Because I was achin’ like mad to do the very thing she’d asked me not to do.
To taste and to kiss and to fuck.
Reclaim.
I stopped at the base of the steps. Holding onto the railing, she took the first step down. It sent tremors rocking the earth. When she climbed down to the next, it might as well have been an earthquake with the way she hit me.
A landslide.
A complete collapse.
She stopped on the last, leaving us face-to-face.
Our breaths mingled in the air.
Whirring around us with the whisper of possibility.
Could I be such a fool to think that I might have this again? So selfish to go after the girl who deserved so much better than what I had done?
Stomach contorting in conflict, I reached out and grabbed a single piece of her hair.
She jerked in a sharp inhale.
I tucked it behind her ear, keeping clear of her skin, my breath close to her ear. “You are stunning. You have any idea what you do to me? Finding you like this? Fucking most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Old wounds opened up and rushed from her pores. “You can’t go around sayin’ stuff like that to me. We already talked about this.”
“You said no touching or kissing. Not doing either of those. And I came here planning on telling you the truth.”
At least what I could give her which wasn’t gonna be a whole lot.
She huffed out a painfully cute sound. “You just touched my hair.”
I quirked her a grin. “Hair doesn’t count.”
She rolled her eyes. “Lord help me if you’re the one making the rules.”
“I thought it was plenty established that I’m the rule breaker, not the rule maker?” It came off playful.
Her laugh was droll. “Rule breaker. Heart breaker. Same thing, isn’t it?”
“Violet.” Her name tumbled off my tongue in an apology.
She shook her head, lifted her chin. “Come on…let’s get this over with.”
I pushed out a sigh and stepped to the side so she could make her way to my truck. I followed close behind, my hand hovering at the small of her back but not quite touching. Probably didn’t matter a whole ton considering the heat of us created a fiery ball of energy in that bare space, burning us alive, anticipation a razor-sharp edge in the atmosphere.
Her breaths were coming short and swift as I reached around and opened the door for her. She climbed in. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
She’d always been.
My sheer and utter pleasure.
I shut her in, rounded the front, and hopped into the driver’s seat. “You ready?”
She huffed a little sound, though there was something light playing around her mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever been ready for you, Richard Ramsey.”
“Funny because I think you were the only thing in my life I’ve ever been ready for.”
Pain creased the corner of her eyes, and I started the truck and backed out without saying anything else.
My intentions clear.
She was just going to have to catch up to them.
We started the trip into town in basic silence.
Violet’s apprehension was heavy and dragging in the cab, the minutes slugging by and racing too fast.
I glanced across at her, girl shifting in the seat more than she had been the day I’d gone with her to take Daisy to the emergency room.
Because then her focus had been the child.
The sweet, adorable child who lodged a rock at the base of my throat.
Guilt came at me like a sledgehammer sent to crush my tainted soul to dust and debris.
I reached out and broke another of those rules. Caressed the pad of my thumb along the edge of her hand she held on her lap.
Tingles ravaged her flesh.
Palpable.
The beat of her heart a hammer, a clanging riot, so loud I could feel it like a shout at my spirit. Mine raced to catch time. I glanced her way for a second, still touching that spot and wishing I could sink all the way inside and make her understand.
“Want to make one thing clear before we start this night, Violet. Need you to know I never meant to hurt you,” I said, shifting to stare out the windshield. The countryside blinked by, passing in a blur, same way as our love.
Gorgeous and wilting. Bright and fading.
Blooming before it’d been sentenced to decay.
“You were the one thing I cherished beyond any other in this world. The one thing.” The words scraped from my raw throat.
Sadness rippled from her being, filling up the space and stealing the air. My lungs wanted to cave. “You keep sayin’ that, Richard, but you chose to do it anyway. You think you comin’ back here can just erase that?”
“No. I don’t.” I huffed out an uncomfortable laugh. “Do I wish it could? Fuck yeah. Would do anything to take away the pain. But I can’t escape this.”
My attention drifted to her, like she might be able to see to the bare truth of what I was tellin’ her.
The hidden confession.
I was a prisoner.
Bound to what I’d done. To what I had to do.
Her expression was tortured. “What have you been runnin’ from? What you said back at the house…”
She trailed off. The implication clear.
My teeth mashed together. “Won’t let anyone get near you, Violet. Won’t let anyone touch you.”
This whole mission was about saving the innocent. The pure who had been defiled.
“Who is it I need protected from?”
My jaw clenched tight, voice only half a tease. “Apparently only me. Anyone else won’t get close.”
She choked out a wry sound. “Now that is something I can believe.”
I slowed as we got into town, and I took a left into the restaurant parking lot. I pulled into a spot, turned off the truck, and released a heavy sigh as I roughed a disturbed hand through my hair, staring ahead before I finally forced myself to look at her. “It’s a bad world, Violet. That’s the truth.”
“What’s a bad world?”
I looked out the windshield. “Fame. Striving to be something, to stand in the limelight, not
