Chapter Four #3
Instead, he dug through his suitcase for a clean pair of boxers, pulling them on as he studied the rest of the contents. Violet made no mention of what their plans were for the rest of the day, so for now, he was opting for casual and comfortable for the chewing out she was going to give him.
Sweatpants were the obvious pick, along with a T-shirt that had seen better days. If his mother, God bless her resting soul, had seen it before she passed, she’d have squirreled it away into her rag basket, to be torn up and used for polishing… something.
She’d abhorred waste of any kind, and Reaux often wondered what she’d have thought about him coasting on the surface on his life instead of truly living it while he waited for Violet to come to her senses.
He smiled to himself as he dressed, imagining his mother’s voice in his head lecturing him on waiting too long to chase Violet down.
More, for letting her go in the first damn place.
His mother believed in heart above all else—the brain was a machine, often flawed, capable of making miscalculations, but the heart knew what it wanted, what was best, as long as the brain didn’t interfere.
She would’ve loved Violet.
Giving the grief a moment to flow through him, Reaux moved his bags to the closet, leaving them on the floor until Violet granted him permission to mingle his meagre possessions amongst hers.
He decided to organize food while she sulked in the shower. While his woman enjoyed flowers and jewelry as rewards, they were not the way to carve forgiveness into her ruthlessly guarded heart. No, she was more likely to respond to thoughtful actions like feeding her.
Luckily, he was a very thoughtful man when he put his mind to it.
Violet
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Palms pressed against the shower wall, Violet hung her head and cursed herself out for the fucking fool she evidently was—a sucker for punishment, a goddamn masochist, the queen of unfettered idiocy.
Not only had she abandoned every vow she’d sworn to not get involved with the rakish prick again in this lifetime, she’d done the unthinkable and let him fuck her without any freaking protection.
On one hand, she didn’t need to worry about STIs or STDs.
Eli and Evander’s strict testing protocol ensured the physical safety of their clients and staff, but it was the participant’s responsibility to guard against any other ramifications of a sexual encounter.
That was why there were hundreds of condoms distributed throughout the club, free to take and—more importantly—use.
It was Boudreaux’s fault, she thought furiously. All that talk about breeding her, filling her up with his cum, had gotten under her skin and burrowed into her empty, aching womb as though words alone could knock her up.
She could have stopped him. Ordered him to find a condom, or better yet, get his ass dressed and out of her cabin. But no, her body turned traitor and demanded companionship to combat the loneliness, a cock to dispel the yearning that had been simmering quietly for years.
She banged her forehead lightly against the tiles.
What wasn’t his fault was the fact she’d stopped taking her birth control pills a month after she left her broken heart and crumbled life on his doorstep.
When the grief of his betrayal finally ebbed and she’d realized their relationship was truly dead, there just hadn’t been any point in taking the meds any more, especially once she made the choice to not get wrapped up in another man—emotionally or sexually—until the deepest wounds healed.
Unfortunately, months turned into years that kept rolling, and those wounds were still as raw and fresh as ever. Some days it felt as though her soul resisted healing simply to protect itself from newer, fresher pain.
It was dawning on her, slowly but surely, that perhaps she was thinking along the wrong lines. She wasn’t resistant to healing; she just needed the man who wounded her so grievously to fix the damage he’d inflicted before she could leave the past behind… preferably with him in it.
There’d been a time when—young and idealistic—she’d dreamed of marrying Boudreaux.
Not the sweeping white dress and ornate veil, just a simple ceremony that joined them together for the rest of their lives.
For whatever came after death. She’d been so in love with him, eternity was the only future she’d seen.
Marriage, a home in the French Quarter, children to add more love and laughter…
The dream almost became reality.
Reality, however, disagreed.
Stupidity and irresponsibility aside, what the hell would she do if nature decided to grant her what she’d wanted back then?
Leaving Serenity to start over in a new city wouldn’t be easy if she was pregnant, but it could be done.
Plan B should be available from the club doctor if she chose to go that route, or the alternative…
Colorado, for the moment, imposed no restrictions on abortion.
Stifling a scream of frustration, Violet resisted the urge to smack her head against the tiles until the lights went out.
If she got confirmation in a few weeks that she was indeed with child, there was no way she could terminate it.
No way to even consider it—how could she when women like Sierra were fighting just to get pregnant?
That left her two options—score some Plan B or play roulette with nature.
In just a couple years, she’d be forty. Forty, for God’s sake, and what did she really have to show for her time here?
A handful of casual relationships before the big one that ended any foolish romantic notions of happily ever after, and a career revolving around leather, impact toys, and naked men.
Not exactly the legacy she’d imagined.
Aside from the fact she’d be a geriatric mother due to her age, did she honestly want to become a single mother? Changing diapers, cleaning up various excretions from both ends of a baby, trying to juggle her own basic needs while prioritizing her child’s at the same time?
Of course, the ramifications of keeping a baby went deeper than that.
Boudreaux would never surrender his rights as a father, which meant she would be tied to him for the next eighteen goddamn years.
He’d make a wonderful father, she had no doubts about that, but he’d use the bonds of parenthood to remain in her life and that…
well, resurrecting that long-lost dream would only turn it into a nightmare.
With a soft grunt, Violet pushed away from the wall and switched the shower off, standing in the swirling steam and heavy silence as her thoughts bounced here, there, and everywhere.
The main thing to do was not panic. There was no guarantee she’d managed to upend her future as dramatically as she was imagining; maybe she wasn’t in her fertile period.
She’d lost track of that a long time ago—when time rolled into one continual loop of loneliness and celibacy, why bother thinking about such things?
However, she wouldn’t be surprised if Boudreaux possessed supercharged, bloodhound-like sperm.
She shook her head, rolling her eyes at the ridiculous mental image of several hundred sperm trekking through her reproductive system on a misguided hunt for the Holy Ovaries, being waylaid in the Fabled Fallopian valley, and stumbling across their hallowed treasure.
Violet ran a hand through her sodden hair, pulling it away from her face.
How hard did a man have to fuck a woman to send her brain into a tailspin, for God’s sake?
He obviously wasn’t lacking in stamina; age played in his favor.
He certainly wasn’t lacking in skill or enthusiasm, that was for damn sure.
She was going to feel him inside her for the next day or two.
Well, she couldn’t spend the rest of the day hiding in the shower. Might be nice, give her a chance to pull herself back together in a way that concealed her inner distress, but the longer she spent in here, the more he’d know just how much what they’d done affected her.
Unacceptable.
As far as he was concerned, their little tryst was nothing more than a meaningless, casual been-there-and-done-that blowing off steam.
The truth would have to be forcibly removed from her lips—Boudreaux could never know she’d broken her years-long dry spell after leaving him by repeating past mistakes she made with him.
Once she was dressed again, she was relegating this fiasco to the unrepeatable file, and they would return to an abstinent, hands-off, Dom-sub relationship until the contract came to an end.
If she figured out a way to break it, or simply decided to get the hell out of dodge before then, all the better as far as she could see.
Maybe she took her time drying off.
Maybe she spent several minutes tying her bathrobe just so.
Maybe… for fuck’s sake, why was she procrastinating walking to her own damn bedroom to get dressed in her own damn clothes?
This was the time she needed to claim her space as her own and not be intimidated by the man pushing his way through the door.
He was a goddamn guest—no, no, not a guest, a lowly interloper—and she did not have to tolerate tiptoeing around him.
Straightening her shoulders, Violet marched down the hallway into the bedroom, prepared to order him from the room… and found it empty. Bravado deflating, she cursed him under her breath, then shrugged it off and stomped barefoot to the drawers for a clean set of panties and matching bra.
Her afternoon plans required a slight adjustment to visit the med clinic, which meant ordering Boudreaux to stay in the cabin or finding something to distract him out in the giant playground that was Serenity.
Odds were he wouldn’t stay put without bitching about it; she was not in the mood for whining or complaining today.