocket over her breast. “Don’t
worry, I won’t be using this on you.”
That wasn’t what had captured my attention, but
I was relieved all the same at not being caught ogling her breasts. I felt like a real asshole, sitting here sporting wood and staring at the nurse’s tits.
Classy.
It was as if my dick thought we were here to pick up a willing participant to ease his discomfort.
Sadly, no, little man.
I felt his pain. I cleared my throat and looked down.
Alexa worked quickly and methodically, pumping up the arm cuff and pressing her fingers into my wrist to get my pulse while she studied the ticking hands on her wristwatch. I took the opportunity to study her more closely, noticing the way her face held absolute concentration as she worked. She was trying her damnedest not to be distracted by me. It wasn’t the usual effect I had on females.
“So can you tell me more about when this problem began?” She glanced down at my forms, which I’d deliberately left vague, jotting down only the most critical issues—name, medical insurance, and oh, yeah, a painful erection. I’d been hoping to speak with a male doctor who’d seen this kind of thing before, not an attractive young nurse, dammit.
I hesitated and Rick laughed. “We were beginning our film shoot and my star here got stage fright. I gave him a couple of the little blue pills I keep on hand just in case.”
Her mouth pursed into a pouty frown again as she looked from Rick back to me. I glanced down, motioning to the tense erection straining against my jeans.
“Oh, my.”
Her hand flew to her mouth and she involuntarily took a step back.
Her response was so honest, so damn innocent, I almost chuckled.
Almost. But the majority of my blood supply was sitting south at the moment, which delayed any normal responses.
“So, wait…what business are you guys in?”
“Adult entertainment,” Rick and I answered at the exact same moment.
“You mean…porn?” Alexa asked.
I winced.
Rick reached across to hand Alexa a business card. “Mrs. X Entertainment,” he said proudly.
I didn’t explain that it was the romantic, softer stuff, and that the film company had won awards for being female-friendly—the features that had attracted me to working with them in the first place. Because frankly, none of that mattered. It was porn, and that was all she was going to see. She probably figured I was some sort of player or a sex addict. I saw it in her eyes, and there was no use fighting it. It wasn’t like I would ever see this girl again. She would never know about the little girl in my custody, and the mortgage, groceries, and utilities I was responsible for.
After taking a moment to compose herself the nurse jumped into action, grabbing a white paper gown and thrusting it towards me. “Here. Get undressed and put this on so that it opens in the front and I’ll be right back.” She fled the room without another word.
A few days ago when I’d signed on for the whole adult entertainment thing it’d been easy. I showed up and posed for some modeling photos for the website. Wearing just boxers I lounged on a bed with a beautiful girl named Desiree. They had us pose in various positions that grew increasingly intimate—me licking her neck, her nipples, and then her clit. It wasn’t sexual, like you’d think it would be. We had to hold still and hold each pose for several seconds while the camera clicked away, so it wasn’t like I was actually getting her off. I just sort of held my tongue against her. It was…different. And when they’d asked me to shed the boxers, I wasn’t hard yet. Without a word, Desiree—like the pro she was—reached down and rubbed her long, manicured fingers over my package until I was erect. After that I spent another hour posing with her. Modeling was the easy part. It was the filming that would prove to be difficult.
*******
Three Hours Earlier
Rick sauntered over to give me a pep talk. “You ready for this?”
I took a deep breath and glanced at the staged set—a white leather couch set against floor-to-ceiling windows in the chic loft the studio had rented. It all felt cold and contrived, but what did I expect? It was just sex. I could do this. It was the one thing I knew for sure I was good at. And most importantly, it paid a lot—enough for me to afford Lily’s medical care.
I pictured her sweet face peeking out over the edge of her quilt when I’d tucked her in earlier tonight. I’d told her
Becca was going to babysit and she wouldn’t see me until morning. She’d tightened her lips and nodded. She didn’t like the dark, and sometimes even preferred to crawl into my bed at night, but she was putting on her brave face.
“Cade?” Rick asked, pulling my attention back to him.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
“That’s my boy. Our actress should be here soon. She’s a new girl. You’ll love her. Young, sweet…” He made a sucking sound with his lips and his eyes got a faraway look to them. I shuddered. Throwing aside the fact that he was an adult-film director, Rick’s demeanor just screamed sleazy.
I was almost starting to regret my decision to work for him, but visions of dollar signs kept floating before my eyes. Rick had seen me in the boxing ring several times over the previous year, and a few months ago had begun approaching me after matches, promising big money if I was ever interested in working for him. At the time, I laughed it off. But the fights brought in less than steady money and as things got worse with Lily I bit the bullet and decided to give it a shot.
The makeup artist approached, thankfully distracting Rick from whatever perverted thoughts were currently running through his head. I removed my robe at her request and she began airbrushing some type of bronzing spray over my shoulders and chest. I didn’t like the smell of it, but I pushed it from my mind and focused on what I had to do.
“So the biggest thing for you to remember is
control
. No money shots until I say so. So if you need to slow down, or switch positions, just go ahead and do it. As long as you don’t come until I give the signal. We need plenty of shots and positions before that can happen,” Rick reminded me.
“Got it.
Shouldn’t be a problem.”
He laughed. “Confident. I like that.”
Confidence usually wasn’t a problem for me, but I couldn’t deny there was a hint of performance anxiety at the thought of having sex with a girl I’d never met, on camera, in front of a roomful of people—lighting techs, director, film crew, and a few others whose roles I didn’t know. I tried not to focus on all that and instead reminded myself about the money Rick had promised me.
“What about her? Shouldn’t I talk to her first? Find out what she likes, how she gets off?”
Rick laughed, and slapped my shoulder. “Silly boy. This is a porn shoot, not a first date. She’ll fake it, so don’t worry about her having an orgasm. Just focus on you.”
I could only imagine what a conversation like that with a stranger might sound like….
So do you like penetration or clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm?
God, was I an idiot or what? I was overthinking this shit.
The front door opened and everyone turned. “And there she is! Beautiful girl…” Rick headed over to greet the wide-eyed starlet entering the apartment.
I couldn’t help but notice how scared she looked. And young. Holy shit, was this girl even eighteen? I watched as Rick helped her out of her jacket and steered her by the shoulders over to the makeup chair.
*******
When Alexa returned I was seated on the exam table, the paper gown loosely closed around me. Rick hadn’t offered to leave while I changed. He and a whole room full of people had already seen me buck-naked though, so I figured it didn’t matter much at this point. This whole night just needed to fucking end.
Alexa washed her hands and carefully arranged an ice pack over my groin. I shifted and let out a grunt at the surprise of the coldness, and Alexa’s eyes flicked up to mine. “Is it okay?” she asked, softly.
“Fine,” I muttered and bit back the string of curse words I wanted to let rip and adjusted the ice pack so it wasn’t sitting directly on my nuts.
Rick leaned against the exam table and chuckled to himself as if he found our interaction amusing. It was clear I was intrigued by her and the way her eyes wandered the room, desperate to look anywhere but directly at me, or rather at my swollen appendage, she was clearly uncomfortable.
“You can see why we hired him, huh, sweetheart?” Rick grinned proudly and elbowed her softly in the side.
