Redemption

by Jessica Ashe

  Oliver and a camera crew walked over to my side of the field, so at least I didn’t have to trek across there in heels.

  I tried to focus on Oliver’s smiling face, and pretend it was just the two of us. I’d never gotten the hang of all the fame that followed Oliver around, and having the attention focused on me was entirely foreign.

  Oliver still had a microphone in his hand from when he had announced the winning number. Please don’t make me speak. Please, anything but speaking in front of all these people.

  The crowd sounded a lot louder once I was down on the field, but I just about heard someone from the NFL congratulate me on my win.

  Oliver passed me the envelope with the tickets and kissed me on the cheek. A photographer insisted on taking a few photos, so Oliver put his arm around me and I just about managed a smile even though I was terrified.

  “Now take the tickets out of the envelope and hold them up,” the photographer ordered.

  I just wanted to get this over with now, so I opened the envelope and reached inside. “It’s empty,” I said to the photographer.

  “They must be in there,” he said. “Look again.”

  I held the envelope open and looked inside. “I’m telling you it’s—” The envelope wasn’t empty. Nestled in the corner was something round and incredibly shiny.

  I examined the diamond ring between my fingers as if it were the first ring I’d ever seen. It was certainly the first ring anyone had ever bought me, and this one looked a lot like an engagement ring.

  I turned to look at Oliver, but he wasn’t next to me anymore. I looked back to the photographer but just saw Oliver on his knees in front of me.

  “I know we’ve only been together eight months,” Oliver said, “but we spent eight years apart, so in my book this is long overdue. Michelle, will you marry me?”

  Someone shoved a microphone in front of my face, and it was only then I realized his words had been amplified around the entire stadium. The previously empty seats were now full, and every person was eagerly awaiting my response.

  None more so than Oliver. “Yes,” I replied, quietly. The microphone didn’t pick up my response, but I was crying now and couldn’t say it again. I looked into Oliver’s eyes and nodded my head vigorously.

  He stood up and pushed the microphone out of the way, before placing his hand on the back of my head and pulling me towards him for a kiss.

  Maisie later told me that everyone in the crowd was whistling and cheering, but I couldn’t hear anything. At that moment there was only Oliver and me. No one else.

  Eventually we were encouraged to head back up to the stands so that the players could get on with the second half. I have no idea what happened. All I can remember is sitting there holding Oliver’s hand with the slight sensation of weightlessness that made me feel like I was flying.

  I didn’t stop smiling for at least a week. Even when Dad tried to get in touch to congratulate me, I just kept smiling and told him he could come to the wedding if he wanted. Nothing was going to spoil my mood.

  I never did get my Super Bowl tickets, though.

  I hope you enjoyed Redemption! I had a tonne of fun writing it. You may not know this, but self-published authors like myself are heavily reliant on reviews to get the word out about our books. It would be a great help to me if you could take a few minutes of your time to write an honest review of the book on Amazon. Just click this link and you will be whisked off to the appropriate page.

  Keep reading for a free sample of my debut novel Escape.

  In November 2015 I will be releasing a FREE exclusive eBook only for those on my mailing list. Be sure to sign up.

  Join my mailing list to be notified when new books are released. You will also have the opportunity to purchase future books at a discount and receive free Advanced Review Copies. Click here to join. I will never send you any spam.

  The debut stepbrother romance novel from Jessica Ashe

  Last week I made the biggest mistake of my life--Caiden Ramsden. He's a cocky, arrogant prick who is sleeping his way around London. I normally stay well clear of bad-boys, but he's ripped, sexy, and impossible to resist.

  I'm supposed to be clever. I'm a straight A student going to the University of Cambridge. So why was I attracted to such an arsehole? I should know better.

  Sleeping with him was a big mistake, but I had no idea just how big until he showed up at my house with his mom. Caiden is about to be my new stepbrother. I have to forget what happened between us, but I don't know how to get him out of my head. And I'm not sure I want to.

  Women claim to hate me. Apparently I'm arrogant and cocky, but that doesn't stop women lining up to screw me. And they always come back for more. It turns out posh English women love American bad boys.

  Sure, I slept around, but I had rules in place. Rules that had served me well until Vicky came into my life.

  The Golden Rule = don't sleep with any first-timers.

  I had that rule in place for a reason, but I couldn't help myself when Vicky made her intentions clear. I broke the Golden Rule and my world collapsed around me.

  Now I needed Vicky in my life, but she was about to be my stepsister. Vicky had given me the most memorable night of my life. Stepsister or not, there was no way I was letting her go without a fight.

  This is a standalone novel with a HEA and no cliffhanger. Contains scenes of a sexual nature and is intended for adults only.

  The man flashed a grin at me as he walked out of the convenience store clutching a large box of condoms. Caiden? It couldn’t be him. I’d been seeing his face everywhere since I lost my virginity to him last week. I must have been imagining things.

  Caiden couldn’t be here. Not in my local corner shop a hundred miles from where he was staying in London.

  There was no mistaking that grin, though. It screamed ‘I’m a cocky, arrogant, arsehole who’s in love with my own reflection.’

  That grin had charmed most of the girls I went to school with, and a few of them even ended up going back to his penthouse in London for drunken one-night stands.

  So had I. He’d grinned at me like that when I’d undressed in front of him last week just before he took my virginity.

  Snap out of it Victoria, you’re imagining things. Caiden was living in London for the summer and would soon be returning home to America. Why would he be in my sleepy little town?

  “You okay, Victoria?” Betty asked, as she took the bread, cheese, and cold meat from my shopping basket.

  Betty had been working in this shop for as long as I could remember. When we first came here as a small child, Betty had owned the small, independent store, and she worked seven days a week all year round.

  At some point, a big supermarket chain had noticed the prestigious piece of real estate in Windsor and had purchased the shop from Betty. I’d felt sorry for her at first. She’d cried when they took the sign down and changed the name, but a few weeks later she looked noticeably happier. She only had to work five days a week now and she once told me she preferred being bossed around than being the boss herself.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Betty,” I replied.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Betty said. “That’ll be £7.65.”

  “I’m just tired from the journey home,” I said, as I slid my debit card in the chip and pin machine. Caiden was no ghost. A ghost wouldn’t have given me the best night of my life. I shuddered as I thought back to the moment he entered me; temporary pain quickly giving way to wave after wave of pleasure.

  I hadn’t done much that first time other than just lay there. He had done all the work, but he was the expert after all. I made up for it the second time. And the time after that.

  “I’m sure your father will be delighted to have you back home,” Betty said. “I always ask after you whenever he comes in here, and he tells me how well you’re doing at school. I hear you’re off to uni in a few months? Cambridge is it?”

  I nodded. I hadn’t t
old my dad I’d been accepted by the University of Cambridge, but he’d already gone around telling everyone about it as if it were a done deal. Typical.

  “Yes,” I replied, taking the food and slipping it into my backpack. I looked behind me to check that no-one was waiting to pay. “This might sound like an odd question, but did the last customer have an American accent?”

  “I don’t know,” Betty replied. “He just put the condoms down and paid without saying a word. Come to think of it, his card wouldn’t work in the pin machine and I’d never heard of the bank on the card. I guess he could have been American. I know one thing about him though.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Betty motioned for me to lean in closer. “He’s got one hell of a nice arse and he’s just bought a big box of condoms. Why don’t you go out there and introduce yourself?”

  “Betty!” I exclaimed, immediately blushing red like I was still the virgin I had been a week ago. “I’m not going to sleep with some strange guy.” Not again. Never again. “Especially not one covered in tattoos.”

  Betty shrugged. “You’re going to university soon. You’re bound to do it sooner rather than later. I’ll tell you this, none of the boys at Cambridge—and that’s what they will be, boys—will get your blood rushing half as much as a man like that.”

  How right she was. Caiden had done things to me that I didn’t think were possible and for the last week I had been trying and failing to replicate that experience myself. I hadn’t even come close.

  “I won’t tell your father,” Betty added. “Just promise me you’ll try to live a little this summer, okay? It’s the last few months of freedom you’ll have in a while.”

  “I promise. But I might stick to hanging out with friends and cooking, instead of… doing that other stuff.”

  Betty smiled and shook her head. “If you make any of those pear muffins again, you be sure to stop by. Don’t be a stranger.”

  I left the store and looked around for Caiden. I must be going mad. It was basically impossible for him to be here. He never left London and on the rare occasions I had spoken to him, he had made his disdain for the English countryside quite clear. Windsor wasn’t the countryside, but it was a relatively small town and to Caiden they were all the same. For him, it was London or nothing.

  I couldn’t see Caiden. I sat down on a bench and tried to reassure myself that he wasn’t here and that I would never need to see him again.

  In three months, I would be going to the University of Cambridge and would leave my old life far behind. No more all-girls school, no more uniform, and no more bumping into Caiden every time my friends insisted on going to a club. I would happily never go to London again if that’s what it took to avoid Caiden.

  I opened up my backpack and took out the letter that I had kept immaculately pressed between two cookbooks that I’d brought home with me from boarding school.

  The envelope had the University of Cambridge logo in the corner, so there had been no mistaking what was inside. The official acceptance would come from UCAS soon after, but Cambridge insisted on writing to all applicants separately if they were accepted.

  I looked at the letter again. The dean praised my application using generic language which he clearly sent to all applicants and then confirmed that I had been accepted for a place to read—not study, read—Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. PPE. The same course my dad had taken decades ago.

  At the bottom of the letter, the dean had scribbled a few words next to his signature. “I loved your personal statement. You’ll be a great addition to our university.” That was a nice touch, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that he wrote that on every letter.

  My personal statement had been one of the strongest parts of my application. My expected A-level grades were two A stars and three As. Good grades without a doubt, but fairly standard among Cambridge applicants.

  My personal statement definitely had an emotional element to it. I wrote about my experience after my mum was nearly killed in a car crash. She’d spent months in intensive care and, even though she was now out of hospital, she had never been the same since. She’d get better one day, but that could be years away.

  My dad had somehow arranged for a divorce the second she was deemed capable of giving consent, and I’d chosen to live with him. Not because I got on with my father better than my mother—I couldn’t stand him most of the time—but because my mother could barely look after herself. I didn’t want to inflict more pressure on her while she recovered.

  I stood up and began the short walk home. My bag was heavy with the books and food, so I decided to run across the busy street by the corner shop instead of walking up to the crossing. A gap in the cars appeared, so I quickly darted across, my head constantly looking both ways.

  I made it two-thirds of the way over when I saw Caiden again. Only from behind this time, but it was unmistakably him. I’d recognize the triangular shape of his back anywhere and the tattoo on the back of his neck was visible even from fifty feet away. He was walking in a different direction to me, but that was him.

  A car horn blared and snapped me out of my trance. I was still standing in the middle of the street and a car had come to a screeching halt in front of me. Well done Victoria. You’re mother’s nearly killed in a car accident and yet you decide to stop in the middle of a busy street.

  I waved a hand apologetically and skipped to the pavement. I turned to look at Caiden again. He’d turned around and was now walking straight towards me. He was looking down at his phone and hadn’t seen me.

  I lowered my gaze and kept walking back towards my house. My hand gripped hold of the Cambridge acceptance letter and I tried to focus on the task at hand. My father had summoned me home for an urgent meeting, but I had news of my own to tell him. I didn’t want to go to Cambridge. I didn’t want to go to university at all. Not yet at least. Maybe not ever. That was going to be tough news for him to take.

  I approached another road to cross. In just a few minutes I would be back home. Back in my childhood house for the first time since Christmas. The road was quiet, but I still flicked my head both ways before crossing. Nothing like nearly being run over to make you more cautious crossing the road.

  My right foot moved to step out onto the road when I felt a finger tap me on the shoulder. I stopped and turned around. Caiden. I looked straight into the deep blue eyes of the man that had taken my virginity a week ago. The eyes that I’d gazed into as I orgasmed with a man for the first time.

  “Hi Vicky,” Caiden said. “You miss me?”

  ---

  “What are you doing here?” I snapped at him through gritted teeth. No-one was around to hear us, but you never knew if there was a nosey neighbour looking out the window.

  “You were much more pleased to see me last time,” Caiden said, his grin still lighting up his smug face. “If I remember correctly, you walked in and started getting undressed immediately. By this point I could already see those pert little titties of yours. Are you going to get your tits out for me again? I wouldn’t mind another look even though they are a bit underwhelming.”

  Underwhelming? He hadn’t seemed underwhelmed with them last week. He hadn’t been able to take his hands off them. I thought back to how he grasped them firmly while I’d been riding him. His thumb and forefinger squeezed my nipples until I moaned and dug my nails into his chest. He’d sucked greedily on them and even used his teeth on my nipples as they stiffened in his mouth. I’d pressed my nails deeper into his chest as the pain shot through me, but I never told him to stop. I didn’t want him to stop.

  “You need to get the hell out of here,” I yelled, not bothering to keep my voice down anymore. “Why are you following me anyway? How do you even know where I live? Are you stalking me?”

  “You really think I’d stalk you? You have a high opinion of yourself, don’t you? I don’t make a habit of chasing after women—they chase after me. Even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t bother with yo
u, although given how little you moved that night, I reckon you’d be quite easy to catch.”

  “Why are you following me then?” I asked. I tried to ignore his insult, but it rang true. The first time we fucked I’d just lain there and let him have his way with me. I had been so overcome with what was happening, it hadn’t occurred to me to do anything. I’d more than made up for it the second time though. And the third. Hadn’t I? He’d seemed satisfied enough at the time, but I was probably kidding myself. How good in bed could I have been compared to all the more experienced women he usually slept with?

  “I told you, I’m not following you.”

  “You just happen to be in my home town on the day I am coming home for the summer? That would be one heck of a coincidence.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Caiden said. “Like a silly little virgin coming up to me and asking for sex even though she’d seemed like a stuck up little madam before.”

  “I wasn’t a virgin,” I lied. I hadn’t wanted him to know, but it had probably been obvious. Perhaps I should admit to it. At least then I would have an excuse for not being good enough in bed.

  Why did I care what he thought of my performance? The entire point of that night had been to loose my V plates to someone I didn’t care about. It’s not like I wanted to sleep with him again. Did I?

  “You were a virgin, but that’s fine. I consider it part of my civic duty to deflower as many English virgins as possible before I go back to the US.”

  “Why don’t you just shove off back to the States then? I think I speak for all English women when I say we don’t want you.”