Insanity usurped logic.
All rationale shot.
Gone. Every fucking reservation I’d ever had slayed at the contact.
Could tell the girl was half in shock from the sudden shift, the air panting from her mouth, the other half wild as she sank her nails into my shoulders and hiked herself higher to get closer.
No chance we could get close enough.
Because this…this was the way we were supposed to be.
She was supposed to be mine and I was supposed to be hers.
Violet and I were written in the stars.
Fate.
Destiny.
My outcome before we’d even started.
Her mouth met mine in a frantic bid, her soul shivering all around like it was looking for a crack, for a way to get back to who we had been, to where I’d gone, when my heart had been with her all along.
This girl was nothing but a volatile ball of grief and need that I held in my hands.
A bomb that was getting ready to go off.
Heat coiled and lapped.
Flames that started at our feet. Leapt and curled and ravaged.
It wound around our bodies to set us afire.
Shouldn’t have been surprised considering the choices I’d made had left us burning at the stake.
In the middle of the storm, I couldn’t stop kissing her. Couldn’t stop from asking her for more when I knew I would never deserve it. That I’d never be worthy. But knowing I was going to fight for her with every fiber of who I was, anyway.
Even if those fibers were frayed.
Even if they were ragged and worn.
Tarnished and defamed.
My dick was hard as stone. Pressing and begging at her soft belly, the physical embodiment of how fuckin’ bad I’d missed this girl, while my spirit wept with every promise I’d made but had not kept.
I angled my head in a demand to deepen the kiss, like it might make up for the disloyalty.
For the deceit and deceptions that I still had to keep stashed in the deepest recesses where only the monsters could see.
My wife. My wife.
I found myself murmuring it at her soft, lush lips, my hands moving to frame her precious face. “My wife.”
Violet whimpered. Fingernails scraped at my back. Need tore through her body. “Richard. Why did you leave me? Why would you hurt me so bad?”
Frantic, her tongue stroked against mine. In the middle of it, I could taste the bitter salt from the tears that fell down her face.
The fingers at my back turned to fists.
Curling into my shirt before she pounded into my back, her kiss becoming more desperate as the offense flooded out.
“How could you? How could you just leave me?”
My hands gripped and pled, riding down her shoulders and locking around her back, holding her tight like I could keep her from floating away. From disappearing into the expanse of nothingness that had been born between us.
The void we were trying to fill in a single moment too vast and extraordinary.
“I know I hurt you, Violet. I know I hurt you. I didn’t want to. It killed me. Fucking destroyed me.”
A sob hitched in her throat.
Guilt throbbed, violent in its lash, and I forced myself to pull away.
But I couldn’t go far.
My forehead dropped to hers as I fought the compulsion to show her the scars the years without her had left.
Marred and stained and disfigured.
Because without her, I’d never looked the same.
My hands were on her hips when I set her on unsteady feet.
She dropped her attention to the ground as a cry wrenched free, and she started to back away. My hands shot out to take her by the face. To stop her from running. From hiding. “Violet.”
“No.” It cracked like a bullet from a gun. Her head shook and she wound out of my hold, putting her hands up between us. “No. Richard. You can’t do this to me. I can’t let you do this to me all over again. I won’t make it. I already warned you…warned you that our hearts can’t take it, and you keep comin’ back here with the intention of wreckin’ me all over again. And this time it’s not just gonna be me who you’re going to ruin.”
“Last thing in the world I want to do is hurt either of you. I won’t.” It was the stab of a confession. Probably the vilest lie I’d ever told. I didn’t want to hurt her. But there was no stopping this train that was barreling out of control.
Asshole out on our property last night had proved that.
“But you already did, Richard. You hurt me worse than anyone has ever hurt me before. You left me.”
The last words cracked, and she touched her chest.
Like the girl wanted to give me access to see what I’d done.
She didn’t need to show me. I’d known it all along.
“I’d take it back if I could. If I could go back and erase what was done, I would. I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Violet. I want to be here. Right here, with you. I need you to trust that.”
A motherfuckin’ fool. But I couldn’t turn back. Couldn’t turn away. Couldn’t leave.
She blinked up at me with those mesmerizing eyes.
Violets and the sky and eternity.
The girl delicate and raw.
Fragile and fierce.
Every fucking day since I’d met her, I’d been in awe.
She scoffed out a disbelieving sound. “And that’s the problem. I can’t trust you. Can’t trust that you’ll stay.”
She stared up at me, wading through the turmoil, wearing this skintight white tank with no bra and sleep pants that hugged her in all the right ways.
Distracting to say the least.
“What do you even want, Richard? I’m over here telling you I can’t trust you, and I don’t even know what you’re asking me to give.”
I took a step forward, cocking my head to the side, my words grit. “Not asking for a thing, Violet, because you and I both know you’re already mine.”
Misery sliced through her
