Chapter 35
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Violet
T he rumor at the ball, which I know is true, is that Sophine is displeased with whoever Queen Bee is.
More so after the last Stitch they posted.
And to be honest, I’m not exactly overly pleased with whoever it is, either. All that stuff about me and Stephan is a lot. And then what she says about Sophine? Dangerous. To be fair, she’s mostly nice enough about me, but…
“Look at me, Vi,” Rue says, dancing up to me. “I am the Queen.”
And she dances away.
But whoever it is, the real queen, should be careful.
“That child’s going to be the death of me,” Heath moans, as Rue in her Queen Bee mask dances on the sidelines of the ball. “And wearing that fucking thing, is she crazy? ”
“It could be her,” Quinn says, appearing out of nowhere. “What if Rue is the Queen Bee? And don’t swear, Heather. It doesn’t make you cool.”
“I said that.” Iris adjusts her black mask with little antennae. “The part about Rue. Though I agree you’re not cool, Heath.”
“I’m going to go help your idiotic mate, Vi. That’s how annoyed I am with you lot.” He kisses my cheek. “Not you. Don’t look so stricken.”
He takes off to where Stephan’s been waylaid by some of the other Alphas and a few Omegas I don’t know that well, but they seem nice. Rue told me they’re just big Asher fans.
Now that’s something I’m going to have to try to get my head around.
People in our world might be huge fans, but for the most part they hardly ever let it show. I think those girls held it in as long as they could and now that he’s off the market…
“Are you jealous?” Quinn asks, nodding.
It takes me a moment to realize she aimed that at me.
“No.” I try to smile because it flusters me on certain levels.
It is true. I’m not jealous. Maybe I should be? I guess it’s the newness, the fact he’s never done anything to make me think he’s looking elsewhere.
Okay, there was the conversation he labeled as “complicated” with Alicia, but if anything happened, it wasn’t like he got turned down by her and I’m the consolation prize.
Someone turning him down is laughable .
“Oh, Lord,” Quinn says. “You are totally in love.”
“I’m mated.”
“Yes, but…”
“Leave Vi alone, Quinn. She doesn’t need to start hyperventilating.” Iris looks at me. “Do you think it’s Rue?”
“The Queen Bee?” I half laugh. “Maybe if she wasn’t so nice. Also, I’m not sure she can keep a secret. Everyone would know if she was. I know the Monarch would love to know who, though.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” Quinn says. “The Monarch must be angry. She’s not here.”
“She’ll be watching, I bet,” Iris mutters. “Not that I care. God. You’d think I’d be out of this patriarchal mess since you’re an old mated lady now.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking a sip of the punch. “You didn’t have to come.”
“I did. You need support.” Then she looks me up and down in the gold dress I have on. It has a black underside to the long skirt. “I love how you’re still not doing the latest fashion stuff. This look suits you, Vi. It’s your look. As Rue would say, it’s up to the minute and timeless, not trendy.”
She waits for my response. When I don’t have one, Iris squeezes my arm, like a mini hug. “It’s strange to see you not panicking.”
“I’m not the center of attention.”
It’s not exactly true. I mated with Stephan and the center of attention seems to be him. But then again, even if I get the fallout from him, he wore me out so much before we came here that I barely had the energy to get on my feet at all. All that sex, all those orgasms before getting dressed. I’m not sure my panic button works right now. The anxiety one, either. And if I feel a little anxious, like I did when we walked in, he’ll say something full of praise or nice in that particular way that sends shivers right down my spine.
“No, there’s a little change, but…this isn’t the place.” Iris spots Mom. “Damn, forgot to get her a drink and she’s stuck talking to Alicia’s pompous mother.”
She takes off with Quinn, and I make my way to the powder room, but it’s occupied.
“Madam, there is one on the second floor, to the right on the landing,” one of the servers says, pointing to the stairs.
I nod and take my time.
There are things you can never whisper about in balls, especially when a Season’s member’s parents host it.
Like Alicia’s parents.
This isn’t a townhouse like ours. It’s in one of the outer park-studded areas of Sabine. Still city perimeters, but the estate’s classed as a townhouse, even though it’s huge. Probably because they’re new and couldn’t get a country estate like most of those belonging to the established Sabine families.
I head to the upstairs powder room, which is free.
After taking care of business, I look at myself in the gold-rimmed mirror. Behind my honey-gold mask, my eyes look big, but the color brings out the softer, lighter tones in the brown of my eyes, making them look like how Stephan describes.
My stomach flips, and my heart squeezes at the thought of him. I know Quinn’s right. I have fallen.
Utterly, irreversibly in love .
Someone knocks on the door, and I call out, “One moment.”
I fix my hair, which is pinned up, tendrils falling artfully down, and I reach in my bag for my lipstick, but realize forgot it. I bite my lips to bring a little more color and then head to the door.
A girl goes in, muttering, “The mated don’t need that long.”
I shake my head and start for the stairs when I overhear my name.
“Violet? Oh, come on.” Alicia laughs. “Do you think Violet and Stephan are actually doing it? She’s such a bore.”
I’m on the wrong side of the door, and a wave of panic comes over me. I have to step past the open door to reach the stairs and?—
“Anyone tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?” Alicia says, suddenly there and looking utterly angelic and beautiful in white-gold dress and mask. She grabs my hand and pulls me into the room, where about six girls sit with a bottle of liquor on the table. I know their names, I do, but they spin, jumbled, in my head and my chest starts to tighten. “Look who I found.”
“We were talking about your honeymoon,” the redhead—Jade? yes, Jade—says. “Drink?”
“She doesn’t drink,” someone else says with a laugh.
Another girl leans forward, eyes excited. “Where did Asher St. James take you for your honeymoon? Somewhere exotic?”
I try to speak, but I can’t, and my vision blurs. It’s only Stephan’s scent as his warm breath touches my skin, whispering perfect girl, so fucking good in my ear, that keeps me on my feet and not unconscious on the floor.
But he’s wrong. I’m not that at all. I’ve crumbled, retreated back to what I truly am, an anxious mess.
“Don’t be stupid,” Alicia says with a laugh. “He didn’t take her anywhere. Look at her… I don’t know what dirt your family has or what they paid the Monarch to get him.” She presses in and her blocker hurts my nose, makes breathing harder. “I fucked him and he was good. Did he tell you that? Did he knot you, too? Because that’s so fucking good.”
She steps back and laughs. “Look at her face. Stephan hasn’t knotted her, so their mating isn’t valid.”
I’ve got to get out of here.
“Come on,” Jade says. “She’s just jealous. Tell us what it’s like being knotted, Violet.”
Another girl sighs. “Heath is hot. I wish he’d take part, now Violet’s taken the catch of the Season off the menu.”
“I bet he’s still on it,” Alicia says. “She can’t hold him. He’ll be sniffing around the Lower Side?—”
“Problem?” Oak swirls around me. I know he’s got a blocker on, too. But I can always smell Stephan. And the moment I smell him, hear him, the panic, the anxiety recedes.
“No,” I say. “No problem. Are you ready to go?”
He slides an arm around me. “With you? Anywhere.”
Stephan draws me in and kisses me so thoroughly my legs are wobbling when he’s done. My lips tingle, and I’m hot, bothered, so turned-on I actually forget we have an audience.
But Stephan lifts his head. “Ladies. ”
And then we’re gone.
Down the stairs, and instead of into the ballroom, he makes a right, dragging me into a darkened room where he shoves me against the wall, trailing a hand up my thigh, under my dress.
He nibbles my throat, making me explode with bursts of light, and I’m ready to drown in him.
“You shouldn’t fucking lie to protect people when they don’t need it. Alicia and those like her will resent you for it, Princess.”
“I want to go.”
He sighs, feathers a kiss on my lips. “As soon as we can, we’re out of here.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
After the run-in with Alicia and her gathering of Omegas, Stephan sticks to me like glue. Which unravels me.
Thoughts ping off each other, my needs growing, and he seems to know it because he gets us out of the ball as soon as he can. I don’t know what he says to Fredrick or my mother or the hosts, but soon we’re in the limo heading back to his— our place.
The air’s throbbing with scent and desire, and I’m so overcome with a need to have him, to pounce, devour, demand his knot, that we barely make it in the door before he has me against the wall.
His mouth is hungry, an answer to my own needs, and it feeds my fire with bites and licks, his tongue a masterful manipulation of the emotions that sing in me with every brush and tease, every parry and withdrawal. I drop down, clawing at his belt, freeing his magnificent cock.
I don’t know where this burst of confidence comes from, but suddenly I want to show him what he’s taught me, what I’ve learned. I stroke him, running my thumb over the precum, and then I lick up along the underside of his shaft to play with that area under the head that sometimes makes him howl in a way that hooks into me, makes me his submissive creature.
He sucks in a sharp breath, a growl of sound uttered from the depths of him, and his fingers sink into my hair.
“Fucking little goddess,” he mutters. “Your mouth is decadence personified.”
Stephan thrusts at me as he grabs my face, my jaw, forcing it open with gentle pressure, and he slams back into my throat, almost choking me.
It’s a choking I crave, the hammer of his cock, just like I crave the control, I crave the taking of it from me, like he’s doing now. I’ve pushed him over an edge, and he’s getting bigger in my mouth, stretching me so I can’t do anything but suck and be that passageway to his pleasure.
My pussy contracts like he’s in there, and a wave of pleasure so intense it almost hurts passes through me as my clit throbs.
He pulls free before he comes and drags me up into his arms and then into the kitchen. There he leans me over the table, my feet touching the floor, and he throws up my dress, ripping at my panties. He sinks into me, hard and fast, and I cry out.
Stephan grabs my hair, pulling my head up. “Are you trying to make me lose control? ”
“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes, I am.”
“Naughty minx.”
Those words feel just as good, just as strip-me-down-to-the-bone dangerous as his praise, making me his center of attention. And I throb and contract around him. Not quite orgasm, but something close.
“Fuck.” He pulls out, and then he fingers me and withdraws, only to push a finger, then another into my asshole. He works it, pleasurable, strange, so good.
He’s touched me there before, played with me, but this feels like intent. And there seem to be a million more nerve endings springing into life as he pulls his fingers free. Something wet and silky slides between my cheeks.
“What are you—” I look over my shoulder to see him holding a bottle of opaque liquid. Then the smell hits me—coconut. He’s poured coconut oil on me. “Stephan?—”
But I’m silenced by something much bigger than his fingers pushing against my tight hole this time.
“I’m going to fuck your ass now, Princess. Finally own all of you. Your pretty, perfect ass. Hold still.”
I do. Every single part of me is focused on him, on what he’s doing, and he stretches me so wide that I want to reject him. I try to stay relaxed, try to allow him entry even as my clit starts to throb harder than before. Which makes me want to grind down into the edge of the table.
It’s impossible, how deep he’s going, how much I seem to stretch, and then he sighs, his hips touching my ass and I know he’s in. All. The. Way.
Then he starts to move and the slide in and out is odd, but he’s stroking something with each push and pull, and soon my whole body is focused on that, and his movements stop being slow and deliberate and hit harder, more forceful, more erratic.
“Oh, fuck, Princess. Fuck .”
He starts to hammer me, and I push back into him, and soon he’s slamming me so hard the table moves, and a deep throbbing pleasure, different from the one in my clit, begins. It sings so loud through me, that pleasure, and I come so hard I think I black out for a second.
I’m still throbbing, still coming, and his movements are hard and fast. I don’t think I’ve felt him so big, so there , but with a cry, he pulls out and his hot cum hits my ass and my back, on and on. Finally, grunting, he collapses on me, breathing heavily.
He kisses my cheek, my throat, my shoulder. “We should get cleaned up.”
Stephan gets up and starts to help me.
And that’s when something snaps inside, and I turn, looking at him as he’s putting himself away.
“Stephan?”
“Yes, Princess?”
I swallow. “Tonight, the girls, they were talking about knotting.”
He goes still, but I continue, the words rushing free.
“I don’t have any reference for it, but they said you haven’t, and can…can they tell? I mean if someone’s been knotted or not? Can they? I don’t have any reference. I don’t know. But sometimes it feels like something’s missing with sex. It’s fun and all, and I’ve never experienced the pleasure you bring. But…but beyond that, it’s like something isn’t there…” I swallow again. “Have you knotted me?”