Almost Paradise Read online

  “What is it?” Rebekah asked, standing on tiptoes but unable to see over Eric’s shoulder. He had a good foot on her.

  “I don’t think Butch wants us to fuck in his chair again.” Eric held out a key card from a nearby hotel.

  “Next time you need a fuck break,” Butch said, “I’ll drive you myself. Consider that your wedding present.”

  “Thanks,” Eric said, “but we just made a bet, so I won’t need this today.”

  He tried to hand the key card back to Butch, but Rebekah jerked it out of his hand and slid it into the front pocket of her jeans. “Don’t be so hasty. I still have a third of a sleeve to get tattooed today. You will have a hard-on again by the time he’s finished with me, I guarantee it.”

  “I don’t doubt that I will,” Eric said, “but our bet wasn’t that I wouldn’t get hard. And it wasn’t that I wouldn’t enjoy as much self-love as I want.”

  “What did you bet?” Butch asked, spraying and wiping and spraying and wiping every surface imaginable.

  “That I wouldn’t have sex with her for an entire day. Heck, I’ve already made it five or six minutes.” Eric crossed his arms over his chest, looking entirely too smug for such a minor accomplishment.

  “That’s the stupidest bet I’ve ever heard,” Butch said as he cleaned up his station to start with new ink and a fresh needle.

  Jeez, how much hepatitis does he think we have? Rebekah wondered.

  “She wants to drive to Bangor, Maine, for our honeymoon,” Eric said. “In December! If I win this bet we’re going to Tahiti instead.”

  “Hmm,” Butch said. “Maybe you should go hang out at the bar upstairs while I finish her sleeve.”

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t care if I nut down my leg—I wouldn’t miss watching this woman getting ink for anything.”

  “Even at risk of freezing your ass off in Maine?” Butch asked. “Just trying to help you out, brother.” To Rebekah he said, “Are you ready?”

  She smiled and slid back into the chair. “Oh yes,” she said, staring into her husband’s brilliant blue eyes. “Hurt me good.”

  Chapter Three

  Eric had gotten quite worked up again while Rebekah was getting the first session of her sleeve completed. It didn’t help—either him or Butch—that she insisted on making pleasurable sounds in the back of her throat every time the needle passed over a particularly sensitive spot. He wasn’t sure if she was addicted to tattooing yet, but he hoped so. There was something intensely erotic about watching his wife get off on the pain. And either she was very good at faking—an idea he did not want to believe—or Rebekah had had an actual orgasm when Butch had been working near her arm pit. It was going to be a long, sexless twenty-four hours, he decided. But there was no way in hell he was going to Bangor, Maine. He’d win Rebekah over to his side somehow.

  Now that Eric was in Butch’s chair, his excitement had waned. He didn’t find tattoos particularly painful. For him, the experience was more like scratching a deep itch beneath his skin. Satisfying in a way, but not sexually arousing. He wondered why his wife found them so enjoyable.

  “So is it the pain of the tattoo that makes you cream your panties,” Eric asked her as he held perfectly still so Butch could work his artistic magic, “or knowing that your mother would never approve?”

  Rebekah smiled crookedly and stroked a strand of purple hair that was mixed into her platinum blond. The bright unnatural color made her blue eyes stand out in her adorable face and made certain parts of his anatomy stand up in his pants.

  “You don’t think my mother will approve?” She held out her arm, now slathered in petroleum jelly and covered with long lengths of plastic wrap. “There’s a cross in the design.” She showed him the vague outline of it on her inner forearm. “How could she disapprove of such a powerful symbol?”

  “There’s also a butterfly that looks harmless enough, but I know its significance.”

  She opened her eyes wide and then batted her eyelashes in her most innocent look. God, he suddenly wanted to do naughty, devious things to her.

  “You mean this one?” she said, pointing at her wrist. “Are you insinuating I had that put there because it represents my favorite sex toy?”

  Butch leaned back on his stool and rubbed at his forehead with the back of his wrist. “And here I thought the sexual tension would lessen after I got her out of the chair,” he said under his breath.

  Eric chuckled. “Sometimes she wears that toy in public and gives me the remote. There’s nothing quite like sitting across from a woman in a restaurant and buzzing her clit until she loses her composure.”

  “He’s quite ruthless,” Rebekah said. “He made me come on the dance floor at a club the other night.”

  “Do you two need a chaperone?” Butch asked, dipping his needle in ink before he continued with the lettering of Eric’s vows.

  “I wasn’t dancing with Eric,” she told Butch, kicking off her shoes and folding herself into the nearest chair to wait for Eric. “He dared me to dance with some drunk-as-fuck woman and then he did that to me.”

  Eric chuckled at the memory. “That chick thought you were having a seizure.”

  Rebekah snorted. “Just a clitoral orgasm.”

  “I’m starting to think your wife is even more perverted than you are,” Butch said.

  “He corrupted me,” Rebekah said. “I was a perfectly respectable woman until he watched Trey Mills eat me out. It was all downhill from there.”

  Butch cursed as his needle slipped.

  “Don’t remind me,” Eric said. He tried not to remember that he’d kissed the male rhythm guitarist of his band clean on the lips just so he could sample Rebekah’s taste for the first time. And once he’d gotten his first taste of her, he knew he’d never get enough.

  Rebekah toyed with the edge of the plastic wrap near the back of her hand. “Before I got to know Sinners, I thought Trey was the sexiest, naughtiest member of the band, but boy, was I wrong.”

  Butch chuckled. “She only wants you for your body, man.”

  “Do I look like I’m complaining?” Eric asked. But he knew she cared about more than his physical self. She understood him on a level that no other person did. She got him—weird, deviant, twisted man that he was—and not only accepted his quirks but seemed to admire them.

  “I wouldn’t,” Butch said and set his gun aside. “I’m done here for today. Go have a look.”

  Eric climbed from the chair and examined his arm in the mirror. It was still hard to tell how the old work and the new would work together once the outline was filled in with color, but he trusted Butch to get the design right. The words he’d inked there were clear and concise.

  Rebekah

  you are my everything

  from now until the end of time

  I will love you more with each passing moment

  Because you are my perfect fucking woman

  His everything stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. She peeked around his side to admire his new body art.

  “Are you sure you aren’t going to get sick of me by the end of time? I’m thinking that’s at least a trillion years.” Her baby-blue eyes flicked upward and met his gaze in the mirror.

  “Even if time starts anew and I have to love you for another trillion years, it won’t be long enough.”

  She licked her lip, a pleased little smile settling at the corners of her mouth. “You’re such a sap sometimes, Eric Sticks.”

  “Only when it comes to you, Rebekah Bla— um, Sticks.” He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to calling her that. He doubted she realized how much it meant to him that she’d taken his name. Not the name he’d been born with, the name he’d chosen for himself when he’d rejected his past life. Now that he was older and slightly wiser, he sometimes wished he’d chosen something a little less junior high, but he was stuck with Sticks now. They were stuck with it. And if he and Rebekah adopted kids together, those poor little shits would be stuck w
ith it as well.

  She touched his arm near the last words. “Don’t you need a comma between perfect and fucking? Otherwise people might thinking I’m your perfect fucking-woman, not your perfect, fucking woman.”

  “But you’re both, so…” He shrugged and shook his head.

  She smiled. “Hurry up and get your dressing on. We need to be alone so I can devour you.” She slid a hand down his hip, and his belly tightened. She was irresistible—he couldn’t deny that—but he hadn’t forgotten their bet. This was one he was determined to win.

  Rebekah didn’t seem too upset that they skipped out on taking Butch up on his wedding gift—that private hotel room down the block. She climbed into the passenger seat of the Corvette and leaned against the door, letting the ocean breeze toy with her hair as they drove up the coast. The top was down, since it still hadn’t been replaced and was a tattered mess, and golden rays danced over her skin. Only her left arm, which was covered from wrist to shoulder with plastic wrap, remained untouched by the sun’s warmth. He couldn’t believe his wife had braved an entire sleeve just to solidify the connection between them.

  “I guess we’ll go in for more tattoo work after our honeymoon,” Eric said as they left the Pacific and the Los Angeles sprawl behind and neared their country home. He took a different route than usual, wanting to extend the time they spent driving in quiet companionship. Before he’d met Rebekah, he’d taken long, quiet drives alone. But he didn’t have to go it alone anymore. Her comforting presence would always be beside him.

  “Stop the car!” Rebekah said unexpectedly, sitting up tall in her seat.

  Startled, Eric hit the brakes, expecting to see an escaped zoo elephant blocking the two-lane road. There was nothing in front of them and thankfully, no cars behind them. His heart thundering and his breath coming in rapid gasps, Eric turned to his wife, who was unfastening her seat belt and reaching for the door handle.

  “What the fuck? You scared the shit out of me.”

  “It’s perfect,” she said breathlessly, her gazed fixed on a heap of metal parked in a grassy field.

  Eric followed her lovesick gaze to a beat-up, gaudily painted Volkswagen bus. Rebekah stumbled up the uneven terrain of a bank and raced toward the vehicle, hopping up and down excitedly as she pointed at the For Sale message painted in white letters on the side window.

  Eric moved the Corvette to the shoulder of the road before climbing out and joining his exuberant wife in the meadow.

  “I didn’t know you had a thing for foreign pieces of junk,” Eric said as he examined the faded hand-painted flower motif and the dust-covered windows.

  Rebekah covered his mouth with her hand. “Shush! You’ll hurt her feelings. She’s not junk. She’s a classic.”

  Eric understood the allure of a classic car, but this dreadful box on wheels? He wasn’t seeing the appeal. He shielded his eyes with a hand and peered in through the dusty window. This thing had been sitting a while. A long while. The interior was completely rotted away from years of baking in the sun. But that didn’t stop Rebekah from opening the driver-side door, which creaked loudly in protest, and scrambling inside.

  “Do you want to come home with me?” she asked the van as she plopped behind the wheel, sending up an impressive plume of dust. “I’ll make you feel all better.”

  She stroked the steering wheel and dashboard gauges. It was as if she’d found an injured, and rather ugly, stray dog to love. And when Rebekah responded to things like that, he had to buy them for her. There was no question or doubt.

  With a resigned sigh, Eric pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number that had been drawn on the window in white paint.

  “Hello?” The grizzled voice of an elderly man answered after several rings.

  “Hi, I’m calling about the Volkswagen bus you have for sale. I’d like to buy it.”

  Rebekah squealed excitedly and flopped forward over the steering wheel to hug it with glee. Some women were impressed with diamonds. His happened to get a lady boner over vehicles that belonged in a junk yard.

  “You’ll have to have it towed,” the man said. “I haven’t been able to get it to run for a couple years.”

  “That’s fine. How much?”

  “Does it run?” Rebekah asked, to which Eric shook his head.

  “Seven thousand,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Nonnegotiable.”

  Well, that would explain why it had been sitting on the side of the road for so long. Who in their right mind would pay seven thousand dollars for a Volkswagen bus that wouldn’t even run?

  “Dollars? Seven thousand dollars?” Maybe the dude meant pennies. Though seventy bucks seemed overpriced to Eric.

  “It’s a steal, baby!” Rebekah insisted. “Is it a sixty-seven or a sixty-eight?”

  A steal? Yeah, that price was highway robbery.

  “What model year is the vehicle?” Eric asked.

  “She’s a sixty-nine. One owner. Low miles. Just temperamental.”

  “Sixty-nine,” Eric said to Rebekah.

  “What? Now?” She glanced into the gutted back of the van and shrugged. “Well, okay, there’s plenty of room back there.”

  Eric laughed and covered his phone with one hand. “I’m not talking about mutual oral pleasure,” he said. “The van was built in 1969.”

  Rebekah’s eyes widened with wonder, and her smile brightened. “Even better. I knew she was perfect for our honeymoon!”

  “Our honeymoon?”

  She planned to take this hunk of junk on a road trip spanning more than three thousand miles? They wouldn’t make it out of the driveway, much less to Maine. He supposed that meant they’d get to Tahiti that much quicker. Assuming he lost that bet that Rebekah didn’t seem too concerned about winning.

  “Let’s get her home. We have a lot of work to do to get her ready in time,” Rebekah said. She hugged the steering wheel again and kicked her feet excitedly.

  Eric rolled his eyes. Some people’s wives—completely baffling.

  “We’ll take it,” he told the seller.

  Chapter Four

  Rebekah bent over the VW’s engine in the back of the adorable little bus and screwed in a new spark plug. She had grease up to her elbow, her hair was clipped back most unbecomingly, and she was wearing her scruffiest pair of cutoff overalls, but Eric couldn’t keep his hands off her. Which was good, because she planned to win their bet and haul him across the United States in this gem of a find. The only problem was, she couldn’t get the thing to start.

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea to get so dirty?” Eric said, tracing her thigh beneath the bottom edge of her shorts.

  “I thought you liked me dirty.” She shifted her hips sideways so that his exploring finger slipped between her thighs.

  “I do,” he said. “In more ways than one. But you need to keep your new ink clean.”

  She lifted her left arm over her head and showed him how she’d covered the loose plastic wrap with several clean garbage bags that she’d duct-taped at her wrist and all around her shoulder. “Got it covered,” she said, glad she had free use of her hand, at least.

  “You’re not going to get this hunk of junk started before we leave for Tahiti,” he said. His breath was hot against the back of her neck as he leaned over her to look into the engine compartment in the back of the minibus.

  “I’m going to get it started a week before we go to Tahiti and then happily drive it over three thousand miles,” she assured him.

  “You’re awfully confident that you’re going to win this bet, considering you aren’t even trying to seduce me.”

  She hid a grin from him. She never had to try to seduce him. The man was always ready to go. She took a step back and bumped her ass into the fully erect cock that was fighting to be free of his jeans. Yep, always ready to go.

  “Oh, pardon me,” she said, grinding her ass into him. “I didn’t mean to rub up against you like that.”

  His hands shifted to her hips
to keep her from moving away. “Completely understandable,” he said. “My magic love rocket is a pussy magnet after all.”

  She giggled and reached for another spark plug. She was hoping all the engine needed was a tune-up. She’d already drained and replaced the fluids, including the oil and the stagnant, likely water-laden gas. She’d checked all the belts and hoses, replacing any that showed wear or dry rot. The engine was surprisingly clean and sound, with no rust or leaks. There was no reason that she could see for why it wouldn’t run. But no matter how much she’d purred at it and tried to coax it into starting, the engine cranked and cranked, but wouldn’t turn over. She prayed the spark plugs would do the trick so she could get to other tasks; she still had