Page 13 of Unleashed By Eden

She holds her ground, shoulders back and chin still lifted, her arms crossed against her chest. She’s furious, that much is obvious. But her jaw doesn’t wobble. She’s not the girl who used to fold in on herself when someone confronted her.

She stands there and takes me on like she’s been waiting years for this.

Heat crawls under my skin, anger licking up fast, mingling with something dirtier that has no business showing up right now, not when we’re rehashing the worst night of my life. The way she said shoved me off your cock all casual and sharp in the same breath has my brain tripping over images I’ve tried hard to drown. Her soft hands on my stomach. Her warm tongue around the head of my cock. The smell of her cheap body spray and my own shitty cologne mixed together. The look on her face when I lost it.

I move half a step closer, enough that I can see the faint ring of a lighter shade of gray around her pupils.

My mouth opens to throw something back at her, something ugly, because it’s easier to lean on anger than admit I’m still dragging that night around like it’s chained to my ankle.

“Excuse me. Are you Carter Ashford?”

The breathless voice cuts in from my right, and I begrudgingly tear my gaze from Violet. A girl in a tight red dress stands there, clutching her phone, her huge eyes and lip gloss shining under the club lights. Behind her, two of her friends hover, vibrating with excitement.

Recognition ripples outward from them, a stone dropped in a crowded pond.

“You are, right?” she barrels on in a high-pitched voice when I don’t answer fast enough. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, I just . . . Could I get a photo? My sister will literally die!”

I sense Violet retreating from me as more heads turn, more phones appear, and more people start calling my name. It happens fast; it always does. One person is brave enough to break the seal, then the whole thing splits open.

I want to tell this girl to fuck off, not now, later, anything, because I’m not done here. I glance back at Violet, but her face is blank in a scary way. I have no idea what’s running through her head.

“Sure,” I hear myself say, the muscle memory of a thousand nights like this kicking in before my brain can catch up. I tip my chin at the girl with the phone. “Yeah. Of course.”

Her squeal pierces straight through the thrum of the music, and then there are bodies closing in, a messy circle surrounding me and too-bright flashes lighting up my retinas. People are talking at me, asking questions they don’t wait for answers to, pushing closer, hands brushing my arms, my shoulders, phones shoved into my space.

I pose on autopilot, throw up the lazy half-smile that I know photographs well, lean in where I’m supposed to, and crouch a little so I can fit in the shot beside the petite girl.

All the while, my focus keeps sliding back to Violet.

At first, she’s still there, at my side, caught on the threshold of the gathering storm. Our eyes meet for a split second between bodies. There’s so much history crammed into that one glance. The accusation. The hurt. The fact that under all of it, I still want her. I want to back her up against the nearest wall and erase the years with my mouth on hers until she stops looking at me like that.

Another fan steps in front of me, throwing a peace sign and smelling like sugar and vodka. When the flash goes off and clears, Violet is moving.

She slips out of the crush, weaving through the crowd without touching anyone more than she has to. Ben scrambles after her, clutching three beers, casting one last wide-eyed look over his shoulder at me, like he cannot believe he is walking away from this. Her hand closes around his bent elbow, guiding him, and then they’re swallowed up by the bodies on the dance floor, their silhouettes blending into the strobes until I can’t pick her out anymore.

Someone shoves another phone into my face. I pose, force the smile, then sign a napkin, nodding at something I don’t really hear.

Every part of me is on fire. She’s here, and somehow, I’m more turned on than I have any right to be.

This isn’t over.

Violet might have walked away tonight thinking she had the last word. But this, whatever this is between us, has been brewing for years. And now I’ve seen her again, now that she’s thrown that night back in my face and looked me dead in the eye while she did it, there’s no way in hell I am letting it stay buried.

This isn’t done. Not by a long fucking mile.

Chapter five

Violet

Eleven years ago

“Idon’t want a party, Liam. Seriously.”

I’ve said it so many times this week, I’m starting to bore myself, but it bounces right off him like everything else he doesn’t feel like hearing.

“Too bad.” That stupid big-brother grin means I’ve already lost. “You’re turning sixteen, Vi. You only do that once. It’s a big deal.”

“It’s not,” I argue, raising my voice over the drums thudding out of his speakers. “It’s just another day. I don’t even like parties.”