Rock Chick Redemption

by Kristen Ashley

  Then he kissed me, not a lazy-necking kiss, he went whole hog.

  I was breathing heavy and my body was in full throb when his lips disengaged from mine.

  He rolled us over, got on top and his hips fell between my legs when I opened them.

  He kept his mouth on mine, making me dizzy with his kisses while his hand slid between us, his fingers finding me, making me dizzier. I wrapped a leg around his waist, my arms around his back, using them as an anchor to press my hips into his hand.

  He touched me as he kissed me and then one of his fingers slid inside.

  “Hank,” I breathed before I nipped his beautiful lower lip gently with my teeth because I could not stop myself. If someone paid me ten million dollars not to, I would still have done it.

  Without warning, his hand slid away and he was inside me.

  He started moving, rocking deep, pounding hard, it was unlike any time before. I got the sense there was control, if there wasn’t he might have hurt me, but there was just not much of it.

  I liked it. No, I loved the thought of making him lose control.

  I lifted my knees and hips, encouraging him to lose more. I started panting, my body jerking with each of his thrusts. I whispered in his ear, running my hands across the skin of his back, stroking the damp hair at his nape.

  Then there was no way I could talk.

  We breathed into each other’s open mouths until I felt it and every muscle in my body clenched, even the secret ones, and I moaned against his lips just as he groaned against mine.

  After, he let his body weight rest on me for half a minute then he rolled us over, still connected, him on his back, me on top.

  My face was pressed against his neck and his hands were on my bottom.

  “Holy cow,” I whispered against his neck.

  His fingers dug into me but he didn’t answer.

  A little later he asked, “Did I hurt you?”

  “Not even close,” I responded.

  His hands roamed up my back, one wrapped around my waist, one slid into my hair.

  He turned his head and murmured in my ear, “Jesus, Roxie, you undo me.”

  My body stilled and, for once, I was silent.

  I didn’t know how to process this information. I didn’t even know how to process the fact that Hank would share it. It was an admission of grand proportions, especially for a man like Hank. It was an admission bigger than the one I’d made that morning. It was the kind of thing that was said that changed lives.

  Finally, I said, “I thought you were just jazzed after catching the bad guys.”

  “That’s part of it,” he replied. “Most of it was knowin’ when I was done, I’d come home to you.”

  Good God.

  “It helped that you weren’t wearing any underwear,” he finished.

  That did seem to be the impetus that speeded things up a bit.

  He rolled us to our sides and his hand went to my jaw. “We have to talk,” he said.

  “We are talking.”

  “Not after-sex talk. We need to have a conversation.”

  Oh no.

  I wasn’t ready for a conversation, at least not the kind of conversation he seemed to be talking about.

  “It’s late. You have to be tired. I don’t –”

  “I know you’re pullin’ away even as you get closer,” he told me.

  I started shivering because this was getting plain, old scary.

  He was so tuned into me was unreal.

  “Hank –”

  He still didn’t let me talk. “I don’t like sayin’ it just as much as you aren’t gonna like hearin’ it, but I understand one thing about Flynn. I don’t like you pullin’ away.”

  My breath caught in my lungs.

  “Don’t say that,” I whispered.

  His hand gripped my waist. “It’s not that. It’d never be that. There’s no way I’d ever hurt you, Sweetheart.”

  My body was shivering like I was cold and Hank’s arms wrapped tight around me.

  “We’re different, you and me,” I told him.

  “I know, Sunshine.”

  Even though he agreed, I kept on. “We’re something else.”

  Something special, I thought, but did not say.

  “Roxie, I know.”

  “I’ve never been with Billy how I am with you.”

  “Sweetheart –”

  “And because of Billy, I can’t have you.”

  It was his body’s turn to still. “Sorry?”

  I was so freaked out, I was on a roll and let my mouth run away from me.

  “This’ll always be between us. You knowing about him, what he’s done to me, how I let him, comparing yourself to him, me comparing us to what Billy and I used to have. It’ll color us forever. It’ll make it go bad.”

  “Roxanne –”

  “It’s too soon. I was meant to have time, after I got rid of Billy, time to feel good about myself, time to feel worthy, time to feel clean again. But you saw it, you’re in the middle of it now and I hate that. I’ve got used to his stink on me, I can’t allow his stink to settle on you.”

  “Roxanne, be quiet for a second and –”

  I pressed my face in his throat. “It’s not just protecting you from seeing me under that fucking sink, Hank. Even without you seeing that, you’ll always know that I’m gray. You’ll always be white and, now, for you, I’ll always be gray.”

  If his body was still before, it was hard as rock now.

  “Roxanne,” his voice was as solid as his body; solid and sharp. My name cut through the air like a cleaver. It was filled with warning, so filled it was dangerous but I was lost in making him understand.

  I ignored the warning and went on. “We were over before we even began.”

  I barely finished the sentence when he rolled, his weight settling on me and pushing me into the bed.

  “Quiet!” The word hit the room like a gunshot and it shocked me so much, my mouth snapped shut.

  Even in the dark, I could feel his eyes on my face.

  Then he said, “You’ve been talkin’ to Jet.”

  I nodded but didn’t speak.

  “Jet and I were havin’ a conversation about an internal struggle she was having. We were talkin’ about some people we know, friends we both like, friends who deal drugs and run games and likely murder other people.”

  Holy cow.

  What friends were those?

  And what conversation was he talking about?

  I didn’t have a chance to ask, Hank continued. “What I said about them in no way… Roxie, hear this right fucking now… in no way does it transfer to you.”

  “Hank –”

  Now he was on a roll and he was angry.

  Way angry.

  “You need to learn to give yourself a goddamned break. You’re so fuckin’ hard on yourself, I wouldn’t even begin to be able to make you feel as badly about yourself as you do. Even if I wanted to. Christ!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I think I fucking well do.”

  “No you don’t!” I pushed at him but he wouldn’t budge so I carried on anyway. “You didn’t see us together, when we’d visit my folks, the looks on their faces. My friends who’d try to be nice to him even though they knew he was a piece of dirt. I knew they wondered about me. Why was I with him? What was wrong with me?”

  “What was wrong with you?” he asked.

  My head jerked like he smacked me in the face.

  Then I started struggling. “Get off me, I’m going home!”

  He caught my wrists and held them over my head.

  “Answer my question, what was wrong with you? Why were you with him?”

  “I thought he loved me!” I shouted. “He promised me everything. He was full of grand dreams. He was going to show me the fucking world. I was young and stupid and believed him.”

  “So, you’re sayin’ that you’re stupid because you believed a pack of lies some shithead fed you?”
>
  “Yes!”

  “It’s you who’s wrong in this scenario, just because you loved someone and since you did you trusted him to tell you the truth?”

  I blinked in the darkness.

  I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “That’s what love’s all about, Roxanne. You love someone, you trust them always to tell you the truth.”

  “Hank, please, get off me,” I begged.

  “Did he get you to deal drugs?” Hank asked.

  “What?” I screeched.

  “Did you deal drugs with him? That’s what he did. He was a drug dealer. Smack.”

  For some reason, the last word he said jarred me out of the moment and I became confused.

  “What’s smack?” I asked.

  I could almost hear Hank’s teeth grinding.

  “Jesus. You don’t even know what it is. How in the fuck can you think you’re gray?”

  Then it hit me.

  “Oh… smack.” I said with dawning understanding.

  “What is it?” Hank asked.

  “Drugs,” I answered.

  “What kind of drugs?” he persevered.

  I thought about it, trying to remember what they were referring to on the TV cop shows when they mentioned it. I didn’t want to sound uncool that I didn’t know what it was but I kinda didn’t.

  For some reason, as I was silent and trying to think, Hank’s body started moving like he was laughing. His hands loosened from my wrists and he buried his face in my neck.

  “Sunshine, you’re a nut.”

  Yes, definitely laughing.

  “Are you laughing?” I asked just to check.

  He rolled off me, to his side, but took me with him, his arms locking around me.

  “Smack is heroin,” Hank’s voice still sounded amused.

  “Oh God. Sid Vicious died of an overdose of that,” I told him.

  “Yeah, a lot of people die of overdoses of that.”

  It took me a moment to realize that our conversation had taken a drastic, and very weird, turn.

  I felt it important to keep on target.

  “I don’t deal drugs, Hank. I design websites.”

  “I know,” he replied and lifted a hand to run his fingers through my hair at the side of my head, then he tucked it behind my ear before his arm locked around me again. “Roxie, people in six different states have been bringing up your name and no one knows who the fuck you are. On my desk, I got copies of employment records, apartment leases, phone bills and credit card statements a mile high with your name on them. I can track your life for the last four years and none of it was even a little shady. Whatever Flynn did, he protected you from it. Every piece of paper and every report that comes in shows you’re as pure as snow. You’re about as gray as the North Pole.”

  Oh… my… God.

  “You checked up on me?” I asked, horrified.

  “I checked up on Flynn. Doing that meant I had to check on you since the only thing we got, except arrest reports and his name linked to various pieces of scum, is the trail he left through you.”

  I tried to process that but Hank interrupted my processing by asking, “Did you know he was dealing drugs?”

  I closed my eyes in despair.

  Here we go, I thought.

  I took a deep breath. Then, I admitted, “I had no idea. At first I didn’t care. Then, I knew he wasn’t out all day doing good deeds but I didn’t ask questions. I just didn’t want to know.”

  I thought that said a lot about me and none of it was good.

  Hank said quietly, “You’ve just proved my point, Sunshine.”

  “What point?”

  “You didn’t work with him, you didn’t even know what he was about. The only thing you did was fall in love with an asshole. He lied to you and you believed him because you loved him. It’s easier for other people to see what kind of guy he was. They didn’t care about him, they only cared about you. You haven’t lived a life of crime, you just lived with a criminal who lied to you about who he was. All this time, you’ve been living a normal life, Roxie. You aren’t to blame for letting the wrong guy into your heart.”

  I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say.

  Except he was wrong.

  He just didn’t get it.

  I didn’t want a cop boyfriend who was forced to run checks on my old leases and phone bills to track down an ex-lover on the run. It was humiliating, pure and simple.

  When I was silent, Hank kept talking.

  “Roxie, it would be different if you let him stay in your heart. But you didn’t do that. Eddie told me that you tried to turn him out years ago. You were a woman alone doing the best she could, but, Sweetheart, you’re not alone now.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said, and all of a sudden I didn’t. Not that I wanted to talk about it before, just that, since we were, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was exhausted; it felt like I’d run a hundred miles without even an energy bar to see me through.

  His hands moved to stroke my back. “All right, Sunshine, we won’t talk about it anymore.”

  His fingers trailed soothingly up and down my back.

  Honestly, it was too much. I couldn’t cope.

  He was such a good guy and there just seemed nothing I could say to get him to back off and leave me be.

  It didn’t matter that I didn’t actually want him to back off and leave me be.

  It was about me caring about him so much that I wanted him to have something better than me.

  I prepared to move. “I think I need to be alone. I’m going to go sleep on the couch.”

  His fingers stopped moving and his hands pressed against my back.

  “No you aren’t.”

  “Please, Hank. I need to be alone. I have to think.”

  “That’s the last thing you have to do.”

  “Really Hank –”

  “Quiet, go to sleep.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Roxie, quiet.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” I snapped.

  I lay there, angry, or trying to convince myself I was angry. What I did know was that my body was wound up and tense.

  Hank just kept his arms around me and kept his silence.

  Then, I spent some time trying not to think, but everything he said was tumbling around in my head, all I could do was think.

  Through this, Hank kept his arms around me and kept his silence.

  Then, when I stopped trying to stop thinking, I stopped thinking altogether and fell asleep.

  Hank’s arms were still around me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There Was Just No Shaking This Guy

  “Wake up, Sunshine.”

  I opened my eyes as the light switched on and I blinked, temporarily blinded.

  Then, I saw Hank’s thighs, upright, at the side of the bed. They were encased in black track pants with three thin stripes running up the sides, the outer two white, the inner one dark gray.

  I decided no one should be upright, especially Hank. He’d had, like, two hours of sleep.

  I closed my eyes again.

  “No waking up,” I mumbled, rubbed my face into the pillow and turned away from the light.

  The bed moved when Hank sat on it. Then the covers slid down to my waist and Hank’s hand rested there.

  “Get up, Sweetheart, Shamus needs his walk.”

  I felt his lips touch my shoulder, then the bed moved again and he got up.

  I was lying mostly on my side but partially on my belly. I felt Shamus in front of me and I squinted my eyes at him. He saw me squint, his tail wagged, he edged up to me and rested his chin on my waist. He blinked twice and then closed his eyes again.

  Since Shamus closed his eyes, I did too.

  Clearly Shamus was in no mood to walk. Shamus shared my mood, which was to sleep more and forget my life was a disaster. Though, Shamus’s life wasn’t a disaster and he probably didn’t comprehend that mine was
, but if doggie brains could comprehend such complex situations, I felt pretty certain he would commiserate and let me sleep.

  I’d fallen asleep again when I was suddenly pulled across the bed, flipped, then lifted, an arm behind my knees, one at my waist.

  “What the hell!” I screeched, grabbing on to Hank’s shoulders as he walked the few steps to the bathroom, carrying me, then he dropped my legs and set me on my feet in the bathroom door.

  I tipped my head back and frowned at him. He kept his arm around my waist and was grinning at me.

  His hair was damp from a shower and he looked awake, alert and refreshed.

  I found this supremely annoying.

  “How can you be bright-eyed at this hour? You’ve barely slept,” I asked. I didn’t know what hour it was; all I knew was that it wasn’t a good hour.

  He kept grinning.

  “Conditioning,” he answered. “Get dressed. I have to get to work but before that we have to walk Shamus, have breakfast and then you have to spend an hour doing whatever-it-is-you-do that, in the end, makes you look no more cute and sexy than you do right now.”

  I stared at him.

  Was he serious?

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Get dressed, Roxie.”

  “I’ll have you know that I’ve spent years honing my getting-ready routine to a fine and practiced art and, when I’m done with it, I look far better than I do right now.”

  “No you don’t.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  He wasn’t only serious, he was insane.

  I’d been perfecting my high-maintenance toilette since I was twelve years old. My family was always yelling at me to get out of the bathroom. I never left the house without at least two coats of mascara, a shimmer of blush and one lipstick and one lip gloss just in case I changed my mind sometime during the day as to which was more appropriate for my outfit.

  “Yes I do,” I told him. “When I wake up my eyes are all squinty and my face is all blotchy and my hair is always a mess.”

  He pulled me into his body and tilted his head down so his face was an inch from mine. “I see you’re in the mood to argue but I have to get to the station so can we argue while we’re walkin’ the dog?”

  Then, before I could answer, he rubbed his nose alongside mine, let me go, turned me around to face the bathroom, put his hand to my ass and gave me a little shove. I whirled around to glare at him and say something smart, or at least say something, but he was already walking away.