Chapter Text
Violet twirls her way through the restaurant, taking care not to twist her ankle, though the heels she’d chosen tonight certainly aren’t helping. They’re silver–Violet loves silver–and they’re strappy, and sparkly, and they make her legs look miles long, but not wearing them probably would have been the smarter choice. It’s just a blind date, after all. A blind date Violet is very, very late to, but a blind date nevertheless.
She spies the back of his head first. Dark hair, so brown it’s black, with the subtle sort of wave, just how Liam had described his foster brother. It looks soft, even from a distance, but the rest of him certainly isn’t. No, Violet can spy the tension that plagues him in the rigidity of his back muscles, the stiffness of his shoulders. He isn’t fidgeting. He isn’t moving at all. Violet takes a deep breath, and fidgets enough for the both of them as she adjusts the hem of her dress. The sight of him had startled her into stopping, which allowed her security team to catch up with her. Chad brushes her shoulder as he walks past, then settles into a nearby booth. Nothing about the man is anywhere near inconspicuous, but he does try, and Violet hasn’t been ransomed while he’s worked with her, so she supposes she has to pick her battles.
Like the blind date before her. That’s certainly a battle.
“Ma’am?” a waiter prompts. He has two glasses in one hand, a bottle of white wine in the other, and he’s inclining his head meaningfully toward the man at the table. Her date.
“Yes,” Violet murmurs, though that certainly isn’t the correct answer. Still, she moves to the table quickly after that, the skirt of her dress swooshing around her upper thighs. Short, but loose enough to be comfortable. She’d elected to wear a black dress, and her date had dressed himself in the same color, it seemed. His black button down was paired with black slacks, and black dress shoes. God, Liam would have warned her if was goth, wouldn’t he? Violet wasn’t prepared for a goth.
She’s mere inches from him when he stands from his seat, spinning toward her. She doesn’t look at his face right away, because she’s a bit startled to find her eyes level with his sternum, no tie, shirt unbuttoned. Warm brown skin greets her. Taunts her, actually. She sees how sculpted he is already, and she has to drag her eyes away, up to his neck where black, inky tendrils curl.
The tattoo should have been a warning to Violet. The tattoo, which she’d spent the better part of an evening kissing and licking like her own personal lollipop, should have been a red flag. But Violet doesn’t really see the tattoo. No, she sees the bobbing of his Adam's apple, the beginnings of stubble, and her brain says, Ooh!
Then, she drags her eyes up higher, to his lips. The lips should definitely be a sign. She knows those lips. She kissed those lips. Those lips had kissed her own. Those lips had touched her forehead, her hips, her wrists, her clit. Those lips appear in her dreams, waking and sleeping.
The lips don’t do it, though. It’s his voice. Deep, gravelly, and cocky.
“Hello, Violence,” he says. The name brings a flush to her cheeks, memories of him saying it in an entirely different, entirely inappropriate, context flood her mind. Her lips part as she takes in the whole of his face. His eyes are focused entirely on her. He probably thinks she looks a bit stupid, frankly. Her head’s titled back, for proper gawking of him at his full height of six feet too many inches.
“H-hi,” she sputters, “This isn’t happening.”
He smirks. “You’re not dreaming. Not this time.”
Violet has no response to that allegation. She’s considering channeling her mother, and saying ‘no comment.’
“Sit,” he says, side-stepping her to pull out the chair opposite his own.
“No,” Violet says. “Sitting would be letting this happen, and this isn’t happening.”
He cocks his brow. “Liam’s here, so I’d suggest you sit.” Violet spins over her shoulder instantly, in a full circle, searching for Liam, but she doesn’t find him until her date adds, “Corner booth. Baseball cap. Maybe he should give your detail some pointers.”
Violet finally spies Liam over the man’s shoulder. Liam conveniently avoids her eye for nearly thirty full seconds, after which he gives in to the heat of her glare and waves, sheepishly. Violet does not wave back.
“Does he know?” Violet hisses, leaning closer to the man so that she can use his hulking form as a shield from Liam’s eyes, in case lip reading is on his list of latent, un-mentioned skills alongside horrible blind date selection and espionage.
“That we had sex?” her date asks, at a volume entirely inappropriate for their public setting. Violet clenches her teeth to stop herself from shushing him, but she’s still certain he scandalized at least two different nearby elderly restaurant patrons. “No, unless you told him.”
Violet had not told him. Violet had not told anyone. That was part of the deal. Violet could have an unadvisable one night stand if and only if she didn’t tell anyone. The other stipulation was that it had to be just that, a one night stand, not one night, and then another.
“So what? I’m cursed?”
The man’s face doesn’t flinch, and his tone is entirely unruffled. His confidence practically oozes off of him. “It didn’t seem like you thought it was a curse the last time I saw you.”
“Obviously not!” It was now Violet’s turn, it seemed, to scandalize the elderly. She practically screeches. “But this…”
“Sit.” He pulls her chair out slightly further, to emphasize its emptiness. Violet feels herself flush once more. Making a spectacle in a restaurant was not on her list of approved activities for the evening, and she had actually bothered to get this date approved. That meant something. Liam’s recommendation had meant something to Violet, at least, before he’d gone and done this.
Violet sits, though she makes sure to glare at Xaden Riorson as she does it.
She supposes there’s no real reason to keep pretending she doesn’t know who he is. Liam hadn’t told her, conniving little man, but she’d have to be an idiot not to know. She’d known exactly who he was when she was fucking him, even if he hadn’t seemed to know her.
He knew now. That much was clear.
“It's just a date,” he says, as he settles back into his own chair. “Or you can leave now. But poor Liam will be awfully sad.”
He seems to say this mockingly, but Violet knows Liam well-enough to know that there’s no way Xaden Riorson hasn’t fallen victim to his charms just as surely as she has. Making Liam sad isn’t something anyone who even knows of him would do willingly.
“Can’t have that,” Violet mutters. The waiter from before chooses this moment to reappear, and Violet is overcome with embarrassment at the realization that he’s been standing behind her all this time, waiting for them both to be seated to bring the wine Riorson must have picked out.
The waiter pours a small amount into the glass he’d set in front of Xaden, for him to test. But Riorson picks up the glass, and extends it in Violet’s direction. She blinks at him.
“Should I pour it into your mouth?” Riorson asks, dryly. “I’ve heard Liam likes a show.”
The heat in her cheeks cannot be normal. It can’t. She must have a fever. That would be convenient. A fever would mean she could leave.
She snatches the glass from his hand, wine sloshing, then pours it into her mouth. She has no idea what she’s supposed to be keeping in mind, and her palette isn’t refined enough to pick up on anything, anyway. It’s white wine, which she prefers to red. Perhaps Liam had relaid this fun tidbit to Xaden. Violet finds his advantage over her distinctly unfair. Liam didn’t tell her it was less blind date and more one-way-mirror.
She smiles at the waiter. “Tastes like wine.” She delivers this line cheerfully, but the waiter’s baffled expression suggests that her cheer was not enough.
“We’ll take it,” Riorson says. He, on the other hand, sounds undeniably smug. Violet almost thinks she sees his lips twitching, but that would be impossible. Xaden Riorson doesn’t twitch.
The waiter pours full glasses for both of them, then leaves swiftly.
“Let me guess,” Violet says, “You already ordered for me, too?”
“Do you want me to?” he asks. “I just wanted something to drink while I waited.”
Violet plops her chin into her palm, resting her elbow on the table, but covering her reddened cheek with her hand. She’s sure the slouch isn’t doing her any favors, but she doesn’t need to impress Xaden Riorson. This date isn’t ending in sex. Not again. Never again.
“I was planning on apologizing for being late, but since you’re you, I’ve rescinded that offer.”
He leans back in his chair, sizing her up. His gaze is a heavy thing. Violet feels it land on each part of her, then feels its absence when it moves on to the next part, and the next. She isn’t being scrutinized so much as analyzed. Deciphered.
“I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong,” he muses. “If I recall correctly, you snuck out the morning after, not me.”
“Yes, I left with the intention of never seeing you again, and yet, here we are.”
He shrugs, unbothered, then gestures to the aforementioned corner booth. “Take that up with Liam.”
“I think I will, actually,” Violet snaps, standing from the table. But, as she turns, she watches Liam dart toward the restaurant's side exit. It’s more of a scurry than a dart, as he picks his knees up while he moves. Two others follow behind him, surely friends of his and Riorson’s, a girl with pink hair, and a bigger, beefier man.
“This is ridiculous,” Violet says, hollowly. “This is not happening.”
Xaden sips his wine. He’s drained a good portion of his glass already, and as Violet settles back into her seat, she decides that can be this night’s new purpose. She isn’t having a blind date, obviously, both because she already knows Xaden Riorson, and because she isn’t allowed to date him, but she can get drunk. Sloshed, even.
“It’s happening,” he counters.
Violet’s head falls into her palms once more, but this time, she covers her eyes. “My life is a cosmic joke.”
“Is it?”
Despite the curious nature of his turn of phrase, Riorson’s tone is utterly flat, and his expression isn’t any more expressive when Violet looks back up at him.
“I wanted–” she swallows, reaches for the wine, and takes a swig. The words on her tongue are likely ones most people in her life would advise her not to say. Hell, they’re words Violet would advise Violet not to say, but she deserves to say them, anyway. She gets to be…whatever this new version of herself is. She isn’t sure yet. She’ll figure it out.
“I wanted one night with you. Just one.”
Whatever he’d been expecting her to say, it hadn’t been that, but his only tell is a blink. Violet only catches it because of…her background. Her background! That’s an excellent way to refer to the Xaden Riorson Internet Search Wormhole she’s tumbled down time and time again. Now, she can almost list it as a skill on her resume.
“Just one?” he echoes. “I don’t usually have retention problems.”
“You’ve never had a girlfriend,” Violet counters, before she can remember that that is not something a normal person says to someone they’ve had one actual conversation with.
He nods. “That’s not because of a lack of interest on the part of the other party.”
Violet swallows. Duh. He’s too sexy not to have commitment issues. Balance, and all that.
“Well. I just wanted one night. For…personal reasons. You can rest assured that your bad boy reputation is unmarred.”
She expects him to pick apart the last portion of her statement, the part she can’t believe she’d even dared to utter, but he says, “Personal reasons?”
She nods. She has no interest in answering further.
“What, am I your Make a Wish?”
“Oh my God, no!” Violet’s blushing. Again.
“Bucket list?” he prompts. “Sex bingo board? My guesses are only going to get worse if you don’t tell me. I don’t think you want to hear them.”
“I-”
“Lost a bet?”
“No, I-”
“Won a bet?”
“You have to let me finish, asshole.”
He smirks, sweeping a hand across the space between us to give me the floor. The tension doesn’t dissipate like Violet thought it would. Somehow, the air feels more charged, even when they aren’t speaking.
She exhales, slowly. She’ll have to blurt it. That’s the only way she’ll say it.
“I needed to do something for me.”
That had not been the answer she was supposed to give. No, the answer she was supposed to give him sounded significantly less pitiful. She’s not entirely sure what that answer was, but once her words left her tongue, she’d known they were the wrong ones. Still, his gaze doesn’t so much as soften.
“And fucking me was for you?”
“I think you did the fucking, actually.”
“Mm. And that was for you?”
Violet fiddles with her napkin, removing her utensils, setting them on the table, and spreading her napkin over thigh. “My mother hates you, you know.”
“I’m well aware, believe it or not,” he replies, dryly. “That makes it sound like you had sex with me to piss off your mother, which would have been a great plan if you made sure she found out, but you did the opposite.”
The stitching on Violet’s napkin is terribly interesting. The cream color is nearly the same shade as her skin. Violet compares them, thoughtfully.
"Can't a girl piss off her mother in private?” Violet asks.
In her peripheral vision, Violet sees Xaden’s head shake. She almost thinks he rolls his eyes. “Sure , but that’s not what you were doing.”
“You have no way of knowing that,” Violet huffs, her indignation bringing her eyes to meet his.
“Sure I do. You just told me.”
“No I didn’t!”
“Your eyes did.”
His eyes twinkle, somehow. Gold flakes dance in the restaurant’s low light. She’d always liked his eyes. Always.
“Well, they lied.” She tears her gaze from his. She cannot afford to get lost in Xaden Riorson’s eyes, so she studies the menu before her. There’s a salmon dish that looks good, with a side of farro. She decides to have that, shuts her menu, and finds Riorson still staring at her. “What?”
“I don’t think your face is capable of lying.”
“Oh, no. I’ll never be a politician. What a shame.”
There had been a time when Violet had wanted to be just like her mother. She doesn’t remember it, but Mira’s told her all about it. Apparently, she’d dressed up like her mother for Halloween and everything. But she’d grown out of the belief that her mother was someone admirable, like all her other childish delusions.
She thinks Riorson might say something. The shape of his lips seems primed to tease her, but the waiter reappears, and he falls silent. Violet orders her salmon, and Xaden Riorson orders grilled chicken and vegetables, of all things.
He says, “If you really want to leave, you can. I’ll make Liam bring you your food in a box as an apology.”
The offer tempts her, if only because this excursion was definitely going to make its way to Lilith Sorrengail, courtesy of Chad and his colleagues, and Violet was not looking forward to being summoned for that meeting. She didn’t have to go. She had to keep the security detail, but she’d moved out. She didn’t have to obey her mother anymore.
“I didn’t realize you were his foster brother,” Violet says, instead of answering one way or the other. It’s a connected statement still, because this new found connection proves to Violet that Xaden’s offer is entirely legitimate. Liam’s always spoken of his foster brother with unshakable loyalty. Liam would kill and die for his foster brother. A trek across town with a to-go box was nothing.
Xaden inclines his head once more. “I keep him out of the news.”
They both fell silent at that, at the mutual acknowledgment of the fact that Violet had looked into Xaden. She found herself hoping it was reciprocated, that Xaden had looked into her, too, but if it had been, it wouldn’t be for the same reasons. It wouldn’t be for good reasons, that much was certain. If Mira was to be believed, any time Xaden Riorson spent looking at pictures of Violet Sorrengail online was spent plotting her murder.
He says, “If you’re staying, let’s play a game.”
“What, 8-ball?” Violet suggests.
Xaden stares at her like she’s suggested they run through the restaurant naked. Maybe he isn’t a big phone guy. It wouldn’t surprise her, actually. “No. Twenty questions.”
Violet is almost certain that this is a bad idea. But she’s entitled to a bad idea every once in a while, isn’t she? If she wants to waste two on Xaden Riorson, that’s her prerogative.
“Fine. Shoot.”
He leans back in his chair. If they weren’t in a nice restaurant, Violet gets the sense he’d rock back on the chairs rear legs. “Was my window the first you’ve ever snuck out of?”
She snorts, “No.” That honor belonged to the windows of Cam’s bedroom in the White House, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
“So it wasn’t the one night stand aspect that was special, it was me?” Riorson doesn’t seem to feel too strongly about his accusation, at least not visibly, but Violet feels like a spotlight has fallen from the ceiling, and someone’s scrawled WEIRD across her forehead in lipstick.
“That isn’t how twenty questions works. You ask me a question, I ask you a question. We alternate.”
“Fine. Ask away, Sorrengail.”
She flinches involuntarily at the sound of her own last name. You are a Sorrengail, and Sorrengail’s—
She shakes her head. She is not in her mother’s office in the Truman building. She is in a fancy restaurant with Xaden Riorson. She’s…her first instinct was to say safe, but that’s ridiculous. She’s interacted with the man for a grand total of five hours, tops. Still, she’s not with her mother. That means something.
She has to swallow before she asks so her voice doesn’t crack. “Did you know who I was?”
He’s smirking again. Maybe he never stopped. “You do have awfully recognizable hair.”
Her fingers drift toward the ends with the impulse to curl them around her fingers, but she twines her hands together instead, setting them back down in her lap. Her hair is her biggest giveaway. Maybe she should take a note out of Liam’s book and hide it beneath a baseball cap. Normal people didn’t usually recognize her, since the average American didn’t know who the Secretary of State was, much less her daughter. But the people of D.C. weren’t entirely normal, and journalists were far from it. Sometimes, she needed to hide.
Xaden Riorson still hasn’t said his piece, so Violet snaps, “Now you ask the question.”
The corner of his mouth lifts ever so slightly. Violet can feel the memory of kissing him there in the phantom pressure on her lips, the remnants of warmth clinging to her chest.
“I already asked my question. If it wasn’t the one night stand that did it for you, was it me?”
Violet frowns, though she tries to limit the pouty-ness of her expression. It had been the one night stand, and it had been Xaden Riorson, and it had been the combination of those things. All of it had done it for her. Being in Xaden’s presence did it for her. If Liam had warned her about who her date would actually be tonight, she would have gotten laid before dinner, so that she wouldn’t feel so…
Every new word she thinks of is somehow more embarrassing than the last. She settles, reluctantly, for on edge. By edge, she means the edge of a cliff, above a river filled with piranhas and alligators and a nasty riptide. Riorson, naturally, is the river.
“Pass,” she says.
“Pass?”
She nods. “That can be question twenty. Ask me something else.”
He drums his fingers on the table. Violet definitely doesn’t watch them move, and she definitely doesn’t keep her eyes on them as they move to his glass, then lift that glass to his mouth.
“Do you like my hands?” he asks.
“I like all hands. Hands are great. Useful.”
Violet seriously doesn’t mean for the innuendo to be between them, but it’s there now, undeniably. Riorson’s hands had been especially useful. The most useful of any pair of hands Violet had ever encountered. Cam was lovely, but the thing between them was different. Violet didn’t love Cam, not like that.
(Not that she loved Xaden Riorson, either. Again, she’d known him for five hours, total. She feels the need to repeat this fact to herself. Five hours, Violet. You are not allowed to act like this until hour fifteen, at the earliest, and even that’s a little embarrassing.)
But things between her and Cam were…functional. They both got off, every time, and Violet could feel sated after. Safe.
“A politician’s answer,” Xaden concedes. “Maybe you are your mother’s daughter.”
“I’m not.” The rebuff races off her tongue before she can even consider its stupidity. She’d had her DNA tested, just in case. She is a Sorrengail, and she is her mother’s child. There’s no refuting that. The look in Riorson’s eyes says he knows that, too.
They fall silent for a minute or two. A woman a few tables over gasps over a necklace her date presents her with. A waiter passes with some dessert that requires the use of a sparkler.
Riorson leans across the table. “Your turn, Violence.”
She sips her wine. She supposes that she’s already here. She’s already in trouble. Might as well make it worthwhile.
“Why does my mother hate you?”
Riorson does a repeat of his mini-recoil. Violet pretends not to have noticed, but really, she’s cataloging him the same way he catalogs her.
“I think you’d be better served by asking her that, don’t you?”
Violet snorts before she can suppress it. “That would involve talking to her, which is something I don’t do.”
“Ever?”
“Not anymore.”
She sounds angrier than she’d like to, but at least she doesn’t sound sad. Riorson wouldn’t pity her, she knows that without even trying, but it would be awkward for both of them. Especially if Riorson’s thinking of his own mother now. Violet doesn’t know her name. In all of her internet searching, it never materialized. But, she knows she’s gone. Vanished, regardless of if she’s dead or alive.
“She hates me because of her past with my father,” Xaden says. Still, he doesn’t seem to feel too strongly about that either way. An incredibly powerful woman wants him executed for crimes he didn’t commit, and he takes a sip of his wine.
Not literally executed, of course. As far as Violet knows. But Xaden Riorson isn’t someone to relate to executions, metaphorical or not. She knows what happened to his father.
“That doesn’t count,” Violet says, "I don't know about her past with your father.”
“You don’t know about the highly-covered coup attempt?” Xaden retorts. “I feel like this should have been touched on by your history major.”
It hadn’t been, actually. It was too close to modern times to make it into her textbooks, but she did know about it, but only in the loosest details, those available to regular civilians. Besides, the media didn’t refer to it with that word at the time. Coup. No, it had been an attempted, fledgling secession movement. A failed one, at that. The media never revealed how close it had actually been, how close it had felt for Violet. Maybe that was for twenty, thirty years down the line, when things could be declassified.
Now, at least, she knows something else about Riorson. He has googled her.
“I don’t know everything,” she replies, opting to retain a little of her mystery.
Xaden looks around at the restaurant, eyes glancing off of Chad and the rest of her detail before returning to her “I’m not telling you here. And it’s time for my question.”
Violet’s first instinct is to demand that he tell her here and now, whatever she wants to know. But his wording had meant something. He would tell her, just not now. Not yet.
Maybe she had to earn her answer. She could do that.
She mimics his sweeping gesture from before, and Riorson’s lips tilt higher than they have so far. A flame of something ignites in her chest. The heat of her emotion startles her.
He asks, “How’d you meet Liam?”
Violet frowns. “He didn’t tell you?” Liam had talked non stop about his foster brother, even with his convenient maneuvering to avoid calling the man by name. Violet knew he had a dog called Sgaeyl, and that Sgaeyl the dog somehow had a dog-boyfriend that Xaden had given an equally innocuous Gaelic name. Violet knew that Xaden had gotten both Liam and his little sister out of foster care the hard way. Violet knew that Xaden really liked the chocolate cake from the bakery on fourteenth street, because Liam got him a slice anytime they were near it.
She’d known Liam loved his foster brother, but she’d always sort of assumed he’d loved her, too.
Xaden says, “Not at first. Or if he did, he didn’t tell me your name.” He pauses to stare at her, meaningfully. “I don’t think he thought I'd be particularly happy with the company he was keeping.”
Well. Ouch. Of course, the feeling is decidedly mutual. At least, it was. Until a few months ago.
“But he thought you’d be fine with this?” Violet asks, flicking her wrist in the direction of the table between them, and all that it implies.
Xaden shrugs. “I don’t know what he thought. You’d have to ask him.”
Violet frowns at her wine glass. She sort of never wants to ask Liam anything ever again. But she will. Of course she will. He’s Liam.
She clears her throat and plasters a smile on her face. Not too cheerful, but farther from homicidal than she had been moments before. “We ended up having identical schedules our first semester of college.”
Violet had found it suspicious at the time, and she still finds it so now, though she can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that she suspects. Liam wouldn’t harm her. She knows that in her soul. If anything, Liam’s copy-cat schedule had been to protect Violet, though that’s a less supported theory. She hadn’t even known Liam before college, and he had only known of her. He’d never judged her for the sins of her mother, but that didn’t exactly segue into becoming her number one body guard.
She’d considered one theory for a time: that her mother had somehow paid Liam off in exchange for keeping tabs on Violet. And in part, Violet had been right. Lilith had paid someone to do that, but it hadn’t been Liam.
She wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that Dain hadn’t ever taken the money. Did it matter, if he still did the job?
“And he was what? The perfect study buddy?”
Xaden says this with too much distaste for someone who, to her knowledge, never even went to college. The word study buddy must fit awkwardly in his mouth.
“He was there, and my dad had just died.”
Xaden considers this for a moment. Violet supposes he’d know all about that part of her life, at least.
“He’s steady,” Xaden says, finally. “Reliable. Dependable.”
Liam was, in fact, all of these things, especially when she’d been grieving. He’d never missed a phone call, or turned down a hangout. And he didn’t bat an eye when Violet did those same things to him, repeatedly.
“Are those traits you’re interested in?” Xaden asks.
“Romantically?” Violet retorts. “If I was into Liam, I wouldn’t let him set me up on blind dates.”
She almost wants to add that she wouldn’t let him set her up on dates with guys who look like Xaden Riorson if Liam Mairi was her type. They’re both tall, but the similarities end there, and she knows where her own inclinations lead. But that would reveal too much. Besides, Xaden knows it anyway. He has to know he’s attractive.
Xaden shrugs again, like her answer had been of no significance. Violet doesn’t believe it for a second. He had to have had a reason for asking. He didn’t do things willy-nilly.
“Your turn for questions,” Xaden murmurs.
“Favorite memory with Liam?”
He resumes his finger drumming. Violet can’t help but wonder what it means.
“When he got into college,” Xaden says, finally. Violet expects him to keep talking—he did only give her a fragment, after all, not a sentence—but he doesn’t. She holds his gaze, and he holds hers.
She breaks first. She isn't sure there’s a version of her that doesn’t break first. Something in his eyes sends her squirming, every time.
“Care to elaborate?” she asks, though she knows it’s unfair of her. She didn’t elaborate for him, after all.
“He didn’t apply for himself,” Xaden says, pausing to take a sip of his wine. “He thought he needed to stay, to help me with the business in exchange for taking care of him, so he didn’t apply. I sent the application in, and I told him when he was accepted.”
“And he was happy with that?”
Violet’s not entirely sure why she struggles to believe it. She’s seen how happy Liam was once he was actually in college, and if Xaden hadn’t sent that application in, they’d never have found each other. He must be happy with that part of the situation, certainly.
But Violet’s hung up on the idea of Xaden applying for Liam. She hadn’t liked that when it happened to her.
“He cried, so I’d say so.”
Violet’s never been a happy crier. An overwhelmed crier, certainly, but never a happy one. And she can’t imagine Xaden Riorson crying over anything.
“Your turn,” she says, opting to ignore the fact that she’s basically been interrogating him.
He sips more wine. The waiter might need to bring a second bottle, based on Xaden’s pace. Maybe he’ll come bearing food. Maybe he won’t. Violet’s not too fussed either way.
Violet sips some of her own wine, to match Xaden’s rigorous drinking speed.
“How do you think your dad died?”
She chokes on her wine. “That’s an appropriate question for this setting, but my question wasn’t?”
“Yes.”
He’s ridiculous, and infuriating, and wrong, most importantly. But Violet looks at Chad, who’s literally twiddling his thumbs. His second in command has snuck off somewhere, and his third is nowhere to be seen, either. The people around them aren’t government moles. She knows what those look like. No one around them cares about her answer to the question except Xaden Riorson himself.
Still, she should be careful. Conscientious.
She stands slowly. Xaden’s eyes tilt upward to stay on her own, though she knows he’s taking in her whole body regardless. She takes one step, then two, then three, then stands before him on his side of the table. He looks up at her. His eyes are slightly wider than usual, slightly more interested than he’ll allow himself to normally show.
She leans forward, letting her lips hover just above his ear. Her dress has a cowl neck, and she knows it’s hanging low and open, right at his eye level.
“Scoot back,” she whispers.
She thinks he might fight her on it, but he doesn’t. He complies, and with the new space between him and the table, Violet perches on his lap. She sits sideways, her legs crossed outside his right leg. He reaches for her hips, shimmying her backward until her butt reaches the hard plane of his stomach. Her feet leave the floor as he swings them around his legs, and she opens her mouth to protest, but his eyes meet hers, daring her to say something.
She says nothing. Xaden Riorson pats her hip, twice. Maybe it should be condescending, but it isn’t. A now familiar flame flickers in Violet’s chest, and at her center.
She leans in closer to him, lips hovering above his ear once more. Maybe this isn’t the ideal position for this conversation.
“You know what I think,” she whispers.
“And how would I know that?” His voice is low too, somehow deeper than it has been for the duration of their conversation. God, he has a nice voice. She almost thinks…no. Not thoughts to be having while sitting on his lap.
“You wouldn’t be here, if you didn’t.”
He raises a brow. The cockiness suits him. She’s never been particularly attracted to cockiness before, but she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to go back. No, actually. There’s something about him being cocky. It’s not just the attitude, it’s how obviously capable he is of backing it up.
“And how would you know that?”
“You’re a busy man.” She lets one finger draw a line down his chest, though she avoids the opening of his shirt. She doesn’t even let herself look at the skin there. “It would be a waste of your time, otherwise.”
The hand he’d used to pat her hip had stayed there, holding her in place. He uses it now to rub circles over her dress. She wishes he’d touch lower, on the bare skin of her leg, or higher, at her waist, or under her dress entirely.
“This is a date, Violence.”
The second portion of that statement goes unvoiced. Perhaps Xaden Riorson is someone who doesn’t mind going on dates with women without morals. That’s who she’d be, if she didn’t know her father was murdered.
That wasn’t fair of her. Mira didn’t know, and Mira was perfectly moral. She was just also perfectly obedient, perfectly loyal to their nation, and perfectly ignorant.
Violet was none of those things. She couldn’t be. And that made Mira a better daughter than her, a better Sorrengail, but it didn’t matter, not really. Brennan had been the best Sorrengail, and he’d died for it.
At least, Violet thinks he did. She’d spent years believing that the man at this table with her, the man sitting beneath her, had a father who had killed her brother. The more she looked into it, the less she believed it. It made no sense, for one thing. There was no proof Fen Riorson had even been in the building when Brennan was shot.
Xaden Riorson does not strike her as a man who would sleep with a woman he believed thought his father was a murderer. And even if he would sleep with her, he wouldn’t sit at a table with her. He wouldn’t be so civil.
It wasn’t a date, though. That’s where Riorson was wrong. It had stopped being a date the second they were seated together. It may still be a date in Liam’s eyes. That was his problem. But, for Violet, it was an interrogation. No, it was a chance. A chance to learn the truth. She couldn’t waste that.
She’d felt Xaden Riorson inside her before. And yes, it was incredible. And yes, she isn’t sure she’ll ever recover. But answers are worth more. Answers are worth everything.
“So it is,” Violet replies, “But you don’t need to play dumb with me.”
Xaden slips his free hand around to squeeze her knee. Violet has to suck in her gasp. His palm is warm and slightly rough, though he has a ring on his middle finger, and the cool, black metal startles her.
The waiter chooses that moment to make his appearance. Though Violet was aware that there were plenty of other people in this restaurant watching them, she hadn’t really felt it. The Xaden Riorson Whirlpool in action. The rest of the world was nothing but noise. All that mattered was the two of them.
Violet moves to shift off of his lap, to save the last shards of her dignity, but Xaden clamps his hands down tighter on both her hip and knee, holding her in place. The flush in her cheeks has to be crimson now, and there’s no doubt it’s spread to her chest as well.
The waiter doesn’t react. Maybe this is just a situation he finds himself in often. It’s certainly not commonplace for Violet. She won’t be doing it again.
Instead of placing Violet’s salmon on her former side of the table, the waiter places both their dishes on Xaden’s side, and moves Violet’s utensils to her new seat. God. She feels the chuckle that rumbles in his chest against the back of her arm.
“Thank you,” Xaden says, then the waiter disappears back into the bowels of the restaurant, leaving their wine bottle on the table. And still, Xaden’s grip does not lessen. “Will you stay if I let go?” he asks.
Her first thought is that she’d rather die than embarrass herself so publicly for even one more minute, but then she feels him stiffen beneath her, just slightly. She is sitting on Xaden Riorson’s lap. She has spent a literal year’s worth of hours googling this man, researching him, learning everything she can, and now she is sitting in his lap. When will she ever get this chance again?
“You’d have to let go to eat, anyway,” Violet says, in lieu of saying yes, yes, yes.
“You’d be surprised at how stubborn I can be,” he counters.
She wouldn’t, actually. She’s done her research, and now that she can view it in light of stories from Liam, she thinks she has a pretty accurate picture.
She has to shift forward slightly to reach her plate, which requires sending her hips into Xaden. He doesn’t pause his touches, so she has to assume he’s unaffected. She sends her hips a bit farther back than necessary.
She cuts into her salmon. It’s delicious. She assumes so, anyway. She only has so much attention to allocate toward her senses, and taste is pretty low on her list of priorities, currently. Riorson must feel similarly. He hasn’t removed his hands from her to eat.
“I know your meal is boring, but you ordered it,” Violet points out.
She feels that rumble of laughter again. This time, his breath tickles her ear. A shiver courses through her. She does nothing to suppress it.
“This meal isn’t boring.”
Somehow, she knows he isn’t talking about the chicken. She squeezes her thighs together, but gives the lower half of her body no more attention than that. There is nothing stirring. There is no warmth. No. No, no, no. She’s sat on Dain’s lap before and felt absolutely nothing! This is just like Dain.
Xaden leans into her, lips grazing her neck.
He is nothing like Dain. She’s shivering. Again. Was it a shiver, or was it a tremor? He brushes a soothing hand up and down her thigh either way.
“You can pass, and I’ll ask something else. Alright?”
There was something weighty to the pause, where he waited for her reply, something serious enough to render her speechless.
She takes a bite of her salmon. She swallows. She steals a sip of wine from Xaden’s glass.
“Alright.”
His lips are still against her neck. He must be able to feel the racing of her pulse, the pin prick prickles taking over her skin.
“Why’d you seek me out, the other night?”
And he certainly just felt the way her heart stopped beating.
“I- I didn’t- I-”
“You can’t play dumb with me.” He uses his pointer finger to draw swirls up and down her thigh. The shape, if Violet had to guess, resembled his tattoo. If he keeps it up, Violet won’t have to play at being dumb. “I know you’re brilliant, Violence. I also know you've been following me for a few weeks. Next time you want to stalk someone, try being sneakier.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Violet says primly, taking another bite of food into her mouth. Xaden’s plate has no doubt gone cold.
“Sure. Corner of 43rd and King.”
Fuck. Violet had done one of her…stakeouts there. She had tinted windows! It should have been fine.
“Maybe,” Violet concedes.
“Maybe,” Xaden agrees. “I can list more, if you require further persuasion.”
She doesn’t. Absolutely not. “If you thought I was…”
“Stalking me?” Xaden suggests, sounding perfectly calm.
“Yes, that. If you thought I was stalking you, you shouldn’t have…”
“Fucked you?” She can hear the smirk. She keeps her eyes on her salmon.
“Yes. That.”
“This is going to come as a shock to you, Violence, but I don’t like being told what to do.”
Mira had been right all along. Xaden Riorson was evil, and he was going to kill her. The methodologies he was calling upon probably weren’t what Mira had pictured, but still. She’d be dead after this all the same.
“It was reckless,” she says, “What if I was dangerous?”
“You are.”
She scoffs. “I couldn’t do anything to you. You’re…”
She’d been planning on saying huge, but she seriously doesn’t want to do that now, given the implications. The implications would be true, but still.
She flicks her hand in his general direction. “You.”
She hears his smile. “I am me, that’s true.”
She swats at his chest before she can think better of it. He’s too muscular. Ridiculously so. What does he need pecs that feel like that for?
“Still. Pick a different strategy with your next stalker.”
“Trust me, Violence. I usually do.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
She probably shouldn’t have asked that question. She definitely shouldn’t be allowing the flame of hope to flicker in her chest. What could he possibly say? Oh, I saw you hiding behind the wheel of your range rover, and I thought, damn.
“I think you know the answer to that.”
She huffs, “I absolutely do not.” Unless he’s implying that she’s so tiny she wouldn’t have been a threat, which would have been true. Or, that he has a stalker fetish, which she would not have expected.
“Really,” he drawls, “You have no idea?”
His ministrations are really starting to wear her down. She doesn’t think she’s ever gotten so turned on just from someone touching her legs.
He says, “I don’t let just anyone sit on my lap.”
She thinks, maybe, that he means that as some sort of hint, but all it serves to do is remind her of how, precisely, she ended up in his lap.
She gasps, “Did you tell Liam?!”
In her shock, she spun around on his lap to face him, which jostled her already precarious position. She’d reached for his shoulder instinctively, to steady herself, and he’d snaked his hand up her back. Her bare back.
“I already told you, I didn’t–”
“Not about the sex!” she hisses. “About…”
“I didn’t tell Liam you’d been following me. He just thought we were compatible.”
“Compatible?” She starts to giggle, so she pulls her hand from his shoulder to cover her mouth, but Xaden catches her wrist and returns her palm to his collarbone.
She wants to continue to mock Liam’s terrible decision making, but she can’t, and she can’t even remember why she’d wanted to. Why weren’t they compatible?
Violet’s family hated him, that was true, but Violet’s mother wasn’t too big on Violet herself. And maybe he had some dodgy business practices—Violet couldn’t actually confirm this: everyone assumed he did, but none of Violet’s searches had found anything concrete, which, perhaps, meant they were extra dodgy, but Violet wasn’t sure—but she hadn’t been squeaky clean lately either. See: stalking.
“He thinks we’d get along,” Xaden says, like Violet somehow didn’t know the meaning of compatible.
“Well,” Violet says. She wants to point out how wrong this is, but they’re sort of getting along right now. “I feel like potential stalkers are the sort of thing you should mention to your friends.”
“I do have more than one friend, you know.”
Violet's heart sputters again. Is he implying what she thinks he’s implying? Because if he is, if he told another one of his friends, and that friend told Liam, Liam won’t ever look at her the same again! And he’d be right to. She’d gone slightly off the rails. That was true. Very true. Too true. Oh, god. She doesn’t want to lose Liam. She can’t.
“I didn’t tell them,” he continues. “I just wanted to see you squirm.”
Had she been squirming? She goes stock still at mere mention regardless, and Xaden laughs again. He’s quiet about it, almost like the sound is just for her.
“Do you know why I was looking for you?” she asks, voice low.
“Nice try. You haven’t answered my question. You answer mine, I’ll answer yours. Then, we’ll leave.”
“What if I want dessert?”
“You don’t.” And fuck, she doesn’t. Maybe she’ll order some anyway, just to prove a point. She shifts, trying to sit up straighter to look for their waiter, but Xaden tightens his grip. “You don’t. Trust me. And if you do, I have food at my place.”
“Your place?” she retorts. When did she agree to that?
He smirks. “It’s a nice place. I’m sure you remember.”
She does. That’s the problem.
She doesn’t particularly want to tell him. She certainly won’t be telling him all of it. She won’t be telling him about her googling-habit, or how often he crosses her mind. But…the rest. He deserves to have the rest.
“I found some documents in my mother’s office after my father died. Documents about my father. Classified, obviously. Like black out poetry. But it was…”
“Suspicious?” Xaden prompts.
“Suspicious. And that made me suspicious of other things.”
“Like?”
She swallows. She really shouldn’t be in his lap for this part.
“My brother. Your father.”
His grip falters for a second, but only that. He’s that composed.
“So I looked into it,” she has to plow on, like a train, “And I looked into you. And nothing made sense, and I needed to know.”
“And do you know?”
She laughs a little, though it’s far from funny. “It’s…a lot.”
“It is,” he agrees, “but you can handle it.”
She’s not sure what gave him that idea. It’s not like he knows her.
But he’s not wrong either. She can handle it. She can handle anything and everything.
“There’s some pieces I can’t seem to get my hands on,” she admits, turning fully to meet his eye.
“And that’s why you slept with me?”
She’s startled, almost, to hear him say slept with instead of fucked. What’s next, make love? Violet doubts that.
“No,” she bites her lip, and feels Xaden’s thumb twitch against her spine. “That’s not why.”
He waits. His face is perfectly calm. If someone felt the need to tell Violet why they’d slept with her, she would be nowhere near calm. She’d probably go hide in the bathroom.
“Do you know Dain Aetos?” She hates the way her voice squeaks out his name, the way she curls in on herself ever so slightly at the memory of that betrayal.
“I’ve heard of him,” Xaden’s responding voice is gruff. “Heard of his father.”
“Right.” Of course he would have, with the circles he’s in. “Well. He was always protective of me. Which isn’t always the worst.” This is, once again, not a lap conversation. “But I didn’t like it with him. He was my friend, though. My best friend. My only friend, for a long time. And I thought that’s all it was. But he changed as we got older. More protective. More…intense. And he hated Liam, which is just–”
“World’s biggest red flag?”
“Yes! Exactly! How can you hate Liam, of all people?” Violet's realizing, in hindsight, that it probably had something to do with his connections to Xaden. But that didn’t make it any better, especially since he hadn’t told her that, or the truth, ever.
“You can’t. Unless you suck fundamentally.”
A laugh bursts out of Violet, loud enough to draw more than one disapproving gaze to her spot on his lap. She means to move, really, but she catches Xaden’s eyes, gold flex’s dancing in the candle light. She doesn’t even try.
She says, “I haven’t even gotten to the sucky part yet.”
“He made you sad, clearly. So he sucks.”
She hadn’t gotten to the sad part yet, either. Unless Liam told him, but she can’t believe that Liam would do that, not if he didn’t even tell Xaden how they met.
Xaden just knows. He can tell, somehow. She’s not sure how to feel about that, if she should feel anything. He could just be a particularly insightful person. He could be abnormally emotionally intelligent.
“He watched my reactions to my father’s death, and reported everything back to my mother.”
“He was spying on you,” Xaden says. “And do you know why?”
“I can fucking guess,” Violet mutters. She feels her lips come to a pout, and she doesn’t bother restricting it.
It hadn’t been a full-cooked plan. Even if Violet had somehow missed the fact that Dain was watching her like a hawk for a year or so, she couldn’t have missed it forever. And when she noticed, she was bound to ask why.
Not that her mother would answer. Not that anyone would. Mira hadn’t known about the spying, and she was angry on Violet's behalf, but she wasn’t willing to consider the why of it all. Mira would go toe to toe with their mother, but she wouldn’t let Violet even think about doing the same.
“I still don’t get how that ties into you sleeping with me,” Xaden muses, voice low, right up against her ear. He nearly startles her into a laugh.
Still, Violet can’t enunciate as she says the next part of all this. It’s pitiful. She feels like a toddler, throwing a tantrum.
“I was supposed to marry him.”
“I thought he was your best friend. Did you have some sort of thirty year pact or something?”
It takes Violet a second to catch up to Riorson’s thought process, and her lips dip as she searches for him, his thoughts. He reaches out and nudges the corner of her mouth with a knuckle. She doesn’t flinch away from him. Maybe she should, but no part of her wants to. No part of her is actually startled, in truth. He nudges her lip until she gives into a smile, then lets his hand stroke her cheek.
“Violence,” he murmurs. His voice is just enough to bring her back to earth.
“We didn’t have a pact,” she says, “it just–we always felt like a foregone conclusion.”
“Marrying someone shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion. It should be something you want.”
Something rises in Violet’s throat. She has to swallow it down.
“I didn’t take you for a romantic,” she says, though there’s no force behind her teasing.
“I wasn’t always.” He runs his knuckles up and down her spine with tantalizing softness. “It was something Liam said to me, actually, that changed my mind.”
“What did he say?”
The energy between them is a living thing, humming, vibrating, pulled taught. She doesn’t want it to stop. She can’t let it stop. She has to keep him talking.
“I was…” Xaden pauses, to grimace, “Betrothed. And Liam absolutely hated her-”
“Which is almost as big of a red flag as hating Liam,” Violet interjects. She knows this very well. Liam has only copped to hating Dain after they fell out, but it had only made Violet feel more justified in her decision to leave. If Liam had been incensed enough to hate Xaden’s…betrothed, they must have been awful.
Xaden is smiling at her. No teeth, but still. She may as well be on fire.
“Exactly. Everyone hated her, actually, but I had my reasons, and I thought they were good enough.”
“Until Liam changed your mind?” Violet prompts. She’d rather prompt him to tell her why he was even betrothed in the first place, or why he uses the word betrothed in this day and age, or to whom he was betrothed to.
“No, actually.” His smile hasn’t stopped playing on his lips. Violet feels the completely irrational urge to kiss him. She doesn’t, obviously. But she wants to. “I changed my mind on my own. I realized that what I was getting out of the arrangement wasn’t worth my happiness.”
His wording bothers Violet, ever so slightly, because it implies that there is something out there that is worth giving up his happiness. And Violet, despite her better judgment, wants Xaden Riorson to be happy.
“And what were you getting?”
His lips twist. “Money.”
“And a dowry of twelve goats?”
She earns another laugh. The rumbling of his chest feels like a reward.
“Believe it or not, Violence, not this time. It was a business deal. My father had organized it.”
Mention of that particular elephant in the room sours her mood.
“You were the twelve goats.”
“I was. And it made sense, when my father made the deal. And it made sense to say no, when it was my turn.”
He sounds very calm about the prospect of being sold off like cattle. Violet can’t say she’d feel similarly.
“I don’t know how we got on to this subject, anyway,” Violet says, using a hand to tuck her hair behind her ears. Xaden’s palm has found the hem of her dress. Gently, he caresses the top of her thigh, then pushes her dress ever so slightly up her leg. Her breath catches.
“You were telling me why you slept with me,” Xaden prompts. He still seems to find the entire encounter funny, somehow. She’s not sure how he manages to seem simultaneously serious and un-serious.
“You tell me first,” Violet counters.
“I tell you why you slept with me?”
“No. You know very well what I mean.”
She feels his breath on her neck as he leans forward. “Ask.”
“Absolutely not,” Violet counters, but there’s too much breath in her voice for him not to know the truth of it.
His hand on her thigh stops caressing her and instead falls into a sort of grip. It isn’t a tight hold, but it’s obvious enough that it could become one, should Xaden feel so inclined. That should not send her heartbeat skittering, but it does.
“Ask,” he repeats.
Maybe Violet should hold out a little longer. Maybe they both knew she was always going to give in anyway.
She whispers, eyes closed, “Why did you sleep with me?”
“Because from the very first second I saw you, I wanted you. Because it was a terrible idea. Because when I asked you for your name, you put your hands on your hips and told me it was Violence. Because the smoke that floated around your head looked like a halo, and it fit. Because I fucking wanted to.” He tightens his grip on her thigh. Violet’s gasp draws more than a few heads their way, she’s sure, but she doesn’t care. Her eyes are still shut. This moment hangs in the balance, and the second she opens her eyes, it will shatter at her feet. “And next time I fuck you, it will be because I still want you. Does that answer your question?”
She thinks she says yes, but she isn’t entirely sure the word leaves her lips. Xaden’s lips, on the other hand, come to touch her neck. She can feel his smile against her skin. She remembers him being this close to her on the other night they’d had. He’d been inside her, he’d had her on her back. At first, he’d stayed standing mostly straight, gripping her hips and pulling her to him, over and over and over. Violet’s mind had been blissfully blank—fucked out. She’s not sure when she last felt like that, if she ever even had before. But he’d leaned forward, kissed her forehead, then her pulse-point, her clavicle. He’d paused his kisses, smiling against her skin, baring his teeth and biting.
When she’d come, it had been white hot and electric, her body and mind and heart on fire in equal measure. She felt the beginnings of that particular sensation stirring within her now.
“Now answer my question.” Xaden’s voice is all-command, all-order.
“I wanted to, too,” Violet whispers.
“I gathered that, actually.”
“No, I mean, you’re gorgeous.” Violet stops speaking. Her cheeks flush crimson, and she has to dig her palms into his skin to stop herself from covering her face.
“I gathered that, too.”
“Hilarious,” Violet snaps. Somehow, he’s managed to reinvigorate her. “You’re more than gorgeous, I mean. It’s like, I’d been researching you for years, so I knew the entire time that you were pretty. But I didn’t realize the full scope of what you were doing.”
She’s desperate, suddenly, for him to understand her, for him to know her.
“And what's the full scope, Violence?”
“You’re doing something so fucking dangerous it’s almost nonsensical. But you’re also doing something very, very good.”
She bites her lip. She doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. She catches wisps of his name in her mother’s circles. She sees hints of things online. She’s seen the man enter shady establishments, and come out with bruised knuckles. But she’s seen other things, too. The papers his father kept, the beginnings of what Xaden Riorson is hell-bent on finishing.
“Good?” he presses.
“It would have to be, wouldn’t it?”
“You don’t think I’d just fuck around for the fun of it? I am rich, you know.”
This makes her laugh. “Your father was rich, too, but I think he taught you that this isn’t any fun.” She thinks that because the more she dug, the more Fen Riorson managed to teach that to her, too.
Beneath her, Violet feels sudden, jarring motion. Xaden’s arms wrap around her middle, pulling her up with him as he stands. Her feet dangle, comically.
“We’re leaving,” he says, by way of explanation.
“I can actually walk,” Violet replies, and slowly, carefully, he lowers her to the ground.
“You’re coming with me,” he adds, as though she had somehow missed the layers of meaning he’d built into his words before. We. She also doesn’t miss that though his tone leaves no room for argument, he spins her around so his eyes meet hers. There, she can see him waiting. He won’t make her go. He won’t make her do anything. He doesn't have to.
Violet smiles. “Obviously.”