Page 59 of Again, Scoundrel

Violet nodded her head. She didn’t care about rules or reputation or ruination, at least not ruination of this kind. She cared about the overwhelming sensation of craving and need in her body. About how her heart was thumping wildly against her chest and the feelings of pleasure shooting through her.

To her surprise she found those feelings to be a kind of balm to the intensity of the day and night they’d faced together. She closed the distance between them and pressed her body into his.

“Then let’s do this properly,” he said, his fingers running lightly down her shoulders and arms until they found the hand that clutched the blanket.

He caressed her knuckles and the small bone in her wrist before giving the blanket a tug. Violet let it drop to the floor so that she stood nude in front of him, as he did in front of her. He held the towel back out to her.

“Would you like to continue your perusal?” he asked.

Alistair’s body was burning as it never had before. His cock was hard and trembling under her gaze—the sight of her watching him being one of the more erotic experiences of his life. But he would not move too quickly; he’d let her take her time.

Violet was Violet, and she’d want to understand the ins and outs of him. To study him. To participate fully in their lovemaking. Hell, she’d probably want to lead it. And he would be more than happy to let her.

Fuck, it would be hard to wait though.

He tried to think of anything but slipping his cock into her ready body. When the time came, and he had her tight, wet heat encasing him, it would be extraordinary.

He groaned to himself as she took the towel from his outstretched hand and turned him around. He moved slowly, not wanting his eyes to lose the feast that was her unclothed body. But then she ran the towel across the broad swath of his shoulders and down the muscled planes of his back to his waist, and he realized how much more he felt when his eyes could not see.

His muscles jumped and rippled in response to her touch; his skin blazed where her fingertips traveled. His cock grew harder and longer and heavier than he even knew was possible.

She bent to the floor, running the towel up one broad thigh and calf and then down the other. He groaned again as he felt her breath on the skin of his buttocks, warming him. His hips gyrated in the air as if he was already inside her, and it took a vast strength of will to keep them still.

“Christ, Violet,” he whispered as she stood, letting her fingers drift back upward along the bunched muscles of his calves and hamstrings. When she was standing again, she pressed her body against his back and let her fingers wander down the front of his chest toward his hips.

He turned to face her, too aroused to allow her to continue. “Shall we move on, my love?”

At her nod, he picked her up and carried her into the bedchamber.

Despite his eagerness, Alistair moved slowly. He was determined to savor every moment of this experience. It was the first of its kind he’d ever had. She may be the virgin, but he was too in his own way.

He’d never let a woman sleep over in his bedchamber, neither here in his rented townhouse nor in his captain’s quarters on his ship. In fact, he’d barely had more than a passing conversation with most of the women he slept with. This place where he found himself with Violet was utterly new and bewildering to him.

But Alistair Crawford was a man entirely comfortable rejecting out of hand what did not suit him. Career choices, familial relationships, societal expectations—he knew what he did not want. So, on the rare occasion when everything he did want was within his grasp, he was not fool enough to let it go on account of a little bewilderment.

He deposited her gently on the mattress and ran his hands through her masses of honey-colored curls. He’d taken most of her pins out earlier before her bath, so now he had the pleasure of watching her riotous hair spread out on his pillow. It was just as glorious as he’d imagined it would be in this moment, when her eyes turned the sapphire color of desire, and her body became warm and supple beneath his fingers.

He bent forward and kissed her. Their lips met slowly at first, languidly, each responding to the other but neither driving too hard nor too fast. It was as if their lips were making a kind of promise to each other, that in the moments of passion and discovery to come, they would act kindly. Gently. No matter the anticipation that was growing between them or the coil of barely suppressed feral energy that sparked whenever they touched.

Even as their kisses grew more frantic, the tenderness between them remained, and he wondered if every kiss with her would be different from the one that came before. A new experience every time they came together.

Her soft lips gasped into his, and he pulled himself away. He would not hurry this. He stretched out on the bed next to her, and she reached for him. Her fingers lightly explored the fine hair on his chest, while he brushed his softly along her collarbone. And then he picked up her hand and kissed the inside of her palm, where her calluses were.

Chapter

24

Violet pulled her hand away from Alistair, her mind snapping back to reality from whatever dream state she’d been in. She remembered the look of surprise on his face when he’d felt the rough skin on her palm the first time at the Somerville dinner party, and how he’d dropped her hand as if it burned him. She wouldn’t be able to bear that kind of rejection again, not now.

“Don’t hide from me, Violet,” he said.

“I’m not.”

But her hand was closed hard in a fist anyway.

“This won’t work if you don’t trust me.”

“What won’t work?” She understood the mechanics of copulation and had witnessed the breeding of stallions in her father’s stables. She doubted that the mares gave any thought to trust during those moments.