Page 95 of Beautifully Ruined

And in that moment, I can’t get air into my lungs.

Violet’s fucking dangerous.

And utterly my kind of woman.

I slip, stumble into the opening she’s given.

“I think you want to play all the time,” I say, just as soft and deliberate. “I think there’s a part of your nature that wants to get on your knees in that classic sub position like you did that time when you waited naked on my floor.”

“That’s not true. I know the difference between it all.”

“Oh, I know you do. And you’re playing me now. I’m betting you’re throbbing for it, wet, aching. I bet you want to strip down and get on the floor of this car and suck me off. I think you want me to order you about in all the ways.”

I’m getting hard because I don’t think I’m wrong. In fact, the flare in her eyes tells me I’m right. She wants that. But of course, it fights and rubs against her stubbornness, her drive to excel. And that in turn confuses and arouses her.

“No,” she says in the least convincing way I’ve ever heard. “That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? If I ordered you to?—”

I stop. Wipe a hand over my face.

We need to talk. I need her to listen. It’s that simple.

“I’m getting way off topic. Fuck, Vi, I didn’t tell you who I was meeting because it might have something to do with Gianna, and it might not.”

She nods. “Don’t you think I might want to know that?”

“Of course, I do. I didn’t want to get your hopes up, and I didn’t want you enmeshed in the sordid shit this Thomas Allistair is. He could have killed you for not knowing how to code or how to hack.”

Vi looks at her hands. “I know. I know. But something took over me, and I couldn’t stop.”

But I don’t think she does. We got out of it last time, when it was my fault, and this is connected. But the last thing I want is my girl in danger.

And that’s what I’ve got.

Her, in danger.

“Did you hear me? If he didn’t get that call and he found out you couldn’t code, then what?”

She looks at me, pink staining her cheeks. “Then I’d have said I might have gotten carried away in what I said that I was there to support you, or?—”

“You’re in it now.” If she’d failed, and she would have, he’d have probably used her to control me, no matter what I said to him.

I meant what I said, but men like him, like Isaac, like Ivan, they think they have the upper hand with people like me.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

But she’s not ready to back down. “I told you, surprising my boyfriend. I guess I should have known lying runs in the family.”

I catch her face, turning it to me. “Jack and I aren’t the same person. I would never cheat. And I only lied for your sake, by omission. I’d have told you, and you know it.”

“I wanted to look sexy for you. How is that suddenly a crime?” She sucks in a breath but makes no move to break my hold on her. “I just wanted to do something sexy and daring. And if you told me…even if you said you had a vital work thing, I wouldn’t have come all the way uptown to seduce?—”

She stops, and I suddenly look at her, dropping my hand to her coat, and I slide a hand in, encountering nothing but bare flesh.

I work down further along the swell of her soft tit, down the hard nipple.

My cock twitches in my pants, sending an ache spiraling through me.