“No,” he scoffs.
Then he looks into my eyes.
“But I was kind of hoping it could be our song.”
I feel myself smile—but smile doesn’t really cover it. Because my lips stretch so broad and wide it feels like my mouth consumes half my face.
And my stomach and my heart are somehow smiling too.
“Really?”
“Yeah. It reminds me of us.” Connor glances at the floor—almost shyly—and he’s never shy. “When you weren’t talking to me, I used to drive past your road on the way home from work.”
My cosmo-soaked brain takes a moment to process the information.
“But my road isn’t on your way home.”
“I know . . . but it felt like it was. Like you were on my way home. I would park at the corner at the end of your street, just for a little while. Because I was hoping to get a glimpse of you. I wanted to be near you, in any way I could.”
He shakes his head, glancing over my shoulder. “I can’t believe I’m fucking telling you this. Pretty pathetic, huh?”
I stare at him meaningfully.
“I wrote a poem about your penis.”
Connor found my box of poems the other day—to my ever-burning, napalm-level shame. It’s my fault; I left the lid of the jewelry box open and he walked past and saw the top paper titled “Connor’s Cock.”
What man wouldn’t take a second look at that?
He chuckles at me at the reminder.
“And it’s not pathetic,” I tell him. “I think it’s romantic. The most romantic thing anyone has ever done. And it’s a relief.”
“A relief?”
“Yeah. For so long I had you up on this unreachably high pedestal. And then, at the wedding, you came down off of it and you were human. You were real. And I liked the real you even more. So it’s a relief to know you liked me as much as I liked you. That we’re on the same page.”
He stares at our clasped hands, his voice hushed and soft.
“We are, Violet. We’re on the exact same page.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Connor
I don’t take Violet back to her house after we leave The Piano Man. I’m not ready for our night to be over yet. Because I’m having too good of a time . . . and because Violet is just too damn cute when she’s wasted. We get to my house a little after midnight.
Aaron and Brayden are playing the great unifier—Call of Duty—on the Xbox in the living room with what sounds like a dozen other kids online. Spencer is already in bed.
I grab two bottles of water from the fridge and tell the boys, “Violet and I are going to watch TV in my room for a little while.”
“Yep,” Aaron answers, but with his fingers working double-time on the remote, I’m not sure it’s me he’s answering.
“Watch your six!” Brayden says into the headset.
And my work here is done. I lead Violet up the staircase.
I’m the master and commander of my internal time clock, so I’m not worried about falling asleep. Doctors have a legendary ability to immediately crash into REM sleep or to stay awake and alert for hours on end, depending on the circumstances.
I close my bedroom door and lock it—in case Vi wants to change into something more comfortable. And I honestly figure we’ll hang out, talk, maybe watch a movie.
Violet’s idea is so much better.
“Is it wrong that I want you to fuck me even though your kids are downstairs?”
My mouth goes dry and my voice rises an octave—from the stampede of blood descending toward my groin.
“Nope. Not wrong at all.”
Her smile is naughty and her eyes are dark and shiny, and she’s so frigging pretty she makes my chest throb.
Violet sinks down on her knees in front of me, keeping contact with my gaze. And there is nothing on earth that’s hotter—nothing more arousing than a woman who is hungry for you and not ashamed to show it.
She opens my jeans, tugging them down my hips and pumping the already stiff shaft. Then she slides my cock between her lips. My head rolls back on my neck as her tongue swirls, and her head bobs and the sweet suction of her wet mouth is so divine it’s like she’s trying to suck out my soul.
My hands clench and a surge of rough urgency rises in me. I lift Violet up under her arms and we kiss hard. I slip my fingers under the straps of her lacy sundress, sliding it down her arms to the floor. I bend my knees, kissing across the swell of her breasts, unhooking her strapless bra and letting it fall. Then I spin us around and place her on the bed.
She looks stunning there, her long hair across my pillows, laid out just for me.
And I know at this moment I could do anything to her. Because she trusts me. Completely and unreservedly. It’s there in her round, waiting eyes and splayed limbs. There’s nothing I could want to do to her that she wouldn’t let me.