“Your skin is a part of you,” she said, and like the scent of roses she exuded, her words hit him in the heart. Or at least in the place where his heart once was. “And I want you. All of you.”
He stared down at her, and even more than before, he felt everything inside him shifting. Changing. He was becoming someone else, a man he had not been, and could not be, without her. This man wanted to give her as much of himself as he could bear.
For now, that meant tearing himself away from her breathtaking body long enough to extinguish the oil lamps. Swallowing, he walked back to the bed in the darkness, plucking the remainder of his buttons from their moorings. When he reached the last, he shrugged it to the floor in a whisper of sound.
“Did you take it off?” she asked quietly. “Your shirt, I mean?”
“Yes,” he grumbled, wondering how this woman, so new to his life, this wife of only one day, could rule him so neatly.
And then he realized, just as quickly, the answer was simple: he wanted to please her. There was nothing he wanted more in this world than to make Violet West—er, rather VioletStrathmore—happy. She eclipsed everything, even his fear of being cast back into prison.
“Thank you, Griffin,” she murmured.
Desire returned to him in swift, steady waves, reminding him of what was about to happen this night. Reminding him the present was of far greater import than the past. He removed his trousers and smalls, and then, finding his way in the dark, he joined her on the bed once more.
Instantly, the heady scent of roses and musky woman hit him.Home, something inside him said, and he knew it was true. Here they were, in a borrowed bedchamber, the guests of his former League comrades, on the brink of utter disaster and ruin, and yet he had never felt so reassured and comforted. Nor had he ever felt so complete.
“Violet.” Her name was a sigh wrenched from him as his body moved against hers, without the obstruction of fabric for the first time. They were both nude, bare skin on hot, bare skin.
His cock was once more rigid, glancing against her slick, swollen folds with erotic precision. He rubbed himself over her and they were both moving, finding a rhythm, bodies learning each other. He forgot to be concerned with the burns and scars covering him. Forgot his uncertainty. Forgot the painful pieces of his past, so often like shards of glass embedded in his flesh. And instead, he simply allowed himself to feel.
Her hands were on him, running over his back and chest with slow, powerful caresses that made him even hungrier for her. The lack of light freed him. Their mouths met, sealing in a kiss that was deep and complete and transforming. A kiss of tongues and teeth, of desperation and culmination and everything in between.
She turned her head, breaking the fusion of their lips, and he dropped his kiss to her neck instead.
“You feel beautiful to me,” she said, her voice a rumble against his mouth.
“I am the furthest one can get from that,” he returned, recovering his own voice at last. “You are beautiful, spitfire. Glorious. More than I could have imagined.”
“You feel perfect,” she persisted, continuing her exploration.
Her hands were on his abdomen now, skimming over the healed scores of a blade that had cut him hundreds of times, brushing the ripples of flesh. Her nimble, elegant fingers meandered over his shoulders, his back, crossing the ridges left behind by a cat o’nine tails. And with each reverent glance of her touch over his battered body, he felt healed, in a way. Renewed.
Whole for the first time in as long as he could recall.
She did that for him, with her tenderness and her caring. She alone.
“I am far from perfect,” he warned her, before taking a nipple into his mouth. He sucked hard. So hard he won a keening sound from her lips, and she raked her nails over his back.
The abrasion was delicious.
“We are a match then,” she said. “For I am not perfect either.”
He was finding that increasingly impossible to believe, but for now, he would not argue the point. For now, he would simply bask in her touch. He would simply revel in her body, warm and willing beneath his, her reverent touch on him, her full, beautiful mouth within kissing distance. Her wet, tight cunny within fucking distance.
Damn.
He had to be inside her. The waiting, the anticipation, it was driving him to the edge. He needed and wanted, and wanted and needed, and everything was Violet. All Violet. He continued thrusting against her, his cock sliding through her wetness, through the hot, humid heart of her.
So good. She felt so incredibly, bloody good. He could spend forever inside her, never leaving. But of course, that was not the way life worked, was it? They would have to leave this bed eventually. Perhaps they would even have to leave each other.
For he had not been honest with her. Even now, their bodies naked and pressed together, hands and mouths studying the curves and dips and plains and hardness and softness of each other, he was not able to be himself with the lamps lit. Nor was he able to admit to her he intended to ruin her brother.
But he could not think about that now.
His fingers were working upon her pearl, stroking her, working her into a frenzy.
“Are you certain you are ready for me?” he asked, rocking his hips so his hardness pressed against her.
