It was dawning on her, slowly but surely, that perhaps she was thinking along the wrong lines. She wasn’t resistant to healing; she just needed the man who wounded her so grievously to fix the damage he’d inflicted before she could leave the past behind… preferably with him in it.
There’d been a time when—young and idealistic—she’d dreamed of marrying Boudreaux. Not the sweeping white dress and ornate veil, just a simple ceremony that joined them together for the rest of their lives. For whatever came after death. She’d been so in love with him, eternity was the only future she’d seen.
Marriage, a home in the French Quarter, children to add more love and laughter…
The dream almost became reality.
Reality, however, disagreed.
Stupidity and irresponsibility aside, what the hell would she do if nature decided to grant her what she’d wanted back then? Leaving Serenity to start over in a new city wouldn’t be easy if she was pregnant, but it could be done. Plan B should be available from the club doctor if she chose to go that route, or the alternative…
Colorado, for the moment, imposed no restrictions on abortion.
Stifling a scream of frustration, Violet resisted the urge to smack her head against the tiles until the lights went out. If she got confirmation in a few weeks that she was indeed with child, there was no way she could terminate it. No way to even consider it—how could she when women like Sierra were fighting just to get pregnant?
That left her two options—score some Plan B or play roulette with nature.
In just a couple years, she’d be forty.Forty, for God’s sake, and what did she really have to show for her time here? A handful of casual relationships before the big one that ended any foolish romantic notions of happily ever after, and a career revolving around leather, impact toys, and naked men.
Not exactly the legacy she’d imagined.
Aside from the fact she’d be ageriatricmother due to her age, did she honestly want to become a single mother? Changing diapers, cleaning up various excretions from both ends of a baby, trying to juggle her own basic needs while prioritizing her child’s at the same time?
Of course, the ramifications of keeping a baby went deeper than that. Boudreaux would never surrender his rights as a father, which meant she would be tied to him for the next eighteen goddamn years. He’d make a wonderful father, she had no doubts about that, but he’d use the bonds of parenthood toremain in her life and that… well, resurrecting that long-lost dream would only turn it into a nightmare.
With a soft grunt, Violet pushed away from the wall and switched the shower off, standing in the swirling steam and heavy silence as her thoughts bounced here, there, and everywhere.
The main thing to do wasnotpanic. There was no guarantee she’d managed to upend her future as dramatically as she was imagining; maybe she wasn’t in her fertile period. She’d lost track of that a long time ago—when time rolled into one continual loop of loneliness and celibacy, why bother thinking about such things?
However, she wouldn’t be surprised if Boudreaux possessed supercharged, bloodhound-like sperm. She shook her head, rolling her eyes at the ridiculous mental image of several hundred sperm trekking through her reproductive system on a misguided hunt for the Holy Ovaries, being waylaid in the Fabled Fallopian valley, and stumbling across their hallowed treasure.
Violet ran a hand through her sodden hair, pulling it away from her face. How hard did a man have to fuck a woman to send her brain into a tailspin, for God’s sake? He obviously wasn’t lacking in stamina; age played in his favor. He certainly wasn’t lacking in skill or enthusiasm, that was for damn sure.
She was going to feel him inside her for the next day or two.
Well, she couldn’t spend the rest of the day hiding in the shower. Might be nice, give her a chance to pull herself back together in a way that concealed her inner distress, but the longer she spent in here, the more he’d know just how much what they’d done affected her.
Unacceptable.
As far as he was concerned, their little tryst was nothing more than a meaningless, casual been-there-and-done-that blowingoff steam. The truth would have to be forcibly removed from her lips—Boudreaux couldneverknow she’d broken her years-long dry spell after leaving him by repeating past mistakes she madewith him.
Once she was dressed again, she was relegating this fiasco to the unrepeatable file, and they would return to an abstinent, hands-off, Dom-sub relationship until the contract came to an end. If she figured out a way to break it, or simply decided to get the hell out of dodge before then, all the better as far as she could see.
Maybeshe took her time drying off.
Maybeshe spent several minutes tying her bathrobejust so.
Maybe… for fuck’s sake, why was she procrastinating walking to her own damn bedroom to get dressed in her own damn clothes? This was the time she needed to claim her space as her own and not be intimidated by the man pushing his way through the door. He was a goddamn guest—no, no, not a guest, a lowlyinterloper—and she did not have to tolerate tiptoeing around him.
Straightening her shoulders, Violet marched down the hallway into the bedroom, prepared to order him from the room… and found it empty. Bravado deflating, she cursed him under her breath, then shrugged it off and stomped barefoot to the drawers for a clean set of panties and matching bra.
Her afternoon plans required a slight adjustment to visit the med clinic, which meant ordering Boudreaux to stay in the cabin or finding something to distract him out in the giant playground that was Serenity. Odds were he wouldn’t stay put without bitching about it; she was not in the mood for whining or complaining today.
She could sweettalk Fordham into babysitting him for thirty minutes. Hell, if she batted her eyelashes insistently enough,maybe she could get him to take Boudreaux off her hands for the rest of the afternoon.
Mulling over her options, she spent a few more minutes than necessary with the hairdryer, turning wet locks into a lush, wavy waterfall down her back with the aid of her favorite conditioning spritz. Choosing to go with an easy, relaxed look to match the outfit she had in mind, she gathered it into a ponytail, securing it at her nape with a hair tie.
Was she really going to have to suffer through this rigamarole every day, pawning her resident pest off with one of her friends just so she could take a break for her mental health?
