Chapter 46
“You’re cheating,” I say, tossing my nine of clubs down on the table to meet Vi’s ace. “I don’t know how you’re doing it but you’re cheating.”
Violette laughs as she swipes both our cards from the center and glances down at the score— nine to six for her.
“One more point and your ass is mine, Kingsley,” she says, taking a sip of her homemade sangria.
We’re sitting on the outdoor sofa on the patio attached to her bedroom playing cards as we wait for Hollie to settle into a deeper sleep, and I’m taking in the way the moonlight hits her face every chance I get.
Violette shuffles the cards and glances over at the monitor. The sound of Hollie softly snoring at the other end of the house makes her smile.
“I should be letting you win after the day you gave, Hols,” she says as she starts to deal our cards out onto the cushion between us. “But I’ve never been known to hold back in a competition, so I’ll just say thank you again instead.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say just as she flips up the trump card. It’s a Jack, the highest card she can turn up. Of course.
“And you don’t have to thank me.” I reach across the table and grab her hand. “Whatever this is between us, Violette, it’s not just you I care about. When I heard Troy wasn’t coming…I knew I had two choices. I could drive all the way to Seattle and beat his fucking ass…”
Violette laughs. “That’s how I felt.”
“Or I could make it possible for Hollie to go, and understand that Troy is the one who loses, because he didn’t get to experience that with her.” I graze her knuckles with my thumb, wanting her to understand. “The more time I spend with you, Vi, the more I realize these feelings I have for you and for Hollie, they aren’t temporary.”
“Rowan.”
I move closer to her and enclose her small hand between my much larger ones.
“Don’t Rowan me. Anytime I want to talk to you about anything even remotely real, you brush me off. I’m not letting you anymore, Vi.” I pull her hand up and kiss the inside of her wrist, just breathing in her sweet coconut scent. I drop another kiss because I can’t help myself. I look into her eyes. “I know you’ve been through a lot, and maybe you aren’t ready to tell me how you feel but I want you to know, I’ve never felt like this before—with anyone. I know enough to know that when the right person comes along, there’s no other choice, it just is. I was too young to understand it before, but I get it now.”
Violette reaches her hand up to press her palm to my jaw. I turn my head to kiss it. “What I’m saying is, you’re my only choice, Vi, you and Hollie, and I’ll wait as long as I need to for you to be ready to accept that, but what I won’t do is pretend I’m not fucking crazy about you for one more second, because I am.”
“I’m afraid,” she says quietly. I place my hand over hers and bring them both to my lap.
“After Jacob…passed…” I can tell she still has a hard time saying the word, like it affirms he’s gone. “I had what my doctor said were panic attacks, but it wasn’t just that. I’ve had those before in my life and this didn’t feel like that. It felt like I was experiencing a glimpse of what Jacob felt when he died. We’ve always been so connected. Once I was at school, and this is going to sound crazy, but my arm just started hurting out of nowhere. Right at my elbow, I couldn’t even bend it. When I got home, my mother told me my dad had taken Jacob to the hospital—he had fractured his elbow.” Tears begin to well in her eyes and my heart feels like it’s breaking. “I get these auras, like everything around me is hazy, I feel almost faint and the weight on my chest, it’s crushing, like I can’t breathe… like I’m inhaling smoke…” Violette swipes a tear off her cheek. “It hasn’t happened in a long time but the thought of you out there, and something happening, it’s like I can feel the prickle of that heat just waiting to overtake me.” She shivers and goosebumps break out over her arms. I squeeze her hand and look into her eyes, offering her some of my own truth.
“I’m afraid too. I still see him before he cracks a joke and then heads up that ridge, it wakes me up in a cold sweat, and I’ve always felt like I suffered that loss alone, until you came home. You’re the only person who’s more connected to him than me. But I feel it too, Vi, I feel him pushing me to do things, pushing me to make choices. He’s always here.”
I take a deep breath and tell her something I’ve never even uttered out loud before.
“When I fell in that pit, I was burned in so many places. The powder in there is white hot, and I remember, in those seconds right before I blacked out, seeing it land all over me. When I got to the hospital and I could really see the damage, I had little singes and pink everywhere on this arm.” I reach down and pat my tattoo for Jacob. “But not here, not one ember, not one singe, and I felt like…” I blow out a breath. “Talk about crazy, but I felt like I was meant to be there with you. Like he was putting me there with you. I know it’s scary, but what if we’re scared together ? ”
Violette smiles up at me and it takes my breath away even though I’ve seen it countless times. “They say misery loves company.” She shrugs.
I chuckle and pull her hand up to kiss the top of her knuckles.
There’s something heavy pulling me to her at this moment—a need I can’t explain, a need to taste her, to feel her body against mine. I lean in and kiss her, losing my hands in her hair. Violette kisses me back. I let her take over. This kiss is all her. Languid and sure. Her soft lips move with mine and her tongue sweeps into my mouth to meet my own. It’s a perfect kind of harmony, one I’ve only ever felt with her. It’s a feeling I’m starting to crave to feel whole. Violette moves closer, cards fall off the couch onto the concrete below, our game forgotten, a whole new one beginning. As Violette’s hands move to the hair at the nape of my neck every cell in my body races. After that talk her mood has shifted. She’s lighter, almost playful.
“Follow me,” she says breathlessly against my lips, and a carnal instinct to claim her takes over. Violette pulls back from me and stands, picking up the baby monitor. She moves toward the door to her room and when she gets there she turns back and smirks at me. Her eyes beam when she smiles at me over her shoulder. Again, it’s fucking breathtaking.
“I’m just letting you off the hook, you know you were about to lose,” she says in a cocky little tone. One that has me on her heels and walking her backward with barely enough time for her to set the baby monitor down on the dresser.
My mouth is on hers and she’s moving, stopping only when her thighs hit the bed. Violette’s nails dig into my skin through my T-shirt, which is just in the way. I reach behind me and yank it off, only breaking the kiss to let the fabric pass between us before her lips are back on mine and her nails are biting into me again in a slow delicious drag. I take her juicy bottom lip between my teeth and bite until she whimpers. There’s an intoxicating balance between the sweet, playful way we are with each other in everyday life and the carnal depraved way we need to own each other in the bedroom. It’s obvious to me that those two worlds colliding and somehow meshing perfectly, could only mean that Violette Taylor is it for me.
She’s my twin flame.
Pulling herself free in a breathless pant, Violette looks up at me. I place my fingers at the center of the flannel shirt she wears, pulling it open with one sharp tug, buttons go flying and hit her wood floors as I press my naked chest against her. I revel in her kiss, her warmth.
We lose the rest of our clothes in a heated blur, tugging and pulling at them until they land on the floor in heap, and I’m pressing against her, rock hard and leaking pre-cum against her abdomen. She moans and reaches her hand between us to stroke me, my cock throbs and I groan into her mouth. Violette sits down on the edge of her bed and looks up at me, taking my thick cock in her hand and licking the tip. My eyes roll back with the feeling.
“Fuck,” I grunt as she wraps her soft lips around me. She licks a hot trail from my base to the tip and swirls her tongue against the underside of my shaft. This view of her pretty eyes looking up at me through her lashes and my cock in her mouth almost does me in. I slide in deeper and hit the back of her throat.
Violette gags but I don’t stop, I use my knee to notch her thighs apart. She spreads them wide enough for me to sink between them and slide just my middle finger through her soaking slit.
“Mmm.” I take my bottom lip between my teeth as I fuck her pretty face for another few seconds, before pulling my cock from her lips and resting it there. I want to burn this image in my brain, and it makes me even more desperate to be inside her.
“Get up on the bed, on all fours, and spread these thighs, love. Show me how wet this pretty pussy is. Show me how ready you are for my cock.”
Violette moans and her eyes flutter closed but she doesn’t hesitate. She crawls up onto the bed before me, her dripping cunt on full display. The room is dimly lit but seeing her soaked like this, so ready for me, has me losing all control. I climb onto the bed behind her, swiping her long hair off her back, tracing her spine with my fingers. The way she moans as I touch her feels like she’s releasing the weight of everything that sits on her shoulders, like only I can offer her that relief. It’s a reward I’ll seek over and over.
“Rowan,” she whimpers as I slide my hands down to her hips, stroking the globes of her ass. Fucking hell, I’m ready to blow my load all over her just from looking at her like this. I drop my lips to her upper back, her shoulders.
“I…” she moans
I slide my hand downward between her legs, running my finger along the insides of her thigh, toying with her for a beat, never touching her exactly where she wants.
“You what, love?” I ask her.
“I…just…” she says almost incoherently before her head falls down and she mumbles, “ fuck,” because my first two fingers have just slipped into her pussy and my thumb is toying with her swollen needy clit.
“Having trouble getting your thoughts out?” I grin, pulling my fingers out of her and sucking them clean, just for a taste. I push my fingers back into her and the two of us catch eyes in the mirror over her dresser. I watch her face as I work my fingers expertly into her. The slope of her shoulders, the curve of her back as she rocks into my hand. The way her eyes slightly close and her teeth meet her bottom lip so she can stay as quiet as possible.
Fucking stunning.
“Yes, I…I just…I think you’re really great,” she mutters in a moan.
I smirk. “I think you’re great too, Vi…” I kiss below the shell of her ear. “The greatest,” I whisper to her as I center myself. When I pull my fingers from her, she whimpers. “And I’m here to take care of you, Vi.”
She nods and shivers as I force her thighs open wider and hike her ass up to meet me, taking my place behind her. My cock presses between her ass cheeks, and she whimpers again, rocking into me more.
I’m so fucking ready to own her body the same way she owns my soul.
“Look at us, right there,” I tell her, reaching around to pull her face up so she sees us in the mirror.
“Look at this body, so fucking beautiful…so needy and eager. You’re good and ready for my cock, aren’t you, love?” I ask, as I slide my cock through her slit, coating myself in her arousal. Fuck, even that feels incredible.
She looks at me over her shoulder in the mirror and moans, nodding quickly, desperately, begging. But I’m not giving in yet. Not before I’ve made a meal of her perfect pussy.
“I…please, Rowan,” is all she offers, but it’s enough. I know all the words she can’t say. They’re irrelevant because I can see them just by looking into her lust filled eyes, and, fuck, if that isn’t the most beautiful sight.