Redemption by Stephanie Tyler Read Free Book Online Page A

down mine.
    They were just hands, big and strong and calloused, but for me, they were everything—the way I talked, the way I communicated, by sign or by touch. They sometimes took the brunt of my fights, which was inevitable. Because they were also deadly hands, and she knew that now, but she didn’t know everything.
    They were weapons that could create a charmed tattoo or strum a guitar or take over a woman’s body and give her enough voice for the both of us. And even though she didn’t understand anything I signed yet, it didn’t matter. She definitely understood my hands.
    The music pounded and I reached out to lock the van doors from the inside. I’d become oddly protective of someone I was pretty sure was just using me to prove to herself that she was most definitely still alive.
    I didn’t need the reassurance, but she was in my lap, half sure but still trembling. And when I slid my hands up under her shirt and against the bare skin of her back, she arched against me. Ground herself against my cock and her eyes widened, like she didn’t recognize herself or her response.
    I wasn’t playing around. Music thumped above the beat of the wind and hail. Everything rolled and the van shook the way I planned to shake her. But first, I grabbed the alphasmart and typed, You don’t have to sleep with me for protection.
    Maybe it was too soon for her to believe me, but sooner or later, she’d make her decisions and we’d know one way or the other. But she nodded and brought her lips down on mine. That sweet lick of her tongue in my mouth, hesitant but willing, made it even better. Her hands shook a little as they slid into my hair, holding me there, keeping my mouth on hers. It was the sweetest thing I’d had in a while and I didn’t want it to end.
    How anyone could be so sweet in all this shit amazed the fuck out of me.
    She pulled back. “Don’t treat me like glass.”
    The words went straight to my dick. I pushed the alphasmart out of the way as I laid her down on the mattress, because we didn’t need talk for this. I could use my mouth and my hands for other, more important things, and I set about doing just that.
    Hey now, all you sinners
    Jessa
    When he lay me down, I reached up and ran my fingertips over his arms and chest, like I could feel the outlines of the tattoos. My body sparked as my hands connected with his skin and he remained patiently hovering above me as I traced the muscles in his arms. Finally, I nodded and tugged him and he put his weight on me and pulled my sweats down. I wound my legs around him, let his cock touch my sex as we kissed.
    I was “Yellow” and “Hypnotize” and “Wanted Dead or Alive”—none of them seeming the most romantic songs, but at that moment they were, and I knew that I’d never be able to listen to them again without thinking of Mathias, of his hands on me, parting my legs, making me come. Making me understand what all the songs about sex were talking about when they praised it endlessly, dissected it, discussed it, flaunted it.
    This deserved to be praised, dissected, flaunted, shouted from the rooftops.
    Coming into this moment, I’d wanted to understand him more than I’d ever wanted to understand anyone in my life, and in some small way, I already did. The beat he’d put on was inside of him, inside of me—drawing me out, making me forget and remember. Rolling around in the back of his van, we might’ve been at the lake on a summer’s day or at a lover’s lane at midnight, but all of it long before the Chaos, when things were normal.
    But if it hadn’t been for the Chaos, I knew I never would’ve been here, in Defiance, in this van, this warehouse, this kind of trouble. And that was the most comforting thing the Chaos had ever given me. And in the back of his van, on clean sheets with music blasting and a storm rolling through—and rolling through me as well—I gave everything to Mathias. He’d seen me at my worst, or maybe it was my best,