“Youdid this.” His voice was violent. Joyful. Terrified. He stepped forward to grab her hands, then just as quickly dropped them. He ran his fingers through his hair. Laughed. Then stared at her with panicked eyes. “This miracle you wrought, it’s... How can I... There are no words for... Oh, did youseeher? She actually—”
He pressed his lips to hers and let his kiss finish the words he could not say.
Violet reveled in his arms. She had ached for his touch ever since their last kiss. She had yearned for the sensations of intimacy, of passion, of being cherished. She had tried to push the encounter from her mind, but she hadn’t succeeded in driving it from her heart.
Hesitantly, she held his face in her hands, silencing his words with the sweetness of her kiss. She lacked the words to express her understanding, but wished him to know, tofeel, that the miracle had affected them all. Years of longing for closeness had hollowed her soul, but here, now, she had hope once more. She had him. They had each other. She slid her hands into his hair, tugging, pulling, until his lips parted, and the kiss was no longer sweet, but carnal.
He tasted like hope, like abandon, like desire. And he did not close his eyes. He let her see the tumult within. The vulnerability. The passion. His awareness of her, of them, of their kisses and their bodies and the fire building deep inside that threatened to consume them both.
She locked her arms about his neck, pressing her breasts against the warmth of his chest. Seeing him interact with his daughter, the thousand-and-one ways he showed his unconditional love... She could not help but admire such a big heart, just as she could not help but crave a taste of emotional as well as physical closeness. His hands were unlike any that had touched her before. His were gentle, seeking to give rather than take. They broke through her walls and tempted her to open, to trust. To risk her very heart.
Her every muscle was tense, but with excitement rather than fear. The realization heightened the sensation of every touch, every kiss. Her back was to the wall—had she tugged him there, or had he pinned her?—allowing her to wrap her legs about him as he lifted her higher and leaned his body into hers. She could bask in his arms forever. He, too, desired emotional and physical closeness. She could feel it. She could offer it.
The more she pulled him to her, the deeper his kisses. She clung to him. The tighter her legs clutched him, the harder his hands dug into her rear, grinding his hard length of his shaft against the heat at her core. Confusion nipped at the edges of her desire. She had never felt this...pleasured. This was far more intense than mere kisses. This was her body quickening to his. And she loved it. He swallowed her gasps, drugging her with his kisses and teasing her with the promise of his pleasure until she could no longer withstand the aching need so tantalizingly out of reach.
Although she well knew the mechanics of lovemaking, she had never dreamed she would one day yearn for it. Now it made sense. She ached to feel that closeness with someone who actually cared abouther. Someone exactly like the man in her arms, who even now dipped his head to nuzzle her neck. She arched her back, presenting him instead with the swell of her breast. Begging him with actions because she didn’t have the words. Wasn’t certain what to do, how to feel. His mouth latched onto the proffered curve and her nipple immediately responded, straining for his tongue through the now-damp fabric. She shivered, amazed. Every inch of her wanted him, inside and out. Shedidtrust him. And she wanted more.
Her fingers clenched in his hair, forcing him closer, reveling in the desperate groan escaping his throat as his shaft strained against the skin-tight buckskin of his breeches. She wanted to share the pleasure, to give as well as get. She wanted the moment to mean as much to him as it did to her. She slid one hand from his hair, down the angles of his face, the heat of his neck, the hard muscle of his arm, the slim taper of his waist, to the shadowy heat where their bodies touched. She needed him as desperate for her touch as she was for his.
The back of her hand eased deliciously, agonizingly, against her own core even as her palm slid across his shaft, cupping, squeezing, each movement teasing them both until she could no longer tell which gasps renting the air were hers or his. This was the moment when she would finally experience true intimacy. A closeness she had lacked her entire life. He would fill her body with his shaft, and fill the emptiness inside with a sense of belonging. They would share each other. Here. Now. Her entire body trembled, on the verge of explosion.
And then, just as she was about to slide the tips of her fingers behind the folds of his fall to touch the heat of his naked flesh, he leaped away as if scalded.
Her shoulders thumped against the wall. She regained her footing but not her equilibrium. Her shuddering limbs struggled to understand the unexpected loss of his body. Had he not felt the magic between them? How could he not want more?
She reached for him.
He turned from her.
She let her hand, suddenly cold, fall back to her side, limp. There was no togetherness after all. There would never be. No matter how hard she tried to connect, it would always be goodbye.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out, his voice a strangled whisper. “I did not mean—I had not intended—I only wished to thank you.” His head lowered, as if in shame. “No matter how much I—You did not deserve—Oh, damn my hide. I knew you were trying to comfort me. I don’t deserve it. I had just meant to thank you.” He pulled his coin purse from his pocket, upended its contents on the table. Pennies, sovereigns, half-crowns spilled onto its surface. “No amount of money can equal the gift you have given me today. I meant to thank you as an employer, and I could not. I meant to give thanks as a father, and I could not. I could only show you as a man.” He spun to face her, his dark gaze turbulent. “A flawed man, who succumbed to his passion rather than used his brain. I apologize for my behavior, Miss Smythe. It shall not be repeated.”
He shoved his empty coin purse back into his pocket and strode from the room before she could begin to formulate a reply. Or toss the coins right back. She was not a whore to be paid for favors. She had wanted to be in his arms, but she hadn’t wanted…this.
Perhaps he was right to draw a line. Hers were not the actions of a governess. Of a respectable young lady. Of a respectful employee. Those were the actions of a girl who had spent both her childhood and her adulthood starved for affection. She had finally met someone deeply capable of love, and had thought him as desperate to make a connection as she.
She rolled her shoulders and tried to put herself together. The moment had been far too powerful to resist, and she could not—wouldnot—be sorry. The opportunity to experience such closeness might never present itself again.
Chapter 13
Violet didn’t lay eyes on Mr. Waldegrave even once over the following two days.
She was beginning to believe he very well might avoid her company forever. If so, then she was fiercely pleased to have lived fully in the moment the last time they were together. It had certainly not ended how she might have hoped, but she still had the memory of his caress, of closeness, ofconnectingwith him, if only for a short window.
And then, one afternoon after lessons, he appeared at her door without warning. Bearing a stack of large parcels in his arms.
“What is this?” She creaked open her door to stare at him in confusion. “I didn’t order anything.”
“I did,” he said without meeting her eyes.
She frowned. “If this is because of the other night when we almost—”
“It’s not,” he said quickly. “These were ordered weeks ago. Please take them. They’re for you.”
Still confused, she moved aside to give him room to bring in the parcels. When he did not budge, her cheeks flamed.
Of course he would not enter her bedchamber. The realization that she felt comfortable enough to allow him to do so undoubtedly shocked him as much as it shocked her, albeit for different reasons. Until the school for girls, she’d never been offered privacy, much less been foolish enough to take gentlemanly manners for granted. And she’d never once trusted a man enough to have willingly allowed him across her threshold under any circumstances.
