Page 129 of Violet

There’s a bottle of bourbon on the small table, and she has a glass in her hand, with a healthy measure poured, but she makes no attempt to lift it to her mouth.

So I pick up the bottle and take a swallow. The backyard with its high privacy walls creates an oasis of quiet, but I imagine I can hear the city live and breathe. The whoosh of cars, muted voices. It’s the right time for the end of the ball, for theaters and cinemas to empty, for the late-nighters to head home after a drink or lingering at a restaurant.

It’s liked the dialed-down-to-under-one version of Emporia.

I sigh as I take another sip.

We should be fucking like rabbits, exploring the insane highs of knotting pleasure, and instead all I feel is coldinside, and the gulf that vindictive little creature Alicia caused.

“Violet, look, I?—”

“I don’t think you have, Stephan,” she says, “knotted, I mean.”

And in the low light her cheeks take on a luminous pink hue.

“You said you don’t know.”

She lifts the glass, then drops it back to where she just cradles it. “Alicia?—”

“She’s nothing.”

“You…she said you knotted when you fucked her. She wanted to know if you’d knotted with me. Am I too boring? Not enough? I know I shouldn’t be saying this because I’m here to make your life better, but if I don’t, I?—”

“Stop. You’re not here to make my life better. We’re here to explore and build a life together. And as for her…I told you it’s complicated, but it’s not.” This I can do, even though I don’t want to. “Before I met you, when I arrived, I met a girl and we’d had enough to drink that I had a one night stand. I wasn’t into her. Not beyond the need I had to have sex with someone.”

Her face is a mask, but I’m close enough I can feel her withdraw, the distaste…not judgment, exactly, but distaste at my actions. And it makes me feel about as sleazy as what happened was.

“Once. I had no urge to knot. So no. It didn’t happen. I didn’t know she’d be part of the Season, and I honestly didn’t care because I wasn’t planning on taking part, no matter what the battle-ax wanted. Then I met you.”

She’s silent for a while. This time, she takes a drink, her nose wrinkling. “You met me?”

“Yes. I didn’t know you. I knew you were an Omega, were probably part of the Season, so I kept visiting that boathouse, hoping I’d see you again.”

Her eyes dart to me. “And yet you don’t want to knot me?”

“Iwantto, but…with Cecilia…” I take another swallow.

“You still miss her.” She glances away, and my heart dies a little. How do I say this without making her feel unwanted?

“To be honest, yes. A part of me will always miss her, I think. She was my first love. But you’re my future, Violet. I’m here with you now, and that’s exactly where I want to be.”

She finishes her drink. “Was she an Omega?”

I sidestep that because I can feel where she’s going. She needs to understand, just like Pen, that now I’m bonded to her, bound by our mating bites to protect her, keep her safe. And I fucking will.

No matter what.

“I haven’t knotted yet, but it’s not because I haven’t been tempted—I have. Many times.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

It cuts right through, unleashes feelings I have no name for.

“Because it scares me…”

Her brow furrows with confusion. “Does it hurt you?”

Man, they really don’t teach Omegas anything about this in Sabine. “No, no. It scares me because it brings up memories I’m not ready to touch yet.”

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