Chapter 50 Violet
Violet
In horror movies, basements always seemed to follow the same rule: something terrible was going to happen. Nightmare on Elm Street. Evil Dead. The Conjuring. Every film was a warning, and yet there I was, descending the stairs to the sound of Ryder muttering.
“Fucking”—crinkle—“stupid”—crinkle—“suit.”
Surprisingly, despite the house’s opulence, the basement was just that: a basement. Low ceiling, buzzing fluorescent lights, and a cold concrete floor. Almost disappointing, really… until I found Ryder half-naked and attempting to pull on plastic overalls.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Ryder turned, his face flushed from where he was clearly wrestling with the suit and losing. “Oh, hi.” He tried to stretch the clearly too small plastic onto his shoulders, almost ripping it. “You know, just trying to be romantic.”
“Romantic?” I echoed, looking past him to the sheet he’d laid on the floor, beside what looked to be a wallpaper pasting table that displayed over ten different spray cans.
“It was either this or flowers.” Ryder shrugged, shoving his hand through his hair.
Was… was Ryder blushing?
Oh my God.
“You haven’t… you need to… oh, just let me,” I said, stepping closer to pull the zipper all the way down before helping him slide the overalls over his shoulders. Ryder pressed his lips into a thin line but didn’t stop me as I fastened it closed.
“This one’s for you.” He handed me my own plastic overalls, which I slipped in without the same struggle. “I thought maybe you needed this.”
“Needed this?” I repeated, raising a brow.
“I don’t know… expression?” His arm swept out towards the brick wall. “Somewhere for you to vandalise.”
“I don’t vandalise!”
“Agree to disagree.” He grinned, picking up a respirator mask and passing it to me. By the time I’d pulled mine over my head, Ryder already had his on, waggling his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion.
I laughed, really laughed, for the first time in months.
“There’s no ventilation,” I said.
Ryder shook his head, handing me one of the spray cans. “Stop overthinking, blondie.”
I took the can and turned toward the wall. It was red brick, the texture harsh when I pressed my hand to it. But from the first hiss of paint, it felt… cathartic. With every stroke, every burst of colour, it stripped away a little more of the tightness coiled inside me.
Painting was how I remembered to breathe. How I kept from falling apart when the world felt too heavy.
And I’d neglected that.
“Stand here,” I said to him, pulling him from the childish-looking drawing he’d been attempting in the corner.
Ryder raised a brow, staring at my burst of colour. He stood in the centre, and I immediately began to spray around him, smiling behind my mask at his expression.
I’d painted soft curves and floral lines. Beautiful, delicate things growing out from his hard silhouette in a sweep of wings and horns. As if he was an angel from hell.
It was fantasy. It was whimsicality. It was perfect.
Ryder watched me with those eyes of dark honey, his attention distracting as I got a little too close and accidentally sprayed his suit. I froze, the hiss of the can still ringing in the air.
Ryder glanced down, then back up at me, and laughed. “Is that how we’re doing it, huh?” he said, winking as he reached for one of the cans.
“Wait!” I squeaked. “It was an accident!”
But Ryder had already pressed down, sweeping across my chest with a burst of pink. I froze, shocked before I laughed louder, running for another can and spraying him in return.
The scent of paint hung thick between us as we moved, dodging, screeching on my part, until the space between us was alive with laughter and something heavier I refused to acknowledge.
Then his hand caught my wrist mid-swipe, and I stopped, my breath rough as he slowly removed his mask and then mine.
Paint clung to us in streaks of colour, a chaotic rainbow across plastic and skin. A splatter of blue traced Ryder’s cheekbone, and he stepped closer to me, the tension between us tightening like rope.
I didn’t stand a chance when his lips crashed into mine, and I didn’t stop him when he pushed me back until I was pressed to one of the support beams.
His kiss was urgent, fierce, and exactly what I’d expected, yet somehow still not enough.
I hated how much he affected me, how easily I fell for his infectious laughter and teasing dimples. But he wasn’t smiling now. The heat in his eyes burned when he pulled back, a tide pulling me under before I even thought to fight it.
I reached for his zip, impatient when it caught.
He yanked it open, the plastic ripping as he shoved it below his hips before turning his attention to mine.
It was a flurry of plastic and fabric until I stood there almost naked.
I moaned when he wrapped his hand in my hair, fisting the length to tip my head back while his other hand gripped my thigh.
He picked me up, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist as my back bit into the harsh wood of the beam.
“Hold on to me,” he whispered as he bottomed out in one thrust, and I could do nothing but reach for his shoulder as he set a punishing rhythm.
I gasped, barely registering the fact that I was touching him during sex before pleasure crashed through me, fast and unforgiving.
I’d forgotten just how big he was, the sharp stretch riding the line between pain and bliss.
Every movement was rough, deliberate, a raw collision of anger and need that sent tremors through my body.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sweet.
It was everything I shouldn’t want… and exactly what I did.
My scalp stung, adding to the overwhelming sensations. I hated how much I craved it, how much I needed him even when I swore I didn’t.
“You feel this?” Ryder growled, his mouth close to my ear, his breath hot against my neck. “What you do to me?”
I couldn’t answer, not when I didn’t trust my voice.
But the way my body responded, arching, trembling, and clenching around him gave me away.
“Say it,” he demanded, voice rough with restraint. “Tell me you’re mine.”
A broken sound slipped from my lips as he rolled his hips harder, his piercing hitting that spot again and again until I could barely concentrate through the pleasure.
Oh God, it was like he knew my body better than I did. The way he moved inside me, the pressure, the rhythm, it was unbearable in the best way. But it wasn’t enough.
“No,” I moaned, not willing to give in. Not when it was the only thing I had left.
His grip on my hair tightened, and the next thrust was brutal. Possessive, like my denial had snapped whatever thread of control he had left, and he wanted to punish me.
“You say that,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous, sending shivers racing across my skin, “but look at you, about to come on my cock.”
Ryder
She was infuriating, my little artist. Still denying she was mine, even as she soaked my cock, body trembling like it couldn’t take any more.
She screamed my name as she came, her lips parting, which I claimed like the savage I was. Because I wasn’t done. Not yet. Not until she was a shaking, incoherent mess. Not until she admitted that this thing between us wasn’t just one sided.
I wasn’t the kind of man who gave grand gestures or whispered poetic promises. Christ, I’d never even stayed the night with a woman before, always having to scrub my skin raw of their fucking perfume because I felt repulsed.
I didn’t care about people’s emotions, especially not the women who dropped to their knees and begged for my cock like it was some grand prize.
I used them to feed my somewhat unhealthy, destructive obsession with control.
With being the one who dictated every second, every sound, every surrender because it was the only way I knew how to outrun my past without letting it swallow me whole.
But I could fuck, having been brought into the world by a woman who used her body to get what she wanted. A survivor. A manipulator.
Sex was something I understood.
I could make Violet come until she couldn’t remember where she ended and I began. Until her body only responded to me. To the way I touched her, took her, ruined her for anyone else.
“That’s it. Good girl,” I praised, using sex to get what I wanted.
Was it manipulation? Yes. Did I care? Absolutely–fucking–not. I’d use every dirty trick in the book if it meant she forgave me. If it meant she’d stay.
Her whimpers caught in her throat, tears slipping down her cheeks, and fuck, I wanted them. I wanted to taste her pain, her surrender. I wanted to fucking consume it. Consume her.
So I leaned in and dragged my tongue across her cheek, licking up the salt like it belonged to me. “You cry so fucking pretty,” I whispered against her skin. “Makes me want to ruin you all over again.”
She gasped, trembling, and I felt her body tighten, strangling my cock. It was fear laced with arousal, confusion tangled with need.
And it only made me harder.
She clung to me in desperation, her nails biting into my shoulders, and for once, it was okay.
With her, it was okay.
The sharp sting should’ve pulled me under, should’ve awakened the darkness I worked so hard to keep buried.
But it didn’t. Instead of giving in to the demons clawing at the edges of my mind, I focused on her. On the way her moans slipped past her lips like a secret, on the way she trembled beneath me, wrecked and needy.
“That’s it,” I growled into her ear, thrusting harder, deeper. “Feel how well your cunt takes my cock? Almost like you were made for me.”
She gasped, body tightening, and I groaned as her nails dug deeper.
I wanted the marks. I wanted the pain because it meant she’d leave something behind.
“No one else gets you like this,” I rasped, lips brushing her jaw. “No one else fucks you like I do.”
She whimpered something incoherent, and it only made me rougher, hungrier when she came again. Her cunt milked my cock, tight and spasming, pulling me under with her.
“Fuck…” I groaned, the sound ripped from deep in my chest. The pressure snapped, white-hot and brutal, and I came with a growl, hips jerking as I spilled inside her, lost in the feel of her body clinging to mine. Unable to do anything but ride the wave.
For the first time I could remember, I didn’t feel despair from being touched. So when I released her hair and her head settled on my shoulder with a sigh…
I let it happen.
I let her hold me.