Page 47 of Again, Scoundrel

It was this Alistair, the gentle, vulnerable one who suddenly showed his face in the middle of their conversations that did it. The version of him who told her the truth of himself. Who made her feel comfortable. Violet never felt comfortable.

The hot-tempered, arrogant version of him could set her body on fire, but this one had the potential to do much more harm, because this one could do the same with her heart.

“Why did you ask him to kiss you?” he asked, and Violet felt his heart beat faster against her body.

He was nervous, another echo of their time on the balcony three years past, and she knew however she answered was important to him. She stepped backward just a little so she could look him in the eye and tell him the truth.

“I wanted to know,” she said evenly, “if it would be the same. As it was with you.”

“It isn’t,” he whispered, a little hitch in his voice.

Violet lifted her shoulders in that small, delicate movement she’d learned. “How could I know until I tested it? I’d only been kissed once before, on the night that James died. And that wasn’t the same at all.”

She looked at him, needing him to understand.

“How could I know if the difference was what came after that kiss or if it was you?”

“It wasn’t what came after,” he said. “And it’s not me. It’s us.”

“I didn’t want it to be us.” She reached for him again. “I wanted to rid myself of you.”

“And now?”

She closed her eyes against her own wanting. “And now I can’t think of anything else but you.”

“Sit down, Violet.”

He went to his knees in front of her and then reached up to cup her face in his hands. “You’re magnificent. Unlike anyone I’ve ever met. And—” He abruptly stood back up.

“And what?” Violet asked, afraid the pendulum of Alistair Crawford had swung away from her once more. She got to her feet as if to follow him. “And what, Alistair?”

“And I don’t know what you need. Or how to give it to you. I don’t know anything, Violet, except that I don’t deserve you.”

She held his stare for just a moment—his dark eyes swimming with a fervency she’d not seen in them before.

“That’s not my judgment, Alistair,” she said quietly. “Whose is it? Your father’s?”

When he didn’t answer she stepped closer. “Whose?” she demanded.

“Mine. But I will ignore it if you will.” He turned to her and tipped up her chin. “You are sober?”

She was. And she kissed him again to prove it.

This kiss was different from the ones that had come before. It was gentle and soothing, a whisper of skin against skin, of skimming lips and soft, soulful tongues. It was a kiss that took its time and let itself unfold, one that was gentled by the truths they had shared with each other and the understanding that they both felt whatever this was between them.

As the kiss continued though, with tongues that slid against each other in the heat of their mouths, it become more frenzied. Lustful. Violet sucked his bottom lip and then she sucked on his tongue. The growl he emitted told her he liked it, so she did it again.

Her arms were wrapped around his neck, and he gently unwound them and pressed her down to sit.

“What are you doing?” she asked, unwilling to let him go, and he grinned, the devil back in his face.

“You’ll see,” he said and moved his mouth to the delicate joining of her earlobe and her neck.

“I’d like to know first,” Violet replied, but her head had rolled back against the cushion of the chair as he pressed kisses to her neck, and her words came out as a whisper directed to the heavens instead of to him.

Alistair smiled and sat back on his haunches. “As you wish, my sweet. I’m happy to explain it to you, but I’ll have to do it from all the way back over here.”

Violet lifted her head, disgruntled at the loss of his lips and tongue, and pulled him back to her.