In truth, she knew her hair must be hopelessly mussed from sleeping through the night, and she was no great beauty to begin with. But none of that mattered when Griffin was looking at her that way.
All that mattered was him and the way he made her feel.
As if she were the queen herself.
“Thank you for marrying me,” she told him seriously. “I am currently no matrimonial prize either, possessing an abysmal talent for crocheting and a former betrothed who thought more of his orchids than he did of me.”
“Flowerpot can take his plants and go rot for all I care,” he said. “If he would prefer to tinker with seed and soil, rather than devote himself to pleasing the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, then he deserves his seeds and his plants and his green bulb fungus, and nothing less.”
She leaned into him then. Leaned into him and settled her lips over his, because he was hers and no one had ever seen her the way he did. And because she felt as if she knew him too, knew him in a way that was profound and poignant and real. Elemental and deep.
She knew about his mother, about his past. And she had begun to know the small fragments of him, as varied and original as the shells she had collected from the shores at Albemarle when she was a girl.
He groaned into her mouth, his tongue finding hers. She could not stifle the sound of need emerging from deep within her. It was not just this meeting of lips she wanted, but something more. Something deeper and far more fulfilling.
She wanted him inside her just as he had been last night, hard and rigid and hot, claiming and taking and possessing. That was what she wanted. Him. Inside her.
Feeling bold, she slid a hand down his throat, over the protrusion of his Adam’s apple, down his chest, marked with scars and stippled with hair. Violet loved each unevenness, every smooth line, each puckered ridge. She loved all of it, all of him. Taking her time, she allowed her fingers to dance over his bare skin, and he let her, not shying away from her touch.
She was careful to keep the bedclothes in place. To give him the shield he felt he required. Down the taut muscles of his chest she went, over the well-delineated ridges of his abdomen, the skin so unlike hers. It was smooth, yet coarse; perfect, yet scarred, masculine to her feminine, and it felt like heaven to her fingertips.
And then, she found him. The part of him that was large and thick and so very male. The part of him that went inside her. She knew not what to call it—his member, his maleness? Whatever the proper name, she loved the way he felt in her hand.
He was smooth, so smooth and soft, and yet warm and firm. She gripped him and an answering ache bloomed in her core, where she wanted him again. Now that she knew without a doubt what transpired between a man and a woman, she felt advanced beyond her years. Bold too.
She felt as if all the power were in her hands, and she had but to snap her fingers, or bring his hardness to her softness, and all would be hers. She wanted that heady sensation of him moving within her. Wanted him. And she ought to be properly shocked by her reaction, she was sure.
Between her legs, she was wet and aching, and she needed Griffin. More Griffin. Deep inside her, taking and claiming and pleasuring. Undoing her all over again. Taking her apart, and then putting her back together with his touch and his tongue and his kiss.
The breath rushed from him when she tightened her grip, and she stilled, watching his expression, wondering if she had done something wrong. “Do you not like my touch?”
“I don’t like it, Violet.” He kissed her, a quick peck on her mouth that was over before it had begun, and then his fingers clasped over hers. “I bloody well love your hand on my cock.”
Cock.
There was the word she had been searching for, all succinct consonance, dominant and muscular and masculine. His cock went even harder in her hand, growing as he guided her, showing her how to touch him. Together, they stroked him until a moan tore from his throat. Until moisture seeped from him, and somehow her hand was slick, and he was a hot, silken brand on her palm.
“Damn it, love,” he gritted. “I want you again, but it is too soon.”
He was even more beautiful like this, pleasure flushing his skin, his body responding to hers. His full lips were slack, his eyes half-closed, burning into hers. How she wished he would allow her to see him, to see all of him, to kiss and worship her way down his body, to give him the same rapturous release he had given her with his mouth.
You must not push him, she reminded herself. He will reveal himself to you when he is ready.
“I want you too,” she said instead, her gaze locked upon his as she drew her face even nearer to his.
They were so close they shared a pillow. So close the humid head of their breaths mingled and became one. So close she tipped up her chin and ran her nose alongside his.
He closed the slight distance with his lips. And this kiss was nothing like the gentle, loving brush of mouths they had shared thus far this morning. He kissed her as if he would consume her, hungry and hard. His other hand tangled in her hair, grabbing a fistful of her wayward curls, so tight she felt a prick in her scalp. Not pain, but tension, and the delicious awareness she was helplessly in his grip.
He held her there for the onslaught of his mouth, not allowing her to move away. Nor would she have, if she had been able. But there was something about the contrast of his touches—reverence and dominance at once—that made her breasts feel heavy and full, made her nipples tighten, and produced a fresh pool of wetness between her thighs.
She was wet and throbbing and aching for him, just from his kisses and his hold on her and his cock in her hand. His tongue was in her mouth, his teeth nipping her lower lip, and she nipped him back and sucked his tongue, kissing him with every bit of the ferocity roaring to life inside her.
He released her hand, freeing her to continue working him on her own. And then his fingers were nudging her thighs open, and he traced her slick seam. He parted her folds, glancing over the hungry flesh within. When he worked his way to the bud of her sex, she jerked, crying out into his mouth.
Griffin broke the kiss as last, but he did not withdraw his touch. Instead, he circled it with his forefinger, one slow, lazy circumnavigation. And then another. And another. Deliberately, he avoided the sensitive underside, refraining from giving her the pressure she desired.
“Griffin.” His name left her on a sigh. She arched into his long, lean body, rubbing her nipples over the bedclothes separating them because it felt good. Because she was desperate for any contact, desperate for release. She felt like the female cats she had seen at Albemarle, rubbing their bodies sinuously against any object, making strange sounds and low trilling meows as they called for their mates. She had not comprehended then, the consuming need those animals had felt to be with another. But she understood it now, because it was how she felt, how this man made her feel. As if she could not ever have enough of him.
As if she could never be close enough or kiss him enough or lose herself to the spiraling waves of pleasure in his arms enough.
He dragged the rasp of his beard down her throat, burying his face in the crook between her shoulder and neck. “You smell so damn sweet, here and everywhere. And you’re soaked for me, aren’t you, darling?”
Giving himself the answer he sought, he slid his fingers through her folds slowly, temptingly. The evidence of her desire was bathing him, making him glide easily through her engorged flesh, the wet sounds of him toying with her loud in the stillness of the chamber. Louder than the harsh panting of her breaths as he once more teased her by avoiding the bundle of nerves that so longed to be stroked.
“Yes,” she said on a sibilant moan. “You make me go wild, Griffin. I…I cannot think when you touch me like this.”
“Are you sore, love?” he asked, flicking his tongue against her skin.
She knew what he meant, because she was. Between her legs and deep inside, she felt as if she had been bruised. But it was a different sort of bruise. It was a sore
ness, and yet, a delicious ache. It was the knowledge she had been stretched and breached, that her body had given way for his, but that it craved that same, sweet invasion once more.
She wanted to be filled. Wanted the ache and the burn and the sting and the decadent rush of release.
“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 warming glow 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.”
He closed the distance between them, catching her waist in his large hands and pulling her against him so their bodies were flush, from breast to knee. His scent invaded her senses, seductive and delicious. She had nowhere to look but into his countenance.
He was serious. Frowning. “You are beautiful, Vi.”
He was wrong. She was not beautiful. Violet shook her head. “I am too tall.”
“I can reach your lips without having to bend down too far,” he countered.
“My hair is dark.”
“It is the glorious ink of a summer’s midnight sky.”
The silver-tongued devil. What could she say to that? She thought for a moment. “My nose is turned up and covered in freckles.”
“We have already established I love your freckles.” He was cupping her face in his big, warm hands now.
And she was melting like butter beneath his touch.
He kissed the tip of her nose as if to demonstrate his affection. “Your nose is perfect. I’ll not hear a word against it.”
She bit her lip to quell the sudden delighted giggle that rose within her. “My mouth is too large.”
“Your mouth”—he stopped and kissed her lingeringly, before pulling back once more—“is just the right size for mine.”
“I am no bloody good at crocheting.”
“I prefer knitting.” He winked.
She huffed a sigh. “My forehead is too high.”
“Directly proportionate,” he argued. “Any shorter, and your b
eauty would not be balanced.”
Violet stared at him, her self-deprecation turning into a dearth. “My bosom—” she began, only to be interrupted by his mouth yet again.
He kissed her hard, ferociously. “Do not, for the love of all that is holy, speak about your bosom, Duchess, or I shall have you in the grass with your skirts around your waist and my fingers parting the slit in your drawers. And I will tear open every one of the buttons on this borrowed bodice with my teeth.”
His intensity and his words both stole her breath. “I would not object to either of those scenarios,” she was bold enough to say, “but I do suspect the Duchess of Carlisle may disagree with the damage you intend to do to her beautiful gown.”
His blue gaze burned into hers. “I would buy her a dozen replacements if necessary.”
She was tempted. Oh so very tempted. But in the end, the prospect of having to explain to the duchess what had occurred to her dress—or to somehow invent a fiction that would be believed—proved too much for her.
“Perhaps we ought to steer ourselves to a safer subject, lest you ravage the poor Duchess of Carlisle’s beautiful gown,” she suggested at last.
He exhaled on a heavy sigh, his hot breath blowing over her lips. “Very well. I hope I have proven my point.”
His point? She had gotten so caught up in the moment she had almost forgotten what it had been. Ah yes, that she was beautiful. She felt beautiful. She saw herself for the first time as he did, and it imbued her with a deep, potent sense of power. Not a plain, shrinking violet after all, but a brilliant blossom all her own.
A new Violet altogether.
“You have,” she said softly, unable to resist giving him another quick, hard kiss. “Thank you.”
“You have nothing to thank me for, Vi.” He kissed the corner of her mouth, before releasing her and taking a step back. “You have always been beautiful. You merely needed to see it for yourself.”
If she had not already fallen in love with this man, Violet would have fallen in love with him then and there, with the sun bathing him in a golden glow, with his handsome face and his angular jaw covered in rich, dark whiskers, and his full lips and, Lord in heaven, those eyes…
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