He gasps as a hot stream hits my throat, his spasms out of rhythm but more primal, more intense. I swallow and swallow and swallow, my eyes watering as I hold him in my mouth until I know that his climax is finished and he’s emptied himself completely.
Only then do I let him go. I draw my body back up his as he pulls off his shirt, kicks off the shorts where they fell around his ankles, and pulls me close.
Skin to skin. Heart to heart. Mine’s hammering a beat of exhilaration at what I’ve just done to him. His face is full of wonder, the tension that clouded it when he arrived at my apartment gone.
This time, when he kisses me, it’s soft. Careful. His hands glide up and down my back in sweeping strokes, then find their way back to my hair.
“That’s what you dreamed about?” he asks.
“There’s more,” I confess, a smile tugging at my lips.
“I’m dying to hear all about it.”
CHAPTER 27: JAYCE
“Bedroom. Now.”
I follow her lithe, nearly naked body with an ass I want to sink my teeth into to the back of her apartment. She pushes open her bedroom door and freezes. I nearly run into her.
I scan the room. Nothing seems out of place and her bed is neatly made.
She turns to me, a look of panic and horror on her face. I pull her to my chest and her skin is clammy, her breath coming in sharp, desperate pants.
“Tell me what’s wrong. Please, Violet.” God, what did I do? Did I fuck this up already?
I came over here with every intention of just getting her to talk to Gus tomorrow, or just getting her to talk to me, and somehow it turned into her naked and kneeling. I’m either a total asshole or the luckiest bastard anywhere.
I hold her tighter, my thick arms squeezing her frail shoulders.
“My—my bag.” She points to a square, gray camera bag on the floor, like the one I thought she left at the café after the run-in with the stalker. “It’s here.”
I want to believe it simply turned up at the café’s lost and found. “He brought it back?” We both know I don’t mean Neil.
Violet nods against my chest.
“Get dressed. You’re not safe here.”
She opens her mouth to protest but shock wins. I push open her closet, scan the thin space beneath her bed, and check Neil’s room and the bathroom to be sure this guy isn’t lying in wait.
There’s nothing.
I throw my clothes back on in the living room, dial the car service, and go back to Violet’s room, where she’s sitting on her bed, still undressed and staring at the camera bag. I pick it up as if it’s infected, holding the strap away from my body, and I worry that there might be more surprises lurking inside.
“Can you pack some more clothes?” I ask gently. “Maybe for a week or so? I don’t want you to have to come back here unless … we’re clear.”
Mute, she dresses and then grabs a small stack of clothes. She carries them to the living room, stuffing them in the backpack she had when she arrived at her apartment.
There’s no tears, and that freaks me out worse than when she’d been crying. In the car, I open my palm. “Give me your phone.”
She obeys.
I dial Neil.
“Violet? You home? Your bouncer guy showed up at work and was a total jackass.”
“Jackass speaking, Neil.”
“Why are you calling me from Violet’s phone? Where is she?”
“She’s right next to me, but she’s pretty shaken up. I need you to tell me if you found her camera bag.”
“The big gray one? She said she lost it at the café.”
I let out a breath to ease the tension in my voice. “That’s not the question, Neil. I need to know if you found it, or if someone brought it back to you, and if you put it in her room.”
“Haven’t seen it, sorry.” His dismissal gets my hackles up.
“So the fact that it turned up in her room has nothing to do with you?”
“You mean, she forgot she’d brought it home?”
I struggle to keep my voice even. “No, I mean somebody put it in her room. And if it wasn’t you …”
The weight of my meaning sinks in. Finally. “Holy shit.”
“Exactly. So I’m taking Violet to my place for a while, at least until the cops catch up to this jack—uh, jackhole, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to be there, either.”
“Great.” Neil’s put-out tone makes me want to throttle him through the phone. “Thanks for the words of concern, bouncer boy. I’ll be fine.”
I hang up before I spew a slew of words that would make Violet cringe and hand back her phone. She stares at it like it’s a foreign object, like she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
I guide her up to my apartment in a daze, holding her backpack and camera bag, my hand never leaving her body—her back, her elbow, her shoulder. I need the touch to tell her she’ll be OK. We’ll be OK.
I shove aside the dirty thoughts that set my brain on fire less than an hour ago. I need to snap Violet out of this catatonia.
I try food. I pull some berries and cheese out of my fridge, but she shakes her head. My stomach rumbles so I plate up the food anyway.
I try drink. Violet shakes her head when I offer her wine, a cup of tea, a glass of water. She’s hanging on to the edge of my kitchen counter and I close the distance between us, really get in her face. “Tell me what you will drink, then.”
The command works, and she whispers, “Gin.”
“Martini?”
“Muddy.”
I nod and fix the cocktail with extra olive juice, then grab a beer for myself.
I carry the food and drinks to the terrace, the sun recently set but warmth still lingers in the velvety air. I have to go back to the kitchen to retrieve Violet and guide her outside.
“This will get better,” I promise. “They’ll catch the guy who’s doing this to you, and then you’ll have your life back to normal.”
Violet accepts her drink and sips. “I thought I could fix this myself.”
The fragility in her voice wrecks me. I twirl a strand of her red hair around my finger, loving its softness, like a silk cord wrapped around naked skin.
No.
Fuck, no.
How can I even go there, think that, when the pictures of her tied up are exactly the thing that got us here? I flash to her wrists bound with the electrical cord, the pictures that fueled my daydreams and wrecked my nights, and self-loathing hits me.
I can’t do that to her. I want to—God, if I was thinking with my dick like usual, I’d be begging her to submit, let me bind her and pleasure her until she loses her mind. But now, after the stalker and whoever took those pictures stole every good and sexy thing from that situation, I can’t.
I can’t tie her up.
Control her.
Fuck her the way I want to.
And I’m back to the way it’s always been for me, because none of that kinky shit’s gonna fly when you’re into a casual hookup. Not with my profile. Not with the no-strings-attached groupies. All of my dark fantasies of attaching more than just strings to their wrists go out the window when I imagine what they’d tell the gossip rags.
Fuck that. I’ll take my vanilla one-night stands over getting dragged through the mud for being some sick fuck who wants to cause pain.
I’m not. I just like being in control. Absolutely.
I unwind my finger from Violet’s hair and put the plate between us. I get her to accept a few berries but I eat most of it.
The food gone, I bring up the thing I’ve been avoiding all night, especially since she’s been so adamant about fixing this herself. “Violet? I want to ask you a favor.”
Her green eyes study me, her face luminous in the twilight.
“I have a friend. He’s an attorney here in New York, specializes in cyberlaw, and I think he might be able to help you get your pictures taken down.”
She bites her lip, squeezing t
he flesh that I’ll bet tastes of berries. My dick stirs in my shorts and I drop my arm to cover it. Down, boy.
“So, anyway, I asked him to look into it, and he’d like to meet with you tomorrow.” I finish in a rush, needing to get it all out before I chicken out. “I can go with you, if you want, if you’ll go, I mean.”
She drops her eyes to study her hands in her lap and shakes her head. “I can’t afford a lawyer.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s not charging you.”
“But he’s charging you, isn’t he?” Her green eyes are back to meet mine, and there’s no way I could lie and make her believe it.
“Yeah. But it’s fine. It’s something I want to do. For you.”
She shakes her head again. “I can’t let you do that. I’ll—I’ll owe you, then. I can’t have that kind of debt.”
“I’m not going to make you pay it back!”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, I’ll owe you a favor. Like, then you can ask me to do what you want. And I won’t be able to say no.” A tear crests over her lashes and drips down her face, and my tongue waters to taste it, to kiss it away.
But I get what she’s really saying. She’s afraid that if I pay for this, I’ll be able to control her in other ways. Suddenly, the naked pictures of her, afraid and unwilling beneath her haze of desire, make absolute sense to me.
“This is about control, isn’t it?” I push the plate and our drinks aside, and pull Violet closer to me on my terrace couch. I press her hand against my chest so she can feel my beating heart. “You’re afraid that if you let me do this for you, then I’ll control you.”
She nods.
And this is the moment of truth for me. I can lie and promise her I don’t want to control her, that some random attorney’s fees are just pocket change for me, no big deal. But that’s not the whole truth. And with Violet so raw and open to me, I have to tell her. Everything.
“Violet. It doesn’t matter what you decide about the lawyer, or whether you’ll let him, or me, help you through this. No matter what it costs, you owe me nothing. There’s no scorecard, and no obligation. But I can’t tell you I don’t want things from you. I want them deeply, desperately. Violet, I want to control you.”
CHAPTER 28: VIOLET
I tug my hands from Jayce’s chest and flee the terrace for the only refuge I know—the bathroom. I perch on the closed toilet lid and let tears make hot trails down my face.
I feel like such a crybaby. Such a wimp that I can’t find a way to just deal with this, delete the pictures, somehow punish Brady and get the stalker to leave me alone, once and for all.
But none of them play by the rules. Not Brady. Not the stalker. Not whatever slippery devil runs the revenge porn website. After living my life playing by the rules, it doesn’t seem fair that I can’t use the rules to make things right.
Despair makes the prospect of handing this whole mess off to someone else so tempting. That’s what Jayce is offering, really—a hired gun who can wave a magic legal wand, make the pictures disappear, and prevent more creeps from coming out of the woodwork and after me.
And maybe, if I’m really lucky, I can put this mess behind me before it explodes into the public eye and takes me, my father and Jayce down with it. I’m lucky I’ve barely been with Jayce anywhere except for our apartments. That’s probably the only safe way to even see him.
And I don’t want to stop.
I wipe my eyes and squelch that thought. I’m getting carried away by feelings for a guy who’s everything I don’t want. A playboy. A celebrity. A controlling, pushy man who makes my insides liquid and my panties incinerate with just his breath on my skin.
He wants to control me.
I can’t even believe he just said that. It was always unspoken with Brady—he controlled me with little comments, tiny gestures and veiled threats that together had a powerful effect. I dressed how he wanted and wore my hair the way he liked it. At events, I hung on his arm, my eyes always riveted on his face when cameras were around. Just as he instructed.
So what’s possessed me to even think about what Jayce says with something other than revulsion? Just as I finally had the courage to break up with one controlling boyfriend and take the trip to Europe that I’d always dreamed of, the one I put off at Brady’s demand, now I have another guy wanting to push me around.
I stand up and pace in frustration. The scary part is, being controlled by Jayce doesn’t sound so bad. He’s Justin. The just. He’s already powerful, already comfortable in his own skin, not some wannabe politician who gets his kicks from being obeyed.
Mostly, I tell myself, he’s not Brady.
I hear tapping at the bathroom door before I’ve made up my mind whether I’m freaked out, turned on, revolted, or ready.
The tapping persists. “Violet? Are you OK in there? I—I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I go to the door and open it, immediately regretting my flight to the bathroom when I see Jayce’s eyes pinched with worry. It ages him a decade, even though he’s only a couple years older than me.
“You didn’t scare me. I just needed some space. To think.” I open the door wider, as if to prove that this is really simple, that I’m not hiding anything.
“You can have all the space you need,” he says, and takes a step away from the doorframe. “I’ll be on the terrace if you want to talk … about what I said.” His head is bowed and my heart goes out to him in this moment of assumed defeat.
I need him to know, at least, that I’m OK.
“Justin.” I catch him with his real name, and he turns back to me. “I don’t need that much space.”
He matches my small smile and it spreads until I see his twinkling caramel eyes. I beckon him closer and his hands move to my hips, a loose hold that centers us, our chests a few inches apart.
“Just give me some time to think about what you’re really asking, OK? Because I know this isn’t just about going to see your friend tomorrow.”
“You mean you’ll go?”
“I’ll go. I’m all out of options, and because you want to help me, I’ll let you. But for the rest—” I pause and I can’t force out the word control yet “—just give me some time.”
“All you need.” He smiles again and strokes my cheek, then drops his hand when a yawn seizes me and contorts my face. “Sleep. You need it.”
“No, I’m good.”
“Liar. Brush your teeth. Get changed. I’ll meet you in bed.”
My eyebrows jump faster than I can control my startled expression.
“Not like that. I’m just going to help you relax.”
***
Jayce sits on the opposite side of the bed in boxers and a T-shirt, a low light at the bedside casting shadows across his face that sharpen his strong jaw and square chin. His eyes are unreadable in shadow, but I cross to the bed in my sleep shorts and tank top as a flutter builds in my chest.
“Lie down on your stomach,” he says, and again, I obey his command. I realized halfway through brushing my teeth that he didn’t ask me to do it—he told me, without a please, without the option to say no.
It’s a little thing, but it’s control.
I lie on my stomach, my arms forming a pillow under my head. Jayce immediately stands and begins arranging my body, his warm hands moving my arms down to my sides, tipping my head into a pillow and brushing my hair back, moving my ankles to adjust my legs, and bolstering my feet with another pillow.
His hand tugs at the hem of my tank top. “I’m giving you a massage, so I’m taking this off.”
Again with the command. I lift my chest to give him access as he pulls the material over my head. I feel warmth as his breath brushes the naked skin of my back, then I hear a wet sound and rubbing. His palms touch my shoulder blades with lotion, his wide hands stroking across my back and up my spine.
“Unnnh.” So much for coherent conversation. I let my body unwind under Jayce’s magic hands. Minutes tick by and he coats my back with lotio
n, working my muscles until they’re hot and supple, as if I’ve been doing yoga for the last hour.
I peek open an eyelid and find my face even with his boxer-clad crotch. Evidence that he’s enjoying this massage every bit as much as I am tents the material, but he doesn’t move to satisfy the urge. His hands work my neck, shoulders, arms, and lower back and I close my eyes again, blissed out.
I feel the mattress dip beneath me as Jayce positions himself lower to work my legs. The air shifts—it’s heavier, more sultry, and I lift my hips when I feel the tug on my sleep shorts. Jayce pulls them down my legs and I hear his breath hitch. I don’t think he realized they were the last scrap of clothing on my body.
“Oh, Violet,” he breathes, and his hands cruise up and down my calves and the back of my thighs. It’s a little bit weird to know he’s staring at my bare ass, but his hands keep up the long, sweeping strokes even as they move up my legs and work my glutes. From my lower back to my rear and the back of my thighs, he moves against me, the energy from his touch sending swirls of excitement through me.
I force my body to be still. I clench at my core, praying he can’t see my arousal as obviously as I see his. His hands pull together, thumbs skimming lightly down my butt and I thrill to his touch. His hands sweep down to my thighs and then back up, each time closer to my center.
He’s tormenting me, and I moan with undisguised pleasure. The strokes become more insistent, less massage-like and more intimate as the seconds tick by. One thumb slides right down my center—crack, hole, cleft, God, what words do I even have to describe where he’s touching?—and it pauses at my entrance, wet and wanting.
I roll, desperate to see his face, wanting to feel him above me, to let his fingers explore me more. His hands freeze as our eyes meet and I give him permission. “More. I love the way you touch me.”
Light fingers stroke the hair on my mound, graze my thighs and then move back between my legs, feathering over my folds. He’s kneeling on the bed beside me, his expression inscrutable as I feel a stroke up my stomach, between my breasts and around them, and then one hand cups my breast as his thumb brushes my nipple.
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