Redeeming Love (Resilient Hearts #2)

by Ashley Cassidy

  “Whatever. Since when have you become such a caveman? And I come all the way here and all I get from you are questions and lectures?”

  She sounds upset. The tone of her voice immediately makes me snap out of my protective mode and into reality. She arranged all of this without me finding out to surprise me for Christmas. My heart swells with love for her. I reach for her immediately and crash my lips to hers.

  As soon as we make contact, everything else in the world fades away. She smells of coffee and chocolate and her own unique scent. A whiff of her is enough to make me intoxicated with the strongest feelings of love and desire for her. Having her in my arms after all this time and tasting her lips takes me on a high that only Aleah’s touch is capable of doing.

  I feel so giddy, all of a sudden, that I can’t help myself. I lift her off the ground while our lips are still locked and start spinning around with her. She starts chuckling in between kisses and the sound of her laugh takes me to new heights. I get lost in the sensations of her skin, kissing her neck and the soft spot bellow her ear, until I hear, “Get a room,” from a guy passing by.

  “Great idea,” I yell behind him then turn to Aleah in excitement. “Let’s a get a room here.”

  “I’m a couple of steps ahead of you,” she says with a twinkle in her eyes.

  “You got us a room here?”

  “Yup, one for us and one for your driver and his wife.”

  Hearing her mention Patrick reminds me that I totally forgot about him. I turn around to look for him.

  “He’s gone. I made arrangements for them to pick up their room key at the front desk. I’m sure they’re in their room by now.”

  I stare at her in silence. How did I get this lucky? How’s this incredibly beautiful kind-hearted girl mine? My heart swells with so much love for her, that it is about to burst out of my chest. I take a look at her figure and desire pulses in my veins. I grab her hand and start pulling her towards the rooms. “You…our room…now,” is all I can manage to say.

  “Did you forget how to form sentences?” she teases.

  “I’m about to make you forget how to talk.”

  A twinkle of excitement forms in her eyes as she starts rushing towards the building holding our room.

  TWENTY

  ALEAH

  The look of desire in Aiden’s eyes makes my stomach flutter with excitement and anticipation. As soon as I open the door to our hotel room, he pulls me in and has me pinned against the closed door in no time. He brings his face so close to me that I can feel his breath tickle my skin. He hovers his mouth over mine for a second without touching me, before moving away to whisper in my ear, “I’m going to ravage you first, and then I’m going to make love to you slowly.”

  His words alone make every nerve ending in my body come alive. He crashes his lips to mine then and every cell in my body screams for joy. He kisses me with an urgency that only two month’s worth of pent up desire can drive, and I match his every move. It’s amazing how after such a short time of being together our lips are so in synch and how our bodies fit so perfectly together. It’s as if we were made for each other.

  He pulls away from my lips to start feasting on my neck and I can’t help the moans that escape my mouth. He begins placing a trail of open mouth kisses from my shoulder blades down to my collar bone, igniting an explosion of desire in my body. He’s just started touching me and I’m already squirming with need.

  He kneels down in front of me, getting a hold of one of my feet and placing my leg across his shoulder. He lifts up the hem of my dress then taking a peek under. A devilish smile crosses his face.

  “You should always wear dresses around me. I like the view from down here.”

  A blush creeps up my face and the only sound escaping my mouth is a gasp. He continuous his delicious torture then by alternating between nibbling, licking and placing a trail of small kisses from my ankle up to the sensitive area behind my knee. He pays special attention to that area licking and sucking until I start squirming and begging him to move up. Still he takes his time kissing my thigh all the way up to my pelvic area. Just before he reaches where I want him the most, he switches my legs, lifting the other one and giving it the same treatment. Both of my legs turn to jelly by his delicious assault. I lean against the door, the weight the only thing keeping me standing. I’m about to start begging him when he finally makes his way to my most sensitive area. He takes his time ravishing me from inside and out. My body is humming with so much need that it takes very little time before an explosion of vibrations ripples through my body.

  The aftershocks are still traveling through my body when he lifts me up and carries me to bed. He removes both of our clothes slowly, and takes his time making love to me in a sweet sensual dance that has my heart brimming with love and my body screaming with joy.

  We spend the rest of the day in our room tangled up in the sheets and catching up on lost time. We even order room service for dinner, not wanting to share each other with the outside world for even the duration of a meal. We talk about everything we haven’t been able to discuss over the phone and make plans for when Aiden comes back.

  When I finally drift off to sleep at night, it is with my head resting on Aiden’s chest and my arm wrapped around his torso. I fall sleep to the rhythm of his heart, and that is the most peaceful lullaby I’ve ever heard.

  I sense Aiden watching me, even before I open my eyes. When I do, I’m greeted by the most sexy sight in the whole world; Aiden sitting in bed shirtless, watching me with a tender smile on his face and a radiant shine in his eyes.

  “Good morning, love. Merry Christmas”

  “Merry Christmas to you too. How long have you been up?”

  “A while. You were in a deep sleep. You must have been exhausted from your trip yesterday.”

  “Not just the trip, also jet lag, and all our…physical activities yesterday.”

  “Oh you better not get exhausted from the physical activities. Otherwise you’ll be exhausted all the time around me.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Most definitely. In fact, I hear physical activity is good for your health in the morning. How about we engage in some exercises before we head out to breakfast?”

  “Do you really have to ask?” I question, with a twinkle in my eyes.

  Aiden gets the hint, and there is very little talking and no questions asked for a long time after that.

  We get ready to go to breakfast, but before we make it to the restaurant I pull Aiden towards the Christmas tree in the lobby, making him sit by the tree so I can give him his present.

  “I wish you had told me you’re coming so I could at least get you something. I sent your Christmas gift to your house. It’s probably sitting right outside your door at this very moment, and here I am having nothing to give you on Christmas day.”

  “You don’t need to give me anything, Aiden. Just being here with you is the biggest gift for me.”

  “But you made this happen. So this is your gift to me, not the other way around.”

  “It doesn’t matter who organized the trip. The important part is that we’re here together and that makes this the best Christmas ever for me,” I tell him, as I hand him his gift.

  I’m very nervous about this gift. I put a lot of thought into what to get for Aiden and it wasn’t easy to come up with the right idea. What do you give a guy who’s always had any material thing he wanted? At the end I decided to go with something unique, but as I’m standing in front of him waiting for him to open the gift, I start to seriously question my choice. He tears off the wrapping paper, revealing the inscribed photo album. He lifts his head to meet my eyes and I can see that his are filled with questions.

  “It’s a photo memory book,” I explain. “Your grandpa had a lot of family photo albums, and he told me once that no one from the family has actually seen any of the albums. He gave me permission when he was still alive to look through the albums and I noticed he had a lot of pict
ures of you. I went back through the pictures and tried to find the ones that display the happiest moments of your life. I picked the pictures based on stories you’ve told me of your life growing up. I wanted to remind you of the good times in your life.”

  He starts going through the pages. Every once in a while, he stops and stares at a picture and a small smile crosses his lips. Once he gets to the pictures I put in there of him and me, he stops turning the page. A huge grin crosses his face, as he stares at the picture of us at the Griffin Observatory.

  “This was one of the best nights of my life,” he says, turning his head in my direction.

  “Mine too.”

  He begins looking through more pictures, until he reaches the last page which displays a picture of us on our first night in Monterrey.

  “Now, this was hands down the best night of my life.”

  A blush creeps up on my face, as I remember the night Aiden claimed my body for the first time. I try to cover the blush with a smile.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it. You put so much thought and love into this and it shows. But you know what the best part about this present is?”

  I shake my head.

  “The fact that you can add more pages to the end, because I intend to add hundreds of pages of pictures of the two of us to this album.”

  His words make my heart smile. “How about we start that right now?”

  He hands his phone off to one of the hotel employees to take a picture of us in front of the Christmas tree. I make a mental note to add this picture of our first Christmas together to the album.

  We head to breakfast next at the outdoor restaurant overlooking the river. The scenery is breathtaking and the food is delicious. We discuss our plans for the next few days. Once Aiden finds out that we have the whole week together, he gets so excited that he almost starts jumping up and down for joy.

  When I first started looking into making this trip, I didn’t even know if Aiden has any days off. Lou contacted the Foundation for me and they informed us that the Zambia office would be closed for the whole period between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Once I found out that he has over a week of free time, I knew I had to make the trip no matter what. Even though I would never admit it to Aiden, the idea of traveling by myself to Africa was more than a bit frightening to me. But my desire to spend Christmas with Aiden far overweighed my fears. And now that I’ve actually made the trip and am sitting here in front of him, I know that all of my fears were baseless and I couldn’t have made a better decision. Not only do I get to spend a whole uninterrupted week with Aiden, I get to spend it in one of the most exotic places in the world. This area offers so many great activities for tourists that we can do one thing every day for the next week and there will still be things to do. From white water rafting, to bungee jumping, safaris where you can see a lot of rare animals, riding elephants, and walking with lions, there is something exciting to do every day. Aiden and I decide to take advantage of our opportunity and cover as many activities as we can while we’re here.

  TWENTY-ONE

  AIDEN

  The week I spent with Aleah was one of the best periods of my life. If I thought I was in love with this woman before, after this trip I worship the ground she walks upon. Not only is she beautiful inside and out, she’s athletic, adventurous, and overall a blast to be around. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s also a goddess in the bedroom. She thinks because she’s inexperienced, she’s not that good. But her innocence and purity is the biggest turn on for me.

  Just thinking about her makes my chest ache with longing for her. I arrived in Port-au-Prince in Haiti yesterday and can’t be happier that this is the last leg of my trip. As much as this experience has been incredible and a huge eye-opening, I’m ready to go home and be with my woman.

  Being in Haiti is especially hard, because out of the three countries that I have visited, this one is in the worst shape. They’re giving us a tour of some of the devastations caused by the earthquake in this city and I simply cannot believe what my eyes see. There is still rubble from the ruins of many building in some areas. You see rebuilding too, but there are definitely more half-built buildings and empty dirt lots at which buildings once stood. Thousands of people still live in temporary camps that were erected in the aftermath of the earthquake with very little access to basic needs.

  Our guide explains that even before the earthquake, a majority of Haitians were poor and disadvantaged, but afterwards they lost the very little that they had. Rebuilding has been slow, and in a country that is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest countries in the developing world, there are very little opportunities for education and work.

  I learn that the Foundation does a lot of good work here, mainly focused on education and teaching children vocations skills that can help them acquire decent paying jobs, but the situation is so severely horrible that I wonder if anything we do makes even a small dent.

  Watching the conditions with which these people live makes me miss home even more. I know that seems selfish, but watching this level of poverty is too hard to bear. When you see schools made up of torn up tarp where kids sit on the dirt floor with no books and no pencils, you can’t help but feel their pain.

  I close my eyes and picture Aleah to calm my heart. Her beautiful face is the most calming medicine for my troubled mind. I don’t want to ignore what’s in front of me and I vow to help as much as I can, but all I can think of now is when will I get home.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ALEAH

  I step out of the elevator into the parking garage, and immediately the hair in the back of my neck stands up. I don’t need to look around to know that someone is watching me. This is not the first time I’ve felt this. The same thing has happened a few times in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve never been able to locate the source. But when it happened before, it was in a public place with other people around. This is the first time I feel it in a place where nobody else is around, and this time I get a really bad feeling in my stomach.

  I start looking frantically around to see if I can find the person who is making me feel this way. Just when I’m about to give up, I spot him. He’s sitting in a car, only a few spots away from mine. His car is backed into the parking spot, so he’s facing the elevators. His windows have a dark tint, and all I can see is that he’s wearing sunglasses and a hat pull down low. I can’t make out any of his features, but there is no mistaking that he’s watching me.

  I feel fear slowly crawl up my spine. There is something off about this man, and as I watch him more closely, my body starts reacting to the panic bubbling up below the surface. Cold sweat starts running down my hands, as a shiver travels my back. I pick up my speed, while clutching my phone in my hand and preparing myself to dial 911. I’m only a few steps away from my car, when I notice him opening his car door and stepping out. I try to make out his features, but with the huge sunglasses, the hat and the large beard covering his face, barely anything is visible. He’s also wearing a bulky jacket and baggy pants. Getting a full picture view of the guy makes me even more scared. I start running towards my car, and hear his footsteps quicken. My heart starts pounding in my chest, as I look around for an escape route.

  Just when I feel him come up behind me, a car pulls into the parking garage towards us and I hear his retreating footsteps. I take the opportunity to quickly slide into my car. Once in the safety of my car, I back up the car quickly and look around to search for him. I notice he’s back in his car. I speed away from the parking garage, hoping and praying that I can lose him once I get to the street below. He follows closely behind me in his car.

  I almost hit a car as I merge into the street traffic distractedly. I have to force myself to take deep breaths to control my shaking hands. I try to focus on driving, but I find myself checking my rear view mirror more than watching the road ahead of me. The longer he follows my car, the more terrified I feel.

  I tr
y to remember from all the action movies I’ve watched how to lose a car. As soon as I do, I make an unexpected sharp turn at the intersection and watch him drive away in my rear view mirror. Even though I don’t see his car after that, I keep driving around for another fifteen minutes to make sure he’s gone. Once I’m certain that he is no longer following me, I release a tense breath I had been holding and pull into a busy restaurant parking lot. It is only then that I notice how my whole body is shaking. Even my teeth are chattering uncontrollably as my initial shock subsides and the terror settles at the pit of my stomach.

  It takes me at least ten minutes of deep breathing to calm down enough to be able to drive to class. Even then I spend all day looking behind me and waiting for him to show up at any moment. The clicking sound of his shoes on the parking garage floor keeps echoing in my head, and the feeling that he’s about to grab me from behind stays with me all day.

  I think about what I need to do and who I need to talk to, and I know right away that I can’t tell Aiden. He’s still in Haiti for another week and telling him would do nothing but make him go crazy with worry. If I tell Lou, he would want to hire me a body guard, and I honestly don’t want to be the freak that shows up to class with a personal guard.

  At the end, I decide to just tell Mia. When I do, I’m really happy about my decision. Mia is level-headed during times of stress. She asks me questions I didn’t think of and suggests that I tell the management company at my building and ask them if they have cameras in the parking garage. We also look up information for a self defense class and both sign up for it.

  On my way home that night, I also stop by the store and buy a pepper spray for my purse and one that goes on my key chain. By the time I get home, I’ve calmed down a bit, but I still watch my back every step of the way. Once in the lobby of my tower, I mention the incident to the attendant and ask them to keep an eye out for any suspicious individuals coming around.