Redeem Me (Beckett Brothers #2)

21. Caelon

Chapter Twenty-One

CAELON

I don’t date. Fucking is one thing; dating is an entirely different ball game. But when I walked into that restaurant and saw Ivy with Rian, I wanted, no needed, to be the one sitting with her. The one commanding her undivided attention. The one to make her laugh loud enough to attract an audience. Even if it means my best friend is liable to cut my dick off and shove it up my arse.

‘Where are we going?’ Ivy asks, glancing out of the passenger window of my Bentley as we leave the city behind.

‘Somewhere you’ll like.’ I indicate to take the exit off the dual carriageway for Dun Laoghaire, a coastal town east of Dublin.

‘You think you know me?’ she teases. ‘Have you really been watching me on the nanny cam?’ Her lips slant upwards. ‘If I’d known I had an audience, I’d have given you a show.’

‘You give me a show every time you swagger around my house, whether it’s in those indecent ass-sculpting yoga pants or those dresses.’ I cock my head to hers. ‘Besides, you’re not too late. I told you I’m away next week. I’ll be keeping an eye on things. ’

She forms an expression of mock horror. ‘Mr Beckett, are you suggesting what I think?’

‘I believe you were the one being suggestive.’ My lips twitch. Despite my permanent rage, it’s impossible not to feel lighter around Ivy. She has a habit of taking everything dark and making it brighter.

‘Do you really want to take me on a date? Or did you barge into that restaurant just to spite Rian?’ Ivy flicks her hair from her shoulder. It’s loosely styled in blonde beach waves, casual but sexy as fuck, just like the rest of her.

‘No, I don’t want to take you on a date.’ My eyes roll skywards. ‘I don’t want to take any woman on a date. Dating’s not on my agenda. But you pushed buttons I didn’t even know existed, and the thought of my brother putting his hands on you drove me demented.’ I inhale a lungful of air before blowing it out slowly. ‘Selfishly, I want you more than is healthy for either of us. You’ve been clear about what you want out of life, and I will never be the man to give you those things.’

‘I said I wanted kids one day, not necessarily right now. I’m only twenty-three-years-old!’ she exclaims.

As if being my best friend’s little sister wasn’t bad enough, Ivy is also closer in age to my own sister than she is to me. ‘As if I could forget.’

‘I want a family, a home of my own, filled with love and laughter, but I don’t necessarily need it now. When that day does come, I want to know I’ve lived a full life. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly saving myself for marriage,’ she snorts.

The thought of Ivy with another man turns my stomach. Which is precisely why my kids are with their maternal grandmother and I’m driving the nanny for a romantic stroll and a fucking ice cream. What the hell is wrong with me?

‘Have there been many men?’ I’d like Killian to track every single one of them down and wipe them from the face of this earth.

‘No one memorable.’ She shrugs.

I clear my throat pointedly and glare at her.

‘Well, up until I met this really tortured-looking hot old guy in a bar recently.’ A wicked smile spreads across her face.

‘I’m thirty-four, not eighty-four!’ I thrum my fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Didn’t anyone ever teach you to respect your elders? Any more of your cheek and I’ll pull over, bend you over the bonnet of this car and slap your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit down for a week,’ I growl.

‘Is that a promise?’ she sings in a sultry tone, ‘because I quite like it rough.’

My cock thickens further in my pants. ‘I’ve a good mind to call your brother and tell him what a bad girl you are.’

‘And I’ll tell him exactly how you found out,’ she chirps gleefully. ‘Lighten up, let’s have some fun. I just want to feel your cock inside me. It’ll be our little secret.’

‘There’s nothing little about it.’

‘Your cock or the secret?’ she chuckles.

I shake my head. ‘Your filthy mouth wasn’t listed on your résumé,’ I grunt, glancing across at her again. Like a fucking magnet, she keeps drawing me in.

‘Neither was my ability to suck dick, but I’m pretty good at that, too.’ Her blue eyes glint with mischief and I almost choke on my own saliva. ‘I’m surprised you even looked at my résumé by the way.’

I didn’t look at it until after she moved in, then I pored over it, memorising every detail. And not because I was concerned for my kids; the agency’s background checks are rigorous. I scoured it, desperate to learn everything about the woman I’m obsessed with.

‘Did you speak to your previous bosses the same way you speak to me? ’

‘My previous boss was a creep. If I spoke to him the way I spoke to you, he’d have dropped his trousers already, which is more than I can say for you…’

‘Ivy…’ My tone is weighted with warning and now it’s her turn to roll her eyes.

‘Okay, okay!’ She brandishes upturned palms in the air. ‘I’ve never spoken to any man the way I speak to you.’ She crosses one lean leg over the other and my gaze is drawn to six inches of exposed thigh. ‘What can I say? You bring out the best in me.’

‘Or the worst,’ I sigh, shaking my head. Dermot would murder me if he had any idea what I’m contemplating doing to his little sister – what I’ve already done to his little sister.

‘Don’t let me be another thing to beat yourself up about, Tortured,’ she pats my knee. ‘I’m a big girl. I know what I’m doing.’

‘That makes one of us then,’ I mutter.

She flicks her hair from her shoulder. ‘I want your body, not a marriage proposal.’

‘The kids adore you. I don’t want to fuck that up. And Dermot will fuck me up if he so much as suspects I’m sniffing around his little sister.’ Everyone knows the bro code. Although, the temptation of doing something forbidden only makes it so much more, well, tempting. Ivy was wrong. I am a bad man.

‘It’s just sex. Well, it would be, if you’d get over yourself,’ Ivy teases.

‘You are determined to drag me straight to Hell.’ Though, realistically, I resigned myself to it a long time ago.

‘I have needs. Besides, we established the first night we met what type of woman I am.’ She slaps my thigh playfully and I snatch her hand up and bring it to my lips.

‘You’re like no type I ever met before, which is why I will at least try to, how did you put it, “get over myself?” ’

‘What is the problem? Do you have some daddy-dom kink where you prefer giving pleasure to taking it? Are you afraid of losing control? Or is it something else entirely?’ Her stare burns the side of my face. I keep my attention focussed on the road.

‘Do we have to dissect my sexual preferences? Why do you try to drag every quirk or kink into the conversation like you’re asking which flavour of ice cream I prefer? I like making you come. What’s wrong with that?’

‘I want to make you come.’ She pouts.

‘You already have, more times than you’ll know, in my shower.’

‘You have had sex with someone other than Isabella?’ Ivy frowns. It’s not a question technically, but the way she accentuates the word have , makes it one.

‘Yes, plenty, but not someone I actually liked.’ God, it’s like this woman is wielding a hundred-megawatt torch into my darkest corners and dragging my deepest truths into the light.

Her grin is so wide, her teeth blind me. ‘You like me,’ she squeals.

‘Fuck’s sake, Ivy, we’re not a couple of high schoolers,’ I tut. ‘If barging in on your date with my brother and claiming you as mine doesn’t scream “I like you,” then nothing does.’

‘So, let me get this straight.’ She inclines her head thoughtfully. ‘You like me, which is why you haven’t had sex with me, because you feel… guilty? Because of Isabella?’

‘Amongst the other things. Like I’m your boss. And your brother’s best friend.’

‘Don’t worry about Dermot. He’ll never find out.’ She puffs out a breath. ‘As for Isabella, I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through and how you feel, but you can’t live in this permanent state of dark and tortured forever. It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for the kids. You need to live while you can. I know nothing about your wife, but I do know that she wouldn’t want you to live in a permanent state of misery.’

Ivy’s words are an uncanny echo of Jocelyn’s. ‘Isabella would hate to see you like this.’

‘I told you already, I don’t want a proposal, I want your penis. Don’t panic. Don’t overthink this. We both know where we stand. It’s one summer in both of our lives. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can use me as a practice run for when you find a woman you really do want to date.’

I can’t think of any woman in the world I’d rather date than Ivy.

I suppose that’s why they say opposites attract.

‘Life is short, and everything can change in the blink of an eye. You know it better than anyone. Let’s live for today,’ Ivy says, patting my knee.

For a horny twenty-three-year-old who chose not to pursue a formal college education, she’s the smartest woman I know.