Lust & Lies Box Set-Sexual Awakenings, Excess, Predator & Prey

“I want you to believe me, especially when I tell you something important, Violet. Me. Not anyone else.”

I nodded and turned the knob, looking back at him. “Why do I feel like if I leave the bubble will burst?”

“We had a rough start, but now we won’t let anything shake us, right?” He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to my lips.

“Right.” I made my way down the steps, practically dancing, and gave him a wink as I turned to walk to my car. I got behind the wheel and buried my forehead on the top of the steering wheel, saying a late Thanksgiving prayer. I prayed like I was accepting an academy award. I couldn’t believe my new reality. I heard my phone ping.

RHYS: What in the hell are you doing?

I looked up and saw him watching me from the porch. I turned crimson.

VIOLET: Gathering my thoughts, Rhys. A little privacy, please.

I watched him look at the message and smile.

RHYS: Were you talking to yourself?

VIOLET: No.

RHYS: I saw you talking to yourself.

VIOLET: If you must know, I was praying.

RHYS: Praying in my driveway?

He was laughing hysterically now and I laughed with him as I replied.

VIOLET: Don’t you have anything better to do than spy on me?

RHYS: No, there’s nothing better to do than you.

VIOLET: Cute. I’m leaving.

RHYS: Bye, beautiful.

I made it to my mother’s and had the turkey and dressing I’d loved since I was a kid. It was amazing and a perfect end to my weekend. My all-knowing mother beamed at me throughout dinner, and questioned me in her roundabout way.

Thoughts of Rhys and our picnic in bed kept me warm on the drive home. Truly comfortable in my own house for the first time since my attack, I settled in that night, heart and stomach full. Right before I drifted to sleep, I got a picture.

It was of Rhys holding his sleeping son. Rhys was grinning, though he looked exhausted. Bryce had his little hands gripping his t-shirt, his eyes closed and mouth open, his long dark lashes covering half his chubby cheeks. The message attached said “Godzilla for sale.”

Caring for a woman was easy for me. I had always cared for different women for different reasons.

Loving a woman had always been quite a bit harder.

Doms don’t have to say I love you.

I got my companionship and sexual satisfaction through my relationships with my subs, but in truth, I could never really classify them as real relationships. I had heard the words I love you out of a woman’s mouth on more occasions than I’d ever cared to, mostly in bed. Making a woman come repeatedly had its disadvantages, especially if her feelings got involved and it wasn’t mutual. And up until this point, it never had been.

Often they confused sexual chemistry with love, and I would have to break it off carefully once they confessed their affections. There was a fine line. I used to think I wasn’t capable of loving a sub, until her...but when it ended the way it did with Bryce’s mother, I was sure it was just poor judgment. She fascinated me with her wicked ways and what I once thought was so intriguing became what I was most disgusted by. Three years wasted on a woman who had almost taken my son’s life before he’d had a chance. She was my past.

And that wasn’t love.

Violet was my future and had given me a clear definition of how the real thing felt, though she was not at all the definition of a sub. She was a woman who was curious, much like I had been. I’d dated numerous women in my lifetime. Well, maybe dating was not a good word. I put my destructive demons to rest when I was twenty-one, learning the art of discipline and what coupling pleasure and pain could do, how it could free you and if you weren’t careful, how it could enslave you.

I never could kick the habit of being interested in the women I brought to valleys and peaks through sexual acts. I liked learning what made them tick. I did the same things with Violet that I had with any other partner. I started off slow as I was taught, The Waltz. A little give and take, something to test the hard and soft limits, and Violet had loved every minute. I knew then I wanted her for my own. There was no way I was letting her go. And before I knew it, she had gotten under my skin and crowded my thoughts more often than I was comfortable with. I became addicted to her moans and smart mouth. I didn’t want to see her, but I suddenly needed to. When we moved on, The Tango, I tested her hard limits. She seemed to have none, which shocked me. I was sure at times I would hear the word stop pass her lips. I spent long nights thinking about how a woman who had never experienced anything like what we were doing could endure so much. It was then that I realized she loved me and I prayed for the words not to come, because I wasn’t sure where her head or heart was, or if we had a future at all.

Now those words were all I want to hear from her, and once she’d said them, I knew I had everything.