He repeated the same words he’d given me on our wedding day.
Our devotion.
Our loyalty.
My palm pressed over the thunder that rioted at his chest. “Then listen to what it says.”
I repeated what my mama had taught me.
My own compass beating strong inside of me.
And it was pointed directly to him.
In an instant, we crashed together.
I felt desperate with the need to touch him everywhere. To sink in. To erase any distance. Blot out the past and fill it with the future.
“Richard. Oh god. I missed you. I missed you.” The ramble of words poured out of my mouth while I left a frenzy of kisses over his twitching stomach and up his chest.
Kissing me and kissing me, he flicked the hook of my bra and dragged the straps down my trembling arms. My breasts felt heavy, aching for his touch, my nipples tightened into hard, needy peaks.
Richard obliged, diving down and taking one into his mouth.
A moan tremored through me, chills streaking across my skin and pumping need through every vein in my body.
Dumping it into every cell.
That deluge just grew higher.
I was drowning in a sea of fire.
Richard’s palms spread down my sides and around to grip me by the bottom while he kissed a line down between my breasts. He kept going, moving lower and lower until he was lightly kissing over the bruise marring my abdomen.
A second later, he was on his knees.
He stared up at me with those mesmerizing eyes as he hooked his fingers in the elastic band of the sleep pants I’d been wearing the entire day, and I was shaking and shaking as he slowly dragged them down, taking my underwear with them.
He left me standing there, wholly bared to him.
He hissed, and I could see the wave of lust crash through his body. “Shit, baby. Vi. How do you do this to me? Have to be dreamin’. Have to be. Moonflower. Never thought I’d get to see you like this again. Any idea how fuckin’ stunning you are? How you make me ache?”
My gaze wandered over his wide shoulders and the packed strength of his chest, to the muscles taut across his abdomen.
God, he was miraculous.
The man art.
A mold of heaven. But it was his face that had always done me in.
“Funny how every night when I closed my eyes, the only thing I could see was you. You were emblazoned in my mind,” I admitted.
A growl ripped through the air, and he pushed to standing.
Without hesitating, I reached out and flicked the button of his jeans. “Get these off. It’s hardly fair I’m standing here completely naked while you’re still hiding some of that from me.”
A smirk pulled to one side of his mouth. “Got nothin’ to hide.”
Okay.
That was clearly a lie. But right then, there were no barriers between us.
He shoved down his jeans and kicked off his shoes at the same time, shucking the heavy material from his ankles before he was standing bold and powerful in front of me.
I rained a million kisses across his chest, across the art representing me that he’d adorned himself with.
“Every song,” he grumbled.
And I was singing back softly as my lips traipsed over the inked flesh, “Amor, amor, amor.”
Richard moaned and fisted his hand in my hair, dragging me flush to his body. His cock thick and hard where it was trapped between us. “Can’t wait to get inside of you. Can’t wait to feel this body again. Fucking perfection.”
I whimpered, rushed with need, with a desire so overwhelming it knocked through my senses.
Amplifying each one.
“Beauty.”
Every touch.
Every word.
Every action.
“La historia de mi vida,” Richard murmured low.
The story of my life.
My knees wobbled.
It wasn’t sarcasm.
It wasn’t mockery.
It was meaning.
“You are the start and the ending. The days in between. Even when you weren’t there.”
Richard scooped me up when I said it, his nostrils flaring, devotion so thick and severe I could almost see it hovering in the air.
He laid me on the bed, trailing a finger from my trembling throat straight down my body. He circled my belly button. “If you could see what I see when I look at you. You are inspiration. Awe. The first wonder of my world.”
My body arched. Desperate for his touch.
I whimpered as I watched him where he stood at the side of my bed looking down on me. The man massive where he hung hard and heavy. His cock swollen. Long since past ready.
My insides quaked.
“You want this, sweet girl?” It came off sounding like a warning when he stroked himself once.
Throat dry, I couldn’t speak, could barely manage an erratic nod.
“Need you to be sure. Don’t want to hurt you. After last night…”
“You won’t. I need this.”
He parted my knees and continued that line over my pubic bone, the faintest touch across my clit, even lighter as he barely brushed through my lips. “First time I saw you, it was over. I was done for, baby. Don’t want anyone else. Never.”
Richard crawled onto the bed, stealing the breath from my lungs when he came to hover over me.
Gazing down.
My soul sang. I reached out to flutter my fingertips across his lips. He kissed the tips, sucking them gently, his eyes watching me with all his shadowy darkness.
Grief and guilt there, held in his devotion.
“Never, not once. You are the piece that is missing inside me. My match,” I whispered.
My heart carved in the shape of him.
“Won’t let anything happen to you. Not to you or Daisy. Will die first before I let anyone get near you.”
“I trust you,” I murmured back.
Simmering flames lapped across our flesh.
Heat rising.
“I love you, Violet. Never stopped. Whatever you do, whatever you think, I need you to remember that.”
“I believe you.”
Then he drove into me with a single thrust that I had no time to anticipate.
It was nothing but vicious, exquisite bliss.
A shout of pleasure ripped up my throat, and I clamored to get a better hold around his neck, to adjust to the size of him filling me up.
Taking me whole.
A deep growl rumbled in his throat while he kept himself still. “So fuckin’ good. Being in you. There is nothing better than this. Do you remember, baby, what we’re like together?”
He pulled back a fraction and nudged back in to the hilt.
Pinpricks of pleasure lit up all over.
My fingers sank into his shoulders, and his nose was at my cheek, his pants expelled at the overheated skin. “I remember,” I whispered.
How could I forget when there wasn’t a thing in the world that felt better than this?
“It’s been too long. Too fuckin’ long. You know what it feels like to be inside you after all this time?”
“I hope as good as you feel to me.”
He edged back, tucking his fingers in my hair, the man staring down at me as if I were light.
Incandescent.
A smile played across his plush, sexy mouth. “Don’t doubt that. Fucking heaven, baby. Magic.”
I tipped my chin up toward him, meeting his eyes. “Then let’s make it.”
A rough, needy chuckle left him, and he dipped down to take my mouth as he pressed up on both hands and began to move over me.
Deep, deep thrusts.
Hard and measured.
Our bodies in time.
Our rhythm in sync.
His mouth devotion.
His fucks possession.
I met him with each one.
It didn’t take long for our movements to become frantic.
Heat lightin
g up, flames growing higher, drowning in that sea of fire.
He pushed back onto his knees, gripping me by the outside of the hips, those eyes moving to take in where he drove us straight into delirium.
The drive of his hips and the pant of his mouth and the surrender of his soul.
“Never…never experienced anything like this. Nothing compares to being in you. Living in you. Not gonna stop, Violet. Wanna be right here.”
He lifted his right hand and licked his thumb.
My insides tumbled.
My heart shattered.
I was nothing but pieces for him to hold.
He reached down and started to stroke me into madness. Winding me straight into ecstasy. “Touchin’ you, Violet. It’s like touching the stars.”
My body writhed and my hips lifted and my spirit soared.
He fucked me harder, penetrating to the innermost places I’d kept secret, shattering the last of the reservations I’d had.
Emotion surged.
Crested with the sensation.
Whipping into a storm that would leave me changed.
Marked in a brand-new way.
Because it was easy to hate. To hold on to the betrayal. But it wasn’t so easy to let it go.
Forgiveness was both terrifying and freeing.
“Richard. Richard. I don’t want to go another day. Not another day without you. I need you. I need you. I need you.”
I chanted it as pleasure gathered fast.
Like it swept in from the ends of the earth and raced to meet in one singular place.
In a place that was only me and him.
That connection shivered and shook and stretched taut.
So intense that it pulled Richard back to me, his body angling over mine, the man wrapping me up, his eyes on me as he thrust and drove and promised me with those eyes that he would never let me go.
“Always,” he grunted.
And there was nothing left.
Only the two of us.
Bound by something sacred.
Captives of the divine.
In that singular moment, I felt something coming back together.
Brokenness hewn.
Fractures fused.
Molten.
Liquid.
Solid.
Ash.
One.
One.
One.
Where I was his beginning and he was my end and we were all the days written in between.
Flying through his darkest night.
The man my eclipse.
My sun.
My every star in the sky.
And I was falling…falling into him.
Into his eyes and into his heart and into the safety of his hands.
He gathered up my hand and pressed it against the riot in his chest. Held me close. Like he could keep me from floating away as the orgasm rocked through me.
A thousand tiny explosions of perfection.
Wave after wave after wave.
Pleasure racing, reaching out for him, my body pulsing around him for eternity.
“Heaven, Violet. You are fuckin’ heaven. Watching you glow. Nothin’ better than this. Right here. With you.”
“Come with me,” I begged.
Hips snapping, and his muscles bowing, he took me deeper.
Harder.
Faster.
More.
Chains broken.
No heed.
No sense.
Just us.
He kissed me hard, his words a mumble at my lips as I felt the orgasm take him over. “You.”
“You,” I whispered back.
Richard tremored and shook, gripping me like he thought I might disappear.
Holding me tight.
His mouth at my ear. “My wife.”
Thirty
Richard
I couldn’t get my breath on account that I was inhaling all of hers. Wanting more. To swallow her down and feed on her beauty and drink from her soul.
This gorgeous, hypnotizing girl with thunderbolt eyes.
My fairy girl.
My moonflower.
God knew I was no match for the magic she cast.
I pressed a kiss to her delicious mouth, and she hummed, those arms still wrapped around my neck.
I twitched and jerked and wanted to take her all over again when I eased out of her body, kinda wishing I could just live right there.
Set up shop.
Hang up a sign that read Home, Sweet Home.
But that’s what this was.
Coming home.
Violet whimpered when I pulled out, and I got the sense she was thinking the exact same thing.
“Tell me you missed it.” I let a grin slide to my mouth, but I knew it had to appear adoring as I stared down at her on her bed, all that lush hair spread around her, the softest smile playing on her face and love swimming in her eyes.
“What? Mediocre sex with you?” The tease slipped from her mouth, and she was holding back laughter, and I was tickling her, the girl shrieking out a laugh, squealing and flailing and kicking her legs as she tried to block my playful attack.
Giggles rippled free that she tried to temper in favor of not waking up the entire house.
I thought there might be too much joy for that.
This moment sublime.
I flipped her around until the girl was straddling me, Violet’s expression like looking at the first dawn.
I bucked my hips, and she let out a throaty sound. “Mediocre, huh?” I challenged.
Her face softened, and she played her fingertips along the tattoo I’d marked of her about three years ago. When I knew my love for her was never going to set.
“There isn’t a single thing that is mediocre about you, Richard Ramsey.”
My fingers threaded through the soft wisps of her black hair that hung like a veil around her face. “That’s good…because you are spectacular.”
“Oh, you enjoyed that, did you?”
My grin grew. “Think that’s pretty clear. Six years without bein’ in you? Without lovin’ you? Without touchin’ you? My poor dick was on a hunger strike. Nearly died.”
I gave her a faked, mopey frown at that.
She barked out a laugh, and then slapped her hand over her mouth to mute it, her voice shifting into a sexy whisper. “Poor, baby. Now you know how I feel.”
My hands cupped the outside of her bare thighs, and I was trying to keep it together considering the girl was sitting on me naked. Still wet. My poor, destitute dick was very, very aware of the exciting change in our situation.
“I knew all along.”
Could feel the shift, the lightness shifting into the darkness that surrounded us. No chance of eradicating it until all was exposed.
I just had to hang on for a few more weeks.
Pray she’d understand.
Forgive me.
Understand what I’d had to do.
“I hate that you left me,” she said, blatantly honest.
I pulled her down and shifted us so we were lying on our sides facing each other. Her little heart beating manic and those thunderbolt eyes searching me for the truth. “I hate that I had to.”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and she glanced away before she looked back at me. “What that man said last night…”
My stomach clamped in a vice of rage. I managed to keep it in check. To just keep looking at her, waiting for her confession.
“I think I know why he came.”
My chest tightened. “You recognize something about him?”
Her lips pressed together, and she slightly shook her head where it was rested in the crook of my arm. “No, Richard, but I heard it. Where the threat was comin’ from. This is about my sister.”
Her throat bobbed in a shock of pain when she said the last while I tried not to lose my shit.
Instinctively, my arms tightened around her. “Why do you say that?”
The girl hesitated, warring. “B
ecause I hired a private investigator to find her, and I think someone doesn’t want her to be found.”
Horror froze every cell in my body.
She sat up, and the words started to fly from her mouth in a tumble of desperation. “Richard, it absolutely terrifies me what that might mean. If it’s her that doesn’t want to be found or if it’s someone else. What…what if she’s in danger?”
I pushed up to sitting, too, taking her by both sides of the face, searching her through the grainy haze of her room.
“Baby,” I whispered, the word nothing but gravel. “When did you hire this person? What has he found?”
I mean…fuck.
Her chin quivered, and she spread her fingers over her chest like she could feel a part of herself bleeding out. “A few weeks ago. My mama…Richard…my mama needs to see her one last time. It’s the last bit of peace that she needs to say goodbye. The resolution she needs. The last I love you she needs to say.”
Gutting brokenness seeped from her pores, and I wrapped her up like I could hold those shattered pieces together and not be the one who was going to send it all crashing to bits in the end. My mouth moved to her ear. “Has he found anything?”
Her head shook in confusion, and she curled her arms around my neck. “A picture. A picture from back in LA. You remember that man, Martin Jennings? The one who took us out to eat all those years ago when they were trying to get Carolina George to sign?”
Fury went on a tangent in my rib cage.
A battering.
A storm.
It took everything I had not to fly from the bed.
“Yeah,” I managed to say.
“She was with him. How was she with him?” Violet begged, clinging to me tighter. “I’m terrified, Richard, terrified that I got her into something that she couldn’t get out of when I invited her there. That I’m somehow responsible for this. For whatever happened to her. And I’m so selfish…so selfish,” she wheezed, “so selfishly scared to find out. Scared to learn what it might mean. Scared of what is going to happen with Daisy. How could I be so cruel? How, Richard? I…I…”
Despair rushed out with the words, and she choked over a sob.
Deep gashes of pain that pierced her.
“It makes me sick to be this person, but I don’t know how to stop this feelin’. This feeling that makes me want to wrap that little girl up and run away. Hide her away forever.”
Hitched, pleading cries ripped up her throat.
Falling into You: A Falling Stars Stand-Alone Romance Page 30