I closed my eyes and pinched my lips into a line. “I’m not just a stand-in for your book boyfriends, am I?”
“No. You’re not.” Violet’s arm wrapped around my shoulder and she held me closer. “Do you wanna know why sexy stuff is so good with you?”
“I’d love to know why I’m a sex god,” I joked.
Her eyes softened. “Because I trust you. I know you’d never try to hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t,” I confirmed. “Never.”
“I can be myself with you,” she said after a pause. “And I want you to be yourself with me. You can be messy. You don’t have to fake sunshine if you don’t feel it. Not for me. Okay?”
I smiled up at her and she tightened her arms around my neck, swinging her legs where they hung from my lap. “Okay.”
“Plus, a lot of times when I’m reading spicy scenes, I’m thinking of us. Of how we could make it fun.”
I grinned into her sparkling eyes. “Me too.”
Violet kissed my temple and hugged me tight again.
“You missed,” I said. She looked confused, but I reached forher chin. She giggled before we met in a delicate kiss, parting with a quicker smooch. “Thanks for not giving up on me.”
Her lips quirked up. “I don’t think I could ever give up on you, Colton Jones.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t know how badly I needed to hear that, and to hear it from her, until it was gliding over my skin like a pair of sweats at the end of a long day. “I’m not giving up on you either. Not ever.”
She rubbed the tip of her nose to mine. “Good. Now,” she skimmed her finger down my nose and booped the end of it, “why don’t you tell me what’s going on with hockey?”
My head sagged back on my shoulders. “Ugh. I had just forgotten about it.”
“Do you want to keep forgetting, or talk it out?”
A slow grin spread across my face before I wrestled Vi back onto the bed and climbed on top of her. “I want you to help me remember this cowboy scene. Is it the one where he,” I nibbled the inside of her thigh to her squirm, “eats her pussy, then,” I nipped her stomach, “comes on her stomach?”
Violet’s eyes glowed up at me. “That’s the one.”
I tugged her thighs flush with my shoulders and she squeaked, then sighed when I licked a stripe up either side of her lips. “Good. Because I’m getting real tired of not eating this pussy.”
THIRTY-NINE
VIOLET
OCTOBER | COLUMBUS, OHIO
I pushedanother Sour Patch watermelon past my lips to try to quell the tsunami in my stomach.
If the Rusties blew this, it would be loss number nine.
Yes, historically, there had been longer losing streaks. But I’d never been in the hockey captain’s proverbial passenger seat as he endured moral defeat after moral defeat.
I had not informed Colton how much of his team I had to trade away to maintain my status in the fantasy league. Best to keep that little tidbit to myself.
Regular time ran out, the Rusties tied 4-4 with Utah. We were in the two-minute break between regular play and overtime, when it would be 3-on-3 play for five minutes or until one team scored and won.
Technically, they already had one point toward their league standings because they went to overtime, effectively ending the losing streak—if only on a technicality.
I needed these boys to win it. They needed to win it, for themselves. The WAGs group chat had gotten progressively quieter as each loss flew by. None of us knew what to say.
And that was especially true for me.
