“I need you,” she said, barely recognizing the throaty sound of her own voice, so much deeper than its normal register. “Now. Here.”
“Are you certain?” he asked, even as his hand began a steady, sneaky slide up her bare calf under the voluminous skirts of her gown. In that moment, when he asked that question, even as Violet could feel the strength of his need pressed against her own body, she knew, without a doubt, how much she loved this man.
She nodded once by way of confirmation, and it was the only signal he needed, his hand continuing its journey up, up, over her knee and onto the silken skin of her thigh, moving ever closer to where she so desperately wished him to touch. He paused for a moment, as if sensing her own urgency and determined to thwart it, his thumb stroking a rough circle into the skin of her inner thigh.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked innocently, a wicked grin curving at his lips even as his thumb continued its movements—so close and yet still so frustratingly far from where she wanted it.
“I might enjoy myself a bit more,” she said a bit unsteadily, “if you would get to where you were going.” She leaned forward then and placed a kiss at the base of his throat, then used her tongue to trace a slow path upward. A groan from James was her reward, and she finished her journey with a gentle kiss on his chin, leaning back to smile smugly at him.
“You do like to win, don’t you?” he asked, but before she could answer his fingers touched her slick folds, and she fell back against the window seat with a moan that she just barely managed to stifle against the back of her hand. Said hand was torn away from her mouth a moment later and replaced by James’s lips, kissing her with a frenzy that matched the rough movements of his hand below. His tongue slid into her mouth just as he slipped a single finger inside her, and Violet whimpered against his lips, her hands rising to clutch at his shoulders.
“James,” she gasped against his mouth as his thumb rubbed a particularly delicate spot. She shoved her hands under his coat, pushing it from his shoulders, and James pulled back to shrug it off. Violet tugged his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, her fingers greedy for the feeling of his bare skin. She slipped her hands up under the fabric of his shirt, moving them over the muscled expanse of his abdomen before sliding them around to clutch once more at his strong back. He leaned forward and placed a series of kisses against her neck, while his fingers resumed their distracting rhythm beneath her skirts.
“Enough,” she said, and reached forward to fumble with the placket of his breeches. He sucked in a breath as her fingers brushed against him, but a moment later the buttons were undone and he was spreading her legs, hooking them up and over his hips.
“Are you—”
“Don’t ask me if I’m certain,” she said, reaching up to twine her arms around his neck. She pressed her forehead against his, their faces so close together that all she could see was the intense green of his gaze burning into her own. “I am.”
This was all the confirmation he needed, and with a flex of his hips he slid into her, the sensation enough to make Violet’s back arch and another helpless moan escape from her lips.
“God . . . Violet . . .” he panted, then withdrew before sliding forward again with a powerful thrust. Violet buried her face in his neck, her arms still wrapped tightly around him, her lips sliding over his skin without much finesse or purpose.
He continued to thrust, her hips rising to meet his, and it was just like every time they had ever done this before—and yet somehow different, and better, and entirely new. If their kiss had been a conversation, then this was something else entirely—a bond that went beyond words, beyond thought. The world outside the window seat shrank and vanished, until Violet couldn’t remember her anger, her hurt, her loneliness—she could barely remember her own name. All she could focus on was the feeling of James moving inside her, the delicious friction that accompanied every move he made, the warmth of his hand at her breast, his face buried in her hair, his lips forming unintelligible syllables against her scalp.
For the first time in a fortnight, Violet didn’t care about revenge, about teaching anyone a lesson, about winning. She only cared about James’s hips flexing against her own, and her desire for him to never stop.
Soon, too soon, she felt a warmth rushing up within her, setting every nerve in her body jangling. James was close, too, she could tell—his thrusts were growing more erratic, his breathing heavier, and his hand had slid from her breast to clutch at her hips instead, pinning her to him as he moved ever more forcefully within her.
“Vi . . . Vi . . .” he panted, pulling his head back to look at her once more. She pulled his face down to her own, kissing him sloppily and desperately, her heart pounding in her chest.
She was close—so close—but not quite there.
“James,” she moaned, arching against him with an inarticulate cry, and somehow, he understood. He let one of his hands glide down underneath her skirts, sliding it into the negligible space between them, and rubbed—not with the finesse she usually expected from him, but at that moment, Violet didn’t care—once, twice, thrice . . .
She shut her eyes tight, her head falling back against the cushions as wave after wave of pleasure washed through her. She could feel herself clenching around him, and a moment later he was gone, too, groaning into her neck as he shuddered helplessly above and within her, the sound of his pleasure heightening her own.
And, for the first time in four years, she had the feeling she’d nearly forgotten: that there was nowhere else on earth she would rather be.
Thirteen
Violet couldn’t have guessed how long they lay like that, her feet still hooked around his back, he still buried within her, his face pressed against her neck, her eyes screwed tightly shut. Eventually, however, she returned to herself and released her grip on him, allowing her legs to slide back down to the floor, her thighs protesting. The movement seemed to rouse James from his stupor, as he lifted his head at last, straightened up, and stood, his hands fumbling to refasten his breeches.
Feeling unaccountably shy, Violet blushed and looked away, suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was only half dressed in the library of a house that was not her own. She sat up, tugging her bodice into place, then raising her hands to her hair to ascertain the damage there. She fumbled around on the window seat cushions behind her, feeling for the pins that James had so cavalierly flung aside; finding them, she began shoving them haphazardly into her coiffure, attempting to restore some semblance of order.
“I don’t know much about ladies’ hair,” James said, thrusting his arms into his coat and then dropping to his knees to hunt for his gloves, “but I don’t think you’ll be able to make that look the same as it did before.” There was a faint note of satisfaction in his voice that made Violet simultaneously want to kiss and smack him.
“I know,” she said. “But I have to try something—I can’t go out looking like this.”
“We’ll sneak out before anyone sees us,” he said, locating his gloves and pulling them on. He paused, looked at her. “Where are your gloves, by the by?”
“In my reticule.”
“Ah.”