LITMIR.BIZ

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taking place under her skin.

      “If you leave this elevator, you will be mine, you understand? I will lay you out on the bed and make you cry out. This is your last chance to take the elevator down.”

      A shiver of delight raced through her. Respectable Violet would never let a man talk to her like this. But V? “Is that a promise?”

      “It is,” he said in such a serious tone that she gasped. “Your pleasure is my pleasure.”

      That was, hands down, the sweetest thing anyone had ever whispered to her. Her entire life had been one long exercise in telling people what she wanted only to have to listen to the litany of excuses why she couldn’t do what she wanted or couldn’t have what she wanted. It was too risky, too dangerous. She didn’t understand the consequences, she didn’t this, she didn’t that—every excuse her brother could throw at her, he did.

      If Mac knew she was in this elevator with a man whose pleasure was her pleasure—well, there might be guns involved. This was risky and dangerous and all that stuff that Mac had spent the past twelve years trying to shield her from.

      She was tired of being protected. She wanted something more than safety.

      She wanted Ben.

      “Why are we still in this elevator?” she asked in as innocent a tone as she could muster, given how Ben’s body was pressing against hers.

      “You are quite certain?”

      “Quite. But don’t stop talking.” The words hadn’t even gotten out of her mouth before Ben hauled her away from the wall of the elevator and out into the hall.

      “Are you this adventurous in everything?”

      He was carrying her as if she weighed nothing at all. She was as light as a feather, a leaf on the wind, in Ben’s arms. She was flying and she didn’t ever want to come down.

      She also didn’t want to cop to her relatively limited experiences in the whole “pleasure” department. Every time she got serious about a guy, her brother—her well-meaning, overbearing brother—came down like the hammer of Thor and before Violet could blink, the guy would be giving her the it’s-not-you-it’s-me talk.

      Violet may have had only a couple of boyfriends, but V was knowledgeable and experienced. She could not only handle a man like Ben, she could meet him as an equal. And so help her, no one was going to give her the let’s-be-friends talk tonight. “Why don’t we find out?”

      He growled against her neck.

      A door opened. “What’s—” an older man, voice heavy on the Texas accent, said.

      Ben stopped and, without putting Violet down, turned to stare at the old man in the open doorway. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t make a menacing gesture. He just stared down the other man.

      “Ah. Well. Yes,” the older man babbled as the door shut.

      “Whoa,” Violet said, giggling again. “Dude, you are—wow.” So this was what exuding masculinity looked like.

      “‘Dude,’ eh?” Ben said with a sexy chuckle as he began walking down the hall. Every step made Violet gasp as Ben’s hard length pressed against her sex. “For a woman as beautiful as you, you often talk like a man.”

      “I don’t always wear little black dresses.”

      Ben stopped in front of another door. “Hmm,” he said as his hands stayed on her body as he set her down, which effectively meant he hiked her dress up. “Are you sure you won’t tell me your name?”

      “No,” she said quickly. She didn’t want this fantasy night of perfection to be ruined by something as mundane as reality. “No names. Not tonight.”

      He got his key out and opened the door. Then his hands were back on her body, walking her backward into the room. “Who are you hiding from? Family?” He pulled her to a stop and turned her around. His fingers found her zipper and pulled it down, one slow click after another. “Or another lover, hmm?”

      “I’m not hiding from anyone,” she fibbed. It was a small fib because, no, she did not want Mac to know she’d done something this wild, this crazy. That’s why she was in Holloway instead of Royal.

      “We are all hiding from something, are we not?” Ben began to pull the dress down, revealing the black bra with the white embroidery that she wore only when she was feeling particularly rebellious. Which, in the last few months, was almost every day.

      “I just—look,” she said in frustration, taking a step back and pulling free of his hands. “I won’t ask about you, you won’t ask about me, and we use condoms. That’s the deal. If that doesn’t work for you...” She grabbed the sleeves of her dress and tugged them back up.

      Ben stood there, his sinfully delicious lips curved into a smile. Oh, no—he wouldn’t call her bluff, would he? Because she wanted to strip him out of that suit—and she didn’t want to walk out of this room until she was barely able to walk at all.

      “I just need a night with you,” she said, the truth of that statement sinking in for the first time since she’d walked into the bar at the Holloway Inn and laid eyes on this tall, dark and handsome stranger. She’d thought she just needed a night out, but the very moment Ben had turned to her, his coal-black eyes taking in her lacy black cocktail dress, her wavy auburn hair, her stockings with the seam up the back—then she’d needed him. And she wasn’t going to rest until she had him. “That’s all I’m asking. One night. No strings. Just...pleasure.”

      Ben stepped into her, cupping her face in his hands. “That is really all you want from me? Nothing else?”

      The way he said it, with a touch of sadness in his voice, made her heart ache for him. She didn’t know who he was or why he was here—he wasn’t local, that much was obvious. But she got the feeling that in his real life, there were always strings.

      She knew the feeling. And for tonight, at least, she didn’t want to be hemmed in by other people’s expectations of her. Good idea or not, she was going to take Ben to bed. There would be no regrets. Not for her. “No. Your pleasure is my pleasure,” she whispered against his lips, turning his words back to him.

      “Kiss me,” he said against her skin.

      So she did. She tangled her hands in his hair and pulled him roughly against her mouth, and then they were flinging each other’s clothing off and falling into bed and she couldn’t tell where her pleasure began and his ended because Ben was everything she’d ever dreamed a lover could be, only better—hotter, sweeter.

      She fell asleep in his arms, listening to him whisper stories to her in a language she did not know and did not understand, but it didn’t matter. She was sated and happy. She’d started this night desperate to do something fun, something for herself.

      Ben—no last name, no country of origin—was an answer to her prayers.

One

      Four months later

      This was not happening.

      Dear God, please let this not be happening. Violet stared down at the thin strip of plastic. The one that said in digital block letters, PREGNANT.

      Maybe she’d done it wrong. Peed on the wrong end or something. Yeah, that was it. She’d never taken a pregnancy test before. She hadn’t even studied. She’d failed due to a lack of preparation, that was all.

      Luckily, Violet had bought three separate tests because redundancy wasn’t just redundant. It was confirmation that her night of wild passion four months ago with a stranger named Ben had not left her pregnant.

      Crouched in the bathroom off of her bedroom, Violet carefully read the instructions again, trying to spot her mistake. Remove the purple cap: check. Hold the other end: check. Hold absorbent tip downward: check. Wait

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