Morgan, Nicole - Sweet Redemption [Sweet Awakenings 1] (Siren Publishing Allure) Read online

  How indeed? Tamara knew Nina was right, she knew she was lucky. Most women waited their whole lives to have a man cherish them the way Brent did her. Why was she always just going through the motions? He wasn’t a bad guy. She had really liked him when they first started dating.

  When they met a couple of years ago, he had come to her office to sit in on a deposition that was taking place in the conference room. They casually bumped into each other several times over the next few months until finally he asked her out. She was excited at first. He was attentive and caring and always so thoughtful. He didn’t rush her into sex. He was almost like the perfect guy, almost.

  If only there was a spark, that one that all teenage girls dream about. She had tried to break up with Brent several times over the past year. He was a charmer though. He always had a way of smoothing over it. By the time they were finished talking, she always ended up apologizing to him for being silly enough to try to end their relationship. Then he would take her to the bedroom and make love to her. That was it, though, the reason for her wanting out. It was the sex. It was so…so…boring! Brent never wanted to try anything at all. She had never even been on top. They had never even had oral sex. Hell, he never even touched her down there. It was a good thing that the condoms he wore were lubricated because she was never ready. It was like they were together for the sheer act of mating, not making each other feel good. Not once had she had an orgasm with Brent. She had become quite the actress, though. She was pretty sure that he never doubted his abilities to please her.

  About six months ago, maybe longer, she began to doubt if faking it was the best idea. She thought maybe that was the problem. How could she expect him to give her pleasure if she never told him what she wanted?

  One night as they were in bed, she had climbed on top of him and started to rock her body up against his. He had become rigid and tense. She remembered it like it was yesterday. At first she thought she had hurt him, but then she realized that he was shocked. He clasped his hands across her waist and pulled her off of him. When he started to kiss her and make love to her “the usual way,” she had stopped him. She told him everything that had been on her mind. She told him the things she wanted to do, the things she would love if he would do to her. He gave her a look of sheer terror. He told her he didn’t think a lady thought or talked that way and that she should go to sleep and they were to both forget the uncomfortable incident ever took place. The incident! He called her opening up to him an incident? He thought her sharing her fantasies with him was an uncomfortable incident. That had really ticked her off.

  She had tried in more subtle ways to open the door to his insipid sexuality since then, but she was always shut down. His lovemaking was inattentive, slow, and lazy, strokes in and out, in and out. Sometimes it was like he was moving no faster than a turtle. Tamara ached to have hard and fast sex, the kind that turned that special area between your thighs into a liquid river of heat filled with want and lust. She needed that so badly.

  “Are you listening to me, Tamara? I said I think he’s gonna propose.” Nina was almost jumping up and down with excitement.

  Tamara had thought the same thing when she read the card. And that’s what she was afraid of. She knew she could try to say no. But she had a feeling that once the night was over, she would once again be apologizing to Brent for declining, and he would make the most boring love to her, and she would wear his ring.

  “Tamara, I’ll finish up here. You go home early, take a bubble bath, and paint your toenails. Do something special to get ready for tonight. Pamper yourself. You are going to get engaged tonight. I can just feel it! This will definitely be a night you will never forget, ever!”

  Before she could give Tamara a chance to respond, Nina was slinging Tamara’s purse around her neck, throwing her coat over her arms, and pushing her toward the bank of elevators.

  Tamara got into the elevator and waited as Nina ran back to her, holding the huge vase with the flowers. “Don’t forget these. They’ll provide ambiance.”

  The doors started to close, and Tamara smiled a good-bye at Nina. She knew she should be the happiest girl in the world right now. It was just sex. Why couldn’t she get over it? She should be happy, shouldn’t she?

  Driving home, Tamara started to relax a little. Maybe Nina was right. She was lucky. Brent was clearly devoted to her. He would never cheat on her or hurt her, and he would provide a nice life to her and eventually their children. Brent loved her. She would just have to be content with the fact that most women would give up their right arm to be loved the way she was. She pulled into her spot and decided that Nina was right. When she got upstairs she was going to take a nice long, hot bubble bath. She would pamper herself. As far as Brent proposing, she just hoped that her heart would allow her to agree. She was sure that she could learn to love him in time and she could possibly even be happy with him. She could ask Shelby to be her maid of honor. The two of them had become so close over the past few years since they’d become neighbors.

  She closed the door to her Toyota Camry and noticed Brent’s very distinctive metallic cobalt blue BMW with its tinted windows a few spaces over. How strange she hadn’t noticed it when she pulled in. She had driven right by it. Obviously he’d decided to come a bit early. She shrugged and headed up the flight of stairs to her apartment with her roses in hand.

  When she got to her apartment door, she started to struggle to dig for the keys but then realized that Brent had probably left it unlocked. She opened the door and was startled to hear a banging sound coming from the kitchen. What was Brent doing in there? It sounded like he was moving furniture. Was he moving her kitchen table? She rounded the corner to the kitchen and dropped the vase of roses. The vase shattered, and glass shards went flying in every direction. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  “Would you care to explain this, honey?” Tamara’s voice was as cool as ice.

  Brent froze, his eyes fixed on Tamara. He stopped in mid thrust, not moving. He looked like a deer caught in headlights. His pants were around his ankles, he was holding Shelby’s legs apart as she lay sprawled on the kitchen table with Brent’s cock buried in her pussy.

  Chapter 2

  “Move it, damn it! Move it, Move it!” Oh, this was just great. Could her day get any worse? Was it not enough that her good-for-absolutely-nothing boyfriend actually proved to be a bigger waste of her time than she’d already thought? Now she was stuck in the most ridiculous traffic because people slowed down to five miles per freaking hour every time a single goddamn snowflake hit the ground. All she wanted to do was get to the gym and work out her frustrations.

  God, she was pissed! How could she not have seen it? Her supposed best friend and neighbor from across the hall was doing her boyfriend, Mr. Please, don’t leave me, Mr. I love you, Mr. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.

  “Aahhh!” Had she ever been this pissed off? She didn’t think so. Was it that she had been made a fool of? Or was it that she’d wanted to break up with that sorry son of a bitch so many times she couldn’t count? He had always somehow managed to convince her they were meant to be together and she should just give their relationship more time to blossom, thus causing her to waste more of her life on him.

  Looking back on it, Tamara knew she mostly stayed with him out of guilt over his supposed undying love for her. And, truth be told, she should probably admit to herself that she might have been a little passive in her pursuits of ending things. Perhaps it was just easier to remain together, but goddamn it! In her own apartment? Shelby lived across the hall. Why not go over there? Was that part of the excitement for them, she wondered, having sex on her kitchen table when she was at work?

  “Aahhh, why won’t this guy move it already?” This traffic wasn’t helping matters either. This was why people snap. This was why people completely lost touch with reality and burst into a fit of road rage. This asshole in front of her was driving like it was the blizzard of ’79 and it was his first da
y driving.

  At last, she turned into the gym parking lot and swerved into the first available spot. Getting out of her car, dragging her gym bag and iPod with her, she was fired up for a workout to beat all others.

  Entering the gym, she heard her phone ring again. Looking at the display, she saw it was Brent, or should she say “the dick.” Refusing to answer it, she turned it off and rounded the corner to the front desk.

  Passing the frosted glass panels that they used all over the gym, she almost bumped into a couple leaving. Shaking off her clumsiness, she pulled out her membership tag from her key ring and dropped her wallet on the ground, deciding that, if one more thing went wrong, she was actually going to go on a homicidal rampage starting with Brent and Shelby.

  She picked up her wallet, and just as she did, it spilled open and change fell out onto the floor. She actually shuddered. The gods of fate were having quite a little laugh at her expense today, and she did not find it funny at all. She tried to pick up the change that was slipping all over the slick surface of the acid-stained concrete floor. Finally she decided that the last two dimes and three pennies that were being pulled to the ground by some sort of invisible magnetic force were no longer worth her trouble.

  Finally, she rose to hand her keys to the desk attendant and was startled and surprised, to say the least. She certainly didn’t expect to see him there. But there he stood, all six feet, six inches of him. He was lean, with hard muscle, tan, and completely gorgeous.

  He had light brown hair, cut short, but not too short. Sometimes when he would work out and start sweating, she would notice how parts of his hair, the longer parts, would fall and curl around his ears. He was wearing a white polo shirt with the Lean & Fit logo embroidered over his very nice chest with black athletic pants, and they both fit him as though they were made for the sole purpose of being on his body. No one could possibly wear that outfit as well as he did.

  He always looked clean-shaven, but he was definitely not one of those pretty boys. He was definitely all man. He appeared to have muscles everywhere, and yet she couldn’t ever remember seeing him use any weight equipment in the gym. She had seen him run on the treadmill a couple times, and that was about it.

  All of the women who came to the gym regarded him with drooling fascination. He had also been the subject of some very raunchy talk in the women’s locker room on many occasions. She had never talked herself of course, merely overheard things being said.

  He was like a specimen carved out of fine marble. The kind you would see in the ruins of Rome. He was simply a masterpiece. She knew his name, Jack Peyton, she knew he owned this gym, and she knew he was some sort of retired military, but what she didn’t know was how any one man could look so damn good?

  He stared at her and raised his brow in a look of confusion since she was just staring at him. Finally, he asked, in what had to be the sexiest voice she had ever heard, “Hi, there. Can I help you?”

  Was he talking to her? Her anger over the previous events of the evening almost instantly subsided and melted away, which gave her an entirely different kind of feeling all together. She should say something, anything. Did he ever talk to anyone? She wasn’t sure she had ever seen him speak a word to anyone. That was part of his mystery among the women at the gym.

  “Uh, are you okay?”

  He stared at her like she was some sort of a psycho. Speak Tamara, say something.

  “Oh, sorry, I, ah, I’m a member here, and I was just, ah, oh, here, here’s my membership tag, I was going to go work out and…” Oh, my god, she sounded like an absolute idiot. Had she never seen an attractive man before?

  He took her ID tag and scanned it into their system. But she was still gawking at him. “Yeah, okay, you go ahead and go work out, Ms. Somers, have a good one.”

  “Oh, you can call me Tamara.” Get your cool back, Tamara. What’s with you?

  “Sure, okay, Tamara, have a good workout.”

  She could feel his eyes watching her walk towards the locker room. Surely she wasn’t the only woman who acted strange around him. His masculine nature probably brought out the crazy in most women.

  In the locker room, Tamara chided herself for acting like such a babbling idiot in front of Jack Peyton. She’d never had a problem being around attractive men before. She was even quite good at flirting with them, or at least she used to be. There hadn’t been a lot of flirting since she had begun dating Brent.

  She hoped the events of earlier this evening hadn’t caused her to become insecure. So what if the guy she had wanted to break it off with for months had been cheating on her? So what if he was screwing her “best friend” on her kitchen table no less? Did it even matter? She was finally rid of him. The only real sadness about it was that she’d really felt like she could trust Shelby. She had really liked her, and obviously they could never be friends now.

  Looking back at what she’d walked in on a couple of hours ago, she was even more appalled. And even though it had only been a couple of hours ago, it seemed like days.

  Right before Tamara had walked in on them, she’d heard Shelby screaming in a sound of pleasure and encouraging whatever was going on by begging for more, harder and faster. Brent had been driving into her with such force that the table was actually inching across the linoleum flooring. At first, she’d almost been unable to believe her own eyes. God, he’d really been going at it with her. Maybe that was what was bothering her? Part of being dissatisfied with her relationship with Brent was that he was almost too gentle with her in the bedroom. Knowing that they never did it anywhere other than the bedroom also equally pissed her off. The fight that had occurred after her discovery of them was almost like a bad dream. Her screaming. His begging for another chance. Her having to literally shove him out the door. It was definitely not how she had planned on her evening to begin.

  She had, on a couple of occasions, nearly begged Brent for more, for harder and faster lovemaking, but damn if he wasn’t always so goddamn tender. Always telling her how much she meant to him and that he could never take her in a violent way. That used to make her feel guilty because she figured he must really love her. But now she was just pissed at the time she had wasted on him.

  She finished dressing for her workout and barreled out of the locker room with fierce determination to beat the proverbial crap out of her body. As she slammed the locker room door open, it came in direct contact with Jack Peyton carrying a load of clean towels in his hands which subsequently went flying.

  Jack muttered several obscenities and looked at her with a glare that had her in fear for a second. Then she realized what she saw was pain, not anger. She must have really nailed him. She reached for him with the intention of apologizing.

  He raised his hands up in a defensive gesture. “It’s fine, really. I’m fine. Why don’t you get that workout in? You’re obviously worked up about something, and I’d rather not be the person you take it out on, if it’s all the same to you.”

  What should she say? Well, say something. Don’t stare at him again. “All right, I really am sorry. Are you sure you don’t need me to get you some ice or something?”

  He merely raised his hand as he walked away in a manner of thanks, but no thanks. He left the towels scattered on the floor and entered the men’s locker room.

  Feeling more keyed up than she already was, Tamara hit the elliptical machine first. She originally had intended to do a good fifteen minutes to get her heart rate up. But she got so into her workout and it felt so good to get out her aggression, she didn’t realize that forty-two minutes had gone by. On a normal day she would have left it at that and decided those forty-two minutes of heavy cardio were enough of a workout, but that would be on a normal day. She jumped off of the machine, toweled it down, and made her way to the weight machines. Deciding she should probably work on her legs today, she headed for the first machine in her normal leg workouts.

  Jack watched her with puzzlement. She was on that machine for close to an hou
r and sweating her ass off. Now she jumped down to do weights as if she had just walked in the gym. He continued to watch her attack every machine that had anything to do with toning up your leg muscles for another forty-five minutes.

  Just when he thought she was ready to call it a night, the phone rang, and his attention was pulled away from her. “Lean and Fit. This is Jack.”

  “Hey, man, what are you still doing there? I’ve got two girls here who are more than willing to start the party without you and focus all of their attention on me, but I don’t want to be a greedy man. Get out of there. Come on and get over here!”

  “I wish, man. Look, that worthless, piece of crap Johnny didn’t show up for his shift again. Big surprise, and since it’s New Year’s Eve, no one answered their phone when I tried to call them in. So I’m stuck here until closing at 8. Sorry, man. Hey, you go ahead and start without me. Just don’t wear them out.”

  Rex Metcalf, the man who had been like Jack’s brother for the past thirteen years of his life, was a wild man. They had first met in Great Lakes, the naval boot camp they went to in Illinois. From the onset, Rex had been a good friend. He didn’t pull any punches, and he was always straight with you, whether you liked it or not. Rex had spent most of his formative years in foster homes—his parents had died in a car crash when he was twelve. More bad stuff went on than good in those homes that had hardened Rex. Although he was a tough SOB, he was the one person Jack knew was good to have on his side.

  After boot camp, they’d had two days of R & R and decided to head into downtown Chicago for some much-deserved partying. They had planned to only do some barhopping. But the first bar they entered, they were almost instantly attacked by available women. Jack knew that he was a fairly good-looking guy. But Rex had a real way with the ladies. He was, as women claimed, “drop-dead gorgeous,” and he always seemed to know the right thing to say to warm up even the most frigid woman.