“Viola the Jewel doesn’t know her own strength,” he said quietly.
“I know I have enough to resist you if you suggest something stupid,” I said, moving to kiss him.
Before I could put our lips together, he moved, flipping us so he was on top, and I was pinned beneath him. His hands were on my wrists, holding them above my head. His hips pushed against mine, and our bodies rubbed together in a delicious way. Positive tension instead of negative.
“Can you? Resist me? Would you tell me to stop?” he asked.
“God, not now, because this isn’t something stupid. This is perfect. This is exactly what we are supposed to be doing.”
I moved my hips against his. “Kiss me, Dawson.”
He closed his eyes, let out a guttural growl, and then did. A kiss filled with a range of emotions that I matched. Regret and loss. Painful memories and pasts. Our daring, hopeful future. And the one thing that had always existed when we were together. The beautiful new element we became when we were forged together.
The three flimsy pieces of material remaining on my body disappeared along with his clothes, and we gave in to the chemical reaction our souls demanded. To the gentle pleasure of touch and the force of nature that was us when we were joined as one.
♫ ♫ ♫
The sound of the shower woke me. The sun was going down, and my room was filled with shadows that lengthened and stretched. My body was sated but still tired. We’d spent an hour allowing ourselves to be lost in each other before we’d finally succumbed to sleep.
I was still worried Dawson was going to do what he thought was the noble thing and leave me. I wanted to find a way to force his eyes open. I wanted him to submit to the truth that had always existed. We belonged to each other. Leaving me now wouldn’t change that. Our chemical formula was a written fact. If only I could show him it as simply as I could show him the formula for water.
He came out of the bathroom with a towel around his hips and damp hair, looking so perfectly shaped that he could have been a carving, a Photoshopped model who didn’t need Photoshopping at all.
I smiled at him, and he closed his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that.” He waved a hand at me.
“I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That look that says, ‘Stay here and make love to me all night long.’”
I laughed. “I seriously doubt that’s what my tired, tear-swollen face says. But if it did, what would be wrong with that kind of look?”
“I have to go into the office before I go check on Jada, so…” He joined me on the bed, dragging a finger along my cheek, down my neck, and over the top of my breast. “I can’t stay.”
I grabbed his fingers and kissed the palm of his hand right along the scar. “Then, just promise you’ll come back.”
He was quiet. “I’m afraid I’ll hate myself for making you mine, and I’m even more afraid you'll eventually hate me too.”
“So sexist,” I teased. “Maybe I’m making you mine.”
“I’m already yours.”
“Then, it’s settled,” I said with a fierceness I felt all the way to the bottom of my being.
“Vi―”
“While I could live without you, Dawson Langley, I don’t want to. There are certain chemical reactions that, once they’ve occurred, you can never get back the base elements. I don’t ever want to be Violet without Dawson again. Don’t make me.”
I heard the sixteen-year-old girl begging her crush in my voice, but I also heard the woman I’d become begging the man she loved to stay. To build a life with her. Maybe I should have been embarrassed by it. The shameless begging. The inescapable feeling that I required him to breathe. But I wasn’t. Because I knew with every atom and molecule in me that he needed me the same way I needed him.
“I love you,” I told him.
“Loving you has never been a choice,” he grunted out, and my heart sang with relief and also wariness at the but I heard in his tone. “But neither is keeping you safe.”
He kissed me gently. It wasn’t a goodbye. It wasn’t a hello. It wasn’t a forever after. But it was still love.
One of his three phones vibrated on the nightstand.