Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

Knew I couldn’t.

But I was going to try.

It made me a bastard. I knew it did. But I was fuckin’ gonna try.

I pressed my lips to the top of her head while sobs ripped from her heaving chest.

“I’ve got you, Violet. I’ve got you,” I murmured into that wild mane of black.

Fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt, and she pressed her face into the well of my neck. “Why does it have to hurt so bad, Richard? Why does it feel like every good thing in my life gets ripped away?” she cried through gasping, quaking words.

“I’m sorry. I would take it away if I could.”

“Why did you have to do it in the first place? I needed you. I needed you.” The words continued to spill in a deluge. The barriers she’d tried to keep fortified between us broken down to nothing. Rubble in this mess that was our lives.

I held her closer. “I didn’t want to. It killed me, baby. Killed me.”

“I don’t understand.” It was a whimper. A plea. Questions billowed, trying to take hold.

The confession burned on my tongue.

She was going to hate me. Soon enough, she was going to hate me.

“Wished I could make you understand, but I can’t. Can’t give you that, baby. I would if I could. Please believe that. Please trust that. Please believe I am trying to make it right.”

A tremor ruptured through her entire being. She burrowed deeper into the security of my arms. The cries she was emitting didn’t lessen but they were changing shape.

Becoming guttural. Whimpers of something that bellowed through the night. The sky hung low, the stars so bright and close where they dangled from the heavens that I was sure I could pluck one out and offer it to her.

A dream that we’d shared but had burned out far too fast.

The canopy held us.

Covered us.

A bubble of protection that refused to allow in anything else.

That energy thrashed in the confines of it. Whipping and wrapping us in the same twine that had bound us at first glance.

Our connection fierce.

Unrelenting.

Endless.

Eternal.

A little fist pummeled on my chest. Then another.

No. They weren’t to injure.

Just got the sense she wanted to bash her way in and get to the truth of what had become of the love we were supposed to share for all our days.

“I’m so mad at you. I’m so mad at you. I want to hate you. I need to hate you.” She rambled the words against the rampage battering my chest.

“I know. I know,” I whispered back, and she was kissing across the spot where she’d just been releasing her torment over my heart.

“Let me hate you,” she said there. “Don’t let me trust you again.”

It was a broken plea, and she kept kissing higher, over the fabric of my shirt. Tremors shivered and need rushed.

“Violet.” It hit somewhere between a petition and a warning.

The exploration of her hands became frantic as she searched me in the night below the murky, opalescent glow of the moon that sagged low.

Under it, something hysterical came over her being, girl’s spirit screaming out in this madness I didn’t know how to sate.

How to tame.

How to fix.

“I’m sorry. I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” I kept murmuring into her hair. At her temple. At her cheek.

Like I could offer the comfort that she needed.

Take it away.

Do something to make her life better.

“I hate you,” she said again, trying to convince herself of the lie.

It’d be so much better if I wanted her to.

If I could let her go.

I’d tried. Fuck I’d tried.

Impossible.

My hands splayed across her back and rode up toward her shoulders. A covering of affection.

Need blistered.

I tried to force it down. To beat it into submission. This wasn’t the time nor the place.

But Violet was kissing higher, those lips making a frenetic path up the column of my throat, tiny caresses of her mouth sending me into madness.

“Richard, Richard,” she chanted.

Her hands gripped.

Her spirit grasped.

“Violet. Baby. You need to stop.”

She just nipped at the scruff of my jaw, her tongue coming out to taste the flesh.

Lust bounded.

I hissed.

Didn’t she remember the admission I’d made to her back at the restaurant? Because this was brutal. Torture. She kept up like this, and I was gonna blow.

Guessed the sentence was fitting. The temptation she was meting. This girl kissing on me and not being able to have her.

She shifted her position to sit on my lap and wrapped her legs around my waist.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She started rocking, and my hands shot to her waist to attempt to stop her, but I was moaning out a greedy sound when she rubbed herself on my rock-hard cock. She did the same, the sexy mewl rolling from her throat.

“Why do you make me feel this way? Richard. Please.”

She nipped the corner of my mouth with her teeth and her fingers drove into my hair. “Please.”