Ruined (Ruined and Redeemed Duet Book 1)

by Marie Johnston

  Time to rein it in. Witty and charming. “Confession? I’ve never been out of the country.”

  She blinks. “But you’re in Mexico.”

  “First time.”

  “So why now?” Does she know she projects all her thoughts on her face? I’m beginning to think that she’s not the manipulator I first thought. But then everyone lets their guard down sometimes.

  “I’m a single guy. Why not?”

  She laughs, stops, then more laughter bubbles out. I don’t bother to ask what’s going on in that pretty head of hers.

  “You’re single.” She drops her head into her hands. “I don’t even know your last name. Or where you live. Or what you do for a living—Wait. IT and a big city in the US.”

  “Getting to know each other isn’t what the kids do nowadays.”

  Her laugh is pleasing. I should soak it up now. She won’t be laughing at our wedding.

  “I know, I know. But it’s what I do. I don’t do…” She waves her hand around the suite. “This.”

  I echo her question back at her. “So why now?”

  She blows out a gusty sigh and curls her leg under her like she’s getting ready to tell me a juicy story. I can’t wait. “There’s this guy—”

  “You’re seeing someone?” I say, playing along as someone who doesn’t know the full story.

  “No. No. God, no. I’m as single as I said I was. The guy I’m supposed to marry is a dick and he thinks he can control my life.”

  “You were seeing him?”

  “Nope. Never. It’s a long story.” She takes a swig of orange juice.

  “But you’re engaged. You said something last night about an arranged marriage.”

  She cringes. “Sort of.”

  “Let me get this straight. You’re not seeing anyone, but you’re sort of engaged to a guy you never met?”

  “And that I absolutely don’t want to marry.” Her face screws up.

  I nod like a lightbulb went off. “So you let me take you back here so we could… stick it to him?”

  “I have two weeks to get it all out of my system.”

  “With just me or are you planning an orgy tonight?” I say it lightly, but I’m seething inside at the thought.

  She sinks her head into her hand. “In the sober light of day, I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Weren’t you sober on the flight over?”

  “I had a few as soon as they started serving.”

  She’s messed up about our impending marriage. A flicker of guilt lights in my chest but I quash it. “Just be with me then.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You said two weeks. Unless you want to play the island, I’ll be what you need for twelve more days.”

  Lifting her head, she stares at me. A flush works up her body to her cheeks. “O-okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure.” She draws out the word.

  Her confidence could be a little higher, but I’ll take it. “Come here.”

  “What?”

  I scoot the chair back and hold my arms out. “Come. Here.”

  Her bright gaze dips to my lap, then lifts to my face. I’m serious and she knows it. That tongue of hers licks her lips and it’s like a fist around my cock. She slowly unfolds herself.

  The skirt she wears is perfect. She’ll have all the room she needs to move.

  But she’s stiff as a board as she walks the three feet over to me. I grasp her hips and pull her toward me until she straddles my lap. Trying to ignore how hard my heart is beating, I gently press her down.

  She sits. Rigidly.

  “We’re not going to do anything you’re not ready for,” I say quietly. And I mean it. I want her to hate me for the right reasons.

  “Why are you so nice?”

  I almost bark a laugh. “I’m not nice. I’m selfish.” I push her hair over her shoulder and trail my fingers over her collarbone. She shivers. “We can’t have hot sex if you’re primed to run away.” I skim my hand up her cheek. “You won’t come, screaming my name, if you’re not relaxed.”

  She swallows hard. I release her and recline back, my hands out to the side. If she wasn’t so tense, I’d have a raging erection about now. But that could wait. Uncertainty is too strong in her eyes.

  “I’m yours. Try me out.”

  She’s hesitant. She brushes her hands down my shirt and I’m glad I used the shower after she passed out and dove into her toothpaste before she woke. “What’s your last name, Jake?”

  “What do you want it to be, London?”

  She thinks for a moment. “Dixon.” She giggles at her joke. I nearly choke. “Let’s pretend it’s Dixon.”

  “Jake Dixon, it is.” The joke’s on her. “For two weeks, London, I’m at your service.”

  She cups my face in her warm hands, her gaze glued to my lips. “Did we kiss last night?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re so nice, Jake.”

  “No, I’m selfish.” She’ll realize it soon enough.

  Her lips land on mine. I almost wrap my arms around her, but I remember at the last second. This is her show. I’m playing the long game. We have twelve days and she needs to be comfortable enough to let me ruin her.

  Chapter 4

  London

  He doesn’t move. I trace his lips with my tongue before pressing inside. Then he moves, but only his mouth. He follows my lead, the perfect gentleman.

  How’d I get so lucky to land this guy on my vacation of debauchery?

  I’m going to have to change my goals. I don’t want to sleep around. I want Jake. For every second of the next two weeks. I want to pretend that we fall madly in love, that we realize we can’t live without each other, and run off together. He wouldn’t know I was wealthy and I wouldn’t know he was… hell, maybe he’s wealthy, too, and tired of wondering who’s legit and who can run a good con.

  His tongue sweeps against mine and I sink into him. His broad chest against mine, my center lining up perfectly with his.

  There it is. The thick length under me, growing harder. Maybe I can do this—sleep with a man I just met.

  As I taste him, I can’t help but marvel over how much better this is than it was with my exes.

  I had two long-term relationships and a few others that passed the sleeping together stage but fell short of moving in. Then once I took over the company, I couldn’t help but feel the ego wars that started. I earned more than them, I commanded a larger team, and it was sadly and stereotypically intimidating to them. I tried to overcompensate to make them feel all manly and important, but they ditched me soon enough.

  Heat builds inside me, blooming up like a mushroom cloud until I start to wiggle. His thickness under me isn’t hitting the right spot and I need it to.

  He goes rigid. I pull back. His fists are clenched at his sides.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You keep moving like that, princess… it tempts a man.”

  Princess. So common, but we were just talking about castles. I like it. Biting my lower lip, I debate for a heartbeat about whether I should admit what I really want. “I think… I think I’m ready for more.”

  His eyelids drift closed and he shudders, the energy transferring from him to me. “No. Not yet.”

  I frown but probably look like I’m pouting. I am. “What do you mean, not yet?”

  He grabs my hand off his shoulder and kisses the knuckles. The feather of his lips over my skin only makes me squirm more. “First, we have a date.”

  I could scream with sexual frustration, but I grin. How sweet. “Where to?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  The question catches me off-guard. “I didn’t come here to be a tourist.”

  The censuring look he gives me makes me feel like a rebellious teen. “You came all the way here to get drunk and get laid. Nothing else?”

  “I wasn’t concerned about anything else.” Sleeping with strangers would’ve taken all my concentration and ef
fort. “It’s not a world I’m familiar with.”

  His mouth adopts a satisfied tilt. “Now you’re familiar with me. What do you want to do?”

  “You’re the one who’s never been here. What do you want to do?”

  His expression goes blank and he doesn’t answer.

  I try again. “What did you come here for?”

  A lazy smile spreads across his face. “To pick up cute girls who were looking to get drunk and get laid.”

  I poke him in his rock-hard abs. “That’s done, so now what?”

  “I dunno. What would you want to do if you came here on a honeymoon? Other than the obvious.”

  That’s an odd question but totally fitting. I’m not going to get a honeymoon. I’m not going to be the blushing bride. My face will be red from fury.

  So other than hot, sweaty sex with my new husband, what would I do? There’s the usual touristy stuff. Deep sea fishing. Zip lining. Day cruise. None of that calls to me. It sounds fun with Jake, but we’d be mired in planning and perpetually hopped up on adrenaline. Not what I planned for the future honeymoon I wasn’t going to get anyway.

  “I always loved to soak up the sun.” He stares at me for longer than is comfortable. “But seriously, it’s whatever you want to do.”

  A blink later and he’s back to charming Jake. “I love hanging on the beach.”

  “I thought you didn’t travel?” Did I peg this guy wrong? Is he saying what I want to hear to get into my pants?

  Isn’t that what I want?

  “I don’t travel. But I happen to live close to a beach.”

  “Ooh, which one?”

  He cocks his head. “Which one do you want Jake Dixon to live by?”

  Fair enough. This is a two-week fling. He doesn’t know my last name or where I live either. “The one with sand.”

  “What a coincidence. The beach I go to has sand.”

  I giggle and get off him. “Let me put all this food away and I’ll get my suit on.”

  “Did you know there’s a nude beach just a few miles away?”

  I stiffen. Nude. Around sand? And more strangers?

  His deep laugh rumbles right through my body. “Gotcha.”

  I chuck a hunk of strawberry at him and laugh. But inside I’m grateful Jake was the man who brought me back to my room. Because he’s right. I’m not ready to hang out nude with a bunch of people. I want as much time as I can get with him.

  Jacobi

  I miss my private beach. This place is packed. London comes from money. Why isn’t she whining about having to share public space?

  Instead, she’s digging through her hot pink Natural Glow tote, her pert little ass planted on a lounge chair. A family with at least four kids are splashing in the water directly in front of us and a game of beach volleyball is happening to our left.

  She flourishes a white, elegant bottle. “There it is. I do your back, you do mine?”

  I know why she didn’t arrange this in the room. Her skin looks far too silky to just rub sunscreen on and walk away. As it is, I’ll be fighting a public boner.

  But the screaming kids help in that area.

  I hold my hand up for the bottle. A Natural Glow product. Since stomping the bottle into the sand would derail my attempts at seduction, I squirt some in my hand. She wiggles around until her back is facing me. The heart-shaped curve of her ass is almost too much of a distraction. Her bikini today is hot pink, like her tote bag. Her flip-flops? Also hot pink. If she had platinum blond hair, she’d look cartoonish in a bombshell sexy sort of way. But with the scattering of freckles she doesn’t cover with her expensive foundation and the orange tint to her blond hair, she’s once again a mixture of adorable and sexy.

  I start at her shoulders and take my time. There’s too much noise and chaos on the beach for me to get aroused. Or so I think.

  Between the satiny texture of this stupid sunscreen and the warm velvet of her skin sliding under my palm, my cock threatens to tent my shorts.

  Making a rush job of the rest of her back, I ensure every inch of her is protected and then say, “My turn.”

  She seems oblivious to the noise, more relaxed than she’s been since I met her. She’s efficient. My back gets slathered in sunscreen and I have to admit it’s nice not trying to reach those hard spots in the middle by myself. But I don’t want to admit how smooth the sunscreen feels. Instead of being thick and oily and leaving white streaks all over, it absorbs quickly without leaving the chemical film that the spray sunscreens leave behind.

  “What kind of sunscreen is this? It’s nice.” It hurts to give the company a compliment. I remind myself that my mom’s genius was the basis of a lot of these products.

  “It’s our—it’s from a company that tries to stay as natural as possible while acknowledging the advances modern science has brought to the beauty product industry.” She sounds like a walking advertisement.

  “What’s it called?” I clench my teeth together, waiting to hear the name of my parents’ company fall from her lips.

  “Natural Glow. It’s my—I really like their products.”

  “You sound like you could be a spokesperson for them.”

  She giggles, but there’s an undercurrent of tension. Why doesn’t she want to tell Jake Dixon that she’s in charge of a company? “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I keep pushing. “What do you do for work again?”

  “I happen to sell products a lot like the sunscreen.”

  Glancing at her over my shoulder, I want to gauge her expression as she answers my questions. “Like one of those people in the mall that’s pretty liberal with perfume?”

  Her smile’s real. “I don’t think they do that anymore. Too many sensitivities. My company would never—the company I work for doesn’t allow random spritzing.”

  The constant censoring of herself tells me that she talks about Natural Glow a lot. When she discusses the company, it’s with her natural inclination to speak of it as if it’s hers. What she says about Natural Glow underscores that she’s the owner.

  “There. All done.” She sits back on her lounger. “I would offer to get the rest, but we’re in public.”

  “And there’re tons of kids around.” Do I sound as cranky as I feel?

  “I love it. I love just people watching.” She squeezes more product into her hand and starts stroking it over her legs and across her arms. I busy myself with the same thing, otherwise by the time she gets to her torso, I’ll be toast.

  “Don’t you go to the beach to relax?”

  “My most relaxing place is in the middle of a Starbucks.”

  I pause to stare at her. Is she serious? “How on earth is that relaxing?”

  She lifts her shoulder as she rubs circles up and down her forearm, the high-end sunscreen seamlessly disappearing into her skin. “I’ve always been around people. I’m an extrovert with introvert tendencies. People give me energy.”

  Tossing the bottle into her obnoxious tote bag, I settle back on the lounge chair and try to see the beach from her perspective. “You can watch them scream and laugh playing volleyball and it’s like a nap?”

  “Not like a nap, but more like meditation.” She’s reclining like I am, one knee kicked up and her other leg stretched out. She folds her hands over the bare stretch of her belly, and lifts her chin toward the loud family in front of us. “Watching that family splash around in the water and laugh with each other fills my heart with joy. And the volleyball players are having a good time. It’s like their energy transfers to me. I get their natural high without having to do the work.”

  I get a natural high when I win security contracts. The biggest natural high I ever had was when I finally got big enough and developed enough muscles to run my mom’s pimp out of our house. Then riding on that high, I hacked his credit accounts and sold his identity off to someone with a gambling addiction. The other interesting info I found in his computer made its way to the police.

  That’s how I relax.r />
  “The noise is…” How do I finish the sentence? I never liked unpredictable noise, but the music from my games was my Zen. I could crash through the different worlds of Mario Kart, but have a nervous breakdown in the middle of a shopping mall. “Painful.”

  She props herself on an elbow. “This is hard for you. We should go.”

  “No, I’m not—this isn’t—” I press my lips together. This isn’t going well, and I’m being a baby. Babies don’t blackmail women into marrying them so they can steal their company. “It’s nothing. I’m just not used to it.”

  She sits up and grabs for her tote. “Sensory issues are a real thing. If this isn’t fun for you, we can find something else.”

  I don’t want to leave. No, I want to leave more than anything, but I don’t want to leave because she’s worried about me. And I don’t have freaking sensory issues. I’m a computer geek who took over several companies. I can sit on a public beach. “London.”

  There must’ve been something in my tone. She drops the handles of her bag and looks at me.

  “Maybe all I needed was a different perspective. Let’s hang out for a while. Give me a chance.” Finishing with a smile, I hope she takes the bait. I don’t need her babying me.

  “Only if you’re sure. The sunscreen is also good for your skin, so I don’t mind having put it on and not laying out in the sun.”

  “But I want to test its effectiveness.” Placing my hands behind my head, I close my eyes. End of discussion.

  “You’ll be as impressed as I am with it.” She speaks with such confidence that I decide I’m going to lay out here for ten hours just to prove her and that damn sunscreen wrong.

  Chapter 5

  London

  He must not have gotten much sleep last night. We’ve been on the beach for four hours and Jake is still snoozing in the sun. After the first hour, he turned over to his stomach.

  When he confessed that noise was painful for him, I felt so bad. Some of our employees have different sensory sensitivities, especially with smell. I make sure to use what they grew up thinking was a weakness as our company’s greatest asset. My dad set out to create a line of quality skincare and beauty products for the masses. While attaining perfection is unreasonable, that doesn’t mean we want to narrow our focus and cut off any room for Natural Glow to grow.