TWICE SHY (A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE)

by Ivy Spears

  TWICE SHY (A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE)

  BY IVY SPEARS

  Copyright 2017 Ivy Spears, all rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced without written consent of the author. This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is for a mature audience only due to strong language and strong sexual conduct.

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  Chapter One

  The breaking of a beer bottle on the ground forced me to jump backward.

  The group of men outside of the bar snickered loudly as they looked me up and down, no doubt wondering what a girl like me was doing in this part of town. I had been asking myself the very same question all day. The answer, of course, was an easy one.

  I was here for my dad. Everything always traced back to him.

  Still, I had promised myself a long time ago the day I returned to this going nowhere town was the day hell froze over. Apparently, it was about to get pretty darn cold. Leave it to my father to throw me a curve ball just when everything else in my life was starting to fall into place.

  “Well, now, what’s a nice girl like you doing down here all alone?” One of the men in the group of hooligans’ stepped forward and licked his thick lips while he looked my body up and down. “Not from around here, then, are we?”

  Actually, I was.

  Still, it had been years since I’d been back and between all the new developments and buildings all over, I was having a little trouble navigating my way around. What used to be a small country town was looking more and more like something I would see in the streets of my Boston neighborhood back home.

  “He asked you a question, missy,” one of his friends snapped, stepping closer to me. “What do you think you’re too good to answer him or something?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I bet you do, don’t you? You look just like the kind of prissy bitch who has a stick shoved up her ass.”

  “I would love to shove something else up her ass,” the first guy mumbled, causing an uproar of laughter and hollering from his pack. He took a step toward me and reached out, rubbing his hand up and down my arm. “You look like the kind of girl who could take it…”

  I yanked my arm away too aggressively and anger flashed in his eyes.

  “Did you see that Lance?” his friend called. “She snubbed you.”

  I pulled my coat closer to my body. Why had I decided to try and find the rental car place all by myself when I left the airport? My phone had told me it was only a two-block walk from where I landed but I should have taken a taxi. You always take a taxi! What had I been thinking?

  “I didn’t, I… I’m sorry, I’ve been traveling all day and I'm a little out of it.”

  “Told you she wasn’t from around here.”

  “Shut up,” Lance snapped, turning his head halfway around. “Leave us.”

  “Ah,” one of them groaned. “Keeping her all for yourself?”

  “Now,” Lance sneered and his boys scrambled away, making it clear who the alpha was here. Once they were gone he closed the distance between the two of us even more. “So, new in town, huh? You know, not much goes on around here that I don’t know about,” he told me smugly. “Why don’t you come back to my place and I’ll tell you all about it?”

  I pushed back, putting distance between us. “That’s kind of you, really, but my family is waiting for me, maybe some other time?” I offered helplessly, it was a poor attempt to stroke his ego, he didn’t seem like the type who was used to hearing the word no.

  I had barely made it two inches before he had me by the arm, yanking me up against his body. “You think you’re too good for me, is that it?” He let his eyes travel down to my breasts. “In your fancy clothes and tight skirt.”

  Fancy clothes? This was from Target!

  I tried to pull away from him but it was of little use, he was too strong for me to match. “No, that’s not it, I just… I really need to get to my father, he’s not well, he’s, he’s sick.”

  Lance reached up with his free hand and popped open the first few buttons on my blouse, letting it fall open so that my pink bra was exposed. “Yeah, you look like you need to loosen up a little bit.” He reached out and ran one of his fat fingers up and down the top of the thin fabric that separated my left breast from his bare touch. “You need to be broken in, don’t you?”

  “Ah… shit,” I mumbled under my breath.

  Being polite clearly wasn’t going to work out for me.

  I gathered up as much spit as I could, pulled my head back, and let it loose right in his face. He yanked back, cursing loudly, and I took the chance to free myself from his grasp and take off running down the street.

  I ran so fast I felt like my legs had left my body but it was no use, I could hear him closing in on me even before he grabbed me by the back of the head and yanked me down to the ground by my hair.

  “You stupid little bitch,” he yelled, shoving the back of my head into the ground and climbing on top of me. “You think you can walk around like your shit don’t stink, huh? Disrespecting people?” He wrapped a hand around my throat. “I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

  I pulled back, hitting him in the chest, but he held me down easily.

  The more I struggled the bigger the evil grin on his face grew.

  I was going crazy, screaming at the top of my lungs and flapping my limbs all over the place. There was something about being in a dangerous situation that made me lose all self-control. Everything I had ever read or watched about what to do when you’re being assaulted went out the window and one emotion took its place; total and utter panic.

  Lance tightened his knees around my waist and laughed loudly before opening up his mouth and letting out a scream that was even louder than mine. “You idiot, scream as much as you want, no one is going to hear you out here! You’re in the middle of nowhere!”

  Tears filled my eyes.

  He ran his thumb over my bottom lip slowly. “I can do whatever I want to you and no one’s going to do a damn thing about it.” He leaned down and crushed his lips on top of mine, filling my mouth with his slimy tongue.

  I screamed loudly, full on sobbing now.

  Please, I begged, please let someone hear me.

  And just like that, like someone had been reading my thoughts, he was being dragged off me and thrown across the street onto the porch of a small business that was dark next to where Lance had caught me.

  I backed up, my body still on the ground, and crawled backward until I was a safe distance away. My hero was beating Lance’s face into the ground, on top of him while he screamed out in pain.

  I waited for him to stop, to pull back when it became clear Lance wasn’t a threat but he didn’t. He kept pounding his face into the ground, causing more fear to creep into my body.

  He was going to kill him.

  If I didn’t do something he was going to kill him.

  Still, I was too shaken up, frozen in place.

  My mind was telling my feet to move but my body wouldn’t cooperate.

  Come on, Bella, I told myself, move. Do something.

  Finally, I found my legs moving forward. I hurried, desperate to close the distance between myself and the horrific scene that was unfolding around me. “Hey!” I called out. “Stop it! You have to stop!”

  The stranger ignored me, continuing to use Lance as his personal punching bag until I wrapped my hand around his arm and pulled on his shoulder, snapping him out of whatever trance he had been in.

  He swung around filled with rage but his deep brown eyes softe
ned when they met mine. I jolted backward, stunned, and for the second time in the last few minutes, my body went numb, sending me flying to the ground and landing on my butt.

  He stood up, his 6-foot frame towering over Lance as he moaned in pain on the ground. He held my gaze for a few beats longer before turning back to the groaning mess of a man in front of him. “If you ever come near her again, I’ll kill you.”

  No, no, no.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Not now, not like this.

  I wasn’t ready.

  “Hello, Bella.”

  His voice was even deeper than I remembered and the sound of my name on his lips was enough to make my heart start beating more rapidly than ever in my chest.

  There he was in all his glory: Asher Dawson.

  One of the main reasons I had promised to never return in the first place.

  Chapter Two

  I wasn’t that girl, I really wasn’t.

  The girl who held a grudge against the guy who had broken her heart and left her all alone in a crying mess on the kitchen floor. But, in my defense, Asher Dawson hadn’t just broken my heart; he had done a complete number on me.

  I had only lusted after him since we were kids and he had only totally and completely shut me down when I had finally gotten the nerve to tell him how I really felt about him.

  And when I say I told him how I really felt about him, I mean I completely threw myself at him.

  Now, I can’t speak for anyone else, but when you had lusted after someone for as long as I had lusted after Asher only to be rejected and turned away at a time when my fresh out of high school self-had images of the two of us riding off into the sunset together… well, let’s just say I had been a little bitter.

  I had avoided him all summer and then promptly left for college on the other side of the country, determined to create a world where Asher Dawson didn’t exist and up until that very minute I had managed to convince myself it was true.

  It was a little hard to keep the lie going when he was standing in front of me.

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

  Asher frowned and took a step toward me. “Bella?”

  I backed away from him, shaking. He looked as good now as he had back then. The same intense creamy brown eyes and jet black hair. Same squared jaw lined with perfect white teeth. I let my eyes drift down to his huge bicep. Then, even lower to his tight black t-shirt I knew was covering a perfect set of six-pack abs.

  Hello, Dolce and Gabbana.

  Warmth crept into my legs

  I snapped them shut immediately. What the hell was wrong with me? I wasn’t going to get my panties all soaked just because Asher had shown up out of nowhere, looking at me the way he used to.

  Things were different now. This wasn’t high school; Asher wasn’t the most popular boy in school and I wasn’t his childhood sidekick who chased him around like a love struck puppy dog while he hooked up with every girl in sight.

  I was in a different place now. I was a strong independent woman! With a career! Asher Dawson was old news. I cleared my throat loudly: as if this would prove my point.

  Asher mistook my ironic behavior as fear and moved even closer to me, extending his large hand out to me. “Bella, it’s me, Asher. It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  I inhaled deeply and bit down on my lip.

  Jesus, Bella, pull it together.

  I rolled my eyes lightly. “I know you aren’t going to hurt me, Asher.” I forced myself to reach up and take his hand, just to prove that I could. He pulled me up easily and I ignored the butterflies that sprung up in my stomach and the electricity that jolted through my most intimate areas.

  He held my hand for a second too long and yanked me toward him, searching my eyes intensely with his. “Are you okay?” He reached up with his opposite hand and pushed a stray piece of hair away from my face, letting it rest on the back of my head. “You’re bleeding,” he crinkled his forehead.

  I got lost in his touch for a second before pulling away.

  “I’m fine, it was nothing,” I told him, turning away to look for my purse that I had somehow lost in all the commotion. I pushed back the tears that were still in my eyelids, not wanting to show any emotion around him.

  “It wasn’t nothing, Bella,” Asher said slowly. “If I hadn’t of shown up that guy would have…”

  “If you hadn’t of shown up I would have been just fine,” I informed him, spotting my bag on the sidewalk a few buildings over and taking off after it. I prayed silently he would go away but a second later I heard the heavy sound of his footsteps behind me.

  Ugh.

  “Oh, yeah, it looked like you really had it under control,” he chuckled.

  I reached down and started digging through my purse, looking for my phone and trying to avoid having to look at him again. “Thanks, I’m glad you noticed.” I finally found my phone and clicked the screen to life, hitting the unlock code.

  “What are you doing?” he asked casually.

  “I’m calling the police.” Did he have to be so nosey?

  “You’re WHAT?” he sounded startled.

  “I’m calling the police,” I repeated, hitting the 9 on my phone.

  “What the hell for?”

  “That’s usually what you do when you’ve been attacked, Asher.” Did I have to explain everything to him? It wasn’t exactly rocket science, when you were in danger you called the cops.

  “You can’t call the police,” he told me sternly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, of course, I can.” I pressed the phone to my ear.

  Asher grabbed it out of my hand and threw it on the ground, stepping on it with the heel of his black boot and crushing it into a bunch of tiny pieces. The phone sizzled and smoked, frying up on the ground.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” I yelled at him, crouching down to my knees. “Have you lost your damn mind?’

  “Have you?” he challenged. “Calling 911, Bella?” He glanced at the guy who was a bloody mess down the street. Lance was crawling slowly away from us now, headed back down to the bar. “Are you trying to get me arrested?”

  “Maybe.” I looked up at him and then sighed. “No one’s getting arrested, Asher, you were defending me.” I picked up the broken pieces of the phone in my hand and got to my feet slowly.

  “I’m sure they won’t care about the almost dead man trying to hobble off down the street,” his tone was laced with sarcasm, the way it always had been when we were younger. “He’s not going to tell anyone, Bella, and he’s not going to try anything like that with anyone else after what I just did to him… just, just let it go? Please?”

  The end of his sentence was almost desperate, pleading.

  Asher didn’t want me to call the police for some reason, a reason deeper than the surface. I could feel it. There was something very familiar about his gaze and, once again, I forced myself to look away from him.

  Whatever he had gotten himself into wasn’t my problem.

  But still… I found myself caving in, the way I always used to.

  “You didn’t have to break my phone over it,” I mumbled, turning the sharp pieces over in my touch. “What did it ever do you?” I could feel the crooked smirk that was playing on his lips without even looking up.

  “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  I let my eyes drift upward and stopped when his bloody knuckles popped into my view. I reached out off impulse, causing more shocks to shoot up and down my body. “You’re hurt.”

  He let out a small sigh and pulled away. “Says the girl who’s bleeding from the back of the head.” He took a step around me, trying to see the back of me again. “You should go get checked out.”

  I inched out of his touch and shook my head. “I’m fine, I stopped bleeding, what you see is already starting to dry.” I grabbed his hand again. “You, on the other hand, you need stitches.” I frowned, turning his hand over so I could look at his cracked knuckles. “G
od, how hard did you hit him?”

  “I don’t need stitches,” Asher said, annoyance in his voice. “I’m fine.”

  His whole back and forth routine was starting to grow on my nerves. One minute he was being all moody and distant and the next he was being all charming and golden boy.

  “Trust me, you do,” I assured him. “Unless you want it to get infected.”

  “What are you a doctor now?”

  “A nurse, actually,” I told him, happy to have something to shut him up.

  Surprise crossed over his features for a split second but he recovered quickly, replacing it with a nod. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You always were smart, Bella.”

  “Asher,” I said, trying to get him back on track. “You need to get it fixed up.”

  “It’s cute of you to worry, really,” he told me in a tone that made me feel like I was six years old again. “But going to the hospital really isn’t an option for me.” And then to my absolute horror, he pulled his shirt over his head and scrunched it into a ball, wrapping it around his hand. “This outta do the trick.”

  I tried to control my breathing as my pulse started to race. “What is wrong with you? It’s freezing out here!” It wasn’t really that cold but it was the only thing I could think of to make it seem like it wasn’t his rock hard abs that had such an effect on me.

  I looked away, begging the dirty thoughts in my mind to go away.

  A loud banging down the street and the sound of shouting broke me out of my trance. Or at least it tried to, my panties still felt too moist for comfort. Lance had reached his friends down at bar he had started out at and from the sounds of it, they weren’t too pleased.

  Asher linked his arm through mine and started to pull me after him down the street. “Come on, we have to get out of here,” he said as the sound of footsteps on the concrete started somewhere in the distance. “Now.”

  Chapter Three

  “Would you hold still?” I asked Asher a half hour later, holding his wounded hand in my grip. “If you refuse to go to the emergency room then I have to get the needle position just right.”