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“Mikel,” she pleaded, heat coiling in her belly. Refusing to be stayed much longer, she sank down, chest against the ground while he rutted over her. His hand slid lower again and rubbed her for three hard, deep thrusts before his hips stuttered. The heat in her belly snapped tight, and Violet shuddered the first breath of her orgasm.
Wet heat bloomed inside her as she tumbled over the edge of her climax. Mikel held tight to her, hot sounds of pleasure lacing with her own while the warmth grew and settled right in the middle of the place where she found her pleasure. Violet was shaking, racked with little aftershocks, when her brain finally processed that he’d finished inside her.
He was warm against her back while they panted together under the moon.
“Option two,” he breathed out, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
“Definitely better.” She clung to his arms where they held her tight, until eventually, he started to move.
“Too cold,” he explained when he started to disentangle them.
“Mikel,” she said before she could overthink, before the moment slipped by. He wrapped her coat around her shoulders and looked at her.
“Don’t sleep on the sofa tonight.” She almost rushed to add that there was plenty of room in the bed or make a joke about his age and his back, but she caught her tongue. The smile he tried to hide made it worth it.
He tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded his agreement.
Chapter Seven
THE MATTRESS DIPPED, and Violet woke. She took a single breath through the moment of catch-up that happened every morning while her brain processed that she wasn’t in the mansion, then blinked over at Mikel in the bright light. He’d settled back in, readers on his nose, and phone held at arm’s length while he squinted at the screen.
Violet blinked and tried to focus on what he was doing before snagging it from his hand. With a few, quick taps, she turned up the brightness and made the font one size bigger than the default setting before handing it back. “You’re such an old man,” she groused while he scrolled up and down, looking impressed with the adjustments.
His lips quirked.
“This old man wore you out last night,” he reminded her. It was true. He’d carried her halfway back to the truck, and she’d stumbled out of the shower when they got home, into her pajamas, and been lost to sleep the minute her head hit the pillow. “Brought you coffee too.” He nodded at the nightstand, and Violet silently blessed him.
Half a cup later, she felt human enough to go to the bathroom. He watched her walk back to the bed with enough interest to make her blush.
“You’re in a better mood,” he commented.
She slid under the covers and leaned back against the headboard. It was strangely simple to be around him, her brain noted.
“Slept well,” she replied. He was smiling again, and it was so easy toalmostbe distracted from all the questions she had that demanded answers today.
“Good.”
In the long moment that followed while she chose her words, it struck her how content she was, how she hadn’t thought about Frankston or Lila in what felt like days. Guilt left her cold, and she got lost in pondering if it was wrong to make the best of things for now, given there was no alternative.
Mikel squeezed the tight muscles in her shoulder, bringing her back to the present. His glasses were in his other hand, phone set aside, concern clear on his face. “Somethin’ on your mind?”
Something was. Violet tried to swallow it down and replace it with the matter at hand, but it refused to budge. “If you could, would you take me back to Frankston?”
He hadn’t been expecting the question; she recognized the surprise of it in the raise of his eyebrows and the way he set his glasses down and sat up to match her position.
“I would.” He was stroking the crease where her neck joined her shoulder now, and the rhythm of it was soothing. “I don’t want to keep you prisoner, Violet. If I thought it was safe, I’d have taken you home that first night whether I wanted you or not. I’d take you tomorrow and hope maybe you’d still want me around once you’re back to bars and other young ladies—”
She cut him off with a kiss.He’d take her back if he could.Truly believing it settled something inside her. Mikel wasn’t responsible for the bad things that had happened to bring her to the Bluff; he was a fortunate upside of it.
“I like it here with you.” She ignored the guilt that came with the admission. “This place is fucked up, but home was fucked up too. Without Lila, my sister, in the equation, I don’t know that I’d care about going back.”
She’d ended up close, held in the circle of his arms and the scent of his cologne. He looked at her like he understood. “Tell me about home?”
That was easier to talk about, less vulnerable, and she dived right in. “You know my dad’s the mayor. He’s on his third term or something, been a career politician as long as I can remember. He’s also a first-class asshole.” She didn’t elaborate on that. “Lila’s seventeen. I’ve been taking care of her since she was five. I’m supposed to be taking a ‘paid internship’”—she added the air quotes—“with the city clerk. Then, I don’t know, some boring real admin job, I guess. No way I was leaving Frankston till the kid turned eighteen, so…” She shrugged. “From what I’ve heard around town, I’m not the only one with daddy issues. What’s up with that?” It wasn’t her most tactful remark, but it was the easiest way to get the spotlight off her quickly, to feel less vulnerable.
Mikel went from quiet and pensive to something darker. He released her and took a long drink of his coffee before he answered.
“Elias, my father, was the alpha for nineteen years.” It sounded like a confession. She waited. “He snapped and killed sixteen people in Frankston at a political meeting when they started to threaten our way of life here. He’s probably the reason your dad’s the mayor—the one before died in the massacre.”
