“I’ve washed my own back for the past two years, Fontenot. I don’t need your help now.”
Oh yes, she was sticking to her guns, he thought. It was going to take more than sex, more than an obvious show of devotion to win her back. Coming at her from the front wasn’t going to work; he needed to attack from the sides and rear, from above and below.
Once she realized he was serious, perhaps she’d let down some of her defenses.
Maybe she’d fortify them even more.
Still, they were in very early days, and forcing his hand now might mean she either pushed Evander to sever the contract—which would be harder than she believed—or she’d simply disappear into the night and, as she had in Louisiana, vanish without a trace.
He didn’t have the patience to hunt her down again, spending years hunting her trail from state to state. Now he’d seen her in the flesh, been inside her again, patience was a thing of the past, a commodity he didn’t have to spare.
It was the only reason he retreated, leaving her alone in the shower with water sluicing over her lush body and his cum leaking down her inner thighs. Oh, she would curse him seven ways to hell, he imagined, when she washed herself clean of his territorial mark.
Neither of them had anything to worry about—his mandatory test to meet the club’s membership criteria had come back clean,the staff were tested regularly, and Violet was nothing if not religious about taking her birth control—but the sheer fact he’d had the audacity to sully her that way would set her temper alight.
Snagging a towel, he dried himself off briskly, listening to her mutters drown in the spray of water. He wrapped the material around his waist and left her to it, making his way down the hall to the bedroom.
Aside from furniture, he discovered the room was essentially bare—her scent made the strongest impression. Several sturdy packing boxes were stacked against the wall, no doubt containing the materialistic elements of her life.
However, it seemed Violet was right in her assumption that Evander would move him in to her living quarters; his own luggage was piled neatly beside the bed, what little he had.
He wasn’t going to start unpacking, not yet anyway. That might be the straw that broke the Mistress’s back, and he didn’t relish the idea of waking up with a pillow over his face.
Instead, he dug through his suitcase for a clean pair of boxers, pulling them on as he studied the rest of the contents. Violet made no mention of what their plans were for the rest of the day, so for now, he was opting for casual and comfortable for the chewing out she was going to give him.
Sweatpants were the obvious pick, along with a T-shirt that had seen better days. If his mother, God bless her resting soul, had seen it before she passed, she’d have squirreled it away into her rag basket, to be torn up and used for polishing… something.
She’d abhorred waste of any kind, and Reaux often wondered what she’d have thought about him coasting on the surface on his life instead of truly living it while he waited for Violet to come to her senses.
He smiled to himself as he dressed, imagining his mother’s voice in his head lecturing him on waiting too long to chaseViolet down. More, for letting her go in the first damn place. His mother believed in heart above all else—the brain was a machine, often flawed, capable of making miscalculations, but the heart knew what it wanted, what was best, as long as the brain didn’t interfere.
She would’ve loved Violet.
Giving the grief a moment to flow through him, Reaux moved his bags to the closet, leaving them on the floor until Violet granted him permission to mingle his meagre possessions amongst hers.
He decided to organize food while she sulked in the shower. While his woman enjoyed flowers and jewelry as rewards, they were not the way to carve forgiveness into her ruthlessly guarded heart. No, she was more likely to respond to thoughtful actions like feeding her.
Luckily, he was a very thoughtful man when he put his mind to it.
Violet
Stupid, stupid,stupid.
Palms pressed against the shower wall, Violet hung her head and cursed herself out for the fucking fool she evidently was—a sucker for punishment, a goddamn masochist, the queen of unfettered idiocy.
Not only had she abandoned every vow she’d sworn tonotget involved with the rakish prick again in this lifetime, she’d done the unthinkable and let him fuck her without any freaking protection.
On one hand, she didn’t need to worry about STIs or STDs. Eli and Evander’s strict testing protocol ensured the physical safety of their clients and staff, but it was the participant’s responsibility to guard against any other ramifications of a sexual encounter. That was why there were hundreds of condoms distributed throughout the club, free to take and—more importantly—use.
It was Boudreaux’s fault, she thought furiously. All that talk about breeding her, filling her up with his cum, had gotten under her skin and burrowed into her empty, aching womb as though words alone could knock her up.
She could have stopped him. Ordered him to find a condom, or better yet, get his ass dressed and out of her cabin. But no, her body turned traitor and demanded companionship to combat the loneliness, a cock to dispel the yearning that had been simmering quietly for years.
She banged her forehead lightly against the tiles.
What wasn’t his fault was the fact she’d stopped taking her birth control pills a month after she left her broken heart and crumbled life on his doorstep. When the grief of his betrayal finally ebbed and she’d realized their relationship was truly dead, there just hadn’t been any point in taking the meds any more, especially once she made the choice to not get wrapped up in another man—emotionally or sexually—until the deepest wounds healed.
Unfortunately, months turned into years that kept rolling, and those wounds were still as raw and fresh as ever. Some days it felt as though her soul resisted healing simply to protect itself from newer, fresher pain.
