I’m sorry, it was selfish, and presumptuous. I just—” Violet laid the box to the side, reached down to take hold of his shoulders and dropped into his arms, unbalancing him with the unexpected move so he rolled back to take her weight. She ended up stretched full length on top of him on the garden path, her mouth fastened on his, hands fisted in his hair. He recovered quickly, his arms sliding around her back, tightening the embrace so every curve and valley of their bodies fit together, and he swallowed her soft murmur of pleasure with the contact.
Violet lifted her head from the kiss at last, though she thought she could have lain there forever, feeling the hard strong length of his body beneath her, tense with leashed passion.
“So you like it, then?”
She lifted a shoulder, affected a neutral look. “It’ll do.” He grinned.
Violet lifted herself off him, and of course as soon as he recognized her intentions he helped, providing extra strength with his hands at her waist. She took the bench again, looked back into the box and fingered the smooth flat rectangular pieces, nearly an eighth of an inch thick, joined by the smaller square links, like an elegant masculine chain.
“How’d you know my shoe size?” she asked, her mind moving over a myriad of thoughts, desires, possibilities, trying to rope them in, struggling for rationality, caution.
“I noticed your shoes at Tyler’s, lying on the floor this morning.”
“Some men would notice the shoes. Most wouldn’t notice the size.”
“I’m not most men.”
She flicked her lashes up at the arrogant tone, then saw the spark of humor in his eyes, not quite covering his concern at her sudden quiet. It warmed her, his attempt to draw her away from darkness. She wasn’t surprised he knew her shoe size at all, when he was so accomplished at picking up so many of her mood shifts.
As if he read her thoughts, he put his hand against her calf. “I notice everything about you, sugar.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
And the realization was opening up her heart further to him, so that the vulnerable organ was all but lying at his feet, ready for him to pick it up and cradle it in those large hands. Or crush it with his formidable strength, enhanced tenfold by the fact that every third heartbeat in her chest seemed to be caused by him. When a slow smile transformed his expression, it jumped and accelerated, making her revise that. Probably every other damn beat.
Well, she wasn’t a coward.
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Violet closed the box, laid her hands over it, resisting the urge to grip it possessively, the way she wanted to do with him. But relationships didn’t work that way, not D/s or vanilla, or any kind in between.
“I want to put this on your wrist more than anything, Mac,” she said. “But I need to wait.”
His eyes sobered and she looked down at the box beneath her hands. “There’s something I want you to know about me first, and then…” She looked up, met his gaze.
“If you don’t regret choosing this as my gift, I’ll put it on your wrist, and call you mine in truth.”
“All right. Tell me.”
She shook her head. “When we get home. I want to tell you when you have some space to think about it. For now, I want you to come up here and hold me like you said, and if I drop off for three hours and your legs fall off from lack of circulation, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Violet, there are things about me…we don’t have to know everything right away to be all right with something like this.” He nodded to the box.
“Yes. Yes, we do.” She tapped the surface with its carved wooden cranes. “I take this very seriously, Mac, and I think you knew exactly how seriously I would take it, which makes it all the more special to me. I can’t give it without you knowing the one thing about me that may make you decide not to pursue our relationship further.”
“Sugar, there’s nothing in the world that could do that.” She smiled. “There’s that charmer again, but I can see you chewing on what it is I’m going to tell you. Come up here.”
He looked as if he would try to persuade her further, but apparently came to the correct conclusion that she was not going to be deterred from her plan. Rising to his knees, he slid his arms beneath her thighs and behind her back and stood, lifting her at the same time. He turned, brought them back into the bench with her cradled securely against him, her legs bent up, held securely in his arms so she was limp and comfortable and immediately at peace, almost as if by giving herself into his arms she had entered the quiet sanctuary of a church. She scooted around to nest herself down, and the erection beneath her immediately drove out any thoughts of institutionalized religion.
“I seem to have a rather sizeable lump in my bed, but I don’t think I want it removed,” she observed.
“Good thing,” he returned dryly. “With you sitting on it, the only chance it has of going away is if it’s whacked off.”
“Would you ask for water before I did that?”
He chuckled. “At the top of my lungs.”
“Progress.”
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But she saw the shadows in his eyes and reached up to touch his face. “What I tell you will matter, Mac,” she said softly. “I don’t know if it will be for good or ill, but it will matter.”
He didn’t say anything this time, just held her closer. She shut her eyes, forcing herself not to push the moment, but to savor it, seeing as today might be the last she could enjoy him. The truth could set you free, but sometimes freedom was the last thing a person could want.
“What was that?” he asked.
She cleared her throat. “I said, what’s that old adage about setting something free?” He tipped up her chin. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn’t—”
He paused, and a chuckle bubbled out of her at the same moment a devilish smile crossed his face. They finished it together.
“—hunt it down and kill it.”
* * * * *
She left him at the club, with several lingering kisses. First in the car, and then through her window after he got out, until his back ached and his heart felt like it would explode. Then there were ten minutes of simply standing there, their hands linked and resting on the base of the open window, while they simply considered each other. No, that was too adult, and he was too honest not to call it what it was. They gazed at each other with no attention to anything else in the world. What was best, he felt no need to pull away. She was the Mistress. She would say when it was time to leave. All he had to do was stand there, drink in every aspect of her, enjoy the feel of her small-boned hand within the clasp of his, and wish time would just linger there as long as they wanted it to do so.
“Well,” she said at last. “I guess I better go. Work tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Taking a chance, he tightened his grasp, unable to help himself, and bent down one last time, seizing her lips in a kiss that was undisguised, hungry, greedy, conveying all he felt and wanted from her. His other hand found its way to the side of her face, her neck, tightened so he felt her pulse rage beneath his touch.
When he lifted his head, she was holding onto his wrist, her nails pressing into his flesh. He was scored by her in a dozen places on his back and upper torso, and he gladly would have let her take every bit of his skin off if it would please her.
“Be careful in this death trap,” he said. “When can I see you again?” Though she flashed a reckless smile at his warning, her eyes were serious as she considered the question. He knew, with a tightening in his gut, that she was about to 118
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tell him whatever it was she felt was so important that she would not fully offer the gift he’d selected until he’d heard it.
She reached into her purse, took out a business card case, held it without opening it, tapping it on the steering wheel a moment before she made her decision and took out a card, wrote on the back of it.
“I want you to come to my house for dinner, Wednesday night. Can you cook, really?”
“Yes.”
She raised a brow. “Just yes? No qualifications, like ‘I can only cook burgers or toss salads’?”
He braced both hands on the window and squatted down so they were eye level. “I attended three semesters of cooking school. I can cook you anything you’d like to eat, sugar, and give you a chocolate dessert that will melt in your mouth.” A delighted, sinful smile crossed her face and she tangled her fingers in the chest hair visible in the open collar of his shirt. “How about I cover you with it and make you so hot you melt it? Then I can lick it off every last inch of you,” He caught her lips in another quick kiss and didn’t flinch when she bit, capturing his tongue and teasing it with her own. When she broke the kiss, her cheeks were flushed and violet eyes bright, for she’d donned her concealments before they were in sight of the club. He loved knowing their true color, knowing that the lavender was an enhancement of the glowing iris that was already there.
Her gaze flicked down. “I want you to wear something obscenely tight,” she said.
“No underwear, so be careful of what’s mine when you’re getting yourself zipped into them. I want you shaved, close.” The direction of her glance indicated what part of his anatomy she was referencing. “Your shirt and shoes go off at the door. I plan to sit on the counter and fully enjoy watching you cook.” He lifted a brow. “I’ll do all that, and bring groceries. Do you have a fully stocked kitchen?”