Chapter 25 Violet
VIOLET
Sunlight presses warm against my closed eyelids.
I don’t move. Just lie here, enjoying the sensation of Elio’s arm across my waist. Heavy.
Possessive. Even in sleep, he holds me like I might disappear.
The soreness between my thighs is pleasant.
A reminder that my body was used thoroughly, repeatedly, by a man who treated it like it’s worth worshipping.
The soft sheets are tangled around our legs. My cheek rests on warm skin, rising and falling with his steady breathing. His heartbeat drums beneath my ear. Slower than mine, calmer, like even unconscious he’s more controlled than I’ll ever be.
This could be normal.
The thought slips through before I can stop it. Two people waking up together. Lazy morning light. Nowhere to be, nothing to do except exist in this bed, in this moment.
This could be my life.
A dangerous thought. The kind that gets you killed in a place like this. The kind that makes you forget there’s a man named Cicero who wants you gone, and a woman named Gabriella who’d probably slit your throat given half a chance.
But right now, with the sea reflecting sunlight beyond the windows and Elio’s warmth around me, I let myself pretend. Just for a minute. Until reality comes crashing back in.
His fingers twitch against my hip. A small movement, barely there, but I feel it everywhere.
“You’re awake.” His voice is rough with sleep. Deeper than usual.
“Mm.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to count your heartbeats.” I turn my head, pressing a kiss to his chest. “You sleep like the dead, by the way. Didn’t even twitch when I stole half the blankets.”
His arm tightens around me. “I sleep like a man who hasn’t slept properly in months.”
“Insomnia?”
“You.” His lips brush my hair. “Watching you on the monitors. Lying awake wondering if you’d ever stop hating me.”
I should hate him. But the emotion is hollow now, an echo of something that used to have teeth.
“I don’t hate you,” I say, the words feeling strange in my mouth. True, but strange. “I should. God knows I tried. But I don’t.”
His breath catches for a second. Then his hand slides up my side, fingertips tracing the curve of my waist, and the touch is so gentle it makes my chest ache.
“How do you feel?” His voice is careful. “After this morning. After—”
“Sore.” I shift against him, testing. The movement pulls at muscles I forgot I had. “Good sore. The kind that reminds you that you’re alive.”
“I should have been more careful—”
“You should have been exactly what you were.” I prop myself up on one elbow, looking down at him. He looks younger. Softer. The sharp lines of his face gentled by sleep and satisfaction. “I didn’t want careful, Elio. I wanted you.”
That raw vulnerability I saw last night when I told him he was mine flickers in his eyes.
“Come here.” His hand cups the back of my neck, drawing me down. The kiss is soft and lazy. Tasting like sleep and each other.
I melt into it.
His other hand finds my hip. Thumb stroking circles over my skin. Not demanding. Touching. Like he’s reassuring himself that I’m still here.
I deepen the kiss. Shift my weight until I’m half-sprawled across his chest. His cock hardens against the inside of my thigh, a slow press of heat, because apparently the man’s refractory period is superhuman, and the feel of it sends a pulse of heat through my belly.
“Again?” I murmur against his mouth.
“Only if you want.”
God, yes.
I want. I want so much it scares me. I slide my leg over his hip. Position myself so the hard length of him presses right where I’m already getting wet. His breath hisses out.
“Violet—”
“Shh.” I roll my hips. Slow. Letting him feel how ready I am, how much I want this. “No more talking.”
He groans, his hands finding my hips, but he doesn’t guide me, doesn’t take control. Just holds on while I grind against him, coating his cock in my slickness, teasing us both.
“Inside me.” The words come out breathless. “I want to feel you inside me.”
He shifts. Positions himself at my entrance. And I sink down.
Oh.
Earlier it was frantic, desperate, weeks of tension finally snapping. This is slow. Unhurried. Feeling every inch of him stretch me open, my body still tender from before, the slight burn only making it better.
I bottom out with a shuddering breath.
“Okay?” His voice is strained.
“Perfect.” I plant my hands on his chest and start to move.
Slow rolls of my hips. Taking him deep on every downstroke. His eyes never leave my face, watching every flicker of pleasure.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.” The words seem torn from him. “Every part of you. Inside and out.”
Heat floods my cheeks. I’m not used to compliments, not used to being looked at like I’m precious rather than convenient.
I lean down. Kiss him to shut him up, to hide how much his words affect me. His hands slide up my back, pressing me closer, and the new angle makes me gasp against his mouth.
“There—” I breathe. “Right there—”
He plants his feet. Thrusts up to meet my movements, hitting my g-spot with every stroke up. I cry out as my rhythm falters, becomes erratic, and he takes over, hands on my hips guiding me through it.
“That’s it.” His voice is dark, reverent. “Take what you need.”
I do.
I ride him until my thighs burn, until sweat slicks my skin, until the pleasure builds so high I can’t think, can’t breathe, can only feel him inside me, under me, all around me.
“Elio—” His name tears out of me. “I’m going to—”
“Come.” A command. “Come for me, Violet.”
I shatter.
He follows seconds later, groaning my name as he spills inside me, and the feeling of it, hot and claiming, sends another wave of aftershocks rippling through me.
I collapse onto his chest.
For a long time, neither of us moves. We breathe together, hearts pounding in tandem, his cock still buried inside me as we come down.
His fingers make patterns on my spine. Lazy. Aimless.
“We should probably get up at some point,” I mumble against his skin.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Food. Hygiene. The basic requirements of human existence.”
His arms tighten around me. “I have people who can bring food. The shower is ten feet away.” A pause. “I see no reason to leave this bed for at least the next several hours.”
I laugh. Actually laugh. The sound surprises us both.
“Did you just make a joke?”
“I have a sense of humor.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
He pinches my hip. I yelp, squirming, and somehow that turns into kissing, which turns into his hand between my thighs, which turns into him rolling me onto my back and sliding inside me again.
He braces himself above me, forearms on either side of my head, and moves in long, deep strokes that make me arch into him. Not conquered. Cherished.
“I could do this forever,” he murmurs. “Just this. Just you.”
I could let him
The realization is terrifying. But I don’t push it away. Don’t pretend it’s not true. Instead, I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper, giving him everything he’s asking for.
The day blurs.
We doze. Wake tangled in each other. Start touching and can’t stop.
He takes me from behind, spooned against his chest, his cock filling me so deep I can barely breathe. His hand cups my breast, thumb circling my nipple, while his other hand works my clit in slow, maddening circles.
“I can feel your heartbeat,” he says against my ear. “Right here.” His fingers press against the pulse point in my throat. “It speeds up every time I move.”
“Smug bastard.”
“Observant bastard.” He thrusts deeper. “There—it jumped again.”
I would tell him to shut up, but he angles his hips and hits that spot, and all that comes out is a moan.
Later, I sprawl across his chest while he’s still inside me, both of us too lazy to separate. We move in small increments, a rock of my hips, a subtle thrust from him, chasing pleasure without urgency.
“This is decadent,” I say. “We’re being decadent.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“An observation.” I shift. The movement makes us both groan. “I’ve never spent a whole day in bed before.”
“Never?”
“I’ve always had things to do. Work. Deadlines. Cathedrals falling apart.” I follow the lines of his chest tattoo. Some kind of family crest, I think. Haven’t asked yet. “This feels... indulgent.”
“You deserve indulgence.”
“Do I?”
His hand cups my jaw. Tilts my face up until I’m looking at him. “Yes.”
That flicker of vulnerability he tries so hard to hide passes his face. He’s looking at me like I’m a puzzle he can’t solve, a problem without a clear solution.
I kiss him instead of asking what he’s thinking.
We talk, too. In the spaces between.
I tell him about the first cathedral I ever restored. A tiny church in rural New Mexico, more adobe than stone, the kind of place that felt held together by faith.
“The roof had partially collapsed,” I say, tracing idle patterns on his skin. “The congregation had been meeting under a tarp for two years. They couldn’t afford a real restoration team, so they put out a call for volunteers.”
“And you went.”
“I was twenty-two and stupid, thought I could fix everything.” I smile at the memory.
The dust. The heat. The way the light fell through the remaining windows like a blessing.
“It took six months. I lived in my car half the time, showered at the local gym. But when we finished—” I shake my head.
“The look on their faces. Like we’d given them back something sacred. ”
“You had.”
“It was just a building.”
“Buildings aren’t just buildings.” His fingers play with my hair, twisting auburn strands around his knuckles.
“They’re repositories of memory. Of belief.
Of everything a community values enough to construct and maintain.
” A pause. “That’s why you do it, isn’t it?
The restoration work. You’re preserving meaning. ”