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“I didn’tseeany abuse,” I continued. “None. I didn’t have any inclination that it was there. I knew my father was a misogynist. An elitist, sure. Although I was a daddy’s girl, I was well aware of my father’s flaws.” I shook my head in disgust. “I just thought he washuman… not a monster.”
My heart thrummed, speaking of my father, and my throat burned with fury. Fury that I’d been trying my hardest to swallow since I found out. Fury that had been giving me excruciating heartburn. I was chewing antacids daily, even though I knew that treating the symptoms and not the root cause wasn’t going to do shit. Plus, I was probably ruining my kidneys, liver and whatever else drug companies were doing to people.
Treating the root cause would be confronting my father. Speaking to him. Looking at him in the face. And I refused to do that.
So I’d continue to eat twice the recommended dose of antacids and engage in self-destructive behavior.
“But still, even oblivious, I was able to repeat the cycle,” I scoffed, looking up at Elden, who was hanging on my every word. Literally hanging on my every word. My hip was radiating pain under his grip. I fed off that.
“In theory, Jacques was nothing like my father,” I told him, working off adrenaline and the mixture off weed and liquor. “He was French. Liberal. Romantic. Exciting. Passionate.” I rattled off the adjectives, thinking about the rush of lust I’d felt when I first saw him. When he spoke to me in perfect, accented English, his dirty brown hair shadowing half of his face.
His long and thin fingers had continually brushed it out of his face in a smooth and graceful movement.
Those long, thin fingers had balled into a fist and punched me in that same smooth and graceful movement too.
“But it turned out, he was exactly like my dad in all the ways that mattered,” I muttered, shaking my head at my own stupidity.
Still, Elden hadn’t moved. It didn’t seem like he’d even breathed. But I was too far gone to understand what that was, how dangerous he was in that moment. I hadn’t told anyone this. Not even my closest friends … although I didn’t really have those. I had girls I went to school with. Some of whom I enjoyed the company of but had nothing in common with—they were happy to live off their parents, adopt their religions, their political parties, hold whatever beliefs they needed to in order to keep their trust funds. And that was fine, for them. For me, I wanted to travel, I wanted to change the world, I wanted to bring down oppressive systems, bring about change. Anything but live the life my friends’ mothers lived.
Live the life my mother lived.
I’d already lost touch with my friends from high school anyway, and all of my friends in France were Jacques’s friends. I hadn’t been to campus yet and didn’t know anyone there… I’d signed up to be part of a house share with a bunch of girls I didn’t even know.
My best friend was my mother.
And I couldn’t tell herthis.
So I was telling Elden. Right after he gave me the best kiss anyone ever had and likely making sure he wasn’t ever going to kiss me again.
“Knowing I sought after a man who beat me, without any kind of knowledge of what my mother went through, is next level fucked-up,” I finished with a sigh.
There was no way for me to forget Elden’s presence, but I’d gotten so tangled up in my narrative that I hadn’t realized what I was saying. The impact it might have. I had forgotten the breed of men who wore the Sons of Templar cuts.
Ultra-hot. Ultra-alpha. Badass and violent to the core. Intense as all hell. Elden even more so because he’d just kissed the shit out of me.
There was a stillness, a quiet, so charged, so dangerous that I forgot to breathe. I was sucked up into his orbit.
“What did you just say?” he murmured, his voice a blade cutting through the night.
Goosebumps raised on my arms with the knowledge of a danger, a deadliness emanating from him.
I couldn’t speak. Not when confronted with the raw violence that was seeping from him.
He stepped forward, and I scuttled back, not realizing I was standing on a roof without railings. Elden’s hand darted out to circle my upper arm, yanking me back in just as my left heel tried to step on empty air.
The result of this was our bodies landing flush together, Elden’s hand settling on my hip, strong and purposeful. To keep me from plummeting to the ground and perhaps from trying to escape him.
He smelled of leather and musk. And the faint aroma of cigarettes, which should’ve turned me off but only added more layers. Spicy aftershave that sank into my pores. He smelled like a fuckingman.
“Violet.” My name was a warning. His grip tightened, and he yanked me closer.
My name was so sweet from his mouth.
“You made me taste you, and then told you me that,” he uttered, eyes wild.
I blinked rapidly at his tone, the pure violence in it. Considering what I’d just told him, considering everything happening with men in my life, I should’ve been afraid. Terrified. The man was exudingviolence.
But I wasn’t. I was comforted. Though I didn’t have evidence to back up the thought, something told me he was a violent man. A deadly man. A man who would burn the earth to cinders if he had the occasion to. That he wasn’t afraid to inflict hurt.
