Falling into You

by Jackson, A. L.

  The same bated violence that I’d lived by the last six years. So close to being unleashed.

  I leaned down close to his face and seethed the words, “Keep your ass out of my business and you won’t have to find out.”

  He laughed a sound of disgust while he thrashed against the hold I had on him. “Fuck you.”

  Anger blistered across my flesh, and I pressed him harder to the metal of the truck, trying not to lose it. “Stay the fuck away from me and stay the fuck away from her. You got me?”

  I heard the roar of Rhys’ car barreling up the road, and I jerked him by the collar of his tee and slammed him back down. “You’re not gonna like it if I have to remind you.”

  I shoved him off, dude stumbling and trying to right himself.

  I straightened myself as I turned to walk away.

  If I stayed a second longer, things were going to get ugly.

  Last thing Violet and Daisy needed was to see me coming unglued.

  To witness the man I’d become.

  The one who would fight to the death if it was required.

  Saul’s voice pierced me from behind. “It’s time she moved on, and I’m going to see to it that it’s with me. Nothin’ you can do about it.”

  Possession slammed me like a punch to the face.

  Devotion screaming.

  Charring my insides with the betrayal that I had cast.

  Spinning around, I walked backward, pointing at the bastard who thought he had everything figured out when he didn’t have a fuckin’ clue.

  “Stay the fuck away from my wife. This will be the only time that I warn you.”

  Then I turned around and stormed down the drive toward the road, knowing my claim was nothing but selfish.

  This distorted greed that warped all logic.

  But I knew right then it didn’t matter how much time or space or treachery I put between us. There was no lie I could tell that would cut her from my soul I’d given her years ago.

  Fourteen

  Richard

  Eight Years Ago

  “No way,” she mouthed. Her eyes went wide in shock where he’d sidled up at her side at the bar after they’d finished their set.

  He felt frozen, staring at her.

  Girl casting some kind of spell. What he’d felt in an instant.

  He’d been right. He hadn’t been imagining it while he was onstage watching her through the raving crowd where she’d sat tucked back at a table like there was a chance she could hide from him.

  This girl’s eyes were dark, almost black. But what had held him rapt was the intense violet surrounding her pupils that fractured out in little veins through her irises.

  Every time the light would strobe across her just right, they’d struck him like thunderbolts.

  At first, he’d thought it was those crazy-ass eyes that had captured him. Nearly had him stumbling over the frets of his guitar when she’d come into view. Stomach lurching. Not knowing whether to climb off that stage right then to get a closer look or to wait and take the chance that she might be gone before the end of their show.

  The girl was like looking at a glittering flare. A thousand sparkling colors in a sea of drab that gathered at the foot of the stage, same way as they did night after night.

  But this girl? She was nothing but a jumpstart to his senses.

  A kick of a million volts that had slammed him from across the space.

  Which was damned ridiculous, so he’d spent the next hour trying to convince himself he was making it up. Envisioning himself a prize that didn’t exist. This porcelain girl with soft, soft cheeks and softer lips. All pink and plush and plump and begging for his kiss.

  “Hey there.” His voice rumbled low, just loud enough for her to hear it over the clamor of the busy bar.

  “Hi,” she returned. Her voice was this cross between a bell and sensuality. Earnest and real and ripe with seduction.

  A remedy.

  Truth was, the stage was his life. The focus of each day. What got him out of bed in the morning.

  The music that lived within him was the single purpose he’d been given. To breathe something magical into existence. Create something good in the middle of the atrocities and the strife.

  Give a little hope and distraction.

  Which was why he’d felt shocked when he’d had the compulsion to climb down from the stage and end a show early for the first time since he and his band had started touring years before.

  All for this girl, right in his hometown.

  “I’m Richard. You’ve gotta be new around here.”

  Redness pinked her cheeks. He wanted to press his nose to it to find out if she was as hot as he felt. “Violet. And no. Not new.”

  He kicked up a wry smirk, leaning in closer. “You’re lying. No chance I could have seen you before and then forgotten you. Not when you are, without a doubt, unforgettable.”

  She turned to look at him. Those eyes flashed. “You know, you’d think with that whole stage thing and you playin’ and lookin’ the way you do, the cheesy pick-up lines wouldn’t be necessary.”

  He barked out a laugh.

  Shit.

  This girl.

  So different. And he fuckin’ liked it.

  He shifted around so he was facing her, one arm rested on the bar. His smirk deepened. “You’re right. Not normally necessary. But normally I don’t stumble into girls like you.”

  That blush deepened and she seemed thankful to have someplace to turn her attention when the bartender set a pitcher of margaritas and four glasses in front of her.

  “Let me get that. Can you add a Michelob on tap to it?” he asked, going for his wallet.

  “Sure,” the bartender responded while Violet’s hand shot out to stop him from tossing cash onto the bar. “No. I don’t need you to buy me drinks.”

  His brows shot to the sky. “I can’t buy you a drink?”

  “Nope.”

  “And why’s that?” Amusement danced around his mouth, his eyes drinking her in.

  Fuck the beer.

  He was pretty sure this girl was the only thing that could quench this thirst.

  That violet stare raked over his arms, up his chest, until she was looking at his face, gaze sparking with something playful and real. “Because you’re going to buy me a drink and then you’re gonna think you can take me home. Then I’d have to go and disappoint you because that’s not going to happen.”

  He edged in closer so he could whisper in her ear. He was slammed with a lungful of the girl.

  Violets and color and dreams.

  Infiltrating.

  Invading.

  In an instant, he was overcome with that intoxicating energy he’d sworn had zapped through the air the second she’d come into view.

  What the fuck?

  He tried to shake it off, the way she impacted him like she meant something.

  “And what if I just wanna dance with the prettiest girl in the place?”

  * * *

  Music poured from the speakers, the dance floor packed, and lights strobed over them in time with the beat of the fast-paced country song.

  Sensations flew, but the girl in his arms was the only thing he felt.

  So soft. So right. Her spirit this palpable thing he swore danced around them. A vapor. Mist. Something faithful and right that he wanted to inhale.

  It didn’t matter a ton of people were two-stepping around them.

  He held her tight, her sleek body tucked close, the thunder of her heart pounding against his as he led her in the slowest dance.

  He had one hand splayed over the small of her back and the other twisted in her sleek, shiny hair.

  She sighed.

  And this time, he did, he inhaled her, brushed his lips across hers, and he fell into the bliss of her kiss.

  * * *

  “God, you’re makin’ a liar out of me.” She whimpered the words as he pressed her against the door of his truck, kissing her with the madness she evok
ed.

  Disorienting.

  Dissolving him into something he’d never before been.

  He nuzzled down the side of her face, breathing her in as he went, and kissed along the delicate column of her throat.

  Her head rocked back, and her fingers fisted in his hair.

  “And what kind of lies are you telling me? Because I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so real in all my life.”

  Darkness rained down from the heavens where they were behind his parents’ house where he was staying the next two nights while Carolina George was passing through town. He’d pulled his truck around the back and parked in front of the stables and his father’s workshop.

  Where it was secluded.

  Private.

  Quiet.

  Where it was just the pants of their breaths and the thunder of their hearts.

  They’d talked for hours outside the bar and then had ended up there, neither of them ready to let go.

  Gripped by the connection that stretched tight between them. Strangers who’d known each other all along.

  A slash of moonlight filtered through the deep, dense sky, and bugs trilled in the trees that whooshed in the slight breeze.

  It did nothing to quell the flames that consumed.

  Her fingers dragged down the back of his neck, girl eliciting tremors of lust that rocked through his body. “This. You and me. Here, together. I told you I wasn’t goin’ home with you. My sister is never gonna let me live this down.”

  “Uh…didn’t she go home with our drummer?” he murmured, his face buried in the flesh of her chest that he devoured.

  “Well, she’s usually a whole lot more adventurous than me.”

  A smirk pulled to his mouth as he kissed back up her throat and made a path in the direction of that delirium-inducing mouth.

  “I disagree,” he rumbled.

  “You’d be wrong,” she whispered back.

  He was sure he’d never felt so drunk.

  Entranced.

  Mesmerized.

  “You want me to take you home?” he grumbled.

  Violet moaned as he nipped at her lip. “I should, but I don’t. Not even a little bit.”

  “Good. Might die if you did.” It was a chuckle of amusement when he said it, and she was giggling as he pulled her from his truck, swung her around, and hoisted her into his arms.

  On a tiny squeal, she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. “Where are you takin’ me?”

  “Where I can show you how fuckin’ beautiful you are.”

  He stared up at her as he carried her toward the stables.

  Awed.

  Sure he’d never felt quite like this.

  A soft smile graced her mouth, her lips plump and moistened from his kiss, those eyes doing those crazy things that hit him like a punch to the chest.

  Like every time this girl looked at him it cracked something open in the middle of him. Making room for something he’d never anticipated.

  Moonlight poured around her head and cast her in a milky glow.

  Girl a light in the middle of the night.

  Colors and hope blossoming to life.

  A moonflower.

  “You are the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Even in the dark, he could see the bloom of color flush her chest and climb to her cheeks, and she chewed at her bottom lip. “You don’t need to feed me lines, Richard.”

  He angled around so he could slide open the door to the stable, still holding her, refusing to set her down. A light was on in the far back, barely illuminating the space. He slipped through the opening he’d made and carried her to the tack room off to the right.

  “I do, Violet. I think you might be every line I’ve ever written. Interwoven in every song. There before I even knew you existed.”

  Hope.

  Fear.

  Grief.

  Lust.

  Passion.

  Love.

  Questioning life and where it was going to take you. Hoping on a forever no one knew for certain they’d be given.

  The unforgettable moment you realized you’d stumbled on to what you’d been looking for.

  “You can’t go around sayin’ things like that to me.” Her voice was a rasp, and he let her slip down his body but didn’t let her get far. He hooked an arm around her waist and tucked her close, letting his thumb trace along the striking angle of her jaw.

  She gazed up at him.

  The girl looked like a fairy.

  Blown of delicate, intricate glass.

  Fiction.

  The magic he’d been missing.

  “I can if it’s true.”

  She shivered, and her expression flashed, and she set her fingers across his lips. “Stop talking right now unless this actually means somethin’ to you.”

  He cupped her face, their movements getting lost in a slow sway. “It wouldn’t matter if I stopped talking, Violet. My body would show you what I’m feeling, anyway.”

  He swept his lips across hers.

  Tenderly.

  The wind blew.

  The earth rumbled.

  He stepped back long enough to grab one of the clean blankets he knew his father kept there and spread it out on the ground.

  He got onto his knees and stretched out his hand to the girl who stood fidgeting at the edge of the blanket.

  Black hair framing her gorgeous face. Her spirit running manic in the space.

  She tugged off her boots. They thunked against the ground as she dropped them, and then she climbed down to her knees in front of him.

  He reached out and slipped the spaghetti strap off one delicate shoulder.

  He pressed his mouth to where it had been.

  She shivered beneath his caress, and her fingers trembled when she reached out and grabbed the hem of his shirt so she could pull it over his head.

  Her eyes raced to take him in, same way as his lingered and searched, wanting to memorize every inch of this girl.

  And they undressed each other that way.

  Reverently.

  Relishing every second. Every beat.

  A soft, seductive exploration.

  He laid her back on the blanket, the girl spread out, her hair a black halo that billowed around her head. Her pretty tits jutted with each heave of her breaths.

  Lust consumed him.

  But it was more than that. Bigger than anything he’d experienced before.

  Kneeling, he edged forward and set his hands on her knees as he stared down at her.

  Lost.

  Taken.

  Found.

  “It means something, Violet. It fuckin’ means something. Pretty sure it means everything.”

  He climbed over her and pressed into her tight, sweet body.

  Bliss. Bliss. Bliss.

  He groaned, and she whimpered as she dug her fingers into his shoulders. “Yes.”

  He gathered her up.

  And they both let go.

  Gave themselves over to the song of their souls.

  Fifteen

  Richard

  Rhys’ car roared down the desolate road. Flying through the night, hugging the corners tight.

  While I shook. My damned knee bounced at warp speed. Agitation boiling my blood and setting fire to my veins.

  Motherfucker’s words banged through my mind.

  “It’s time she moved on, and I’m going to see to it that it’s with me. Nothin’ you can do about it.” Knew it made me a prick that I couldn’t let her go. That I hadn’t in all this time. That in my fucked up, twisted mind, that girl had still been mine.

  No matter what I’d said.

  No matter the lies that had been told.

  No matter the mistakes that had been made.

  Had she really fallen for that bullshit?

  Believed that I left her to chase down a dream? That I wanted that life more than I wanted her?

  Fuck that.

  But what was she suppos
ed to believe?

  Curiosity rippled through Rhys as he slanted me a glance. “You’re lucky I love your mopey ass so much. You’re about the only person in the world I’d crawl out of bed for in the middle of the night. Well, that and a text for a little Rhys-style lovin’.” Dude waggled his brows.

  “So, me and half the female population? I feel super special. Do I even want to know how many numbers are on your phone?” I tossed out.

  “Not unless you feel like fallin’ into jealousy. I mean, I know it’s hard to be friends with a god like me, so I should probably keep that information on the down low. Out of the goodness of my heart, of course.” He cracked a grin.

  I shook my head. Dude almost managed to pull a laugh out of me.

  But it was stunted.

  Gloom came off me in plumes of thick, black smoke.

  Rhys’ inquisition turned speculative when he caught my mood.

  “Care to tell me what you were doing over at Violet’s in the middle of the night? Pretty obvious you weren’t there to get a little of your own lovin’ with that forlorn destitution on your face. Hell, you look so pathetic, you’d think you’d been sentenced to blue balls for life.”

  Sounded about right.

  “You get your ass tossed off the property? Cockblocked? Or did she look at your ugly mug and come to her senses?” he razzed.

  I rubbed my sweaty palms down my jeans. “Was only over there in the first place because Emily convinced me to go with them to check out the wedding venue.”

  Didn’t take a fuckin’ psychology degree to know my little sister was angling for something. What, I couldn’t tell. Like Vi and I were just gonna somehow be friends?

  Our pasts nothin’ but water under the bridge?

  Not possible considering I’d already burned that bitch to ash.

  “And it lasted until two in the mornin’?” The question was nothing but sly supposition.

  Agitation taking me whole, I looked out the passenger-side window to the blur of landscape flashing by. “Daisy fell out of a tree and broke her wrist. Drove them to the ER. Couldn’t ignore that.”

  Worry filled the cab.

  “Well, fuck me,” he wheezed.