Worthy of Redemption (16 page)

I took her mouth with mine, seeking out her tongue with my own. Her studded tongue stroked over mine and it was my turn to groan. As I kissed her del
icious mouth, I pushed one finger inside of her. Her hips involuntarily rose up to take in more. Despite her words, she was moist and ready for me.

I pulled my hand out of her pants and gripped the waistband to pull them off of her, but her hands covered mine in an effort to stop me.

“You’re going to be mad,” she said and her mouth set in a grim line.

I looked at her in confusion. Why the hell would I be mad after I got her pants off of her? Did she grow a dick overnight or something equally disturbing? To answer my silent question, Lily released my hands and with a sigh, she nodded for me to continue. I pulled her pants and panties down mid-thigh before I understood what she was talking about. ‘Mad’ could not ad
equately describe the blood boiling feeling I had when I saw the large hand shaped bruise on her thigh.

Where his fingertips must have been, the marking was darker in shade, ind
icating that he squeezed her pretty damn hard. The bruise was extremely close to the junction between her thighs. He would have only had to extend his hand to touch her there.

“You told me nothing happened,” I said, gingerly touching the contusion.

“I was angry and humiliated,” she said, staring up at the ceiling. “I didn’t want to discuss it.”

“You should have told me,” I said, climbing off of the bed. “You should have said som
ething the moment your feet hit the ground when you got out of his truck.”

I grabbed my phone off of the table next to the bed and had Corsey on the phone before I could even get out of the bedroom.

“That bastard hurt her that night,” I growled at Corsey.

“In the truck?”

“That’s the only time she was left alone with him, Corsey! On your watch!”

“Is she okay?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

“She has a hand shaped bruise on her thigh! He was so close to…” I stopped myself before I said it out loud, because whatever little reserve I had left would have gone out the window.

“It’s my fault,” Corsey said, disgusted with his self.

“You’re damn right it’s your fault,” I growled, as I started to change out of my lounge pants into a pair of jeans. Lily was standing in the doorway, watching and listening with clear apprehension.

“How do you want me to handle this?” Corsey asked.

“I’m going over there and I’m breaking his fucking head.”

“I don’t think that is a wise decision, Kyle,” he said.

“It wasn’t a wise decision for you to allow her to get into that truck with a known psychopath either!”

“Stop yelling at him,” Lily hissed, stepping into the room. “It’s my fault, not his and you’re not breaking anyone’s head.”

“Let me call a few guys,” Corsey said. “We’ll go have a talk with him.”

“I’ll handle it myself,” I snapped and ended the call.

“You can’t go over there, Kyle,” Lily said, standing over me as I tied my shoes. “You’re going to get hurt or in trouble with the law, and that’s the last thing you need right now.”

“Those are necessary risks I’m willing to take,” I grumbled. “Not that long ago, you were calling me a pussy. Now you’re trying to talk me out of this.”

“Yeah, because this is
stupid
!”

“I’m going to kick his fucking ass for touching you like that,” I growled, getting to my feet.

“You’re not going over there,” she said, crossing her arms and sidestepping to block me from leaving.

“You’re not going to stop me,” I said, scowling.

“You’re really angry and you can’t see or think straight, but you can’t go. I won’t let you. Besides, you have vagina fingers. You can’t go fight someone with vagina fingers.”

“Perfect,” I said, glaring at her. “He’ll smell what he will never have.”

“That’s…you’re disturbing sometimes,” she said and sidestepped again to block me.

“You’re not going to stop me,” I repeated and started to go around her.

Suddenly my arm was wrenched and pulled and twisted behind my back. My elbow and my shoulder erupted in pain. Something cracked against the back of my knee and I went down onto both knees. Lily’s arm circled my neck and squeezed.

“Oh, you were easy,” she purred in my ear. “Pussy.”

With my one free hand, I reached up and around her as far as I could and threw her over me, freeing my neck and my arm. She lay on the floor, looking up at me with a stunned expression on her face, but it only lasted a couple of seconds before she used the palm of her hand to jab me in the chest. As I struggled to catch the breath she had knocked out of me, Lily sat up on her knees and taunted me.

“You throw like a girl,” she grinned.

I narrowed my eyes at her and launched myself at her. She landed on her back again, but this time I was on top of her, pinning her hands above her head and trapping her under my body. I stared down at her parted lips as I felt her breathing hard beneath me. She tried to squirm away, but she only succeeded in rubbing her cloth covered crotch against my denim covered cock. I took in her flushed face and wild eyes. Her hair had come loose from its bun and some of it swept across one side of her face. She looked so fucking beautiful, lying there out of breath and excited. I closed the few inches between our lips and savagely crushed her mouth with my own as I rocked against her.

Lily moaned into my mouth as I kissed her and pulled her tongue between my teeth. I sucked on her bottom lip before pushing my tongue back inside of her mouth. I grinded against her, loving how rough the material felt between us. I r
eleased one of her hands and tangled my fingers in her hair. I pulled away from her lips and kissed a trail down her jaw and to the little stars on her neck and continued grinding against her. She gasped as I tasted her skin. She tasted like soap, sweat, and something sweet and floral.

Suddenly Lily’s body tensed beneath me, and her moans deepened. She pushed her hips up off of the floor to grind her clit hard against me. As she started to cry out from her orgasm, I absorbed it with my mouth on hers. Before her cl
imax could die down, I was up and quickly pulling off her pants and panties. I tossed them to the side and started to undo the button and zipper on my jeans. When my eyes fell where Vic marked her, my anger intensified again. Seeing my expression forced Lily to distract me. She sat up and yanked my jeans and boxers down just below my ass, setting my erection free. Her hand wrapped around my shaft and gave it a few good strokes. I groaned at her touch, but as good as it felt, I needed to be inside of her. I needed to release the rage I was feeling and I only wanted to do that while buried balls deep inside of Lily.

I didn’t bother pulling my jeans off before I pressed her back down to the floor and wit
hout warning, I slammed into her. Lily screamed, but she wrapped her legs around my waist, inviting me to go deeper inside of her hot, moist, sex. I pulled her arms back above her head as I slammed into her again. Unable to keep my mouth off of hers, I swallowed her screams as my cock assaulted her again and again.

When I relinquished her mouth to kiss and nibble at her neck, Lily cursed and prayed and called out my name as her next orgasm hit her. Her body rocked up to meet my thrusts as she came. As her pussy squeezed at my cock, I felt my own orgasm approaching. I looked into her eyes and held back the words that hung on my tongue and groaned deeply as I began to spill inside of her. Lily’s legs tightened around my waist, holding me inside of her as I shot stream a
fter stream deep inside her.

When I had emptied myself inside of her, I released her arms and kissed her tenderly as I stroked the side of her face. After a minute, I rolled off of her onto my side and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“Did I hurt you?” I asked, looking down at the bright mark on her thigh.

“I hardly noticed,” she murmured, snuggling closer to me and resting her head in the crook of my arm.

I kissed her once more before pulling away to gaze down at her. “You’re fucking beautiful,” I whispered to her.

Her eyes had closed, but she smiled sleepily. “I guess you got used to the ta
ttoos and piercings after all.”

“I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

She seemed content with that. Soon her breathing slowed and her body relaxed. Once I was sure she was asleep, I got up to go take care of Vic.

*~
Lily~*

I opened my eyes in a panic. I could tell by the light filtering through the blinds in Kyle’s room that it was much later than my usual waking time of five-thirty. It’s still dark at five-thirty in the morning. Before looking at the clock behind me, I guessed it was probably about eight or later.

“Eight-thirty!” I groaned, pushing myself up in the bed.

I didn’t remember getting into his bed. I remember falling asleep on the floor, but Kyle must have moved me during the night. I was impressed. I
wasn’t obese, but I wasn’t a light weight either. The fact that he could lift me was kinda hot, and he was kind enough to pull a pair of his boxers on me so my bare ass wasn’t hanging out.

“Hey,” said the
hot guy as he exited his bathroom, buttoning the sleeves of his dress shirt. He looked sexy with his tie just hanging around his neck waiting to be tied, his muscles pressing against the fabric of his shirt, and his hair still damp from a shower.

“You let me oversleep,” I said groggily, swinging my legs out of the bed.

“I’m giving you the next two days off,” he said as he stood in front of his mirror.

“That’s not funny,” I snapped and rushed for the bedroom door. “There’s a lot going on today. You should have
woken me up.”

“I’m serious, Lily,” he said in a firm tone just as my feet crossed the thres
hold.

I turned around and looked at him. He was tying his tie now. It wasn’t the best looking tie.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, rubbing my tired eyes. “You wouldn’t even let me have the afternoon off last week for a doctor’s appointment. Why are you making me miss work?”

“When was the last time you had a day off?” he asked, watching me from the reflection in the mirror.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “It’s been a few weeks.”

“It’s been six weeks. Six weeks without a day off is too long, even by my standards.”

I was about to ask him how he knew when I was last off since it was on a Sunday, but I forgot for a moment that he had stalked me for a long time.

“I can’t take any time off
now. You just told me not that long ago how busy we are, and your schedule is insane this week. I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll catch a cab or something. You don’t have time to wait for me. You have a nine-thirty appointment.”

I started to move down the hallway, but Kyle’s stern voice made me pause.

“You’re staying home today,” he said. “Beth can follow your itinerary and step in as needed.”

I poked my head back into his room. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Extremely serious,” he said.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Thank you.”

I didn’t know what else to say. The rushing and panicking had filled in any possible awkwardness, and a day of hard work was sure to do the same, but now there was nothing to stop things from being awkward. I wasn’t sure what kind of mood Kyle was in, even after his generosity of giving me a couple of days off. Was he angry at himself again? Was he angry at me? Was he going to treat me with indifference? Or was he going to treat me like a burdensome piece of property?

I went into my room and slipped on a sweatshirt. The house was pretty warm most of the time, but I was a little chilly. I pushed my feet into a pair of slippers I rarely got to wear and went downstairs. Kyle was already in the kitchen, eating a cold leftover slice of pizza. I prayed that there was coffee somewhere in the kitc
hen. I opened a cabinet and discovered K-cups on the top shelf, way out of my reach. Before I could formulate a plan to reach them, Kyle’s body pressed against mine. He slipped an arm around my waist and reached over me to grab the coffee. He dropped the box on the counter, tilted my head, and swept my hair off of my neck. His lips and tongue on my neck sent tingly warm sensations across my neck and radiated down my spine.

“Something about you in my boxers is extremely hot,” he murmured against my neck.

“Why do you think I’m still wearing them?” I teased and then sighed when his tongue flicked over my earlobe.

“No working today,” he warned.

“I can log in and work on a few things,” I suggested.

“No, you cannot,” Kyle said. “Take a break. Watch a movie. Do a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t care what you do, as long as it does not constitute as work. If you need to go anywhere, call and wait for Corsey. Don’t go off by yourself. I mean it.”

“I don’t like having a babysitter, Kyle,” I said, getting a little aggravated.

“I know, Lil, but it won’t be forever.” He kissed the top of my head and r
eleased me. When I turned around, he was already walking across the living room towards the door. He gave me one last wave and left me alone in the huge penthouse.

I started my cup of coffee and looked around. I had not had an actual day off in more than I can remember. When I wasn’t working for Sterling I was working in the bar. When I wasn’t working in a bar I was working for Sterling. It had become one hectic, tiring circle, but as relu
ctant as I was to quit my job at
Steve’s
, I had to admit that it was the best thing for me before I ran myself into the ground.

With a cup of coffee in hand, I went upstairs to shower. I smelled like sex, which made me grin like an idiot, but I’d rather smell like soap. When all the sex was washed off of my body, I carried all of my dirty laundry downstairs to the laundry room. I figured since I was d
oing laundry, I may as well do Kyle’s.

“How domestic of you, Lillian,” I said out loud and rolled my eyes after I put in my first load.

I went back upstairs to get Kyle’s dirty laundry. I found an overflowing hamper in his bathroom. With a sigh, I started to pick up the items that had fallen to the floor. I was muttering about Kyle having pockets deeper than Scrooge McDuck and as much class as the Royals, but still unable to keep up with his laundry when I picked up a blue shirt with bloodstains on it. It was very similar to the shirt Kyle had on the night before. In fact, I was positive that it was, but when I last saw him in it, it was blood-free.

I sat down on the edge of the tub, trying to process what I was seeing. The shirt not only had blood on it in several places, it was torn at the collar, as if som
eone had grabbed it in a struggle.

“Damn it, Kyle,” I said as understanding set in.

After I was asleep and dead to the world, Kyle must have gone to try and kick Vic’s ass.

It’s not that I didn’t think that Vic needed an ass whooping, because he did. I just didn’t want Kyle to be the one to administer it. Vic was obviously off kilter, and years of steroid abuse was setting him up for a murderous rage. While Kyle’s body muscle was impressive to say the least, Vic was almost twice his size. I am clear proof that size isn’t everything, but me taking down a few
drunken guys or even handsy assholes wasn’t the same as Kyle trying to take down a roid-enraged crazy man. The opportunity for him to get hurt or even killed was high. If he made it out alive and unscathed – which he most likely did since I didn’t really see any indication on him that he had been in a fight – there was still a legal issue.

I’m not a saint. I seriously don’t abide by all laws, and I’ve been in enough fights of my own in my lifetime, but the last thing Kyle needed was trouble with the law. His superiors wit
hin the company still didn’t fully trust him, and I often heard murmuring about what part he had played when business at Sterling went to hell in a hand basket. Many believed that he was just as much a criminal as Walter. He didn’t need to give people anymore reason to question him.

While I was very much aware and forgiving of Kyle’s violent past with Emmy, I was having a hard time with parts of past Kyle sifting into present Kyle. He was drunk and high when he hurt Emmy, but last night he was clean, sober, and angry. And if he really did go after Vic, especially after what we did on his be
droom floor, it told me that Kyle had the ability to be cold and calculating.
That
scared me.

I shoved the shirt into the hamper and dragged it down to the laundry room. I was so tempted to call Kyle and yell at him or to go down to the office and co
nfront him, but I needed to get my thoughts and feelings together. Instead, I picked a random box for the kitchen and began the process of unpacking Kyle’s home.

~~~

Kyle’s fridge only contained the necessities in a healthy bachelor’s life – a few eggs, cream for the coffee, carrots, lettuce, and bottled water. I wasn’t a rabbit and I didn’t eat like one. When I texted him and told him I was going to have Corsey drive me to the grocery store, he insisted on taking me himself. His last meeting of the day was canceled, so he was going to skip out of work a couple of hours early.

Since it was my day off, I had dressed in some skinny jeans, a t-shirt, one of Kyle’s hoodies that I found in his closet and the DC sneakers he had replaced more than two years after his vomit destroyed the identical pair. My hair was back to its normal wild and curly state, but I skipped the makeup. After months of applying only light makeup for the corporate world, I had learned that I really liked my natural, speckled skin. I still went heavy on the eye makeup when I was working at the bar, but since I was only going to the grocery store, I didn’t see the point in bothering with it.

I was waiting on the couch watching the early edition of the news when Kyle came in. I waited a couple of minutes for him to change his clothe
s before he took my hand and led me out the door. In the elevator, he pulled me into an embrace and gave me a quick and gentle kiss on the lips. It was a small sentiment, but it made me smile despite the uneasiness I was feeling inside. I had not mentioned to him in any of the text messages or phone calls of the day what I had discovered in his hamper. He would figure out that I figured it out eventually.

“How was your first full day off?” Kyle asked as we cruised down the cereal aisle.

“Fine.” I shrugged and stopped to grab a box of Capn’ Crunch. “I got a lot done around the house. The kitchen and dining room are completely unpacked, and the living room is more than half way finished.”

“I said no working,” he said sternly, but then leaned over and gave me a
nother peck on the lips. “But thank you.”

This Kyle was awfully affectionate. I should have been giddy about it, but it made me even more uneasy. What if he was
affectionate because he released all of his anger on Vic’s face?

“We have to get laundry detergent,” I said more to myself and wrote it on the list I had made earlier. “I almost forgot.”

“Right,” he agreed, a little distracted by the array of disgusting healthy cereals. “I was almost out last time I did laundry.”

Which must have been a century ago
.

“Well, now you’re out completely. I did my wash and yours.”

His head swiveled in my direction. “You washed my clothes?”

“I thought I may as well since I was washing my own,” I said casually. I pr
etended to be very interested in oatmeal. “I had to throw away your shirt. The ad for the laundry detergent lied. It does not wash out blood.”

I rounded the corner before him and moved into the next aisle. Top forty music played from the speakers above us. An older man further down the aisle had a cart with a squeaky wheel, and in the main aisle behind us a mother wrestled with her three small crying children. There was noise and activity all around us, but b
etween Kyle and me was a big silent bubble.

I put a bottle of olive oil in the cart. A minute later Kyle put a small box of natural sugar next to the cereal. We finished the baking aisle in silence and moved on to coffee, tea, hot cocoa and soups and gravies. I grabbed a bottle of Hershey syrup and Kyle grabbed coffee. We co
ntinued on in silence for another aisle. In the dairy department, we stood side by side looking at the vast array of coffee creamers. At the same time, we both chose a different flavor and put them in the cart.

“I had to do it,” Kyle said when I had started to move on to the cheeses.

“You know, I actually kind of give a damn what happens to you,” I said, as I inspected a package of cheddar. “He could have seriously hurt you or even killed you. Not to mention the legality of the whole situation – you could have screwed up your entire life because you wanted to be a vigilante. And what scares me is…” I trailed off. I had not planned on telling him what scared me.

“What scares you?” he asked after a thoughtful moment.

“Never mind,” I said, shaking my head.

“Lily,” he said, enclosing my wrist in his big hand. He pulled me away from the cheeses and off to the side so that we weren’t
in anyone’s way. “Tell me what scares you.”

A woman a few years older than me was pretending to look at the yogurt, but every few seconds her eyes would turn back to us. A college kid was restoc
king a display of Snack Packs, but he didn’t seem to be paying us any mind.

“Your mind wasn’t compromised by drugs and alcohol this time,” I whi
spered to him. “What you did was carefully calculated. I don’t condone what you did to Emmy, not by a longshot, but I know you didn’t mean it. This time you were very aware of what you were doing. It scares me that you can willfully and knowingly become violent like that.”