But then hammering started on the door and someone shouted, “Are you in there, Violet Edwards?”
Edwards?
“Oh fuck.” Violet said, going still underneath me. “Now I really do have to get that. It’s Jay. Stupid fucking rental must have given him my forwarding address.”
“I’ll answer.” I told her, moving away from her and standing up. “You want to see him or not?”
She shook her head. “Not particularly.”
“Okay.”
I walked out of the living room, closing the door behind me, went to the front door and threw it open. I stood there almost blocking the doorway as I stretched myself tall and wide.
“Yeah?”
“Is Violet Edwards here?”
“Nope.”
“I know that she lives here. I was given this address.”
“You’re mistaken. Violet Blake lives here. There’s no Violet Edwards.”
The lanky blonde guy in front of me rolled his eyes. I was tempted to thump him so that they really rolled, all the way up to the top of his head.
“So she’s gone back to her maiden name. Figures. Could I speak to her please?”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you. She’s moved into her perfect new home, with cushions, blue paint, pictures on the walls, and we’re expecting a new arrival any day now.”
Jay’s face paled.
“A gorgeous little doggy. So it’s time for you to say why you’re here and then you can fuck off.”
“Who are you?” He demanded. “I want to talk to Violet, not you.”
“I’m her boyfriend.”
“Well I’m her husband.”
“Ex-husband. She’s told me all about you. How you banged her best friend. Now unless you want to get banged by me, and round here that means being thumped good and proper, I suggest you leave now.” I cracked my knuckles.
“I just brought a box of things from our old house. They were in the loft and I thought she might want them now she had her own proper place.” He gestured to the cardboard box at his feet.
“Thanks. You can leave it there.”
“I just want to see her. Just tell her I’m here. Violet.” He shouted.
“She knows you’re here. But what you need to know is she’s mine now. You had your chance and blew it when you shagged her friend.”
“Hmmm. Told you everything, has she?” Jay tilted his head. “About our past, about the end of our marriage.” His voice rose to a point where he was almost shouting.
“Everything I need to know.” I said. I heard Violet jump up from the sofa and begin to walk towards the door.
The living room door opened and she stepped into the hallway, sadness and resignation on her features. “It’s okay, let me talk to him.” She almost begged. I didn’t understand what had caused the change in her feelings towards seeing him.
“Oh there you are.” Jay smirked as she appeared at the side of me in the doorway. “Brought you a few things, including the knife rack we got for a wedding gift. Thought you’d appreciate it.”
He turned towards me. “Yes, I banged her best mate, but we’d agreed to work through it. Only she heard me talking to Darcy on the phone one night. Purely innocent, but she lost it. Waved a knife at me. And we all know what happened to her daddy, don’t we?”
I heard Violet sob and her knees buckled.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I came to wish you all the luck in the world, Violet, but actually I’ll wish it to your new boyfriend instead. Watch your back, mate, these Blake women tend to like to stick a knife in it.” He laughed.
That was it. I let my fist fly straight into his chin. Jay staggered backwards, clutching at his face.
“Th- that’s assault.” He said.
“You came harassing your ex-wife. Come here again, and you’ll have more than a knife being waved at you to worry about. Me and my brothers will pummel your face in so even your own mother doesn’t recognise you. We clear?”
“You deserve each other.” Jay spat, blood in his spittle. I’m guessing his teeth had cut his tongue with the impact from my fist.
“We do. We deserve each other because I’ll never do anything to Violet that would make her angry enough to wave a knife at me. If I was her, I’d have used it to cut off your adulterous dick. Now FUCK. OFF.”
I slammed the door in his face and I picked up a hysterical Violet off the floor. “No. This is not how you are spending the first night in your new bedroom.” I told her, and then I carried her upstairs.
I laid on the bed with my arms around her until she’d cried so much she got that hitch with her breath. “I’m going to get you a glass of water and then I’m going to run you a bath okay?” Violet nodded.
“He, he told you the truth. I w- waved a knife at him. I lost it. What if I’m j- just like my mother?”
“Then you attend anger management and we deal with it, okay?”
“I, I did. I had counselling.”
“Okay. We’re going to talk about this tomorrow now, sweetheart. Because nothing you say to me is going to make me leave here. We all have pasts. I don’t give a shit, Vi, what yours is. Don’t give Jay the satisfaction of ruining your fresh start. Now, tonight, it’s a bath and then you’re going to fall asleep, right here in my arms. That okay with you?”
She actually managed a half smile. “Would it make a difference if I said it wasn’t?”
“None whatsoever. Good to see you’re learning. Right, time to make the most out of an opportunity to potentially see you naked.”
She shook her head, but she smiled again.
“I’m off to run that bath and get you that water, but I mean it. Do not let that twat get to you. He knows you’re moving on and he came to try to spoil it. I don’t know what his motives were. To try in some warped way to get back at you, but he’s gone now. Forever. Do you hear me? He won’t try to contact you again.”
And I knew this because me and my brothers were about to pay Jay Edwards a visit the next evening while my girl enjoyed the girly night she had planned. A very painful visit with a very clear message.
Never to contact Violet again.
Violet
I woke up the next morning feeling a warm body wrapped around mine and I froze. What the hell? Then it came back to me. Jay coming around to the house, my falling apart, and Milo being so tender and kind: running me a bath, allowing me to not have to explain myself, letting me fall asleep in his arms with exhaustion when enough tears had fallen that I couldn’t cry any more.
My eyes felt heavy and as I touched my fingertips under one of them I could feel the puffiness. Great.
“You okay, Princess?”
I turned around and hitched myself up the bed, staring at a very awake Milo. “I feel like I got punched in the eyes.”
“You still look beautiful to me.”
That made me smile. “You have such patter, Milo Waite.”
“Only for you, babe. Only for you.”
He moved away from me and swung his legs out of bed. “I’ll go make a brew. I’m guessing you’re ready for a drink? There can’t be any water left in your body.”
“I’d love one please. What time is it anyway?” I peered over at my bedside clock. Seven am flashed back at me.
“It’s early, so none of my family will be over anytime soon. They have the cooked breakfast and weekly planning get together.”
“Oh yes. Well, soon as you need to go it’s fine.”
He stood up and turned around to face me. “I’m not going, I’m staying with you. They’ll fill me in.”
I found it hard to argue with him because now Milo was standing I saw he wore his t-shirt and boxer briefs and somehow I was finding it difficult to not stare at his taut thigh muscles or the bulge in his boxers.
Look away, Violet.
“You know you’re staring at me like I’m a packet of your favourite biscuits and you’re starving, right?”
I blushed to the roots of my hair
. I could feel the heat.
“Much as I’d like to let you indulge, it’s not my style to take advantage of a vulnerable woman, so you’re gonna have to wait for this Waite. Get it?” He winked. Then he walked out of the room. I could swear he was shaking his arse as he did so. Was that a dimple under his arse cheek?
While I heard Milo downstairs, I sat back against my headboard, closed my eyes and sighed. Fucking Jay. I’d just begun to feel a little happiness and then there he was like a dark cloud blocking the sun from shining. Shouting my secrets from the doorway like the petulant child he’d always acted like.
Yet Milo was still here. Not only that, he’d threatened to kick his arse, and whether his words were for Jay’s ears only, he’d acted like my potential knife-throwing act didn’t bother him at all. But it bothered me. It bothered me a hell of a lot that for one brief moment in time, a horror had come over me that I might be just like my mother. Our relationship had been over anyway, but now instead of Jay apologising for cheating, everything came back to what I’d done. He felt he could get away with anything, control us, control me, because I daren’t start an argument back. I couldn’t live that way. I filed for divorce. Drew a line under a mistake.
Milo came back into the room, walking around my side and putting a coffee on the bedside table, before going back to the other side.
“Can I get back in? It’s cold out here without my trousers.”
“Or you could get dressed?”
He pouted.
“Yes, you can get back in, as long as you stick to your own side of the bed.”
“I have my own side?” He winked at me.
I shook my head at him. I was going to end up with dislodged brain cells with all the head shaking and eye-rolling I did around this man.
“You totally perved over my body while I put your drink down and walked back again, you know. I have eyes.”
“As do I. Hence my perving. I’m not blind.”
He pulled the duvet back and climbed in. Sitting against the headboard like I had, he pulled one of his pillows out and rested it behind his head.
“Tell me about Jay, and more about your mum. I want to know everything.”
“Why?”
“You have to ask that?” He reached out and held my chin, tilting my face towards his. “I want to get to know you, Violet Blake. All about you. But we have all the time in the world, so if you just want to sit quiet and have your drink that’s okay with me. I’ll just enjoy my own brew before I do a bit more work.”
But I needed to talk. Other than the counsellor there had never been anyone to hear me and I’d kept part of myself back at counselling sessions, afraid they might lock me in a psychiatric unit. I just knew that Milo would be the perfect person to talk to. So I began.
“I met Jay at college. I should have known what he was going to turn out like. We’d done some meeting of eyes across the building, but then we’d spoken and flirted briefly while out drinking and in nightclubs. He was always chatting up other girls, but for some reason when he turned his attention on me, I felt special. All the others he’d flirted with just faded away. I’d see them staring at me with envy in their eyes and I’d revel in it; that at that moment he’d picked me. Idiot teenage hormones.” I laughed, although it was more a laugh of pathetic-ness than humour. “We started dating, and he met my mum and dad. He was with me through what happened with mum and dad and he was supportive then. I have to give him that. It was one of the reasons I fell for him more. He liked my father, they’d got along. It shocked him that Dad almost died. While Dad was recovering, Jay proposed. I’ve wondered since if he did it in some strange way to try to cheer us all up rather than because he loved me. We married at nineteen. My best friend, Darcy, was my bridesmaid. She delighted in telling me afterwards that they sneaked out at the reception and fucked at the back of the function room near the bins. How romantic, fucking there like the trash they were.”
“So, he cheated on you from the beginning?” Milo’s eyes were flashing with fury and his fist was opening and closing although he was unaware he was doing it.
“He never stopped, Milo. He was seeing other people all the way through us dating and all the way through our marriage. Darcy thought she was special, but he wasn’t only seeing her either as it turned out. Anyway, before all that, when I first found him with Darcy, he told me it had been a mistake, that she’d come on to him. Asked me to give him a second chance. I was desperate to not be divorced, because my dad was so happy I’d found someone. Plus, like I said, when Jay was full on with his attention, he was charming. You felt accepted. I guess I had self-esteem issues I didn’t know about, that I was desperate for his approval. Anyway, I moved into the spare room which made him angry, but I said we’d take it day by day.
And then like he said, I heard him talking to her one day on the phone. He’d not stopped seeing her at all, and when I challenged him about it, he goaded me, saying what had I expected when I wouldn’t put out? That it was my fault he cheated, because I was an uptight, frigid bitch; and I don’t know, Milo, just all this frustration and anger I’d had bottled up inside just exploded and I grabbed a knife from the side. A small vegetable knife and I was waving it at him because he’d begun to start his apologising and simpering and telling me he was sorry for his outburst and how it was all my fault and I couldn’t hear it anymore. I was done, and so I waved it and I’m 99.9% sure I never would have used it, but because of my mum I fear about that other tiny bit of a percent.”
I was trying not to cry again. My mouth was dry and I took a drink of the tea that was now only lukewarm.
“I totally get that, Violet, but do you know what?” He looked at me.
“What?” I whispered.
“We all have that small percent of unpredictability, Princess. You, me, everyone. You’re no different than most people on this earth, and I don’t give a single fuck about your past. I’ll take it all, because it all adds up to you.”
And that was me done. Despite the vulnerability that he said he didn’t want to take advantage of, this man just said he wanted me despite my past. I was done resisting Milo Waite.
I put my drink down and I crawled across him so I was sitting astride his knees. He watched me move, staying perfectly still, until I leant over and brushed my lips over his.
“I want you, Milo Waite.” I whispered hungrily.
“I said I wouldn’t take advantage of you today.” His eyes were searching mine.
I rolled my hips so that I ground against his cock. “I don’t think it’s you taking advantage right now, Miley.”
He groaned and then his arms came around me and he flipped us around so I was underneath him, caged in by his warm, hard body.
“You sure about this, Princess?” He asked once more.
“Yes.” I gasped and then his mouth was on mine and any thoughts of my past emptied clear out of my mind as thoughts of Milo took their place.
His mouth felt bruising as our lips clashed together: want, frustration, and lust combining in a red-hot connection. I felt his tongue seeking entrance into my mouth and my lips parted, my own tongue dancing with his. My breathing became erratic as I was consumed by the man above me. After kissing some more, he broke off and looked down at me. “You’ve never looked more beautiful than you look right now.”
I smiled up at him. “With puffed-up eyes?”
“Yeah, but you’re under me, and that’s where you belong, so from my viewpoint, it’s just damn perfect.”
If I had any more protests he swallowed them in more kisses.
We broke off only to strip out of our clothing.
His hand roamed down my skin as he kissed me, causing my arms to goosebump and lust to flare. His fingertips trailed down my side, his hand cupping my breast. He stroked his thumb over my nipple making it pebble, and then his hand moved off, trailing down the side of my stomach. I jumped a little, as he hit a ticklish spot and I felt his mouth curve against mine as he stopped kissing me for another
brief moment.
Sweeping a hand across my thigh, he moved himself to one side so that his fingers could access between my legs. I gasped into his mouth as he swept a finger across me. He moved it across and back, across and back slowly and then softly he pushed his finger inside me. I arched my hips up seeking more.
Again, he moved his finger forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, until I was lifting my hips in a steady motion, rocking against his hand. He began to flick my clit, rubbing, as I became needier still. I was lost in his actions and crying out as I rose to a heady peak I’d not allowed myself to feel for a long, long time. And then I came and he pushed his finger back inside me as I shattered, my pussy pulsing around his digit until I broke off our kiss at last and laid back against my pillow panting and spent.
“Felt like you needed that, Princess.”
“You have no idea.” I closed my eyes and breathed deep. “I hadn’t noticed just how much tension I’d been holding. I feel all wobbly now.”
“Well, while you’re recovering, I’m gonna go take a look around the place.” Milo said.
My brow creased, “Erm, okay.” It was a bit of an odd thing to do, but maybe he didn’t want us to have sex today. Maybe he was taking it slow.
I realised my foolishness when he moved to the bottom of the bed and dived underneath the duvet. “Hmm, so what have we here?”
He started on one foot, peppering tiny kisses all the way up one arch, up around my ankle, and all the way up, behind my knee, up to my thigh; swapping to the other leg once he’d kissed the entirety of the first, and then when my patience was finally about to snap, his mouth descended on my pussy. He sucked at my clit, his tongue snaking up my seam, licking up all my juices. His tongue plunged my depths until once more I was writhing against him, my hand holding the back of his head as I guided him deeper and I rode his face. A second orgasm exploded and it was almost as hard as the first one. This man was going to break my body at this rate. I’d never be able to get out of bed, but then again would I even want to?
He came back up from the bed and pulled me towards him. “Close your eyes for five.” He said, “because I’m not stopping anytime soon.”
Waiting For Milo: THE WAITE FAMILY - BOOK ONE Page 10
