Redemption (Complete)

10. Failure To Launch

His kiss was killing her.

Something in it made her lose the ability to think properly- or even to complete the simplest of tasks. Like breathing.

It also seemed to slow or speed up time- she wasn't sure which yet. They could have been pressed against each other kissing for any amount of seconds, minutes or perhaps hours and still, it would not have mattered. His lips were... addicting.

They were strong muscles attached to a handsome face, his jaws working up and down as he opened her mouth with his like some snake charmer who only needed the right tune in order to seduce and destroy.

Carl ground his hips into her pelvis and swallowed the moan she didn't mean to utter.

Violet felt Carl smile into the kiss and felt utterly betrayed by her own body. That moan wasn't meant to happen.

Breaking away from the kiss, Carl trailed his lips down her neck and sucked a bit of flesh up into his mouth softly, not wishing to break any blood vessels as he tasted her skin. He could smell her expensive perfume and her underlying natural scent, both intoxicating.

With a soft thud, Violet ended up with her back pressed up against the wall, her hips pinned by his pelvis as it continued to grind and thrust slowly into her.

When Carl's hands started to wander away from her ass and up to her chest, she began to come out from whatever spell he had her under. It was a slow process as his lips had her surrendering before she knew there was even a fight to be won. Sneak attack.

One hand came down to caress her thigh where the slit in her dress was and Violet wasn't sure what he was doing until he felt his hand... there. Right over her panty-clad p***y attempting to push aside the fabric covering her mound.

"Stop." She forced herself to speak, but it came out strangled and weak.

Carl gently took his finger away but kept pecking at her neck and shoulders, hoping to bring her back under his spell and submit. It usually worked- not that he usually had to try this hard. Violet was a difficult woman to pursue. It was both exhilarating and frustrating.

"Why?" he asked between soft pecks to her neck. "I know I want this and that you want this- so why?"

He immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say. Violet wasn't a woman to be told what she wanted. Even if she did want this, she had to be the one to say it- not the other way around. The woman was stubborn as Hell.

"We just... shouldn't do this," she told him and pushed gently at his hard chest.

He let himself be shoved away and looked at her face, searching her eyes.

"Says who? That little boy out there?" Carl smirked as he spoke of the pretty boy with the blond hair and green eyes.

"No," she told him. "Says I. Says the fact that you are my father's friend and there's over a decade age gap between us."

"Age is just a number, Kitten," he told her and took a small step towards her again. He was trying to look deeper into her blue eyes with his own hazel ones, and she closed hers against them. His were magnetic and she knew if she let herself be pulled under their spell again, she would be lost. There would be no 'shoulda- coulda- woulda's'. There would have only been a 'been there, done that, bought the t-shirt'.

"I- I just can't," she told him lamely, no other excuse coming to her foggy brain. "I'm here with a date."

Carl grabbed her left hand in his large warm ones and pulled it up to chin height and rubbed it.

"There's no ring on your finger," he told her. "And that boy is just a date- you said so yourself. Not a boyfriend, not a lover- he's a placeholder."

Whereas Carl had all the right moves and words in the bed, his rapport with women was somehow lacking in everyday situations.

"He's not a placeholder! He's- he's a- it's none of your f*****g business who he is!" Violet gritted out as she lost her temper.

"I love your feisty side, Baby," Carl stated as he took another tiny step towards her. "Gets me rock hard and wanting to tear your p***y apart."

Violet hated the fact that she got even wetter when he said that. She should be furious at the man and yet she wanted nothing more than for his...

No!

"You are a foul-mouthed man, aren't you?" she spat out as she stepped to the side to get around him. "You must be great in bed to have screwed so many women with a dirty mouth like yours. I believe it may be your only redeeming quality. Sad, really. To have such prowess between the sheets and yet your verbal repartee is so lacking. It's a shame you couldn't handle all your business from the bedroom. You'd be neck deep in assets then."

"I'd like to be neck deep in your-"

"Shut. Up!" Violet yelled. "I cannot stand you and your filthy mouth a minute longer."

With that, Violet pivoted on her heels and stalked to the door where she went through it in a whirlwind of red fabric and palpable disdain.

Carl propped his leg up on the wall as he tried to think of how he could have averted that crisis. Things had been going so well up until the point he started talking.

Once again, his big fat mouth had f****d s**t up again.

Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back trying to think of a way to turn back time- and a way to keep his d**k in check.

But it was all but futile. He had had his throbbing c**k pressed up against Violet's luscious figure and he wanted more. He ached for it.

And now he would have to go back to his date pretty soon and try to pretend everything was fine.

It was several minutes longer than he would liked to admit before his d**k was finally semi-behaving and he could walk into the hallway without it becoming an obscene gesture.

******

A couple of hours later found Carl outside on the balcony with a tumblerful of his sixth scotch. Or it could have been his tenth. He didn't honestly keep track. He had been nursing this one unlike the previous ones and trying to figure out his life. It was never a good mixture- philosophy, and alcohol. At least not for Carl. He was sure there were plenty of alcoholic philosophers out there that drank to excess. Who wouldn't? Philosophy wasn't exactly a well-paid gig.

He was bringing his glass of scotch to his mouth again when a voice rang out behind him.

"She's a very pretty girl," Constance stated.

Carl turned around to see his best friend's fiancee in a green gown that was fitted to her growing belly. She had her right hand resting on top of the swell of her stomach and was smiling gently at him.

"Yes, Nadia is a very beautiful woman," he admitted softly. "Very intelligent as well."

Constance walked over to the concrete banister he was resting on and leaned her back against it before laughing a bit.

"I wasn't talking about your date," she told him and Carl blinked.

"Who were you talking about then?" he asked, flummoxed.

"Violet, of course," she answered with a wide grin.

"Well, yes I suppose she is." Carl shrugged as he spoke, looking away.

There was silence for a few moments before Constance cleared her throat.

"You know being pregnant is a bit of a hassle," she said. "Always having to pee every five minutes, accidentally ruining your panties if you laugh or sneeze too hard."

Carl looked over at Constance's strange comment and waited quietly to continue. She wouldn't speak to him about pissing yourself for no reason. Unless she was suffering from baby brain already.

"I was just coming out into the hallway to use the bathroom before when I saw you speaking with a certain young woman," she commented as if talking about the weather. "I could tell by the way you looked at her that this was the girl we were talking about at the office a couple of months ago."

Carl looked away, not wanting his face to give him away.

"I also know that your 'foot in mouth' syndrome always seems to get you into sticky situations as well," she added with a smile in her voice.

"But- I see you, Carlton," Constance continued. "I see you willing to change- and are changing. For her. If you really have feelings for her, let her know. Don't use your bedroom seduction tactics to try to get her to drop her panties for you. That's not how Violet works. She'll see your come-on's as what they are- a way to get her into bed. If that's all you want, I suggest you drop it before Harry slices and dices you until you are nothing but Carl Stew."

She paused, c*****g her head to the side as she did so.

"But I don't think that's all you want," she told him. "If it was, you would have given up a long time ago, wouldn't you? The Carlton Smith I know doesn't wait for any woman. They either 'come hither' or he moves on to the next conquest. If this is what I think it is, win her over with the man I know you can be, not the one you have come to rely on to get laid. After you can seduce her mind with the man I think is nestled deep inside of you, then you can worry about what Harry and Mathilde might say. It's no use fretting about it now until you win the girl over."

Constance came closer to Carl and he looked back down at her, his face pained and his breathing labored a bit.

"Don't make the mistakes I made in life, Carl," she told him sadly. "s*x only gets you so far. Meaningful relationships are so much more fulfilling. When there's a connection- you just feel it deep inside. It doesn't go away until you either win or falter. And even if you falter, you can bring yourself back up by your bootstraps to fight another day."

The sound of another set of heels came from a distance and walked closer to the open door to the balcony.

"Carl?" The voice was that of Nadia and Constance heaved herself off from the banister and walked towards the woman. They exchanged slight pleasantries as Carl watched silently.

After Constance left, Nadia came over to his side and looked at his face. He had been so close to strong emotions a minute earlier that his face was still struggling to retain its calm composure. He had never been an emotional man and everything Constance had said to him had struck a chord deep within him.

There was something wrong with him. He was never this petulant, sad-faced sack who crept in the shadows brooding and pining. He was Carl- the life of the party with a pretty girl on his arm and a scotch in his hand.

"I'm going to head out," Nadia told him. Carl's head snapped over to look at her. Her face was calm and composed, much like his used to be.

"What? Why? The party is just getting started?" he asked.

"I called an Uber to come and pick me up," she told him. "No need to see me off, Carl."

"I don't understand," he told her. Nadia looked at him, tilting her head and thinking.

"I studied the human psyche in college and have come to know how to read people well," she told him. "I can tell your heart isn't into this 'date' and there's a reason for that."

"My apologies that I haven't been as attentive as I should have been tonight," Carl stated "I've had a lot on my mind lately. Work-related things."

"I just told you I could read people, Carl," Nadia said. "Don't insult me by lying to me."

Carl went to object but Nadia put up a hand in a halting gesture.

"There is someone that you are fond of- may be in love with in fact," she told him and watched as his jaw twitched. "I'm assuming that since that other woman- Constance- looked to be about seven or eight months pregnant with that blond gentleman's baby, that it's not her."

Carl looked away and again, his emotions tried to make their way to his face.

"I won't make you say it, but I will say this," she spoke out. "I know the type of man you are, Carl. You don't take 'no' lightly and I'm assuming this woman has denied you somehow. I also know that if this were just a matter of getting her into bed, you wouldn't be out here moping like a lovestruck boy with his first crush."

"I don't mope," Carl said. All the rest was the truth and he knew if he denied that too, she would call him on his lies.

Nadia laughed at him lightly.

"Well, you're doing a damned good impersonation of it then," she told him lightly, patting his arm.

"Goodnight, Carl," she said to him as she started to walk away. "If you ever get over the girl or things don't work out, you have my number."

Carlton listened as her steps faded away and then downed the rest of his drink in a series of quick gulps.

He was so out of here.

Never had a date left him before the night was over and for that he was... upset.

At least that's what he told himself. If he had really been honest deep down, he would have admitted that he was lying.

He didn't care that Nadia left. He only cared that he had somehow- again- f****d up with just his words.

With a quick movement of his hands, he threw the empty tumbler across the balcony and let it shatter against the far side of it before dropping his head to his chest and letting one small tear roll down his cheek.