Becoming guttural. Whimpers of something that bellowed through the night. The sky hung low, the stars so bright and close where they dangled from the heavens that I was sure I could pluck one out and offer it to her.
A dream that we’d shared but had burned out far too fast.
The canopy held us.
Covered us.
A bubble of protection that refused to allow in anything else.
That energy thrashed in the confines of it. Whipping and wrapping us in the same twine that had bound us at first glance.
Our connection fierce.
Unrelenting.
Endless.
Eternal.
A little fist pummeled on my chest. Then another.
No. They weren’t to injure.
Just got the sense she wanted to bash her way in and get to the truth of what had become of the love we were supposed to share for all our days.
“I’m so mad at you. I’m so mad at you. I want to hate you. I need to hate you.” She rambled the words against the rampage battering my chest.
“I know. I know,” I whispered back, and she was kissing across the spot where she’d just been releasing her torment over my heart.
“Let me hate you,” she said there. “Don’t let me trust you again.”
It was a broken plea, and she kept kissing higher, over the fabric of my shirt. Tremors shivered and need rushed.
“Violet.” It hit somewhere between a petition and a warning.
The exploration of her hands became frantic as she searched me in the night below the murky, opalescent glow of the moon that sagged low.
Under it, something hysterical came over her being, girl’s spirit screaming out in this madness I didn’t know how to sate.
How to tame.
How to fix.
“I’m sorry. I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” I kept murmuring into her hair. At her temple. At her cheek.
Like I could offer the comfort that she needed.
Take it away.
Do something to make her life better.
“I hate you,” she said again, trying to convince herself of the lie.
It’d be so much better if I wanted her to.
If I could let her go.
I’d tried. Fuck I’d tried.
Impossible.
My hands splayed across her back and rode up toward her shoulders. A covering of affection.
Need blistered.
I tried to force it down. To beat it into submission. This wasn’t the time nor the place.
But Violet was kissing higher, those lips making a frenetic path up the column of my throat, tiny caresses of her mouth sending me into madness.
“Richard, Richard,” she chanted.
Her hands gripped.
Her spirit grasped.
“Violet. Baby. You need to stop.”
She just nipped at the scruff of my jaw, her tongue coming out to taste the flesh.
Lust bounded.
I hissed.
Didn’t she remember the admission I’d made to her back at the restaurant? Because this was brutal. Torture. She kept up like this, and I was gonna blow.
Guessed the sentence was fitting. The temptation she was meting. This girl kissing on me and not being able to have her.
She shifted her position to sit on my lap and wrapped her legs around my waist.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She started rocking, and my hands shot to her waist to attempt to stop her, but I was moaning out a greedy sound when she rubbed herself on my rock-hard cock. She did the same, the sexy mewl rolling from her throat.
“Why do you make me feel this way? Richard. Please.”
She nipped the corner of my mouth with her teeth and her fingers drove into my hair. “Please.”
“What do you need, baby? What do you need?” My voice was a growl. Desperation and the knowledge that I shouldn’t do this. That this girl had reached a breaking point and I wasn’t fit to hold her together.
The secrets I was keeping from her were more than enough to make me a criminal just for touching her.
Still, I was edging back to look into the expanse of those eyes, unable to push her away when she was clinging to me like I was the one thing that was going to keep her grounded.
Like maybe I wouldn’t be the one to destroy her in the end.
“I need to go back. I need to remember. I need to remember the way it used to be when you loved me. I need you to remind me what it feels like.”
“There is no used to in this equation,” I rumbled beneath her assault.
She leaned in and whispered at my ear, “Touch me.”
I nearly came undone.
“You don’t want this, Violet.”
At least the girl who’d run out of the restaurant because of the declarations I’d been making didn’t. Wasn’t so sure about the girl who was currently grinding her sweet heat all over the bulge in my jeans.
Friction flying.
Zinging through the air and making it hard to cling to reason.
“You owe me. Remember the way you used to touch me? The way you used to make me fly? Remember when you told me you’d do it forever? I’m achin’.”
Well, fuck me.
How was I supposed to argue with that?
She kissed across my mouth. Lips brushing lips in a tender caress.
Flames leapt in the space.
Enticing, excruciating heat.
She exhaled at my mouth, and I swallowed it down, muttered, “I do. I owe you. I owe you everything.” Then I followed the words with my tongue, delving into the treasure that was this girl’s mouth. “Want to give you the world. Anything. Everything.”
Hot flesh stroked the other. Tangling in this desire that caught fire.
A blaze that burned right through the middle of us.
Sparking and spreading.
This girl was straight-up arson.
Torching all reason and discretion.
No longer gave a shit about anything other than making this girl feel good. Satisfying this one request.
Stupid?
Hell yeah.
So fuckin’ stupid because Violet was still trembling and shaking and expelling tears while she clamored to get to me, moisture glinting and striking as it rolled down that breathtaking face, and my guts got jumbled in a warning that she was going to regret this.
That I was only making this coming end worse.
But those thoughts were drowned by the desperation that rose and lifted between us.
Stirring the disorder.
Each movement more delirious than the last.
Hands
