Текст книги "Whipped"

Автор книги: Elizabeth Lee

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Whipped

Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Lee

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced without written consent from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

There’s only ever been one great love of my life. That head-over-heels, falling through the air, weightless, mind blowing kind of love that gets your pulse racing and adrenaline pumping. Your muscles tense just thinking about her and how amazing it feels when you’re together doing exactly what you were made to do. You can’t think about anything else—you don’t want to think about anything else. Call me crazy, but that kind of love doesn’t come around every day. That’s why when you find it, when you get your hands on it... you don’t let go.

I was sixteen when love changed my life. I’d flirted for a while with the idea of it being something more between us, but I wasn’t sure if it would ever pan out. There were hundreds of other guys out there who could have been in my shoes, but I loved her more. I was the one that put in the time. Put in the work. I was the one who gave up everything for just an hour with her. I’d never been one to half-ass something so when the opportunity arose, I literally jumped at the chance. I put everything I had into making sure I gave it all I had. And I won. As much as I loved her, she seemed to love me right back in equal measure.

It was everything I’d ever hoped for... and more. I was on top of the world. That is, until it all came crashing down and the love of my life decided to show what a fickle bitch she could be.

Motocross was like that.

One minute I was flying high. Freestyle Champion, motocross celebrity, making bank…the next I’m being tossed from a bike I trusted with my life onto the cold, hard dirt. My knee was rebuilt by a doctor I met in a morphine-induced haze of confusion and betrayal. I woke up in a hospital bed, alone, being informed by a room full of white coats that I had at least twelve weeks of intense therapy and healing before I could even think about giving the one great love of my life a second chance.

But, I will. Because fickle as she may be, I can’t and won’t live without her.

“The harder you push yourself with the physical therapy, the faster you’re going to see results. But don’t over do it, Mister. Listen to your body. It will tell you what it can withstand.”

Doctor Reyna Forlani stood at the exam table, giving me a pep talk as she looked over my chart. Her jet-black hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, which accented her sharp features. Her high cheekbones rose with her smile when I gave her a wink. It had been two weeks since she’d rebuilt my knee. The knee that had given out on me when I was riding my buddy, Reid’s, bike. The reason it had given out on me might have had something to do with the fact that the bike I was riding quit working mid-ride and crashed to the ground, tossing me and jacking up my leg along the way.

“I’m not worried about the PT, Doc,” I assured her, standing from the bed and letting my weight fall to my feet. “Hard work doesn’t scare me.”

It was astonishing to think that not too long ago the petite woman standing in front of me had sliced me open like a frog on her operating table and replaced the mess I’d made of my own bones with a dead guy’s. Cadaver bones and tendons that were now mine used to belong to someone else. It felt... odd. But if the recently departed’s spare parts meant I was going to be able to get back on a bike soon, then I’d take it.

“Good to hear, but when I say push yourself, I don’t mean injure yourself further. You need rest just as much as you need the therapy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said with shrug. The day of my knee replacement surgery they’d had me up and walking on my new set up, so I wasn’t worried. “You’re the one who said the more I work the new rig, the faster it will heal.” I stood on my good leg while I bent and straightened the other one to show her my progress. The flexibility was getting better every day. It still hurt like hell, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Couple more weeks and you’ll release me for riding, right?” I gave her my most charming grin.

It was wishful thinking. I knew that, but it didn’t stop me from counting the days until I would be able to ride again.

“Don’t push it,” she said with a smile. “Let’s get your range of motion back up to one hundred percent before you go jumping back on a bike.”

I offered up a salute. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Two weeks.”

Dr. Forlani and I walked out of the exam room and into the lobby together as we said our goodbyes. The small hospital that she worked for in the middle of Nowhere, Illinois was lucky to have her. As far as I could tell, she was one of the best doctors I’d ever worked with. And I’d worked with quite a few—my career tended to land me in the ER more often than other professions. Her quick thinking and resourcefulness may have saved my career after Beau Gregurich tried to ruin it for me.

Gregurich was a local guy that had tampered with my best friend’s bike. Beau was a spoiled trust fund asshole used to getting his way and he wanted revenge against Reid Travers for stealing his girl. A girl who, in my opinion, never even belonged to him. Beau’s opinion was clearly not the same. The faulty fuel lines were meant to put his one-time high school and current rival in the hospital—or worse. But his plan failed because I was the one on that bike, in mid-air, when it gave out.

So here I was.

I was trying really hard to be thankful that I was alive and all, but I had a lot of time to think while I was sidelined from my career. That slimy little bastard was going to get what was coming to him and I was going to make sure of it. Knowing that he was still walking free after tampering with Reid’s bike was a tough pill to swallow. I would have been equally as mad if Reid had been the one to end up on the operating table. You don’t mess with a man’s bike, just like you don’t mess with his girl. Reid and Nora may have gone about things in a way that pissed off Gregurich, but I didn’t blame them for what happened. There was only one person that I was directing my anger at these days.

Focus on your recovery. I reminded myself daily that I had more important things to worry about. I wanted to get back on my bike. Reid’s bike might have been headed for the scrap heap, but mine was still in one piece. According to my mechanic, Beau hadn’t touched my pride and joy. I needed to get back to my career as soon as possible. The one I’d given all my blood, sweat and tears to. Well, not tears. I’m not a little bitch that sits around crying. I was Brett Sallinger, freestyle motocross god. All around badass. Good thing this accident hadn’t messed with my confidence. That would have been a damn shame.

“Ready to go?” A female voice called out gently.

Speaking of things I wanted to focus all my attention on.

The sweet little blond waiting for me in the lobby with a smile on her face was none other than Georgia Bennett. My most favorite thing in Halstead, the sleepy little town that I’d come to three months ago with the Travers boys. Reid had big plans when he asked me to come back to his hometown with him and his brother, Hoyt. Plans that had started out as one thing and quickly turned into winning back his high school sweetheart, Nora, Georgia’s big sister.

As pissed as I was about how I’d ended up on the shit end of the Reid/Nora/Beau love triangle, I was grateful that I’d met the girl standing in front of me. Beautiful, funny, and not a damn bit interested in anything I had to say, which hadn’t stopped me from trying to make her smile. Each and every time I was around her, I became more and more intrigued. Luckily, my persistence had started to wear her down. We had struck up a friendship and while I was in town I was going to make the best of it.

For now, Georgia was playing nursemaid to an injured athlete, but every minute we spent together had me thinking there could be more between us. Even if she was adamant about denying it.

I’d caught her staring at me on more than one occasion. She might have tried to play innocent, but I knew when a girl was looking at me with more than friendship on the brain. I was just the guy to help her find her inner wild child, even if she didn’t know it yet. Just the thought alone was enough to drive me insane. I’d never met anyone like her—all good and pure and never crossing the line. A line that I knew she’d enjoy if she would just let herself.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, hobbling over to where she was waiting. My knee was still pretty stiff, but I refused to use the crutches any more than I already had. The brace was enough to keep me from falling on my ass, but I’d use the opportunity to touch her whenever I could. Georgia’s cheeks blushed pink as I took her arm and tucked it through mine like I needed her for support. She was extremely sexy with rosy cheeks. “Want to get something to eat?” I asked.

I’d taken up residence in an old cabin out on Reid’s property for the time being—it was a small place on a big patch of flat Midwestern land that butted up to the timber. It was peaceful and secluded and just what someone needs when they are trying to keep their focus channeled on recovery. Well, recovery and trying to figure out how to get my nurse, and chauffeur, to give me the time of day.

Georgia had volunteered to check in on me and made sure I made it to the doctor’s and physical therapy appointments. As much as I appreciated the time we spent together, I’d been trying to get more of it. Between nursing school, volunteering at the hospital, and hauling me around, Georgia Bennett ran herself pretty thin.

“I could eat,” she agreed, tucking a piece of her shoulder length hair behind her ear. “It will have to be quick though,” she added looking at her watch. “I’ve got a class at two.”

“Okay.” I’d take it. Honestly, I was bored out of my mind on the days I didn’t see her. Sitting around by myself was not good for my morale. When I wasn’t focusing on PT or getting to know Georgia better, I was second-guessing my abilities to make a comeback. What if I wasn’t as strong and resilient as I pretended to be? What if I could never ride again? Or at least not the way I used to?

“Okay,” she echoed sweetly when she caught me staring off. Worrying about my recovery wasn’t something that I should even be doing. I was going to get back on my bike. My real concern needed to be what exactly I was going to do when my flirting with Georgia finally paid off.

I’d never really been a take-a-girl-out-on-dates kind of guy—not that this was a date. She had shut me down more times than I could count, so for the time being I was content with us just being “friends,” or whatever she had convinced herself that we were. But it did seem like she was becoming more receptive to my flirting the more time we spent together. Hell, she’d even flirted back a few times. I couldn’t help but wonder if she looked forward to the time we spent together as much as I did. Or if she missed me or even thought about me when I wasn’t around the way that I did.

I knew a little bit about her relationship history from talking to Reid, but we’d yet to reach a place where I felt comfortable asking her about her fiancé. Reid told me that he had been killed overseas during his short military career. I didn’t tend to let my emotions run too high, but my heart broke when I thought about such a pretty young girl having her whole life thrown off track by such a tragedy. I also had no idea how to bring that up in conversation, or if she’d even want to discuss it with a guy she barely knew. So I’d wait. I’d wait until she wanted to tell me about him. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t. I wasn’t about to push her to pour her heart out. Deep and meaningful wasn’t really my thing. Casual and fun was more like it.

Besides, I wasn’t really looking forward to the conversation where I told her that most of the things she’d probably heard about me were true. I’d never had a girlfriend. Twenty-four years on this earth and I’d never been able to commit myself to anything other than my dirt bike. Not that I wanted Georgia to be my girlfriend. I just wanted to be around her. I wanted to know her. To know what made her smile and laugh and what made her mad and if she ever lost her temper. In short, I wanted to know what made her tick. And, I definitely wanted to sleep with her.

As much as humanly possible before I had to head back to my real life on the motocross circuit.

I studied her while we walked together. She was gorgeous. Petite, but curvy in all the right spots. She was one of those rare women that truly never needed an ounce of makeup. She had big blue eyes that made a man forget what he was thinking and the prettiest pink lips I’d ever seen. The kind of lips that I suspected had a mind of their own. That is, if I could just get her to let go of a little bit of that control she held onto so tightly. To say that Georgia was wound tight was an understatement. But I liked a challenge. Hell, I lived for a challenge.

If getting Georgia Bennett to let her hair down, so to speak, was the only other thing I had to focus on—other than my recovery—these next twelve weeks weren’t going to be so bad.

“So Miss Georgia,” Brett began as we walked down a hospital hallway. Our arms were interlocked giving him the opportunity to nudge my shoulder with his arm.

Being this close to him—to any guy—felt strange. I couldn’t deny that feeling the warmth of his body against mine was nice. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have a man this close or to be held. Granted, I was the one doing the holding this time as I helped my newly injured friend take a little bit of the pressure off his knee. Either way, I kind of liked it.

“What’s on the schedule this week? I was thinking if you’re not too busy we should probably pencil in that sponge bath.” He waggled his eyebrows and smirked.

“Seeing as how you’ve been bathing yourself since you were released from the hospital, I don’t think there’s any need for that, stud,” I deadpanned.

He was as persistent with his flirting as he was with his physical therapy. Harmless as it was—and despite the fact that I enjoyed our playful banter on occasion—he never crossed the line. It was always just words.

“Fine then,” he chuckled. “Where are we eating?”

“What sounds good?” I asked when we made it to the parking lot of the hospital. I’d parked as close as I could, knowing that, even if he wouldn’t admit it, a long walk for him was not a fun one. I had to give it to him, he was tough. Having a knee replacement couldn’t have been on the top of his bucket list. Lucky for him, recovery was going better than expected. Dr. Forlani had told him that his knee was as worn out as a seventy year old man’s with severe arthritis when she’d opened him up. A result of beating his body to hell and back on a dirt bike, I’m sure. Other than that, he was young and in really good shape. Almost too good of shape. At least that’s what I’d gathered from the countless times I’d checked him out. Long and lean in all the right places. Not to mention he had a six pack set of abs that I was lucky enough to get a peek at one day when I’d went over to the cabin to check on him. Abs that had fixated themselves in the fantasy segment of my thoughts. Thoughts that I had zero time for.

I was busy enough without adding anything else to my to-do list. Not that I wanted “to-do” Brett. I mean, I liked him. I liked him in an I-want-to-help-him-out kind of way, but as far as anything romantic between us went, a fantasy was all that it would ever be. It was all it ever could be. Getting in a relationship of any kind was not high on my list of priorities at the moment. Especially not a relationship with the bad boy of motocross. Pass. Hard pass.

Even if he did have the whole southern rebel thing going for him. A Texas gentleman drenched in whiskey and bad intentions. The moment I met him at a local bar with my sister’s then ex-boyfriend, Reid, I knew he was trouble... and according to Google he was exactly that. Wild and reckless on the track and off. Brett Sallinger had quite the reputation, complete with countless women, long nights of celebrating victories and enough photographic evidence that led me to believe it was all true.

But damn, he sure was fun to look at. Blond hair that he kept a little long and chaotic. Eyes that were a mix of blue and gray. The rest of his features were perfectly imperfect. His nose had a slight bend to it and his front two teeth overlap the tiniest bit, both of which I found myself finding more adorable each time I saw him. Not to mention the intricate ink patterns that covered his body. Patterns that seemed to mesmerize the opposite sex. Myself included, much to my own surprise. Plus, he was funny and charming. I’d been giving him the benefit of the doubt when it came to his reputation, and so far he’d been sweet and respectful and nothing like the guy I saw on the gossip sites.

A pang of guilt struck the center of my chest as I climbed behind the wheel of my SUV and glanced over at Brett. It hadn’t been all that long ago that I was sitting in this very seat holding hands with Jamie as I drove down the street. Jamie was the love of my life. My fiancé. The only guy I’d ever fantasized a future with and he was gone. As hard as it was to think about him, I still did every day.

James Shaw, or Jamie as most called him, wasn’t just the first boy who ever kissed me. He was the only boy who ever kissed me. He was all of my firsts and onlys, actually. He’d been my best friend from the moment I met him, and over time it turned into so much more. We’d learned to play t-ball, ride bikes, and swim together. And, more importantly, we’d learned what love was.

Driving through town kept Jamie at the very forefront of my thoughts. We’d walked down those sidewalks. We’d studied at that library. Our first real date was at the very diner I was taking Brett to. There wasn’t a place in this town that we’d hadn’t been together. There wasn’t a place in this town that didn’t remind me of him.

When Jamie and I were fourteen years old he told me that he was going to marry me one day and I believed him. We shared everything—school dances, homework assignments, backseats. It came as no surprise that soon after graduation, he popped the question. Sure we were young, but we had nine years of being friends, followed by four years of being boyfriend and girlfriend. We should have had sixty more being husband and wife, but a roadside bomb in Afghanistan had other plans for us. It had been a little over three years since he’d been gone. But in my head and in my heart, he was present every single day.

I loved every chestnut colored hair on that boy’s head. He was sweet and handsome and he truly wanted to make the world a better place, which was exactly why he enlisted in the Army after graduation.

“It won’t be forever,” he’d told me the night before he deployed. “I’ll be back to marry you after this tour,” he had promised. I’d swallowed back the fear and believed him.

I should have listened to my gut when he told me he wanted to enlist. I should have told him I didn’t want him to do it. I should have been selfish and tried to save him, but then I wouldn’t have been the supportive girlfriend I’d always been. The thought that he might have still been alive was a constant reminder that I should have said to hell with it and told him that I didn’t want him to enlist.

I swallowed my emotions before they got the best of me and glanced over at Brett. He was tapping his fingers steadily on the center console, unable to sit still for even a few minutes. I couldn’t help but smile at his childlike energy. That strange tugging sensation in my belly always surprised me, but there it was. My attraction to Brett was a little confusing. He wasn’t like Jamie at all really. He was reckless where Jamie was meticulous. Impulsive where Jamie was speculative. Intense and overwhelming where Jamie had been calm and soothing.

I felt safe with Jamie. I felt nervous around Brett.

That’s the difference between love and lust, I supposed. Every time I started to feel tempted to give into one of Brett’s suggestive offers, Jamie’s face appeared behind my eyes.

I miss him.

That was an understatement. I missed him more than I could ever fathom a person missing another person. The day he died, a big part of me died. A part of me that I was struggling to figure out how to live without. I might have been alive and kicking, blood pumping and heart beating, but it wasn’t the same as before. Before I was excited about my future, about the life we were going to build together, now I was just went through the motions of each day.

Which is exactly why I kept myself so busy. And, why I was ushering around an injured motocross star and agreeing to have lunch with him. At least if I was busy, I could pretend that I wasn’t hoping that it was all just a bad dream. Hoping that I’d wake up one morning and Jamie would be lying in bed with me. That we would be happily married and living our life together like we were supposed to. I wanted the pain of missing him to stop but deep down I knew it never would.

“The diner?” Brett asked as I nearly drove past it.

“Right,” I said, yanking myself out of my head while easing into a parking spot on the street.

Brett ambled out of the car and looked over at me with those piercing blue eyes. “Not like we had too many other choices.” He shrugged.

“This is true,” I agreed, forcing myself to be in the moment with him and not wallow in the past.

“A burger sounds good,” Brett said as we stepped onto Main Street. “Besides, it’d be great to just hang out for a while. Outside of the hospital and the cabin.” He laughed, casually bending and straightening his leg as we walked.

Diner burgers were Jamie’s favorite.

“I guess.” I hadn’t really thought about it. Helping Brett out was just another thing on the schedule that I kept jam-packed. I was close to completing my nursing degree. Class on Mondays and Tuesdays. Clinical hours on Wednesday and Thursday. Volunteering at the hospital between hours of studying the rest of the week. I usually squeezed in a workout or two, and maybe a night out with my sister when she was home. Which she wasn’t right now. She was out touring the country with her boyfriend, which meant more hours at the hospital for me. I’d squeezed giving Brett rides to and from check ups and physical therapy appointments on the calendar without as much as a second thought. Helping people out was kind of my thing.

Over the past couple months I’d fallen into a friendship with Brett that I hadn’t expected. He was fun and easy going. He didn’t look at me like I might fall apart at any second like most people in Halstead did. With good reason, I guess. Most girls didn’t lose their fiancé at the ripe old age of nineteen. I knew Reid had probably told him about Jamie, but he’d never inquired so I’d yet to volunteer any info.

As much as I liked that Brett didn’t handle me with kid gloves, he also made me nervous. A kind of nervous I hadn’t felt in a very long time. A kind of nervous that I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for.

I especially wasn’t ready for the casual way he leaned across the booth in the diner and reached over, his elbow resting on the table between us as his hand brushed aside my hair. His hand lingered a moment on my neck, his fingertips trailing up and then down my skin in a slow, seductive manner. My skin rippled with goosebumps as soon as he leaned back in his seat.

“See? Hanging out with me could be... fun,” he said. My eyes glanced up momentarily into his and then back to my menu. “We should have a little fun, Georgia.” He bit back a grin. “It’s allowed. I promise.”

What just happened?

His gaze was different—less playful and far more enticing than I was used to from him.

No. No, this wasn’t allowed. This was mine and Jamie’s place and being here with Brett, letting him touch me, liking it, was wrong.

Panic rose like bile in my throat.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked, setting my menu down. A faint tightness in my chest and throat made it hard to breath.

“I wanted to see your face,” he said nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t just crossed the line between us. The line that I was comfortable with. The line that kept me safe. I was used to Brett making innuendos from time to time, but this caught me off guard. “Can I not touch you?”

The physicality of his actions—the slow, steady sweep of his hand across my skin had made it impossible to think. I could tell by the smirk on his face that he knew exactly what kind of affect he’d had on me and while a part of me felt exhilarated, and admittedly a bit turned on, I felt like I was doing something wrong.

“No. I mean... I don’t know. I...” I kept trying to reason out an answer until a waitress came to take our order. “I forgot that I need to go to the library,” I blurted out. “Big test this week,” I padded the lie. “Let’s get our food to go then I’ll drop you off.”

* * *

How did I let that happen?

I’d asked myself the same question a handful of times, but I still couldn’t come up with a good solid answer. Could Brett touch me? Sure. I mean, we weren’t strangers. We’d walked arm in arm through the hospital and I hadn’t thought twice about it, but the touch in the diner was different. It was fueled by much more than friendship. It was more sensual and less innocent. Perhaps Brett had caught on to my stolen glances and how I sometimes let my eyes linger long than they should have. He was subtlety calling me out. The real question was…did I want him to touch me? The second he was out of the car when I’d dropped him off at Reid’s cabin, I’d let out a deep breath that I might have been holding in the remainder of the ride.

I’d driven around for over an hour after I left Brett. Once I’d lied to him about having somewhere to be, his laid back posture stiffened. We’d waited for our food and driven back to the cabin in mostly silence, peppered with awkwardness and short answers from both of us. The look on his face when he was getting out of the car caused a physical ache in my chest. I wasn’t sure if he was shocked or sad about it. But I’d hurt his feelings in some way and I hadn’t meant to.

Truth be told, our interaction had scared me. Not only because of his reputation, but because I liked the way it felt when he was touching me. The stroke of his hand on my neck had my insides coiled tightly. It made me giddy, which made me feel like a teenager again. I wanted to be a woman, not a teenager. I needed to start behaving like I was in my twenties. A guy was interested in me, or physically attracted to me at least, it shouldn’t have been a big deal.

Don’t make it a big deal then, Georgia, I told myself as I tried to fall asleep that evening.

Until Brett, I honestly hadn’t even entertained the idea of going on a date with anyone, let alone being physical with someone. I’d become numb to the entire concept. Not that anyone had asked. Every guy in Halstead knew Jamie and knew my story. Maybe it scared them. Maybe I appeared unavailable. Brett either didn’t know or didn’t care, which was kind of liberating. I found it hard to believe that Reid or my sister hadn’t filled him in on at least some of my backstory.

My fingers found the chain that I constantly wore around my neck and I pulled on it until the engagement ring Jamie had given me slipped out from beneath my t-shirt. I’d stopped wearing the ring on my finger when I couldn’t take the looks of pity anymore.

“That poor girl.”

“Surely she’ll find someone else.”

“Not if she keeps holding onto a ghost…”

I’d heard it all when they thought I wasn’t listening. The people in my small town just had to talk about me—and everyone else for that matter. The truth was…they were right. That poor girl indeed. Once I’d slipped the ring onto a chain and tucked it under my shirt, the comments seemed to slow. Little did they know I was still holding onto him. To the future I’d never have. I was still thinking about him. Every single night.

The difference was tonight, between thoughts of Jamie and how it used to be, how it could’ve and should’ve been, thoughts of Brett Sallinger managed to sneak in as well.