“We should eat before we waste it,” I said with a low groan.
She laughed softly. “We should, huh?”
“I’d make it a command, but I don’t want to lose my balls when I have plans for them,” I teased back.
We ate the sandwiches and fries in a comfortable silence, and then I went into the bathroom to hit the head and wash my hands. I stopped to look at myself in the mirror. Tired and ungroomed. My hair was wild, and my beard was dark and scratchy. It was hardly what Violet deserved—a man too focused on things that weren’t her.
No good to the core.
I pushed it aside. I was different now. I’d changed from the thoughtless teenager whose father had first called him that. And maybe, once this was done with Ken’Ichi and theKyodaina, I would walk away from the one thing that could put her at risk. Screw the FBI. Screw their international crime unit. Screw the syndicate. Maybe, instead of three lives, I’d narrow it back down to two that I could certainly blend into one. Racing and Violet.
When I emerged from the bathroom, she’d cleared the tray off the bed, leaving the champagne and our flutes on the bedside table. She was cross-legged on the mattress, close to the edge, her hands on the edge of her braid the only sign that she was anything but completely calm. She’d removed her oversized sweater so she was in just the damn leggings and a tank top that hid nothing. Braless, her nipples were already on alert.
I forgot everything but the woman in front of me.
I was at her side before I’d realized I’d even taken a step. I went down on my knees, bringing our faces almost even. “Violet, are you sure? Because once I start touching you, I’m not going to want to stop. I will if you ask—I always will—but goddamn, it might kill me.”
Her answer was to wrap her arms around my neck and draw me closer to her.
“Five years, Dawson. Five years I’ve waited to be yours. Don’t make me wait anymore.”
I kissed her, tasting the champagne. Tasting the sweetness that was Vi. Slowly exploring the soft recesses of her mouth with my tongue while my fingers found the hem of her tank and slid under it, coasting over her smooth skin and pulling so that her body was flush with mine.
She broke out in goosebumps that echoed my own.
I left her sweet lips to trail kisses over her jaw and sucked and nibbled on her earlobe before kissing the soft spot below her ear. She moaned a soft little noise that made my already hard body tighten even further. I slid my tongue and my lips down her throat, over her collarbone, and then down to the tank. I tugged, exposing one of her beautiful breasts. Hard and firm and so ready for me. I barely touched the tip with my tongue, and her body quivered. The smile that broke out over my face was instantaneous. Violet’s body was meant to react to me. Now, all I had to do was prove I was worthy of it. Of her.
Her hand found its way to my hair, tugging at it as my lips went from a light touch to devouring her breast with my entire mouth. My hand found her other nipple, twisting and massaging gently.
“Oh, God,” she muttered, and her hips lunged toward mine. It was an involuntary reaction that hit the inner caveman inside me, wanting to claim her and mark her and make her only mine for the rest of her life. She should have been mine all along. There should never have been anyone else who had touched her. There shouldn’t have been tears because she thought she had to prove herself experienced enough for me. She would have always reacted to me this way, regardless.
I slid my hands to her ass and pulled so that those curves encased in soft cotton were in my hands and her core was pushed up against my hard-on straining to escape my jeans. Her legs surrounded my waist, bringing those two sensitive areas even closer, only layers of clothes separating us.
“Slow down,” I whispered with a smile, looking into her eyes that were usually soft and cloudy and had now darkened into something deeper. Just for me. More violets than lilacs. The real her. The inner her.
“Slow down next time,” she said. “This time, I just need you to consume me fast and furiously.”
She yanked off her tank, pulled herself away from me, and lost her bottoms. She was standing on the bed with her beautiful body naked in front of me, the soft curls of her core near my mouth, and she was asking me to consume her. How could I deny that? I bent and licked.
Her hands found my hair again. “Dawson.”
It was a plea and a moan and a promise all wrapped into one.
She pulled me toward the bed, and I grumbled at having her center drawn away from my lips. I removed my clothes and joined her, trailing hands and kisses all over the pearly sheen that was her, landing nibbles and licks in every single tender spot I could find.
She returned my adulation of her body with her own. Kissing, teasing, taunting with lips and hands that were making it difficult to hold back, to keep myself from pushing between her legs and sinking into her.
“Jesus, Violet. You’re so beautiful, and you taste like heaven. I’m not sure I can be gentle any longer,” I groaned out the words.
“Then don’t be gentle,” she gasped.
“Condom. I need a fucking condom.”
“Drawer,” she said, head tilting toward the bedside table where the champagne waited for us. She touched my tip and tugged with a flick of her finger, and my body tightened. I took a shuddery breath and breathed in, thinking of everything but what she was doing so I didn’t lose it.
I opened the wrapper, slid the condom on, and turned back to her. I settled between her legs, looking into her eyes as the tip of me nudged her heat. Her hands strolled over my back, to my hips, and tugged.
“Dawson, goddamn it, now,” she said.
