“No,” she lied, as his mouth closed over a nipple and sucked. Because she knew he would deny her what she so desperately craved if she said yes. And because Wicked Violet was at the reins once more, and she was driving this runaway carriage of want as fast as she could into the horizon.
He rolled her to her back, and she instinctively opened her legs wide, cradling him between them. Their hands were still upon each other. He was careful to keep his body from her view, the bedclothes sheltering them like a cocoon. He sucked her other nipple, delivered a playful bite to it that had her writhing and sucking in a breath.
It was good, so very good, that line between pain and pleasure, and he straddled it so well. Instinctively. He knew how far to push her, how to make her go weak for him. Her hips thrust against him, seeking, desperate. Her heart thundered in her breast. She was nothing but a conflagration of sensation, burning for him, set aflame beneath him.
“Are you certain, Vi?” He glanced up her body, licking her nipple slowly, while his eyes met hers and he stroked her bud.
Vi.No one had ever called her that before, and she liked the sound of it in his deep, velvet voice. Before she could answer, he increased the pressure and the friction between her thighs. Pleasure trilled up her spine and centered between her legs where she was about to explode like a nighttime display of roman candles.
He sucked her nipple again, still watching her, and it was so decadent, so much more intimate and wicked, his eyes upon hers while he brought her to release. She realized she had released his cock, and her fingers were in his luxurious hair now, threading through it.
“Vi?” he prodded, his fingers going faster now. Faster.
Oh, she was on the edge. She arched her back, urging her nipple back into his mouth. “Yes,” she cried out as the first ripple of pleasure shot through her. Her entire body was alight. She shook beneath him as she spent, and colors and stars seemed to burst around her. “Yes, oh dear God, yes. I want you inside me. Now.”
Wicked Violet was who she blamed this brazen boldness upon.
But it felt right, and so did he when he nudged her entrance. So right, she rolled her hips. So right, when he rocked against her, sliding inside. There was a faint trace of pain, a slight tingle as her body adjusted to the thick size of him.
“Yes,” she said again.
“Fuck yes,” he growled, and then with one stroke, he was fully seated within her.
He was deep and hard, and she was full. So full of him. Awash in sensation. They moved together, finding their rhythm, and it was fast and furious and frenzied, as if they both feared being torn apart before it was over. They made love as if it were the first and last time.
And as he spent inside her and she came around him, bliss rolling over her with more force than anything she had ever known, she kissed him hard. Kissing him open-mouthed and wet and messy.
Inside her heart, she said the words she did not yet dare reveal, the same way he hid his scars.
I love you.
God, how I love you.
In the warmingglow of late morning, Violet stood alongside her new husband, facing a straw bale that had been laid against an embankment a decent ride away from Harlton Hall. Before it stood a round iron target. As he had promised her back at Lark House, Griffin was giving her shooting lessons.
She stared at the target, a good distance away, and then looked back to the man at her side. “The target seems awfully small.”
He was unfairly handsome this morning, utterly devastating in borrowed trousers, shirtsleeves, and waistcoat. Though Ludlow and the Duke of Carlisle were both immense men, Griffin was tall and broad and strong, and he filled out the attire in comparable fashion. He wore a borrowed hat as well, his brilliant eyes glinting at her with warm heat that made her think of all the intimacies that had passed between them.
“The target is meant to be small to help improve your aim, Vi,” he said, grinning at her. “Have I told you how glad I am the Duchess of Carlisle was in possession of a purple dress?”
She glanced down at the gown she had borrowed herself, which was somewhat snug in both the waist and the bosom, regardless of how tightly the lady’s maid assisting her that morning had laced her corset. “I fear I do not do it justice, for Her Grace is rather more diminutive in stature than I am.”
It had been her only option, however, since the other ladies in residence were even smaller. Violet felt like a great, hulking weed in their elegant presences, grateful not to be wearing the same dress for the third day in a row, but nevertheless conspicuous. But she was glad, she had to admit, to have found a gown in her color. It had rather become her signature. Alas, not all the gowns she had borrowed from the duchess were purple, but she would make do as she must until she was able to either procure herself a wardrobe, or rescue hers from Lark House.
The thought of Lark House brought with it Lucien and Aunt Hortense, and she knew a fresh pang in her heart, a sense of missing them. But she knew she had made the right decision. Griffin was the right decision. Marrying him had been equal parts rebellion and freedom, and she reveled in both.
In him.
“Trust me, darling, when I say you do it more justice than any other female on this great earth could,” Griffin said, his tone dark and smoldering with sin. His eyes lingered on her bosom like a caress.
And just like that, beneath the glaring sun which had chased the rains, in the midst of a field, about to partake in shooting lessons, he made her feel as if they were alone in a bedchamber all over again. Her knees went weak, her heart galloped, and heat slid between her thighs. Her nipples pebbled beneath her corset, and she remembered in exquisite detail what it felt like to have that glorious mouth of his upon her there, sucking and biting and licking.
Where was a fan when one truly required it for cooling one’s wicked self?
She fidgeted with her skirts for distraction. This simply would not do. The man had addled her wits with his lovemaking, and she could not even concentrate.
“Thank you,” she forced herself to say, all too aware of the flush on her cheeks once more. It seemed to be her perpetual state in his presence. “I am sure you have no need to flatter me, however. We are already wed.”
