Page 94 of Beautifully Ruined

Violet is full of surprises, though. She undoes the top button, and all I can see is her unmarred flesh, her cleavage, and because the coat is not fitted, I can see into it a little, and there’s just skin. No clothes.

What the fuck is she wearing under that?

“Nothing,” is the thought that comes into my head, but I banish it as something put there by my own perversions and by Thomas’s words.

“Maybe I don’ t like being left out.” She tosses back the rest of her drink. “If this partnership is to last.”

I toss my drink back, too and call a car. This is from a service that The Syndicate uses. Sleek black cars. I keep my usage of them to a minimum. They’re perfect for things like this, though. Because I can almost guarantee that Thomas has a driver and a fleet of cars. And if he’s watching, he’ll want to see how I get home.

I’m not trying to pretend to be a CEO anymore, but the car is still a good idea.

Then I snag back on the idea of him watching me.

I don’t want to go home. Not yet.

Thank fuck I never handed the keys to the apartment I have to Jack.

I get up and dump a few hundred on the table for the manager or whoever’s in here, “I think that you and I need to talk about boundaries. Rules. The nuts and bolts of our partnership. Outside.”

I take her and drag her out, right as the car slides to a stop. I open the door and push her inside.

I lean in and let the driver know where we’re going, and then I slide the partition shut.

“That’s not your address. Or mine. You?—”

“What part of we need to talk don’t you understand?”

“Iamtalking.” And bless her pretty soul, she glowers at me.

It makes me want to kiss her. Which makes me an asshole, but I can’t help how she affects me. She’s soft, sweet devastation.

“What I mean by talking is you shutting the fuck up and listening to me while I fucking rip you a new one.”

“I don’t think I like this.” Her eyes narrow and glitter, but her hands clutch at each other in her lap, and it tugs at my heart, but I shut that thing down.

Violet’s not about to go anywhere. That hangs in the air.

And I’m fighting a losing battle of keeping this needed conversation from turning sexual, from hooking into the pull between us.

“Too fucking bad. What the fuck were you thinking following me? I get you wanted to surprise me, but come on, if I wanted you there, I’d have told you.”

“That isn’t how relationships work.”

“You obey me.” And how I wish that was true in this moment.

Outside everything else, right now I want—need her to be subservient, obedient, in every single way.

It’s the only way I can think of to keep her safe.

But I’m skating way too close to the edge, over ice that’s way too thin.

“When we play.”

Vi’s words are soft, deliberate in choice. Because she could have said anything. She could have said ‘not in real life’. She could have flung my words back at me, called me out for being wrong. She could have just called it bullshit.

Fuck, she could have said, ‘when we play,’ in a different type of voice.

But she chose that one. Soft. Deliberate. Loaded. Sexual.