The Beat and The Pulse Box Set 1

by Amity Cross

  So, filling up a thermos with coffee, I drove in extra early and caffeinated myself while I sat in traffic. When I arrived and walked into the gym, it was still empty. Confident I’d avoided Lincoln, for the morning at least, I opened the door to the office and flicked on the light.

  I halted mid-stride when I saw something big and black on top of my desk. Something that hadn’t been there when I’d left on Friday. I stared at the can of hairspray perched in front of the computer and didn’t know what to do.

  It was one of those huge black cans with the extra twenty-five percent, but what got me was the purple ribbon tied around it. Only one person could’ve left it, and I’d already made up my mind as to what to do about him. I was going to forget about it and move on.

  Dumping my bag on the floor and sitting in my chair, I peered at the hairspray and poked it with a finger like the thing would jump up and bite me.

  “Vee.”

  I hesitated slightly at the sound of Lincoln’s voice, my brow furrowing.

  “You’re pushing your luck calling me that,” I said, not turning around.

  “I figured I’d take a chance,” he replied.

  Swirling around in the chair, I waited for him to continue. He stood in the doorway wearing his usual get up—shorts, a tight, black Pulse T-shirt and his big feet stuck into a pair of trainers. His arms were crossed over his chest, his gaze firmly on mine. After a moment, he stepped into the room and closed the door, shutting us in the tiny office together. The space seemed to shrink, and I swallowed hard.

  “Hairspray?” I asked, taking the initiative for once in my life.

  “In case of spiders.”

  “Smart ass,” I muttered and his lip pulled up slightly at the corner, his dimple beginning to show.

  “I think we need to talk about this,” he murmured.

  Shit, a guy wanting to talk about it? I knew Lincoln wasn’t like other guys, least of all his twin brother, but this was taking it to a new level.

  “What’s there to talk about?” I asked.

  “A lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “I said I’d help you,” he murmured. “I didn’t, and I’m sorry.”

  I shifted my gaze onto my lap. “You were just trying to be nice. I’m sure Ash asked you to look out for me before he left.”

  “He did, but—”

  I snorted, shaking my head. Of course he did.

  “Vee, he did, but I would’ve done it anyway.”

  “Really?” I looked up at him.

  “How else do I need to say it?” he murmured, stepping forward.

  Rising to my feet, I edged away from him, his nearness doing strange things to my self-control. “I don’t know. I’m pretty fucking clueless.”

  “The other night…” He frowned. “Using Andrea like that… Shit, it was wrong. I should never have gone there. Knowing I hurt you like that? Shit.”

  I tried to latch onto what Dr. Ormond had told me about writing an ending to a story that hadn’t even begun yet. Maybe she was wrong.

  “Violet, I should’ve talked to you from the beginning. I should’ve told you—” He stopped mid-sentence, biting on his bottom lip.

  “Should’ve told me what?” I whispered, staring up at him with wide eyes.

  “I took the job here because I’d hoped I’d see you again.”

  My entire body erupted with chills, and I shook my head. “That’s…”

  “I never stopped thinking about you.”

  He took a step closer, and I tensed, my inbuilt flight mode trying to switch itself on, but I held firm. I breathed deeply, inhaling his musky cologne. It was the same one he’d worn the other night, and I knew I’d always remember him by it.

  “Vee…” Lincoln swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  I held still, waiting to see what he would do. My heart was beating so loudly, I was sure he could hear it—the whoosh in my ears was almost deafening in the silence.

  As he lowered his face toward mine, I drew in a shaky breath. He was going to kiss me. Fuck. I wanted it so badly, but now that he was standing here, I wasn’t sure what to do. He terrified and turned me on all in the same heartbeat.

  Finally, his lips brushed against mine, sending a shiver right down my spine. It arced into my breasts and right down to my clit, and I felt myself press forward. I fell into his touch, and before I could even think about what was happening, his mouth was hard against mine. Lincoln was kissing me, the tip of his tongue dancing across my lips, coaxing me to part and let him in.

  Raising my hands, I gently touched his face, feeling the stubble on his jaw. Pulling away slightly, our noses brushed as his gaze searched mine. The soft yet passionate look in his eyes giving away how much he was holding back. Would he ever be able to let himself go with me? Would he ever get what he so obviously needed? Hard, passionate, bruising sex.

  This time, I allowed my lips to meet his, parting them with a sigh. His tongue grazed my own, and I shuddered at the unfamiliar contact, but it felt so good that I allowed him to deepen his hold on me. His lips became firmer, his touch more desperate and forgetting himself, he raised his hands and cupped my face, holding me in place.

  Images flashed into my mind, bad things…the feeling of not being able to escape overwhelmed me, driving away the pleasure I felt at the taste of Lincoln’s mouth on my own, and my eyes flew open.

  Tearing my lips from his, I pressed my hands against his chest and shoved hard. Instantly, he broke away, giving me my space. That was the thing about Lincoln that I’d known all along. He wasn’t Hammer. Not by a long shot.

  “Did I do something?” he asked, his voice heavy with desire.

  I bit my bottom lip because, if I opened my mouth, I’d cry, and once I started, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop. If I opened my mouth, I’d ruin it all.

  I wanted to touch him, and I wanted him to touch me…but I couldn’t… It was so long ago, but I could still see him.

  Lincoln stared down at me, his expression full of questions…and concerns.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally choked out.

  “You don’t have to be,” he said through a heavy breath, his gaze dropping to my lips. “I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  “I mightn’t understand what it’s like, Violet, but I get it enough to understand your reaction.”

  My eyes widened. I wished he didn’t have to. I wished I could kiss him hard and touch him in all the places I’d fantasied about without the fear coming back. The fear that still wouldn’t leave me no matter what I seemed to do.

  “Violet—”

  “Can we talk about this later?” I asked hastily, my cheeks heating.

  He nodded once before biting on his bottom lip. He raised his hand and lightly brushed my hair behind my ear. His fingertips grazed the shell of my ear, but it was the only part of him that he allowed to touch me. I knew why he was doing it, but it still hurt.

  “Later,” he murmured and edged backward, opening up the space between us.

  As the door closed behind him, I sagged against the desk, my breathing shallow. Fuck, that had to be the most intense moment of my entire life. Lincoln had kissed me… It could’ve gotten out of hand pretty fucking quickly, but he’d respected my boundaries. He wanted more and I wanted more, but… There was the magic word. But.

  I couldn’t help but feel that I’d already disappointed him.

  I didn’t have time to see Lincoln again before I went home.

  He was teaching an MMA class, and as I left, he watched me from across the mats like a hungry lion. Ironically, that only served to make my confidence dip lower. He looked like he wanted to devour me, and I guess there was nothing bad about it, but I wasn’t like that. Not yet anyway.

  More importantly, I didn’t know how to handle it.

  As I drove home, I thought about all the romance novels sitting on my bookshelves at home. Were they instruction manuals? Could I rely on the fantasies of those authors
to get me through this? I wasn’t sure I could. I ran the tip of my tongue across my bottom lip, the memory of Lincoln’s kiss still fresh in my mind, and wondered if I could use at least some of it. I was so inexperienced it hurt. How could he want someone who didn’t know what they were doing? I was utterly clueless.

  By the time I got home, I’d worked myself up into a tight ball of anxiety, so I microwaved a huge bag of popcorn and went upstairs. I changed out of my work clothes into my pajamas and buried into my bed, covering myself with the blankets, and sat the bowl of popcorn in my lap. Picking up the remote, I queued up my latest addiction on Netflix, Supernatural. When I didn’t want to acknowledge this world, I escaped into another. Classic avoidance tactic, but the real kicker was I knew exactly what I was doing and had no desire to do anything about it. Dr. Ormond would be proud of me. Not.

  Lincoln had sent me into a complete tailspin, and I was free falling from where I’d been sitting in the clouds since I’d started work at Pulse. I was currently plummeting down to earth, and reality was pretty fucking scary. I’d thought that once I’d gotten what I wanted, everything would be magically fixed. Life would instantly get better, and my demons would go away. I was fast learning that it wasn’t the case. Lincoln wasn’t the cure all I so desperately wanted him to be.

  In reality, the hard work hadn’t even begun. A simple kiss wasn’t so simple in my world.

  Just as I was heading into episode two of season three of Supernatural, the very male sound of someone clearing their throat broke through my daydream, and I sat up straight, almost knocking over the bowl of popcorn. I caught it at the last second and found my brother standing in the doorway. My big, beefy, over-protective brother who wasn’t due home from Thailand until at least tomorrow.

  “Ash?”

  “Hey, Vee.” He leaned against the doorframe, frowning at my current arrangement.

  I swallowed hard. “I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow?”

  “Nup,” he said, looking me up and down.

  “How was your trip?”

  Pushing off from the doorframe, he came and sat beside me. “No getting out of it, squirt. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t tell Ash about all the things that had happened with Lincoln, least of all our kiss in the office. Talk about embarrassing.

  “I know this is your thing.” He gestured to me, then at the TV. “What’s got you wound up?”

  I shook my head, clamping my mouth shut.

  “Did Lincoln—”

  “Ash.”

  “I know you like him,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Did he do something to you?”

  “No,” I snapped. He had, but we were working it out, I supposed. That’s if you could call having the guy overload my brain cells with a single kiss ‘working it out’.

  “I’m going to kill him.” Ash, as per usual, had jumped to his own conclusion and would dive in head first and ask questions later. It was his MO and always had been.

  “Stay out of it,” I pleaded.

  “Can’t do it, Vee,” he replied. “He made a promise, and obviously, he broke it.”

  “You’re such a bully.” I knew I was pouting like a child, but short of beating him, which I had no hope of doing, there wasn’t much else I could do to convince him to drop it.

  “If looking out for you makes me a bully, then I guess I’m a fuckin’ huge one.”

  “Ash, please don’t butt in on this.”

  “Like you butted in on me and Ren when I asked you not to?”

  Remembering when I’d gone to find Ren at Beat, I began to pale. He’d been under house arrest then, wallowing, floundering, and wasting away… I’d done the drastic and gone to face the woman whose heart he broke. In his mind, this was exactly the same, and maybe he was right.

  I cast my gaze into the bowl of popcorn. “Please let me handle it, Ash,” I murmured.

  After a moment of silent deliberation, Ash reached out and pulled me into a hug. “Sure.”

  I didn’t like the tone of his voice. It screamed hell to the no. Ash would do what he wanted to do, regardless of how much I pleaded—I just hoped he would be diplomatic about it. I’d already put a dent in mine and Lincoln’s relationship before it had even really started, any more and it might just totally implode and disintegrate.

  I’d have to talk to Lincoln about that kiss tomorrow. Rain, hail, shine or Ash fucking Fuller.

  18

  Lincoln

  All I could think about was how good Violet tasted.

  Our kiss had been soft, tentative and completely fucking mind-blowing. It wasn’t what I was used to, which was hard and demanding, but she’d surprised me. Totally blindsided any expectation I’d had.

  Thinking about how she’d pulled away, I frowned. I knew I’d have to take it easy…there were things she still struggled with. She obviously didn’t think much of herself either, so I guess I had to do something to change it.

  She was fucking stunning, inside and out, and compared to Andrea? There was no competition. Never had been. I was the one who’d fucked things up, and I had to set them straight.

  I wanted Violet Fuller.

  My shoulder was getting better by the day, and the last scan had been really great, the exercises had increased and I was now allowed to do heavier weight training. It was fucking great to get back into it, and now I could have a heavier hand in Cole and Ryan’s training. It wouldn’t be long before I could join Coach and Dean back in Sydney and train full throttle.

  Thinking about Sydney, I paused, holding the weight I was pumping in the air. Violet and Sydney. There was a piece of the puzzle I hadn’t quite thought through.

  “What the fuck did you do to Violet?”

  Oh, fuck. I hesitated at the sound of Ash’s voice before setting the weight back into the bracket. Turning, I found him staring at me in full-on rage mode.

  “What are you talking about?” Better go for plausible deniability on this one.

  “She likes to think she’s tough, but I can recognize a broken heart when I see one.”

  Broken heart… Fuck.

  “Don’t fucking stare at me like you have no idea,” he went on. “Violet has a crush on you. Has since she was a kid. If you’ve taken advantage of her…”

  Vee had a crush on me since we were kids? I knew I was staring like a moron, but I’d had a crush on her. Never in a million fucking years, as a horny teenager, had I thought that Violet Fuller had looked twice at me.

  Ash snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fuck, by the looks of you, the only thing you’re guilty of is being a clueless cunt.”

  Swallowing hard, I said, “I looked after her while you were away. Just like you asked.”

  “Did you touch her? Because I love that kid more than anything—”

  “I didn’t touch her,” I snapped. But I wanted to. We kissed, but I didn’t touch her. Did that count? Yeah, it counted.

  Ash jabbed a finger against my chest. “You better not be lying to me Hayes.”

  “I would never disrespect Violet like that.” I squared my jaw and pushed into his finger.

  He narrowed his eyes and stared at me, waiting to see if I would crack. When I didn’t, he snorted and backed away. “If I find out you’ve done something to her, you’ll have more than that fucking shoulder to worry about.”

  Ash Fuller was not a guy I wanted to go up against in a fight. In or out of the cage. He had a bad reputation for taking things too far, losing his cool and breaking every rule known to man. There was a reason he was able to win a Championship at The Underground. He had no fuckin’ off switch.

  I watched him back away and turn, striding back across the mats and up the stairs, no doubt to go into the office to drill Violet about us. I didn’t know what was going on, we hadn’t exactly had the time to talk about it, but I hoped we would soon.

  The one thing I knew for certain was Violet Fuller wasn’t a kid anymore. She was a beautiful fucking woman. A woman who’d
been through a lot and was scarred from the inside out, who needed someone to care for her and to help her heal. I wasn’t sure I was the right man for the job.

  That’s why we had to talk about it.

  19

  Violet

  I knew it was only a matter of time before things imploded between Ash and Lincoln, but when my brother barged into the office, I knew he’d already had a go. It had to be some kind of new world record. Ash Fuller, whirlwind of destruction.

  I jumped as the door swung inward and collided with the wall, almost knocking my cup of coffee all over the keyboard.

  “Fuck, Ash,” I cried, holding my hand against my chest.

  “Did he touch you?” he barked, his expression full of anger.

  Oh, fuck.

  “I told you to leave it alone,” I snapped.

  “Violet…did he fucking touch you?”

  “Ash—”

  “Violet.”

  “He kissed me,” I blurted.

  “And?”

  “And what?” I asked, rising to my feet. “There’s a point where you have to stop and let me make my own mistakes!”

  “To the point you get hurt again?” he roared, edging further into the room.

  I jerked backward. “Ash, you’re scaring me.”

  “Fuckin’ good.” He began to grind his teeth.

  “Good?” I exclaimed, tears threatening to rise up and overwhelm me. “Good? You’re not my father!”

  He paused, his face falling like I’d slapped him into silence. “No, I’m not, but I had to be after they left us.”

  “Don’t make this about them,” I snapped. “That’s ancient history.”

  “What the fuck is going on in here?” Ren exclaimed as she appeared in the doorway. “I can hear you two going at it from in the apartment.”