A desperate whine left her, her pants rising into the air.
Whipping around me.
The girl dropped her chest to the bed, her head turned to the side, watching me as she reached under us. Blunted fingernails scratched at my balls. Nails raking that sensitive flesh, swirling around my hole.
“Oh god. Fuck. Violet. You are destroying me.”
I took her faster and harder. She met me thrust for thrust.
Girl demanding it.
I would give her my all.
Everything.
My heart. My truth. My life.
“Touch yourself, baby.”
And she went to town on that clit.
That was all it took, and the two of us were going off like an atom bomb.
Leveling everything. Girl writhing and moaning and trying to cover her cries by burying her face in her mattress as this fire took us whole.
Boundaries incinerated.
Nothing left but ashes.
Words falling from her mouth that she tried to bury in the sheets. “Don’t ever leave me, Richard. Don’t. My heart can’t take it. I can’t. I can’t.”
All those vulnerabilities slipped back in.
Two of us completely bare.
Nothing left to hide.
I had to tell her.
Had to.
Couldn’t go another day keeping this deceit because I no longer knew who it was that I was betraying.
Knees giving out under the weight of what I had to do, I eased us down to our sides and I curled my body around my girl.
Her spirit thrashed and her heart hammered out of control.
Like that moment we’d just shared had crushed every wall. Stripped every barrier. Tore away the veil.
Got the sense she was lying there, staring right at my secrets.
I pressed a kiss to the base of her skull. “Baby…I need you to listen…need you to hear the truth.”
It cracked on the fear.
Every cell in her body seized, and she gripped me by the hand, twining our fingers together, her ring glinting in the hazy rays of infiltrating moonlight. “Not tonight, Richard. Give us tonight.”
I nodded against the back of her head, my nose in her hair, inhaling the girl.
Violets and grace and the good.
I tugged her sweat-drenched body closer.
Refusing to let her go.
Refusing the wedge of terror that tried to slice its way into my soul.
“When we wake up in the morning, I need you to hear me out. Listen. Let me explain.”
Her nod was wary. “Okay.”
I breathed out in something that wasn’t quite relief. “Okay.”
I held her as we drifted. As we floated. As we soared.
Girl content to lie in my darkness.
I opened my mouth and began to quietly sing.
I closed my eyes
I fell into a dream
Watching through a looking glass
Nothin’s what it seems
Shards of ice
Cold, bitter bliss
That’s what I get
For stealing that first kiss
She sighed and sank deeper into my hold as I moved into the chorus.
Now I’m lost
Lost in your mystery
I lost sight. I lost my right
Staring at eternity
What’s come. What’s gone
Never gonna be reclaimed
Because clinging to this moonflower
Is where I’ll forever be chained
Clinging to this moonflower is where I’ll forever be chained
I eased up and whispered in her ear, “And I’m never going to let you go.”
Thirty-Five
Violet
My phone vibrating on the wood of my nightstand nudged me from the most blissful sleep I’d ever had. Powerful arms were wrapped around me from behind, and he held me in the haven of his body, his heart this steady thrum, thrum, thrum that lulled me into a transcendent peace.
The barest light glowed against the window, and I carefully untangled myself from Richard’s hold when my phone vibrated again. I pushed up to sitting on the side of my bed. Squinting against the sleepiness still trying to drag me under, I thumbed into the screen so I could find out what was so important this early in the morning, and I saw that I’d missed three calls and a bunch of texts.
David Jacobs: I need to speak with you.
David Jacobs: I’ve been calling. Please return my call.
David Jacobs: It’s vital I speak with you immediately. I’m coming to your house.
A shudder ripped through me.
Head to toe.
This sticky chill that slicked my spine.
Ice cold.
It sent alarm freezing my heart to a stalling point.
Sitting there staring at my phone, I knew I was about to get news that I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
Wasn’t sure I could handle.
I blinked through the waves of grief that threatened to take me under.
A dark, dark sea I could feel coaxing me into its depths.
Fear slogged through my veins, slowing my movements when I pushed from the bed, unplugged my phone, and quickly fumbled to get into a pair of jeans and a tee, my hair a wild disorder from the twist it’d been in for the wedding and then Richard destroying it last night.
My gaze moved to where he’d shifted when I’d slipped out. He now lay facedown with the sheet dipping low around his waist, just the faintest hint of his ass peeking out.
Gulping around the jagged rocks that had gathered at the base of my throat, I tried to cling to the sight of him there. To use it as encouragement. As the reminder that I would do whatever was best for Daisy.
No matter what.
I did my best to claim the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. Richard would be there to support us. To help us. But I was having a hard time feeling any sort of security.
Not when this feeling of dread rose to wash out anything else.
This sense that doom was encroaching.
I blinked back the tears burning at the back of my eyes, turned, and crept out of my room. Quietly, I clicked my bedroom door shut behind me and tiptoed downstairs and toward the front door.
With each step, I felt that swell growing higher.
A tidal wave that gathered strength.
It rushed and surged and, by the time I was unlocking the front door and stepping out into the breaking day, I could barely stand.
Stranded in a riptide.
Because I could feel it.
The devastation that approached.
My mind banged with the reality of what was coming.
I was gettin’ ready to be told my sister was no longer alive.
I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready.
“I
