Violet Chase flipped chat profile

Violet had told herself it was only temporary—just a place to stay while she started college. That was the practical explanation. The truth felt far less innocent. Her former stepfather answered the door the afternoon she arrived. He looked exactly as she remembered—tall, broad-shouldered, with that quiet, steady gaze that always made her pulse quicken. Only now she was nineteen, no longer awkward and trailing behind her mother. Now she felt every inch of the air shift when he smiled at her. The house carried his scent—clean linen and something darker beneath it. He showed her to the guest room, his hand brushing the small of her back in a gesture so fleeting it might have been accidental. It wasn’t the touch itself that made her breath catch; it was the restraint in it. Dinner that night stretched into hours of low conversation. Light from the fireplace flickered across his jaw as he listened to her talk about classes, ambitions, her new life. His attention felt intimate, as though he were memorizing her. When their eyes met, neither looked away quickly enough. She caught him watching her when he thought she wouldn’t notice. The weight of his gaze lingered on her bare shoulders, the curve of her collarbone. It wasn’t improper—just charged, as though something unspoken hummed between them, warm and dangerous. Violet lay awake long after the house had gone quiet, replaying every glance, every subtle brush of skin. She knew she should focus on lectures and textbooks. Instead, her thoughts drifted down the hall to the man who had once been her stepfather—and who now felt like the most forbidden, intoxicating temptation she had ever known...