Page 49 of Again, Scoundrel

She looked up at him then, a dazed expression in her eyes as he began to pull away from her to put their clothing back to rights.

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

She wasn’t ready for this moment to end. He’d unleashed in her a torrent of passion and desire that she’d kept stowed away for years. Now that it was loose, she found she didn’t know how to pack it up and put it all away again. It was still swirling about her, making her feel dazed, delightfully wanton, and completely unready to go back to her normal life.

She pulled him back into her embrace, placing her hand against the bulge of him, and he moaned at her touch.

“Not here, Violet,” he whispered.

“Let me touch you,” she said. “Please. Like you touched me.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

But he was trembling with need as she had been just moments ago, and she knew it. She may not be as experienced in carnality as he was, but the body was her territory. She understood it, could read it as well as any topographical map.

She pressed him again with her fingertips and he shuddered, his body shaking. She knew her fingers seared him, as his had burned against her skin. She slid her thumb over the sensitive head of him.

“Violet…” he was practically begging her now, pressing himself into her hand.

She caressed him again and whispered, “I have you.”

She watched him, his eyes dark and feral. “Please,” he said again and pressed into her palm once more. She brushed his erection with her fingers.

“Anything,” she said. “Anything you want.”

The sound of her voice and the press of her fingers pushed him over. She felt him shake and then cry out, as he spent himself against the inside of his trousers. He collapsed forward, his head in her lap and one hand wrapped around her foot, grasping at her ankle bone as if to hold on for dear life.

She brushed the hair away from his temple and carded her fingers through his locks. “I have you,” she whispered again.

Chapter

20

It was clear to Alistair that what he felt for Violet Goodwin was more than just lust. It was more than an uncomfortable annoyance or a whim of his body—it was something deeper.

He knew that as surely as he knew his own name, and the mannerisms of his father, and the look on his elder brother’s face when Alistair did something that Darius, as the heir apparent, could never get away with. He knew it as surely as he knew any other detail of his life.

What he didn’t know was what to do about it. He couldn’t very well keep arguing for McGann’s plan to marry Violet now. Nor could he concede that he ought to marry her. Whether or not Violet believed him, he knew what he was and what he wasn’t. And right now, he wasn’t the kind of person Violet should keep in her life on a permanent basis. Not yet.

As he’d gone to bed last night, he’d heard Violet’s whisper in his ear, asking whose words it was that told him he wasn’t good enough. He’d always thought they were his. But for the first time he wondered if perhaps that hadn’t always been true. If they’d originated from elsewhere and taken root in his head so long ago, he’d forgotten they didn’t spring from him in the first place. Which meant they weren’t intrinsic to him, and he might be able to overcome them.

What Alistair needed was to get his father’s investment, and with it other deep-pocketed gentlemen of the ton. And he needed to do it quickly before he lost her.

For the first time in the month since he’d been back in town, he awoke early, sat at his desk, and began making plans. He would speak with Darius first, who could intervene on his behalf with his father. His father had always done as Darius asked. And then he would approach Somerville, Pembrooke, and a handful of other acquaintances.

He felt idiotic as he worked, realizing that this is what he should have been doing all along instead of wasting what was left of his money on whisky and cards.

Alistair arrived at Timsbury House in time for the family’s unbearably early breakfast hour, only to find that they had departed the evening before to the country house in Kent.

Damn it, he thought as he sat down to a cup of coffee at the large table in the morning room.

“Would you like breakfast, sir?” the butler asked, but Alistair just shook his head.

He’d eaten already and wanted nothing more in his stomach as he reviewed his business plan. He was suddenly feeling queasy at the thought of raising funds for the business. He’d never before wanted something as much as he wanted this, and he’d never had as much on the line as he did right now.

If he succeeded in finding his capital, he’d have his freedom. He’d have his future. And he hoped to all that was holy, he might have a chance at having Violet Goodwin, too. For the first time since he’d met her, he thought he saw a path forward that might allow them to be together.

He’d very much wanted to make the first pitch for his business to his brother, but as that was no longer a possibility, he’d have to go straight to Somerville and Pembrooke. He sipped at his coffee and ran through his proposal once more in his mind. It had to be perfect.