I threw back the covers, noting that Artemis’s bed was empty too. She was always with Violet or Willow. She considered it her job to protect and adore them. She merely tolerated me because I fed her and took her on morning runs.
The doors off our bedroom were open, the balmy desert breeze moving the curtains.
Violet was standing at the edge of the patio wearing my tee, her perfect ass peeking out from underneath as she folded her arms.
Hunger sparked within me, seeing that alabaster skin in the moonlight. My wife had always been beautiful. Fucking perfect. But while she was in college, stewing on shit, suffering from her father’s sins, her frame had shrunk. She hadn’t been eating.
Even during the first months she was pregnant with Willow she barely gained a pound because she couldn’t eat.
Now that she had all the curves her body was designed for, wearing evidence of creating our daughter, my need for her had grown fucking tenfold. I was like a horny fucking teenager whenever she was around, thankful that our daughter napped in the afternoon and slept through anything.
Artemis, the black lab that Violet had surprised me with for my birthday, was sitting beside her dutifully, scouring the desert too.
I didn’t hesitate to slip my hand underneath the tee Violet was wearing, pulling her back to my front and cupping her perfect breast.
She let out a contented sigh, sinking into me.
I nuzzled her neck, inhaling the delicious scent that was my wife. That drove me crazy to this day and would until the day I died.
“You’re getting too good at getting out of bed without me noticin’,” I grumbled, annoyed at myself for not noting my wife leave.
She leaned her head back against my shoulder. “I didn’t want to wake you,” she said. “You know that you’re the one Willow wants in the morning anyway.”
I grinned, thinking of it. Willow adored her mother with everything she was, but the mornings were ours. As soon as Violet stopped breastfeeding, I let her sleep, taking Willow with me into the kitchen, sitting there with her, sipping coffee and watching the sun rise. We’d go on long walks with Artemis in tow, dutifully protecting her sister because she didn’t seem to trust me to do it.
The quiet. The desert. The sun rising. My daughter’s warmth, smell, the noises she made in delight as she discovered something new about the world, they were like nothing on this earth. I hadn’t known such peace existed. Especially when we got home to my wife either wearing my tee or a nightgown, holding two coffees, smiling sleepily at us.
“Don’t give a fuck,” I told Violet. “You’re not getting up, shakin’ off nightmares, standing here in the middle of the night alone.” I tweaked her nipple, and she let out a moan I felt in my dick.
The need to take her was almost impossible to control.
Almost.
“She’s gone again,” Violet whispered.
I moved my hands down her sides, slowly turning her to face me. “She’ll come back. She always does.”
Violet let out a long sigh. “I’m worried about her.”
Everyone was worried about Sariah.
She had survived what most people wouldn’t at the hands of that piece of shit.
The fucking sheriff.
Yeah, no one had been expecting that.
No one had thought he’d be smart enough to bury his fucking craziness down that deep. Separate it so completely from his outward persona.
It was Ollie, Violet and Sariah’s old roommate, who had found it out. Figured out a twisted and well buried trail that led to what he was.
A fucked-up piece of shit with an equally fucked-up past.
His mother had been a club girl.
Long fucking ago.
Attached to a different club, not the Sons. One that didn’t treat women with respect. One that used them up whenever and however they wanted until they were done with them then threw them away like trash.