Chapter 17 Violet
VIOLET
Iwake in the same dress. Red silk, wrinkled and twisted around my thighs like accusation made fabric. I never undressed last night. Just curled on top of the covers after he left, too wrecked to do anything but lie there and stare at the ceiling until exhaustion dragged me under.
Smell hits first.
His cologne. Citrus and wood, embedded in the silk where his body pressed against mine. And underneath that—
Me.
The scent of my own arousal, dried now but unmistakable. Evidence I can’t wash away just by closing my eyes.
My stomach lurches.
I sit up too fast. Head spinning. Body protesting.
Damage assessment, my brain supplies automatically. Fine. I can do that. I’ve spent my career documenting what’s broken. Might as well apply those skills to myself.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand on shaking legs. The bathroom mirror shows me exactly what I don’t want to see.
My lips. Still swollen. Tender when I press them together.
My neck—
Oh, fuck.
The hickey blooms purple and angry just below my jaw. Impossible to hide. He sucked hard enough to mark me, to brand me, to leave proof of ownership on my skin where anyone could see.
I touch it with trembling fingers. It throbs.
Between my legs, I’m sore. Tender in a way that brings back every detail I’m trying not to remember. His fingers inside me. Curling. Finding spots that made me—
Stop.
I grip the edge of the sink. Breathe. Let’s assess this.
I kissed him back. Pulled him closer. Opened my mouth under his like I was starving for it.
True.
My hands found his shirt and gripped the expensive fabric and pulled.
Also true.
I came on his hand. Soaked his fingers. Made sounds I can’t take back. Squirted like something out of a porn video while telling him I hated him.
The most damning truth of all.
I’m falling apart.
I sink to the cold tile floor. Pull my knees to my chest. Press my forehead against them.
I should feel violated. He ignored my verbal no.
I should feel angry. He touched me without permission.
I should feel traumatized. Coerced orgasm. Textbook assault.
I should feel desperate to escape.
What I actually feel is… confused. My body betrayed every word that came out of my mouth.
Ashamed, because I wanted it. Never said stop. Wanted more. Am sitting here on a bathroom floor in a wrinkled dress waiting for him to do it again.
Exhausted. Fighting myself is so much harder than fighting him.
The waiting is the worst part.
I woke up expecting him. Kept listening for his footsteps in the hall, the opening of the door, his voice saying my name. Part of me, the sick, broken part, was disappointed when he didn’t come.
That disappointment makes me want to vomit.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
No answer. Just the phantom sensation of his fingers curling inside me, and the memory of how hard I clenched around them when I came.
I force myself to review every moment.
Call it masochism. Call it the restorer’s obsession with understanding exactly how a structure failed before you can fix it. Call it whatever you want.
The kiss.
My mouth opened under his. Not his tongue forcing its way in. My lips parting. Inviting. Welcoming. I did that. That was a choice.
My hands.
They found his shirt. Gripped the fabric. Pulled him closer. Not pushing away, not fighting—pulling. Wanting.
Straddling his lap.
I felt him hard beneath me, and instead of recoiling, instead of using that moment to shove away and run, I pressed down. Seeking friction. Wanting to touch.
The wall.
He offered to stop.
Say stop, and I’ll walk away.
I saw it in his eyes. The genuine offer. He would have stopped if I meant it.
I couldn’t say it.
Because I didn’t mean it.
He read me better than I read myself.
The verbal resistance plays back like a damning recording.
I said “don’t.” True.
I said “no.” True.
I said “I don’t want this.” Lie.
The biggest lie I’ve ever told, and my body exposed it with brutal efficiency.
I was soaking wet before he touched me properly. Aroused from the kiss alone. My hips tilted forward seeking more pressure, begging with my body while my mouth said no. I clenched around his fingers when I came. Flooded his hand with wetness I didn’t know I was capable of producing.
That’s what I can’t get past. That’s the real horror.
Not that he ignored my no.
That my no was a lie my body exposed.
That he knew it was a lie before I did.
That I wanted his hand higher. Wanted him inside me. Wanted to come so badly I was shaking with it.
Good girls don’t want boys who aren’t nice.
Sister Mary Catherine’s voice echoes from a decade ago, all those catechism classes drilling shame into my bones.
Good girls are modest. Good girls save themselves.
Good girls don’t touch themselves and certainly don’t let strange men touch them, and absolutely positively do not come on a man’s hand while pressed against a courtyard wall saying “I hate you” on repeat.
But my body doesn’t give a shit about Sister Mary Catherine.
My body wants what it wants.
The questions spiral. Was it rape if I wanted it? Was it consent if I said no? Was it assault if I came?
The legal answer is clear. No means no. Period. End of story. I know that. I’ve always known that.
But what if no means yes, and everyone in the room knows it?
What if your mouth lies and your body tells the truth, and the man touching you reads you better than you read yourself?
What if he said he’ll walk away if I said stop and I didn’t?
You can hate me and want me, tesoro. They’re not mutually exclusive.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars.
He was right. That’s the part I can’t escape. He was right about everything.
An hour later the door opens. My head snaps up, heart hammering—
Not him.
An older woman I haven’t seen before in a staff uniform, face carefully neutral. She carries a breakfast tray. Sets it on the small table by the window without making eye contact. Leaves without a word.
I stay on the floor for another minute. Two. Then drag myself upright to see what fresh torture he’s sent.
The tray is perfect. Silver dome over a plate. Coffee in a delicate porcelain cup. Pastries arranged in an artful spiral. Fresh fruit, strawberries, melon, grapes, glistening like jewels.
And a note.
His handwriting is all sharp angles. Aggressive. Controlled.
Eat. You’ll need your strength.
The rage is white-hot and clarifying.
My hands find the tray, and before I make a conscious decision, I hurl it across the room with a scream that tears my throat raw.
Porcelain shatters. The crash is satisfying in a way nothing else has been. Coffee spreads dark across the tile like a bloodstain. Fruit rolls everywhere. The note flutters down, landing in the wreckage.
I stand there, breathing hard.
Waiting for him to appear. To punish me. To do something.
He doesn’t come.
The cameras are watching. I know they’re watching. He’s probably sitting in his study right now, sipping espresso and enjoying the show.
You’ll need your strength.
For what? For fighting him? For whatever comes next?
My body shivers, and it’s not fear.
Ten minutes pass.
The mess is still there. No one comes to clean it.
My stomach growls. Traitorous bitch.
A strawberry catches my eye. Somehow unscathed, sitting in a puddle of cream. I pick it up. Wipe it on my ruined dress. Bring it to my lips.
It tastes like summer and shame.
Then another. And another. Picking fruit from the wreckage like a scavenger. Juice on my fingers, on my lips. Eating like I’ve been starved.
I threw the tray.
Now I’m eating off the floor.
Can’t even commit to defiance.
Exactly like last night. Say no, body says yes. I’m consistent in my inconsistency.
The note stares up at me. Coffee-stained now, but the words still legible.
You’ll need your strength.
I eat the last grape and hate myself for it.
He doesn’t come.
All day, nothing. No visits. No summons. No demands. Just silence and space and the walls closing in. I should be relieved. After all, it’s giving me time to process. Time to plan. Time to rebuild the defenses he shattered against that courtyard wall.
Instead, I can’t help the dismay that he’s not here. Doing what? Telling me I want him? Trying to apologize for last night? Trying to charm me into a repeat? God knows.
I try to distract myself.
First, I pace. Back and forth, back and forth. Restless energy with nowhere to go, trapped in this beautiful prison while between my legs, the ache from last night throbs like a second heartbeat.
When that doesn’t work, I make my way to the studio and start sketching. But my hands shake too much. The lines come out wrong, all jagged edges and angry strokes. So I go to the library, grab a book from the small romance section and read the same page five times without absorbing a single word.
Finally, I stomp back to my room, the floor pristine clean once again, and decide to have a shower.
The water is too hot, almost scalding. I stand under the spray and try to wash away his scent. My scent. The evidence of what we did.
Here’s the passage smoothed into more cohesive, natural prose while keeping Violet’s raw, conflicted internal voice.
I’ve connected the choppy fragments into flowing sentences that let the sensations and thoughts drift together organically—less abrupt stops, more lingering discomfort and denial—without adding new beats or changing the content.
Between my legs I’m still tender, but there’s this persistent ache underneath, like last night wasn’t enough, like my body is already asking for more even as I stand here trying to scrub it all away.
I press the washcloth too hard and wince at the sting, but the discomfort doesn’t dull anything.
It doesn’t erase the memory. I can still feel the exact shape of his fingers inside me, the slow curl that found every spot I didn’t know I had.
I can still hear his voice low against my ear, that quiet certainty whispering that my body wants him, knows what it needs even when I won’t admit it.
My hand slides down without me deciding to let it. Just washing, that’s all I’m doing. That’s the lie I tell myself as my fingers brush over sensitive skin, as heat flares up instantly, like he trained my body to respond to this exact touch.
I pull my hand away like I’ve been burned.
I won’t. I refuse. I’m not going to stand here and masturbate to the memory of my kidnapper making me come. I’m not going to prove him right.
But the wanting doesn’t stop.
It throbs between my legs all afternoon. A constant low-grade ache. Punishment for what I did. What I want to do again.
By evening, I’m exhausted.
Not from physical exertion. From fighting my own body. From analyzing every moment of last night until my brain feels bruised. From waiting for him.
From pretending I’m not waiting.
Eight o’clock passes.
No knock. No command. No summons to dinner.
He’s giving me a choice. Which is worse than demanding, because now I have to decide. Stay in my room like a coward. Assert independence. Make him come to me.
But then what? He wins either way?
I open the closet.
A backless green silk dress hangs in the place he usually puts dresses he wants me to wear.
When did he choose it? Will he come and order me to wear it like he usually does?
The green dress stares at me. My hands reach for it before I make a conscious decision.
Strategy, I tell myself. Choosing my battles. Studying the enemy.
But the truth is darker than strategy or studying the enemy. I want to see his eyes darken when he sees me in this dress. I want his breath to catch the way it did last night, that small hitch that makes me feel powerful, even if the power is only over his desire.
I want him to want me.
The admission twists in my stomach, sick and hot, because saying it out loud, even just in my head, makes it real.
I pull the dress from the hanger. The silk whispers against my fingers, cool and liquid.
I step into it slowly, letting it glide up my legs, over my hips, settling against my bare skin like it was made for this moment.
No bra, the cut doesn’t allow it. That’s the practical excuse I give myself.
The real reason is harder to face. I like how his gaze tracks every line of me through the thin fabric, how it feels to be wanted even when every rational part of me screams that I shouldn’t crave that look.
I leave my hair down. He prefers it loose, and I know that now, have noticed it in the way his eyes linger when it falls over my shoulders, the way his fingers twitch as if he is trying to stop himself from touching it.
The mirror shows me a stranger.
Auburn hair wild and untamed around my face. Green silk clinging to curves I’ve never paid much attention to before. The hickey on my neck blooming purple and unmistakable. His mark, his claim, impossible to hide or deny.
My eyes are too bright. Cheeks flushed. I look like someone who wants to be touched.
Who is this woman?
Not Violet Murphy from Boston. Not the restorer who spent years keeping everyone at arm’s length. Not the girl who learned that needing people gets you hurt. Someone new. Someone being built from the rubble of who I used to be.
The plan, I remind myself. Stick to the plan.
Go to dinner. Study him like a restoration project. Find the cracks in his foundation. Find something to hurt him with.
Make it easier to hate him again.
Because hating him was simpler. Clean lines. Clear enemy. Now everything is complicated. Now I understand him. His mother, his damage, the grief buried deep behind his eyes. Now I want him despite knowing exactly what he is.
Wanting a monster is the most dangerous crack of all.
I walk to the dining room.
Each step deliberate. Not a prisoner being summoned. A woman choosing battle.
Even if the battle is with herself.