Chapter Nineteen #2
We spent the entire day in that bed. It wasn’t a race to orgasm. No one was keeping score. It was fingers and tongues and long, lazy touches. Endless kisses, slow and deep. Violet riding me until ecstasy spread across her face, my hand between her legs, and my mouth on her breast.
Soft murmurs of sweet nothings. Napping and waking to reach for each other again. We finally surfaced when our stomachs rumbled too loudly to ignore. I ran a bath and ordered dinner after Violet told me what she wanted, and we soaked in bubbles and hot water until the waiter knocked on the door.
Violet turned pink with embarrassment when I answered in my robe. Once the waiter was gone, she wrapped herself in her own robe and didn’t bother with clothes. We ate, steak for me and pasta for Violet, chocolate tort for dessert. The chocolate tort, we ate in bed.
“Movie?” Violet asked.
“I’m embarrassed to say I don’t think I can have sex again for at least an hour,” I admitted.
Violet laughed, her breasts jiggling beneath her robe, distracting me. “Only an hour? I think we’ve had more sex in the last twenty-four hours than I’ve had in my entire life.”
“That’s just sad, sweetheart.”
“It kind of is.”
“We’ll have to make up for lost time,” I said, “after we take a break. You pick the movie.”
It wasn’t a test, exactly. More that I was curious to see what kind of movie Violet would pick. She pulled up the hotel’s basic cable channels, but I grabbed the remote and switched her over to pay-per-view. She slid me a sideways glance and said, “I’m not picking porn.”
“I wasn’t suggesting porn, you perv,” I said, though I made myself a liar by immediately imagining watching porn with Violet.
Later. Another time. I wondered if she’d be up for it.
I was so caught up thinking about Violet and porn that I missed the movie she picked. It wasn’t until I saw the opening credits that I realized it was a recently released offbeat comedy I’d been meaning to see and hadn’t found the time.
“Is this okay?” she asked, handing me the remote.
“It’s great,” I said, meaning it.
“It was between this or that disaster flick about earthquakes and tsunamis. I want to see that one but this screen is too small.”
I completely agreed. “We can watch that one at home. The screen in our theater room is huge.”
Violet sent me another one of those sideways looks and murmured, “Of course, it is.”
I ignored her and pulled her into my side. Violet rested her head on my shoulder. She dozed off just before the end credits rolled.
I let her sleep all night, but woke her in the morning with my mouth on hers. She turned into me as if we woke together every day, and I knew there was no way I could give her up. I sensed that pushing Violet too hard was the worst possible plan, but I could feel time slipping away.
It was Sunday and the plane was waiting. I could talk to her in the office on Monday. We had to sort this out. She still hadn’t come clean about her reasons for taking the job at Winters, Inc. I knew enough for my own peace of mind, but I wanted to hear it from her.
I felt like I could trust her, but I wanted to know that I could.
I had to know that I could.
I needed to know she trusted me enough to be honest. Until we got past that, we couldn’t move forward. And I needed to move forward with Violet.
I saw it happen when we got on the plane. Her body, languid and relaxed, stiffened as if she’d braced for the reality of home. I meant to wait until Monday. To confront her on my territory, in my office. I couldn’t do it. We’d begun our descent into Atlanta when the words spilled from my mouth.
“When are you going to tell me the truth?” Immediately I wished I could take it back.
Shutters fell over her eyes. Her shoulders straightened and she crossed her legs, lacing her fingers together and resting her hands on her knee. She was perfectly composed. Impenetrable. Fuck.
“The truth about what?”
Her evasion got under my skin and I said, “You know what. I already know and I want to hear it from you. Why did you take the job at Winters, Inc.? What were you after?”
“What do you mean you already know?” she asked, the first hint of emotion thawing her gaze. “What do you think you know?”
“I know what you were up to,” I said. I’d been tracking her for weeks. She hadn’t made a move that wasn’t documented. “But I want you to tell me. I want you to trust me enough to be honest. I’m tired of this game”
“If you’re tired of me,” she said in a frozen voice, “we can solve that easily enough.”
“That’s not what I said. I’m not tired of you. I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of you. I’m tired of the game. I’m tired of the lies. Just tell me the truth.”
“Then tell me what you think you know,” she insisted.
“I know why you took the job. I know what you were doing while you were in the company. I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it.”
I wasn’t prepared for the gleam of tears in her eyes. “You know why I was there and you don’t care? After everything I told you, you don’t care.”
I was missing something.
I didn’t care that she’d been looking for dirt on me. There wasn’t any. She couldn’t hurt me with anything she’d found. But I had to be missing something because Violet looked as if I’d just stabbed her in the heart.
“Violet. It’s okay. Just tell me who put you up to it and we can just get past it.”
“And then what? And then we just keep doing this?” She gestured between us. “We just keep sleeping together? Is sex the only thing that matters?”
“Yes. No. Sex isn’t the only thing that matters, and yes we just keep doing this. You and me. I like being with you. I want to get the rest of it out of the way. I want to forget about it.”
“And it’s just that easy for you, isn’t it.”
“I don’t see why it has to be more complicated than that,” I said, carefully. I needed to know who’d sent her to Winters, Inc., but then I’d be happy if we never talked about any of this again.
Violet lifted a finger to wipe underneath her lashes. It came away wet and my gut clenched tight. What was I missing?
She shook her head slowly, her eyes unbearably sad. “I can’t forget about it. I let myself get sidetracked with you and I shouldn’t have.”
The plane bounced twice as the wheels touched the tarmac. Violet didn’t look at me. She wouldn’t look at me as we got off the plane. She wouldn’t meet my eyes in the car.
I’d fucked up, and I didn’t know how.
At least I had Monday. I was going to drag her into my office and we’d start all over again. I was going to figure out what the fuck was going on so I could get it out of my way and concentrate on Violet.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t even think about calling in sick,” I ordered, hating the angry tone in my voice.
Violet only nodded. She collected her purse and suitcase and disappeared through the doors of her building without looking back.