Chapter Eleven Violet #2
“Want to come inside?” My voice was softer, less strained, and I was moving toward the door before he answered. But Grayson followed me inside, and when the door shut behind him, I tossed my bag on the couch and made a beeline for the kitchen.
I felt him behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I found myself surrounded by his body heat and his cologne—a dark, rich, feral scent threaded with leather and something else that made me dizzy.
“Violet.” My name was gravel on his tongue, swirling around me until I closed my eyes and gripped the edge of the kitchen sink.
“Don’t lock me out,” he murmured, fingers brushing my waist, inching up my shirt so I could feel the roughness of his fingers against my bare flesh.
It lit sparks under my skin. My pulse betrayed me, jumping hard at the base of my throat.
“I hoped we were past keeping our fears buried deep. Especially after last night.”
A tremor raced through me—God help me, he burned me alive. I turned around to face him, and he took a step back, giving me space to breathe in deeply and not become drunk off his scent.
“How do you explain to the one person who makes you feel alive and safe that you’re afraid of the world?
” I whispered. He smiled, brushed his thumb against my cheek, and stepped in close.
He just wrapped his thickly muscled arms around me and held me, my head on his chest, and I just closed my eyes and breathed in his scent.
For long minutes all we did was stand there holding each other. He was my anchor, this safe space that took away all the shadows and darkness that threatened to drown me. When he pulled back, I didn’t want to let him go. He cupped my cheeks and leaned in to kiss me slowly. Softly. Thoroughly.
His gaze burned, a fire that wanted to consume me. I didn’t want him gone. So instead of saying something—anything—I took his hand and led him to my room. This wasn’t about sex.
I’d initially just wanted to have him close, to hold him. Searching for intimacy that didn’t involve clothes being taken off or orgasms being reached.
A closeness that the darkness couldn’t touch.
But holding turned into kissing, and before I knew it, there was heavy petting, two naked bodies pressed together, and the weight of everything else fading away.
Grayson’s hands were already on me, sliding up my back, pulling me closer.
His touch was electric, like every nerve in my body was waking up, screaming for more.
We were tangled in the sheets, his breath warm against my neck as he whispered, “You’re fucking perfect, Violet.
” His voice was low, rough, and it sent a thrill straight between my thighs.
I arched into him and his lips crashed into mine, hungry and demanding. Our tongues tangled, hot and wet, while his hands roamed, one finding its way to my breasts, squeezing gently, causing my nipples to pucker even further.
I moaned into his mouth when he broke the kiss, but he wasn’t done with me. His mouth was on my neck, teeth scraping against my skin. “I want to taste every fucking inch of you,” he growled, his hands massaging my breasts.
And then his mouth replaced his hands. He sucked one nipple into his mouth while his fingers pinched and teased the other. I gasped, my hips grinding against him instinctively.
“Grayson,” I breathed, my voice trembling.
He mumbled something against my skin that made me shiver.
His hand slid down my stomach and between my thighs, and I nearly came undone when his fingers found my sensitive clit.
He rubbed slow circles, his lips still on my nipple, sucking harder now, pulling a whimper from me.
“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he murmured, his words deep and muffled against my skin. He slid a finger up and down, smearing my wetness, and finally pushed a finger inside me.
My lips parted and another gasp was pulled from me as the sensations crashed into my body. When he curled the digit just right, I cried out, my thighs clamping around his hand.
“That’s it, baby,” he said, his voice a dark rumble. “Let me fucking feel you.”
I was lost in the sensations when I finally realized he was moving down my body.
He slid his mouth lower, trailing kisses along my stomach until he reached my hip bone.
Grayson looked up at me and our eyes locked for long seconds.
When he looked at the most intimate part of me, staring at my bare pussy, heat rose up my neck to my face.
“So fucking beautiful,” he muttered before burying his face between my thighs.
His tongue flicked against my clit, once, twice, and then he was devouring me like I was the best thing he’d ever tasted. I tangled my fingers in his hair, holding him there as he lapped at me, his tongue moving in slow, deliberate strokes that had me writhing beneath him.
And when he added a second finger, thrusting them inside me while his tongue laved my clit, I felt my body wind tighter until I knew I’d explode.
“Grayson,” I breathed his name, my hips bucking on their own against his mouth. He growled in response, the vibrations sending shock waves through me so my inner muscles clenched around his fingers, pulling them in deeper.
He sucked my clit into his mouth, sucking hard before releasing it with a pop. “You taste so damn good,” he said, his voice thick with desire. “I could stay here forever, just buried between your legs, eating out this sweet pussy.”
He gave me praise until I could have orgasmed from that alone.
I was so close, teetering on the edge, and he knew it.
“Come for me, Violet,” he said, his voice firm but tender as he sucked on my clit and finger-fucked me.
The low rumbling that came from his chest sent vibrations through my center, and that was all it took.
I shattered, my body convulsing as waves of pleasure rolled through me.
Grayson didn’t stop. He kept licking and sucking until I was squirming, too sensitive to take any more. Finally he pulled back, and I forced my eyes to stay open to look at him. His lips glistened with my arousal, and he ran his tongue over them, licking me off.
He kissed his way back up my body, his erection pressing against my thigh, hard and demanding, but he didn’t try to go further. Truth was . . . I would have let him.
Instead, he just held me.
I lay there sated, drowsy, feeling like my body was weightless. I fell asleep almost immediately with Grayson holding me. And for once the nightmares didn’t come. The memories stayed back, and for the first time in a long time, I slept peacefully.
But that peace was short-lived.
Now, long after midnight, I was staring at the ceiling. Grayson lay beside me, his even, deep breathing telling me he was out. Images of bloody hearts, purple crayon designs on deep-stained wood, and shadows of sinister faces flashed before my eyes.
But the strongest, most vivid memory was Marcus’s voice in my head, slithering through my mind like it had never left.
“You were chosen for a reason, Vienna,” he whispered, reverent and poisonous, the same words he’d murmured over and over again. “You’re scared. But there’s no reason to be. You’re the Vessel. You’re so very special.”
Even now, years later, it echoed clear enough to make my skin crawl.
I thought about my memory box hidden deep in my closet. I didn’t dare get up and look inside, to let my fingers wander over the living proof of what my life had once been.
So instead I closed my eyes and thought about the linen robe. My journal. The blade with Vienna carved into the hilt.
I whispered into the dark, “You’ll never have me again.”
But my heart stuttered because I wasn’t sure if I truly meant the words.