Chapter 5
FIVE
VIOLET
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, WEST VIRGINIA
Click-slap. Click-slap.
Colton’s dress shoes clacked on the marble floors, while my bare feet made a slapping sound on our way to the elevator. I carried my shoes in one hand, hobbling from dancing so hard.
Colton was silent, eyes downcast. I twisted my lips to chew on one corner while we waited for the elevator. My heart raced. Things had gotten awkward since the wedding ended. Other than basic reality crashing in, I wasn’t sure what caused the shift.
“Tonight was fun,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah,” Colton agreed, but his voice didn’t sound like he had much fun at all. “Violet, what really happened with us?”
My lips parted, the wind knocked out of me. This was it. The confrontation I’d feared every day leading up to this wedding. Tremors broke through my body.
“What?” I whispered. Wasn’t my explanation the night before good enough? I explained as much as I could. I made sure he knew it wasn’t his fault.
“I wasn’t done, Vi,” he said, his voice breaking. His Adam’s apple bobbed. I was struck with the memory of kissing him just to the right of it, where he was ticklish. “And I don’t think you were done either. I was willing to stick it out until your parents came around. You just . . . quit.”
Our eyes locked, and the gut wrenching reality of his hurt seared through the glance.
The elevator doors opened and we broke our stare to step inside. Colton’s gaze fell to the floor between us after I pressed the buttons for our floors.
Colt sniffed in a breath and held it. “I loved you, Violet.”
Hot, fast tears blurred everything around me.
I sucked in one breath, then two. My eyes raised to Colton’s.
I wished I had a good reason why, other than you scared me, but I don’t know why.
His jaw tightened as he took my hand, trembling slightly.
The elevator doors opened on his floor and he stepped out, keeping our hands joined.
There before me stood the wounded boy, the one who got his sunshine taken away. I took it from him. How could I?
“You don’t have anything to say,” he said, a surprising amount of contempt in his voice.
“Colt,” I tried.
He huffed a sad laugh, dropped my hand, and turned away. “I don’t know why I got my hopes up. Goodnight, Violet.”
The doors slid shut and the elevator moved to my floor. But I couldn’t move. I was stuck there, frozen and trying to figure out how to do this.
I couldn’t tell him why I left, because I didn’t fully know why. It was just something I felt. Colton, who had always been safe for me, became dangerous. I wished I could pinpoint it.
But there was one thing I knew that he didn’t, and he deserved to know the part of the truth I could give him.
I frantically pressed the button for his floor, going back down. The doors let me onto his floor and I speed-walked out. I dropped my shoes in the hallway by the elevators. Who cared? I pulled my skirt up so I could run. My heart pounded as I turned once, then twice, to make it to his room.
I knocked, my heart in my throat, on my sleeve, spilling all over the space outside his door.
Colton opened with sad eyes, an empty husk of who he usually was.
“I loved you,” I rushed out. “I loved you so much, Colton, and I’m sorry I ran, and I’m sorry I can’t—”
I was cut off when he reached for my waist, pulling me into him and slamming the door shut behind me.
“You loved me,” he forced out, his voice strained, his hand swiping over my hair, then into it. I was pinned to his body, fiddling with his lapel. “Say it again. Please.”
I nodded. “I loved you.”
I only had a split second to glance at his lips before we were there. For the first time since that last time in his bed, we kissed.
He tasted the same. All these years later, and Colton still tasted like Colton.
Gently, he backed me into the closed door.
I raised on my toes to get closer to him, and his hands settled on my ribs.
He did that delicious thing where he scraped his teeth over my bottom lip, and I cried out into his mouth.
He held our faces together, panting. “What do you need?”
“You,” I whimpered. “This.”
Pain laced through his gruff voice. “I need you to tell me exactly what you want.”
I gripped his cheeks. “Colton.”
His thumb traced my bottom lip and his voice lowered to a husky rumble that reverberated between my legs. “I know you can use your words, baby.”
But I didn’t want to use my words. I wanted to be tossed on the bed and ravaged.
I wanted to fuck him until he understood that I wanted everything and I hated that we couldn’t have it.
I was tired of talking, tired of thinking, because thinking always led to frustrating dead ends. I wanted to show him.
So I did.
I shoved him back and his arms braced in front of him like I might hit him. I smirked, grabbed him by the tie, and guided him to the bench at the end of his bed. His blue eyes tinged darker and the corner of his lips hooked up. “I liked that.”
“Good.” I stepped between his spread knees, combing my fingers through his hair. I swept them under his jaw to keep his gaze up at me. His pulse thundered under my thumb, my palm resting on his throat.
“Vi,” he breathed. “You’re so sexy.”
While I’d just been a commanding sex goddess, his commentary slowed me down. I wanted furious passion, to let my body show him what my words couldn’t. To show him that leaving him hurt me just as much as it hurt him, that I wished it hadn’t happened how it did.
I was taller than him like this, with him seated. His hands drifted up and landed on my hips, eyes softening. “You loved me?”
“Yeah.” My voice cracked. “I did.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as his eyes scoured my face. “This is really hot, but . . . it really messed me up when you left and,” his voice faltered, “you’re going to leave again.”
“We just have tonight,” I agreed, and I didn’t miss how he deflated. I hated letting him down, but I had to stay strong. I couldn’t reopen the past we shared, our simple love and my garbled mind. I had to keep it together, to keep my hectic life as simple as possible. “Do you not . . . want to?”
He shook his head, eyes going wide. “Oh, I definitely want to. I just think . . . with you, it’s not hot, you know?”
Well, I didn’t see that coming. I cocked my head back and crossed my arms. “I’ll just see myself out, then.”
“No, no, wait, wait, wait, that’s not what I mean.” He gripped my hips tighter. “It’s so hot. But it’s not just hot.”
His thumb toyed with the fabric sprawling across my hip, peach chiffon. Colton’s jaw popped forward and he drew a breath that flared his nostrils, like he was nervous to say it.
“It means something with you.”
This was quintessential Colton: vulnerable to a fault. “Because you loved me?”
He shook his head. “Because we loved each other.”
His eyes met mine and held, one, two, three seconds.
Four, five, six eternities.
My dress dipped between my breasts in the front, larger than they were when Colton last knew me, but still small. He leaned forward, closing his eyes as he pressed a soft kiss to my breastbone.
I was caught off guard, speechless from his tenderness. So, I stole his words from shortly before. “I liked that.”
He smirked. “Good.”
What was I supposed to do then? Straddle his lap? Push him back on the bed? Lower my dress strap and let him suck to his heart’s content?
Colton’s hands were planted on my hips, his thumbs stroking my hip bones in the front.
I couldn’t stop running my fingers through his hair, the familiar texture grounding me.
His fingers sank deeper into my hips with each pass of his thumbs.
His face drew closer until he turned his head to press an ear against my chest.
A full breath in and a full breath out, together. This was what I wanted. Letting our bodies apologize. Lungs, breath, hearts.
With a gentle finger, I tipped his chin up and bent to kiss him. I lifted my skirt so I could straddle him, which he met with an eager moan into my mouth.
From there, we were a tangle of slow, sensual hands: in my hair, on grinding hips, pushing his jacket from his shoulders, clawing up my thigh. His cuff links were discarded, but fell in the gap between the bed and the bench at the end of it. The clank of metal on wood made me pull away from him.
“Fuck ‘em,” Colt rushed out. I giggled against his lips, a sound that he met with sweet, smiling kisses. “I love this, Vi.”
Love this. Not love you. But it sure felt like the latter.
He spread tender kisses down my throat, lightly sucking the divot above my collarbone. His finger slipped under my dress strap. His playful eyes met mine as he toyed with the thin cord of fabric. “Can I see more of you?”
“Yeah.” I traced my fingers over the top button of his shirt. “As long as I can see you.”
He sobered, and our shared gaze turned more reverent.
We hadn’t been together like this in years. Almost a whole decade. And yet, his skin still held that familiar scent. My fingers parted his buttons, revealing inch by inch of him until he pulled his shirt tails out of his pants. I spread my hands across his chest to free him from his shirt.
My eyes drank in the changes. He was more muscular than the last time we were like this, broader. Tanner, though I suppose it was spring the last time I saw him undressed.
“You’re blushing,” he breathed.
I smirked at him. “You look good.”
He flexed his pecs and laughed. It was a thing he did when he was self-conscious: making a joke about all the hard work he did to have that body.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”
He shook his head. “Not near as gorgeous as you.”
With drowsy eyes and a kiss brushed to my chest, he lowered the strap. Unfortunately, with the excellent tailoring job on the dress, that did very little to undress me. “Hang on.” I reached back to undo the clasp at the top of the zipper.
Colt’s hand landed over mine. “Let me.” His eyes sparkled. “Stand up for me and turn around.”
A pit sank in my stomach, something about his request flashing with danger.
You’re safe, I reminded myself. Colton cares about you.
He would never hurt you. Still, my breath became shaky when I did as requested, sweeping my hair over one shoulder so he could access the zipper running down my spine.
Feather-soft lips met my mid-back, just above the zipper.
“Are you nervous, baby? You’re shaking.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Why was I so jittery? Colton had only ever been good to me. Why did I feel like this was dangerous somehow?
Colton’s hands met my upper arms. “Do you want me to stop?”
Of course I didn’t want him to stop. That would be insane. Years of wanting, and here he was, undressing me like I was a present where he wanted to save the wrapping paper. I blew out a breath.
It was Colton. My Colton.
“No,” I said. “Keep going.”
With another tender kiss, the clasp popped open and with painstaking care, Colton lowered the zipper, tooth by tooth, to just above my ass. Gentle fingers skimmed up the newly exposed skin until he pushed the straps off my shoulders.
The dress pooled on the floor, and Colton gasped. His voice was choked. “Jesus. Nothing underneath?”
I peeked over my shoulder to find him there, shirtless, eyes passing over my skin. “No lines.”
To his credit, his hands swallowed up my waist and didn’t immediately grope my ass or any other more interesting part of me. His lips went everywhere, landing on my ribs, between my shoulder blades, on a dimple on my lower back.
Colton stood, his kisses now pressing into the ridge of my shoulders, the crook of my neck.
His breath feathered over my breasts all the while, making my nipples harden into tight points.
Best of all was his rock-hard cock that landed as a heavy weight against my back.
I whirled to face him, taking his mouth in a deep kiss.
My leg hitched above his hip, my center pressed against his dress pants.
His hand trailed up my thigh until he took a fistful of my ass.
The moan I emitted at the rocking of his hips could be described as nothing less than wanton. Depraved.
Also deprived, because at that moment, he stepped back. Colt’s hands molded my waist as his eyes devoured me. His voice was gravelly. “Vi.”
Then, his body slammed into mine as his mouth became voracious. Hands met my breasts, thumbs flicking over my nipples. I cried out as a rush of heat met my center. I knew what he wanted but was too shy to take, so I fisted his hair and shoved him toward my breast.
“Fuck,” he breathed before his tongue circled my nipple, teeth nipping, lips sucking. “I don’t know how you did it, but you got sexier.”
I laughed, but it quickly turned into a sigh as his mouth ventured farther south, down my stomach until he was fully on his knees. A hand squeezed his cock through his pants, teeth gritting as his hips rolled. He was desperate for relief, but still putting me first.
As always.
The heels of his hands coasted up my outer thighs until he cupped my ass. “I need to taste you.”