She was awake. More alert than ever.
Her black and blue-ish bruises were turning into sickly yellow hues across her skin, but despite noting her painfully decorated body, I couldn’t help myself from reaching for her…and holding her in my arms.
I kept my touch tender, despite how desperate I was to squeeze her, to show her how glad I was that I could hug her. Feel her. Talk to her. Trade jokes and jabs with the funniest twenty-four year old to ever walk the planet.
My heart squeezed, my chest aching from the raw emotion.
Especially when she flashed me a weak smile, wincing as she sat up under the ghostly white sheets. She examined me with assessing blue eyes.
“I never thought you’d make it here so soon.”
“Thought? Or hoped?”
She grinned. “The hospital staff told me you made it here that night. That you slept in my room. Stayed until the morning.”
“They over-exaggerate. I really only stayed because you owed me money. Wanted to make sure I got it back.”
She laughed. “You’re the same as ever, Hollywood.”
“And so are you, Squirt. Tougher than nails.”
She gazed down at her freshly bruised body, smiling. “Don’t I look tough?”
“I learned to never judge a book by its cover.”
“Interesting advice. Considering that you’ve always looked like the asshole you are.” She winced again with a smirk. “What’s with the fancy threads?”
“Had some business to take care of earlier.” I glanced down at the newest Tom Ford threads on my shoulders. “Not everyone can be as tough as you.”
“Some of us are tougher.” She winked in my direction, her stare wandering out of the window at the setting sun. Her smile fell from her gorgeous, discolored face. She glanced back at me.
“I heard about dad.”
I nodded. “I figured you had.”
“They say he may never wake up.”
“They say a lot of things,” I answered, my stare stalwart and unblinking. “But then again…they’ve never met the Sparrows, have they?”
My sister grinned. “No, I guess not.”
Minutes pass, and we filled them up with light-hearted banter, sibling stories and jokes.
Until Marilyn started talking about the night of the accident.
And I sat down near the edge of her stiff hospital bed, careful not to touch her, careful not to poke too hard at the pieces of her that were slowly cracking. I let her speak, never saying a word.
Not until she finished.
The car accident was brutal, she’d said. Like nothing she’d ever experienced.
Satan himself, in her words, had set them on a road to Hell, and as she sat in the passenger’s seat, she watched—as if in slow motion—my father’s expensive red Ferrari spin out of control, tilting on two wheels before turning completely over.
Winding in a cartwheel of pain and impending death.
The world went topsy-turvy before turning black. And the next thing Marilyn remembered was waking up in a white-washed hospital bed, her back and bones aching on every inch, her mouth unable to move as she assessed the red wounds and new scars now stretching across her skin.
She said the leather wheel seemed to slip out of my father’s grasp, found a mind of its own.
A well of emotion built behind my tired eyes, but anger—seething and hot—dried the unfallen tears. I was angry that she’d had to go through such pain alone. I was angry that my dad’s damn driving had put here there.
Several hours later, after the sun has already set, I step inside the Manhattan penthouse I’d left behind, shedding my clothes like an unwanted skin. I loosen the tie, drop the slacks, ditch the shirt. Naked, I march over the marbled tile and inside of my polished glass shower door. Shutting it behind me, I let a stream of scalding hot water, bear down on my body, beating the emotion out of me.
The water is scorching. Searing. Steam builds up like a billowing smoke, and through the heat and haze, all I can think about is the strawberry-haired siren I saw just this morning in the King & Sparrow offices.
Violet fucking Keats.
The bane of my sorry existence.
In a pure white blouse and blue pencil skirt, looking every bit of a fucking fantasy, the feisty lawyer—and object of my unadulterated lust—was a sight to behold, a beauty that was unfairly unforgettable.
What’d we had in one night was fierce—fiery. Almost one year ago to the day, at Elsie and Brett’s unexpected engagement party, we’d danced, drank and dove into each other like there was no tomorrow, shallow breathing as we drowned in each other all night long.
The sight of her, standing there in a silk-lined red dress, showing off those long toned legs, is enough to make me unreasonably hard, and amongst the scouring water, I stroke one steady hand across my shaft. Needing to relive it. Needing that same release that always evades me every time I see her.
One hand against the hard black tile, another across my cock, and I remember what it was like to lay Violet Keats down, to kiss my way across her skin, to lavish her smooth body with my tongue.
Violet.
Sweet to the taste. Soft to the touch.
Violet.
Smelling as sweetly floral as her name, her fuckable mouth open to me as she accepted whatever I had to give, my hardness slipping between her cherry-red pair of lipstick-lined lips as she gazed up at me openly—her blue eyes wide.
I’d set her ankles across my shoulders, filled her to my heart’s content.
Hotly silky and disturbingly sensual, I’d given Violet Keats, Esquire, the good, the bad and the better in my bed—taking her body to new heights, crushing her sexy cries with my mouth as I kissed, sucked and tasted each inch of beautiful bow-shaped mouth.
It’s the thought of her mouth that sends my rigid erection into granite territory, and I pump myself harder among the scalding spray of the shower, imagining her plush pussy wrapped around me. Squeezing. Stroking. Loving every inch of me from the inside out.
A moan makes its way out of me, and the pressure inside me builds to painful levels, the need to sink myself into Violet Keats more visceral and violent than ever before. I slam one wet fist against the wall tile, an orgasm threatening to tear me apart until the sound of a slamming door shocks me back from the precipice of a climax, the unexpected noise knocking me violently back down from the peak of unattained pleasure.
I freeze, dropping my cock as I turn.
A growl from just beyond my bathroom doors sends my nerves to new heights, and I swing open the glass door—soaking wet, storming out of my gleaming black and marble-lined bathroom only to find myself face-to-face with a pair of razor-sharp teeth.
Baring…at me.
The snout above the angry sneer sniffs and as the growl through the air lowers to a gravelly rumble, I catch Brett turning the far corner, heading in my direction, his hand reached out to the huge dark gray dog staring at me.
He grabs the monster animal’s collar—pulling.
“Shush,” he hushes to the humongous creature. “It’s okay, Tank. It’s okay.”
“Tank?” I question, dripping all over my cream-colored carpet. I point towards the panting brute. “That’s Marilyn’s dog?”
Brett smiles. “I know. It’s been a while since you’ve seen him.”
I look back down at the beast. “Yeah. Almost a year. Fuck, I didn’t know the damned dog could get that big.”