9
We ran past the dark shop fronts and turned up a side street. After we passed four or five houses, my rescuer stopped and turned to me. “Are you okay?”
I still couldn’t see him because of the shadows, but I didn’t care. He had saved me.
“Oh my God, thank you – thank you so much –”
“You’re welcome. Are you okay?”
Other than a few cuts and scrapes, I was fine. I didn’t feel shaky, or freaked out, or traumatized. I felt a little scared, but having this powerful, brave stranger with me made everything seem like it was going to be okay.
“I’m fine,” I said, then realized that wasn’t the end of the matter. “Should we call the cops?”
“Good idea. Did they take your phone?”
“No, I – ”
I reached in my pocket and panicked when I didn’t feel anything but my keys. I patted down both my front and back pockets, then remembered I hadn’t brought my cell phone with me.
“I left it at home. Do you have yours?” I asked.
“It’s back at the house.” He took my hand. “Come on, I’ll take you there.”
This time, as he pulled me along, I was right next to him instead of being dragged behind as we ran. Light from an apartment window flooded into his hoodie as we walked down the street and I finally saw his face.
It was the hot guy from earlier in the day – the one who had been rude to me.
“Oh my God – it’s you!”
He turned to me, and I could see his brow furrow in confusion. “What?”
I remembered why he had been rude, and suddenly I grew bashful. “I… uh… I saw you this morning. You had the…”
“The what?” he asked, sounding slightly annoyed.
I know it’s crazy, but I felt super self-conscious saying it, so I could only whisper, “The sex stuff.”
Now he looked really confused. “What?!”
“That sex wax stuff!”
I was glad we were standing in relative darkness, because I’m sure my face was crimson. I could feel the heat from the blood in my cheeks.
He burst out laughing. “You know that’s wax for a surf board, right?”
“For a … surfboard?” I asked, tentatively. Now I was the one who was confused.
“Yes.”
I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the whole surfboard part, so I continued in dull stupefaction, to my chagrin. “But it said … the best for your stick…”
He laughed, again, a deep, smoky rumble. “Yeah – the ‘stick’ is the surfboard.”
Oh my God. I held my hands up to my face, trying to shield myself from his gaze. My cheeks felt like a roaring campfire, they were so hot.
“Exactly what ‘stick’ did you think I was putting ‘sex stuff’ on?” he asked as he roared with laughter again.
“Please, please, can we just drop this?” I muttered behind my hands.
Suddenly I felt a powerful but gentle pressure on my wrists. I jerked away, shocked, and saw him standing there looking at me in concern.
“I just wanted to see your hands. It looks like you cut them up pretty badly.”
“Oh.”
I looked down at my palms. It’s true – there were some deep scratches and a fair amount of blood on them. In all the excitement and adrenaline from our escape, I hadn’t even noticed.
He reached out his hand to me again. I still flinched a little.
“Don’t worry,” he teased, “I wasn’t going to put any ‘sex stuff’ on you.”
I stared at him in mortified outrage. “Can you please stop that?”
He grinned. “For now, I guess.” Then, as he took my hands in his, he frowned. “That fall did a number on you.”
It’s funny. I wasn’t even feeling any pain. Not with those powerful hands gently clasping mine.
He suddenly released me, knelt in front of me, and touched my leg softly.
Whoa.
I tingled at his touch. I can promise you this: pain wasn’t the sensation I was feeling at that moment.
“That asshole really hurt you,” he said. I could hear the anger in his voice.
“It’s nothing,” I protested.
“It’s not ‘nothing’. Come on.”
He took my hand, gently, being careful not to touch my cuts. The warmth of his skin on mine sent a shiver down my back.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He pointed down the street. “My place is right up here. After we call the cops, we’ll get you cleaned up and put some antibiotic cream on your cuts.”
I hesitated. I guess it was kind of stupid, seeing as he had saved me from horrible danger, but I had a tiny moment of hesitation at going into a stranger’s house.
A really hot stranger, I might add.
He must have sensed I was uneasy, because he joked, “And I won’t even make you touch the sex wax again, unless you want to.”
Annoyance won out over anxiety.
“You are NEVER going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Come on. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”
“I’m not worried.”
He smirked. “Yes you are.”
He said it with such surety and self-confidence. I hate having people tell me they can read me so easily.
Then he slipped effortlessly from annoying to sympathetic. “But given what you’ve been through tonight, I don’t blame you.”
Every negative emotion I had – every fear, every anxiety – melted away. I could see his eyes reflecting street lights from further up the block. His gaze was so soothing, his voice was so deep and comforting, that I didn’t put up any further resistance.
“Come on,” he said, and took my hand. “You’ll be safe with me.”
And then, without giving me a choice, he gently led me up the street.
I didn’t mind, because I totally and completely believed him.
10
He led me another fifty feet up the block until we stopped in front of a weathered, seven-foot-tall wooden fence.
He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, secured by a string to his swim trunks, and unlocked the rusty handle on the wooden door that served as a gate.
Inside the fence was a small, badly aging house – although it was charming in a rundown, Venice kind of way. It had a cute little yard, with fruit trees, overgrown flowering bushes, and tiki torches, none of them lit. There was also a tiny concrete pond that water trickled into from a miniature statue of a woman with a jug. Instead of cheap, it actually looked quite mysterious in the moonlight.
“Come on,” he said as he unlocked the front door and opened it wide.
He led me into the den – a cozy little spot with a decades-old couch, along with a battered TV – and picked up his cell phone from an end table.
“You ready for me to call the police?” he asked.
My heart sped up, and not in a good way – but I knew that I would have to relive what had happened earlier if I wanted those assholes caught. And especially if I wanted to make sure no one else had to suffer what they had intended for me.
“…yeah. I’m ready.”
After Googling something, he touched the screen and then held the cell phone up to his ear. Someone apparently answered, because he started talking. “I’d like to report an attempted…”
He looked over at me, then averted his eyes. He didn’t want to say the word ‘rape.’
I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t even want to think about it.
“…an attempted assault on a woman. My name is Ian McLaren.”
Ian McLaren…
Nice name…
“Her name is…” He stopped and looked at me questioningly. “What’s your name?”
“Katherine Worthington.”
“Katherine Worthington,” Ian said. “Yes, she’s here with me. Yes, she’s okay, but we thought we should report it, so you can catch the guys who did it. Okay – 152 Waverly in Venice. Yes, we’ll be here.”
; He hung up the phone and slipped it in his pocket. “Well, the cops are coming. Now it’s time to get you cleaned up.”
11
He took me to the kitchen, which was small and homey. A few used mugs and glasses sat on the countertop, but otherwise it was clean. There was a spice rack, small plants in the window, and a few artsy prints hanging on the walls.
“Hold on,” he said. “I need to get some things.”
He disappeared into the back of the house, then reappeared a few minutes later carrying a bottle of rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs, rolls of gauze, and other odds and ends. He arranged everything on the countertop beside me, then turned on the sink. “Go ahead, wash them off as best you can.”
I grimaced as I gingerly rubbed my hands together under the warm water. He squirted a couple of dollops of hand soap onto my palms, and I winced even more as I lathered up and washed them off.
“Do the same with your knees,” he commanded.
I repeated the procedure, but this time sitting awkwardly on his sink counter. After I was finished, he uncapped the rubbing alcohol, grabbed my wrists, and held my hands over the sink.
My eyes grew wide. “Do we have to?”
“We need to disinfect the cuts. It looks like you got any dirt out, but we need to make sure it’s as clean as possible.”
I tried to jerk my hands back. “I don’t want to!” I whined.
“Those are some nasty scrapes,” he said sternly. “I know it’s going to sting, but we need to do this for your own good.”
“They’ll be fine,” I said, and tried to take my hands back.
“So,” he said casually, “what did you think sex wax was for, exactly?”
My eyes widened, and I completely forgot what we were doing. “What?!”
That was when he poured the alcohol all over my palms.
“AAAAAAH!” I wailed.
“Rub your hands together,” he commanded. “Make sure you get them clean.”
“You tricked me!” I said angrily as I doused my hands under the water.
“Yup. Unfortunately, we’ve got to do your knees now, and I don’t think the same gimmick will work again.”
I grumbled, but let him pat my knees with an alcohol-soaked washcloth.
“And now it’s all over,” he said, in amusement, as though he were talking to a child. “Dry everything off and I’ll put some Neosporin on it.”
I grumbled, but I quickly stopped once he took my hands in his again. They were surprisingly soft – not what I would have thought a surfer’s hands would be like at all. He was also exceedingly gentle as he rubbed the antibiotic cream into my scrapes.
As I thought about what might have happened to me tonight had he not been there, my voice choked up with gratitude. “Thank you for what you did back there.”
He glanced up at me. He could hear the emotion in my voice, but he seemed uncomfortable. “Don’t mention it.”
“No, you saved me. They would have …”
The thought of what might have happened was too horrible to contemplate. I shuddered.
“I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if you hadn’t been there.”
“Well, I was,” he said, as he rolled gauze over my palms and then taped it all up so that it stayed in place. “We’ll leave your knees the way they are, but you’ll be touching things with your hands, so better to protect them. That good?”
“It’s wonderful, thank you.” I looked around, uncomfortable in the silence. “So… it’s okay that I stay here with you? Until the cops come?”
He shrugged and said in an off-handed way, “Guess I’m stuck with you.”
After everything I’ve been through, his cavalier attitude rubbed me the wrong way. “Well, if it’s too much trouble, call them back and I’ll meet them at my house,” I said, irritated.
“Don’t be so sensitive,” he said, and turned towards the kitchen. “Do you want a beer?”
I crossed my arms in a huff. “Should I be drinking if the cops are coming?”
“You’re over 21, right?” he asked as he disappeared around the corner.
“Yeah.”
“Then there’s no law against having a drink. What do you want?” he called out from the other room.
I sighed. “What do you have?”
I heard the ancient metal fridge open and glass clink inside.
“Corona, Modelo, a couple different IPAs…”
“I’ll take a Corona.”
I heard two bottle tops pop off with a fzzzt! A few seconds later, he reappeared with a bottle in each hand and handed one to me.
I could feel the coldness of the glass through my bandages, soothing my sore spots.
I took a sip. “It’s funny… if we were at my place, I could reach out my bedroom window and pick us a lime from the trees outside.”
“What would we be doing in your bedroom?” he asked, straight-faced.
I felt my cheeks flush. “Nothing – I just meant – stop messing with me!”
He grinned. “At least I didn’t mention the –”
“But you’re THINKING it!” I yelled, though I was laughing as I raised my voice.
“No crime against thinking things.” He wiggled his eye brows, and I felt suddenly very self-conscious.
“As for the limes …” He jerked his head towards the front door. “Ask and ye shall receive.”
“Huh?”
“Come on,” he said as he walked outside the house and into the tiny garden. I followed behind him.
He walked over to a tree, reached up into the limbs, and pulled down a lime. He turned around and tossed it to me, underhanded. “Think fast.”
I yelped and barely caught it.
“Good hands,” he said with a grin. “Even if they are bandaged.”
I gave him a sideways reproving look for his flippancy.
“This is a whole lime,” I pointed out. “Don’t we need a knife to cut it into wedges?”
“Nah.” He reached up into the tree, picked another piece of fruit, and then crushed it in his powerful hand. A stream of juice flowed out and drizzled into the open top of his bottle. “You just want the juice anyway.”
“Isn’t that wasting a lot?” I asked, more surprised than scolding.
He shrugged as he tossed the lime into the grass, and then took a seat in a well-worn fabric deck chair by the fountain. “There’s plenty more where that came from.” He gestured towards the seat opposite him. “Sit.”
I sat down, and tried to crush my lime – but it was harder than it looked.
He leaned over and held out his hand. “Here, let me.”
I handed him the lime, and watched as his powerful hand clenched around it like a vise.
“Hold your bottle underneath,” he commanded.
I held out my Corona and a stream of juice trickled out of his fingers and into the bottle top.
I sat back in my chair and took a swig. Bliss. There’s nothing quite like a cold Corona with ripe lime juice after a near-death situation.
My hottie surfer reached down into the grass, found a cigarette lighter, and sparked it up. One by one he lit the tiki torches within arm’s reach until we were bathed in an orange glow.
“Nice,” I murmured.
“It’s the little things,” he said as he tossed the lighter back on the ground. Then he leaned back in his seat, took a sip of his drink, and regarded me impassively. “So, Katherine – ”
“It’s Katie.”
He frowned. “You said – ”
“For the cops, it’s Katherine. But nobody calls me that except my mother.”
“Oh… Okay. So, Katie…”
He was so serious it was funny. “So, Ian,” I said, poking fun at him.
The corner of his mouth turned up the tiniest bit in amusement. “What do you do?”
“… nothing yet, really. I just moved to Venice yesterday.”
“Well, you’ve had quite the time of it so far.”
“I guess,
” I said, then frowned the slightest bit. “You know, you don’t talk like a surfer.”
His eyebrows raised slightly. “I don’t?”
“No – ‘quite the time of it’ isn’t something surfers would say.”
He shrugged, “I guess I should throw in a ‘brah’ every once in a while.”
“…‘bra?’” I asked worriedly, apprehensive that we were back on sexual territory.
“Like ‘bro,’” Ian explained. “It’s from Hawaii. Probably pidgin English for ‘bra-dah.’”
“Yeeeaaaah… you really don’t talk like a surfer.”
“Okay, brah,” he said, playfully.
I smiled, then grew wistful. “You know, I want to go to Hawaii someday.”
“You should, it’s gorgeous.”
“You’ve been?”
He seemed to hesitate – to become the slightest bit more guarded.
“Yeah…”
“Which island?”
“Uh, most of them…”
Again, that strange evasiveness.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you surfed there?”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t quite figure him out. Why was he being so cagey about surfing in Hawaii?
Suddenly his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen, then sent it directly to voicemail.
“That’s not the police, is it?” I asked as he stuffed the cell back in his pocket.
“No.”
“Is it a girl?” I teased him.
“No,” he said flatly.
“You can take it if you – ”
“Nobody I want to speak to,” he said, then took another sip of his beer.
Huh.
“What do you do besides surf?” I asked.
“Drink beer with beautiful women,” he said, with a hint of a smile. “Tend to cuts and scrapes.”
“Save damsels in distress,” I suggested.
“Occasionally.”
I lifted my beer in a toast. “Well, I’m glad I got you on one of those occasions.”
He raised his beer and held it out towards me. “To chance encounters and saving the day.”
Sex On The Beach: Bad Boys Club Romance #1 Page 3