On the Ropes 2: Insidious Obsession by Michelle Cary Read Free Book Online Page A

never climbed back out.” She slipped an arm around Cole’s biceps and settled against his shoulder. “I pretty much was on my own after that. We lived on welfare and handouts, and I spent every waking moment either working part-time jobs or studying.”
    “Not much of a life.”
    She smirked. “You’re telling me. It pretty much sucked, but I had one vice that I refused to give up. Wrestling. It was the one bright spot in my life. Then I saw Vixen wrestling legend Tara Sweet. From that point forward I knew I wanted to be a Vixen too.”
    “How did your dad feel about that?”
    She shrugged. “He didn’t care. All he cared about was drinking and porn.”
    “Porn? How do you know he watched porn?”
    “I saw him,” she replied without emotion.
    “You saw him watching porn?” Cole asked, his voice laced with shock.
    She nodded. “I caught him one night. I heard a woman’s voice and wondered if he was secretly dating someone, so I went to investigate.” She shuddered as she thought back to the day it happened. “There wasn’t a woman. Instead he was stretched out on the couch naked, a bottle of beer in one hand and his other wrapped around his…”
    She took a deep breath. “He stroked himself as he watched this woman on the screen get taken by two men.” She paused as the memory burned through her, and she fought to shake it off. “He never touched me that night. Hell, he never knew I watched as he came crying my mother’s name, but that was my first introduction to sex.”
    Cole sighed. “Wow. That’s a lot seedier than my first tryst in the back of my dad’s SUV with Laura Pasture.”
    She turned her head and gave him a small smile. “I’m not sure I want to hear about that.”
    “Jealous?”
    “Maybe,” she replied as a strange happiness flowed through her. By all accounts she shouldn’t feel this way while recounting what happened, yet it was there just below the surface, pushing through the sludge of grief and sorrow. She desperately wanted that happiness to break through, but it had been so long since she’d felt joy, Amber wasn’t sure how to make it happen.
    “Really?” He quirked a brow. “We’ll explore that revelation later.” He kissed her on the temple. “Let’s not get off track.”
    “Right.” She sighed and settled back against him. “As I grew into a woman, Dad started making comments about how much I reminded him of my mother. At first I didn’t think much of it, but the older I got, the more possessive he got. When he was really drunk, he’d pin me against a wall and say things like my body belonged to him and if I wanted to have sex, he’d teach me the right way to please a man.”
    “Okay, that’s creepy,” Cole replied as he took her hand in his.
    “You’re telling me. I’d always manage to talk my way out of him doing anything. By morning the incident would be forgotten, so I’d let the subject drop. Sometimes I wondered if he did it because he was just that messed up in the head, or if he knew I was sneaking his porn behind his back and he was trying to get even in some weird way.”
    “You snuck his porn? Have a wild streak, do we?” Cole asked with amusement in his voice.
    She glanced up at him, smiled, and pressed a kiss to his slightly bearded jaw. “Just a little.”
    “Good to know.”
    “Yeah, well. It wasn’t good for me when my dad finally found out. I was seventeen, and I’d promised my boyfriend that for his eighteenth birthday I’d”—she paused—“well, that I’d give him a blowjob. Not knowing the first thing about oral sex, I snuck my dad’s porn to learn, and he caught me.”
    “What happened?”
    She shivered as images of that night flooded back. “He was really drunk, and he pinned me against the wall, felt me up, and told me that it was about time I took care of the one and only man who really loved me instead of boys who were only looking for one thing.”
    She felt Cole’s arms tighten around her, but he remained