Ruin Me: The Summer of Secrets: Part 1 Read online

  Ruin Me

  The Summer of Secrets: Part 1

  Christina Hart

  RUIN ME

  The Summer of Secrets: Part 1

  Copyright © 2019 by Christina Hart

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblances to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Formatted by J.R. Rogue

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Ready for Lucy’s story?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Christina Hart

  Hate Me

  1

  1

  JULY 4, 10:14PM

  The secrets I left on the shore,

  they were yours.

  And you didn’t need them anymore.

  They stopped mattering when

  I stopped shattering over every truth they held.

  They were little pearls in my palm

  and I let them go,

  watched them drift out to sea,

  far away from me,

  where they belong.

  Did you know that once-pretty things can sink, too?

  I pretend not to look for him in the crowd.

  The cracks and booms go off around me as I convince myself I’m just observing the people in our small town.

  Wait, it’s not ours anymore. It’s just his now. Because I left.

  I watch the finale of the fireworks light up the night sky, crossing my arms to keep the breeze from infiltrating my bones. Being about a hundred pounds soaking wet doesn’t help keep you warm. And living near the lake—again—doesn’t help with the chill. It’s always cooler near the water. And as much as I like to believe I was a mermaid in a past life, I can’t say for sure that it’s true.

  This all feels too familiar. This searching for him. My heart is always searching for him. I close my eyes and wonder if he feels it. I will him to feel it. To feel me. But here I stand, alone, on the Fourth of July.

  I glance around at the couples, keeping warm under blankets on the beach. I see the hand-holding, the kissing, the whispers of sweet nothings in each other’s ears. I wonder how many of them are happy. I wonder if they are in love the way I have always been in love with him.

  My eyes are still wandering, raking over the people I once knew, trying to find the one I knew best. People start clapping as the last and most brilliant fireworks go off back to back, before fading and disappearing to black. I breathe in, sigh, let it out. Whatever it is, I act like it’s normal. My flannel isn’t doing its job here. Cheap shit.

  Coming here was a mistake. I don’t know what I expected, why I expected any different. I turn and walk the opposite way everyone else is heading. It seems I’m always doing that. In this instance, I move closer to the water as the surrounding people flee to their cars. I sit near the edge—not close enough to get wet—and take my sandals off. Wrapping my flannel tighter around me, I stare out at the lake, giving up.

  But, in the next moment—call it serendipity, call it fate, call it torture—I turn. A man, about his height, dressed like he’d be, in a white T-shirt and jeans, is walking away, slowly. I see the smoke trailing behind him. The muscular but not too muscular form. A hint of a bicep as he tosses his cigarette and stomps it out with his boot.

  Pick it up. Pick it up.

  He bends to pick the butt up off the ground. And I see, it’s him.

  I stare. For too long, I stare.

  Turn around. Look at me.

  He must feel my eyes on him. I wonder if he feels the passion, reaching him all the way from here. He double-takes. He goes to continue walking, but he stops. And he turns again. He squints, like he can’t believe I’m here.

  You didn’t know? No one told you?

  And he starts walking toward me. The slight smile he has aimed at me—it’s accidental, I think, a reflex, from a million moments just like this—is almost sad, almost playful. I could never tell with him. My sisters would say I am oblivious. He would say I never paid attention to the signs that he loved me because I didn’t want to accept them.

  My heart starts pounding and I’m taken back. To the days when we were even younger than we are now. To the days when I was a virgin and he, my first everything that mattered.

  To spring, and his first motorcycle.

  I had on my favorite bubblegum pink cat sweatshirt. Eleanor Katherine Bordeau. My name never quite fit me. It was too sophisticated, too…normal. Everyone close to me called me Kitty. Including him. Especially him.

  I pulled the hood up with the matching cat ears. He loved that thing, while simultaneously hating how obnoxious it was. My long hair flowed down my back in a braid. I had on the knock-off Timbaland look-a-likes we grabbed from WalMart, specifically so I could go ride with him. And light acid-washed jeans with holes all over the place.

  We went everywhere that day. That’s what it felt like. To the bank, to the store, to the movies, to dinner, to pay his rent. At some point, I think he was driving just to drive. I clung to his middle, stopping only to rub his shoulders and kiss his neck at red lights. He rubbed my leg on the highway, crept his hand back and found my crotch. I still don’t know how he ever managed that with one hand on the bike, going ninety miles per hour.

  But it turned me on. He knew that, used it as foreplay, building me up long before we’d get home.

  We got back to his place, high on sunshine, on the breeze from the open road. The way the miles stretched on in front of us like we could ride forever like that, always with each other. Always touching, always at ease.

  Always needing more.

  I hopped off the bike first, like I always did. He followed close behind, a dog in heat.

  “You have to stop touching me like that while we’re speeding on the highway. You almost gave me an orgasm,” I scolded.

  He lifted my hood up and tugged on the ears, giving me that smirk that melted my insides. “Almost? I’ll have to make up for that real quick.”

  I smiled and shook my head, teasing. “Oh n…”

  Before I could get the word out, he picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and heading toward the door. He unlocked it with his free hand and carried me inside, spanking me once on the ass with just the right amount of firmness.

  Once we reached his bedroom, he tossed me on the bed, climbing down my body, nipping at my clothing with his teeth.

  “You gonna take these off or am I?” he asked.

  “You,” I chose, because of the way he always undid me. Slowly, deliberately, leaving me aching for more.

  He started with my braid. Taking off the hairband, he
unraveled it, unraveling me. He ran his hands through my hair as he kissed me, before moving to my neck. He gripped the sweatshirt, sliding it off with ease, then trailed kisses in between my breasts, down my stomach. He was squeezing, feeling, exploring. Appreciating every inch of me as he did every single time we made love.

  He reached my jeans, finally, stopping once he undid the button, and sliding down the zipper. I was panting, begging. But him being him, he moved to my boots, untying the laces like he had all the time in the world. He took off my socks, then kissed my feet, massaging them, holding them.

  He pulled my jeans off as I lifted my hips to help him, my head falling back against the pillow in anticipation. I could feel my panties being ruined by the desire coursing through me for him.

  He moved up my legs then. Kissing my ankles, my calves, my thighs, making me squirm with the way he knew it tickled me right there.

  He removed my panties last.

  I had a black and white polka dot lacy thong on. He always ripped them. I never cared.

  He rolled over, lifted me up so I was just above him. His favorite sight, he always said. My pussy, his pussy, it didn’t matter. It was both of ours at that point. Only mine, and only his.

  It was supposed to stay that way.

  He reached around me, squeezing my ass with both hands as he pulled me down to him. I gripped the headboard, allowing him to take control, allowing myself the mind-bending pleasure he always gifted me.

  Closing my eyes, I felt his lips first, tongue second. He licked me once, slowly, from my clit to the end of my slit, and back again.

  “Joey.” I moaned his name like he might stop, even though we both knew he wouldn’t.

  He licked in circles and rhythms that I never knew were possible before him. I never knew this could feel so fucking magical, until his mouth came along. He repeated the dance, making me come, gently at first, leaning into him as I moved my hips in rhythm with him and arched my back, tilting my head back in pure ecstasy. He moaned each time I came, every time, as though he was enjoying it more than I was.

  With each twirl of his tongue, every agonizing stroke, he made me come harder, sucking my clit into his mouth like he was exorcising my orgasm from my body, and it worked. Every fucking time. I came hard in that moment, leaning forward, pushing myself into his mouth, his moan deepening with the intensity of my primal reaction to him.

  He slowed then, giving me another two orgasms to come down from, before pulling me down onto him. I ripped his clothes off then.

  First, his shirt.

  Then, his pants.

  I never had as much patience as he did. He always made me want to fuck him like I’d die right then if I didn’t get him inside me. And I did just that.

  He was already hard, waiting. Wanting. And the sight of his desire just made me need him more. I kissed him, deeply, grabbing his hair as I slid on top of him, slowly, teasing my entrance on him so he could enter me easily. We always had to work for it in the beginning. His size and my size being slightly too large and too small to start. But once we fit, it was a blur of wild chemistry and sheer fucking need.

  He stopped kissing me, leaned toward my ear and pulled my hair. “Purr for me, Kitty.”

  I smiled, both of us starting to laugh, before I shut him up by kissing him again.

  But that was then, and I’m brought back to the now, as he’s standing in front of me, looking the slightest bit lost, but mostly found. A ghost I’d only seen for the last two years in my mind, my heart. In vivid recollections like these.

  “Joey,” I say, breathless from the memory.

  “Kitty,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  The sudden urge to cry hits me then.

  I’ve been looking for you, too.

  2

  JULY 4, 10:47PM

  She wasn’t supposed to come back. After two years, I was almost starting to be okay without her presence. Without the sound of her laugh. I’d finally forgotten what her hair smelled like about six months ago. The scent remained on my pillows for almost two months after she left. Dirty, I know, but I refused to wash them at first. The pillowcases. At least with the faint keepsake, it almost felt like I could still hold her, in some way.

  I didn’t know how many nights I could spend in that bed without her, without at least the reminder of the smell of her shampoo, her perfume. The sheets were a given. We’d fucked so hard in my bed, so often, that it just wasn’t an option not to wash them.

  With her, I always wanted more, but never from anyone else. No one else existed as long as she was around. And how could they? There was no one like Kitty Bordeau. At least not to me.

  I knew it from the moment I saw her. A moment that plays back in my mind on loop.

  I was at a bonfire, just shy of eighteen years old. The woman whose house I had just left was twenty-seven. I was pretty sure I smelled like her. Pussy has a distinct smell. As a man, you can recognize it in the air almost immediately. Even afterwards. And not in a bad way. I always loved it, at least if it was dripping for me. A subtle parting gift, thanking you for making them so fucking wet.

  When I was first introduced to female parts, I couldn’t get enough. I’d stick a finger or two in before slowly sliding out and putting my fingers in my mouth to see what that particular woman tasted like, savoring it. The women called me nasty, in a teasing way, but they made no attempt at hiding the fact that they loved it, and later, would get off on it.

  I’d learned something in my early teenage years. Women wanted me. And not just the girls in high school. I mean real, full-blown women. Older women. Experienced women. Beautiful women. Women I sometimes didn’t even know what to do with because no matter how much I satisfied them, they always wanted more.

  And I gave it to them.

  Ask and you shall receive. That was my motto back then. I didn’t even have to search it out. As cocky as it sounds, they came to me. Being a Cherry Cove MC prospect promised that. The women flocked. And not just regular women. Gorgeous, sexy, damn near goddesses seemed to appear out of thin air most nights.

  By the time my feet landed at that bonfire, I’d been with more women than I could keep up with. It was every man’s dream, but as a practically permanently aroused teenager, it was my reality.

  The carnal desires, the momentary cravings, fulfilling them was fun. But amidst all the rough and kinky sex, the flings, the one-night stands with women who taught me—and blatantly told me—exactly how to touch them, there was something…missing.

  The sex was great. I never complained.

  But that night, at that bonfire, I saw Kitty and thought something for the first time in a long time.

  I want to talk to that girl.

  And that was it. I just wanted to talk to her. I didn’t look at her and wonder what she’d look like without that cute little belly shirt on. I didn’t view her as the potential for a little fun, much like the older women viewed me.

  This beautiful stranger was sitting around the fire, on a tree stump, head thrown back and laughing hysterically at something. Her smile was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. The effortless way she laughed and ran her hand through her dark brown hair. It was mesmerizing to me.

  She had jean cut-off shorts on. My eyes traveled straight to her tan legs, the gorgeous bare thighs that were begging me to look. But I looked away, because I didn’t want to miss her smile. That was where the prize was. I wanted to make her laugh like that. I wanted that smile aimed at me. I wanted it there because of me.

  I’d seen enough beautiful naked female bodies to last me a lifetime at that point, even at such a young age. But that girl, nah. That something she had wouldn’t allow me to walk away before talking to her. Everything in me wanted it. Needed it.

  But working for it wasn’t something I ever had to do anymore. And in that moment, I wasn’t sure how to approach her. What I would say.

  Hi, your smile is the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

  No. Too desperate
.

  Hello, what is your name?

  Too boring.

  Wanna get out of here?

  Too forward.

  I lit a cigarette and looked at her for a few minutes more. She laughed again, and without realizing it, I started smiling. I didn’t notice until she did.

  One moment, she was laughing with her friends.

  The next, that smile was aimed at me.

  As soon as our eyes caught, her smile lessened in its natural vibrancy. I saw a shy one take its place. She tucked her hair behind her ear and took a sip of her Corona.

  I knew right then, if she didn’t look back over at me, I stood no chance with her.

  But she swallowed her beer, and her eyes found me again. She looked…nervous. But she looked at me. On purpose this time. And that was all I needed.

  I tossed my cigarette out on the ground and picked it up, putting the butt back in my pack before I started the walk over to her.

  When I reached her, she was playing with her hair again, like she didn’t know what to do with her hands.

  “Is this seat taken?” I asked her.

  She laughed. And this time, it was for me and only me. A small dream, that she just made happen.

  “What seat? That’s just grass,” she said, still smiling.

  I took off my leather cut and tossed the vest on the ground, which landed in a messy square. “It’s a seat now,” I said, sitting my ass on it before she could instruct otherwise.

  She laughed again, shaking her head. “Oh, you’re good.”

  During the brief pause, I looked at the bag resting by her feet, reading it before her eyes found mine again.