“It doesn’t matter. Not now. I don’t care about it, and it doesn’t care about me. Tonight at the manor reminded me of that. There is no reason to hold onto vows of the past. Hold onto the life I once led. Not anymore.”
His grip around her hand tightened and he pulled it to his chest. “I want to kiss you, Vee.”
“I think you should.”
He released her hand, his fingers diving to the nape of her neck, tangling in the hair she had freed from her upsweep to hang down her back. Dragging her to him, his mouth came down hard, soaking her up, crushing her as though she were the last drop of water in a desert. His tongue breached her lips, exploring, asking, and almost immediately demanding so much more.
Instant fire in her veins. Instant pleasure that she knew she couldn’t trust. Pleasure that made her believe—made her believe things she shouldn’t in a man. Trusting that very pleasure had blinded her once before, bringing her devastation.
Her head warring with her body, she pulled back from Theo’s lips, her hands catching his face between her palms, her voice breathless as she met his eyes. “I had forgotten how it feels. To be held. To be adored. Tell me this is real.”
“This is real.”
“Tell me you are not lying to me, even if you are, Theo.”
“Why would you think that?” His fingers tightened on her neck, his eyes locking on hers. “This is not a lie, Vee. This is me, wanting you. Wanting your body, your thoughts, your soul, like nothing I have ever wanted before.”
“I don’t know if I can go down this path again.” Her eyes closed as she inhaled a trembling breath. “A game—is this a game for you, Theo? Am I merely the conquest that you were denied long ago?”
“You were never a conquest, Vee. You were the woman I loved. Still love. I realized that after only one day with you.”
Love? She swallowed hard at his words, her eyes squinting shut. Not the word. Not the lie.
“Open your eyes to me, Vee.”
She tried. No success.
“I can stand here all night, Violet. Look at me.”
She tried again, her eyelids cracking to find his stare searing into her, taking her breath away.
“Heaven help me, I am going to make you feel this, Vee. Kiss you. Touch you. Have your body sink onto mine. But I don’t want to convince you. You have admitted that you cannot say no to me. But I don’t want that. I need you to want this. Want this as much as I do.” He shook his head as his look dropped, the cords along his throat shifting as he swallowed hard. His gaze lifted to land on her. “If you don’t, then—the devil take me—tell me now. This is the no you need to speak. The no I need to hear.”
Her eyes opened fully to him. “Do you want me say no, Theo?”
“It is the last thing I want.”
She stared at him for a long breath, mesmerized by the agony the threat of a no brought forth in the blue of his eyes. The fire. The honesty. Theo had never been anything but honest with her. “Then, yes. Yes, I want this. There are no copper tubs in sight.” A smile curved onto her lips. “There is only you and me, and that bench behind me.”
He laughed, his mouth on hers before it ended, sending the soft rumble from his chest into her mouth. Lifting her slightly, he took three steps, and the back of her calves bumped into the front curve of the black metal bench.
Stretching her toes to the ground, she touched the bricks of the path and spun them around. Her lips pulled from his mouth, moving downward along the stubble lining his neck, the pricks of the stiff hairs plumping her lips. She dipped lower into the open V of his shirt, his skin tasting of salt and only partially quenching her thirst. Her hands went low, unbuttoning the flap on his trousers.
“Sit. I need you to sit, Theo.”
Her tongue traced circles on the expanse of his skin, and his chest lifted in a deep breath that shook his torso. “I am at your command, Vee.”
Her lips stretched wide in a smile against his chest. “I like that answer.”
He dropped from her, yanking off his shirt as he sat. His eyes found hers, the fire in them scorching the air between them. “You are the only one I would ever dare offer those words to.”
The ferocity of his words made her pause. The value of them intended for so much more than just this one moment in time. She nodded, her fingers slipping to untie the knot on her robe. The belt fell from her grip, the silk of her robe opening, baring herself to him.
She stood for a long moment, letting his eyes run over her body, the heat of his look, of his hunger, teasing her core into frenzied craving. She moved forward, her right knee slipping along the outside of his thigh, the cool metal of the bench pressing into her shin. Following with her left leg until she fully straddled him on the bench, she settled her hands along the warm slope of his neck. “Then I will strive not to abuse the power.”
His right hand reached up, gripping her by the base of the neck as he pulled her down to him, his lips voracious on hers. This kiss held no exploration, no tease. Only demand.
For all he had said she could command him, his body ceded no control.
His pinky went under the top back of her robe. “Let it fall, Vee.”
Instant acquiescence, she moved her arms, letting the fabric strip from her body. The cold air enveloped her torso, spurring it into attention, into feeling more intensely the heat of his fingertips as they travelled along her body, sweeping into curves, pressing into muscles. Wherever his fingers went, her skin burned under his touch.
He dragged his mouth from hers and invaded her neck, moving quickly down to her left breast. Her head tilted back, her eyes closed as he took the bud into his mouth, his teeth raking the delicate skin.
Her hips drove forward, seeking him out. Finding him. The full of his member, hard and pulsating for her. She shifted, running her core along the length of him.
This. This was what she needed.
“Damn, Vee. You do that and I will have no strength for you.” His hand dipped down between them, his fingers finding her folds, stroking.
“Yes.” She shifted back slightly, her look dipping to him as her hips maintained their circular siege. “But this is what I want, Theo. Now.”
A sudden ferocity took over his face and he exhaled, lifting her and setting her long onto his cock without a word.
It stole her breath and she had to clutch his neck, her head hanging over his shoulder. The sheer size of him filling her sent her gasping for breath.
His fingers wrapped around her hips and pressed into her backside. He lifted her.
“This? This Vee?”
A moan was all that could form in her throat. No words could make it past the storm of nerves swirling in her body. No sense of anything but the length of him moving up into her, and withdrawing, again and again, every stroke a strike on the blast precariously near to explosion.
He kept his rhythm, his onslaught, even as his body began to struggle against itself, his muscles straining. “Hell, Vee, yes. Yes.”
The words filtered through the haze in her mind.
No. Not yet. Not yet.
Her body fighting to maintain rhythm, fighting to stay connected to him, she superseded every base instinct and pushed herself upward onto her knees, removing herself from him.
The instant void of him struck her, making her gasp. Her eyes closing, she tilted her face to the sky as she ignored the abandonment she had just forced. Ignored every nerve that was still on fire, waiting to be sated. She dropped her hand in between them and wrapped her fingers around Theo’s straining cock, starting to stroke.
He instantly grabbed her wrist. “Why did you pull from me, Vee?”
She swallowed, trying to find ballast in the storm of her body. “You are—you are about to come and that is what you do—how it happens. You have to pull free.” Her face stayed upward, her words floating into to the sky.
“What I do?”
“Men do.”
“Not most men.” He yanked her hand off of him and gripped her hip bones, lifting
her and centering her above him in one quick motion.
Her look jerked down to him.
His voice hard, he looked up at her. “Whatever you think you know, Vee, forget it. I want to be inside you. You—your body wrapped around me. Pulsating around me. If you want me to pull out just before to protect against a babe, I will. But not until you have come. Not until I am a hair away from it myself.”
Her eyes went wide. “I—I never had the choice.”
“Everything is your choice.”
She nodded. “This. I want this. You.”
He pulled her down onto him hard, filling her to the hilt.
Twice more he lifted and lowered her before he stopped. “You are holding back.”
“I…I am not.”
He reached up to grab the back of her hair, forcing her to look down at him. “You are, Vee. What are you afraid of?”
The answer slipped from her lips without thought. “This—wanting this.”
“Come hell or heaven, you already have it, Vee.” His voice was brutal virility. “So tell me what you want.”
She met his eyes, unleashing every desire she’d ever had to squelch. “Deep, Theo. I want you deep. Deeper. Deeper. Hard.”
He thrust up into her, reaching far into her depths. Consuming her. He slid out and drove upward again. Again and again and again. Every last nerve on her body exploded, her body clamping down upon him, contracting, pulling him even further into her.
The waves rushed in a fury, suffocating her. And in the middle of the turmoil, he swelled deep within her, his body violently shuddering as his arms clamped around her with a growl.
He came. Deep inside of her.
And it was right.
Right.
It finally felt right.
{ Chapter 12 }
Her body meshed to his, her chin draped over his shoulder, Violet grasped onto the seconds as their chests rode back and forth with heavy breaths. Even as their panting slowed, she held onto the moment, held onto him—her arms clasped hard around his back—offering only the slightest cracking open of her eyes to the night air.
Scars.
Her body stilling, her eyes flew open. A horrendous mess of scars, up and down and across Theo’s back. Long, short, skinny, circular. Too many to count. She had seen the ones on his chest but she hadn’t imagined this. She had never felt them through his layers of clothes. But there on his bare back—a horrific display of torture.
Hiding a gasp, she stiffened slightly, her chin drawing away from his shoulder, and the ridge of a rough scar brushed against her neck, just one of the many she had seen marring the front of his body. Far too many to contemplate. Far too many to imagine the pain of.
Her heart constricting, her lips were instinctively drawn onto the ragged line of raised white skin along his shoulder—once smooth, now mangled.
His shoulder jerked slightly from her lips.
“No.” She said the one word softly, tightening her hold around his back, not letting him escape her.
He leaned away. “My scars are hideous, Vee. You shouldn’t be exposed to them.”
Her head jerked up so she could see his face. “Hideous? I shouldn’t be exposed to them? You intend for me to never see your skin, Theo?”
Her eyes pinned him as she shook her head. He responded with a cold stare.
Violet was undeterred. “You intend for me to never see the lines of your muscles?” Leaning forward, she lightly kissed the center of his chest. “Never to touch the cords of strength running through your body? Never to set my lips upon the pathway down your belly?”
A harsh chuckle escaped him. “I should have kept my shirt on. You make this increasingly difficult for me, Vee.”
“I do nothing of the kind.” She said the words into his chest, her lips making slow circles along his skin, both perfect and scarred. “I cannot take certain parts of your body and disregard the ones that have been marred.”
“No, Vee.” His hands lifted to her shoulders and he pushed her slightly away.
She popped up, her eyes wide as she found his face. “You are serious?”
His mouth pulled into a terse line. “I don’t want you to have to witness my scars, Vee. I—”
“Stop.” Her right fingers went onto his lips, cutting his words. “Theo, your body is amazing—a miracle. Your body managed to survive all of these.” Her left hand trailed down the ragged scars on the right side of his chest, the pads of her fingertips caressing each of the bumps. “To survive all of these. To bring you to this moment in time. To bring you to me. The scars are just the price of that. They do not diminish the strength of your body. They are proof of how strong you truly are.”
Her fingers slipped down off of his lips and then moved to cup the side of his neck. She pulled herself close to him, her nose nearly brushing his as her words came soft against the stone set of his jaw. “So you will not hide them from me—ever, Theo. You will let me touch them. You will let me kiss them.” Her head dipped down, her lips brushing the round scar on the edge of his left shoulder. “You will let me do whatever I see fit with them. Because they are a part of you.”
She moved inward along his shoulder, setting her lips on the next mangled line of skin, her voice cracking in a whisper. “And I think now—now maybe I have right to intrude on your demons.”
Theo stiffened under her, his fingers suddenly digging into her back. “Demons?”
Violet lifted her head from his shoulder, pulling away. Cold snaked between the heat of their bodies, but there was nothing for it. She had dipped into this daunting well of the past and was not about to turn away from it now.
Her fingertips went lightly onto his chest, pointedly tracing a long, curved scar. What had torn his skin, she couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to imagine. Yet she realized the need in the moment. She needed to ask. And he needed to tell her.
“I need to know something, Theo. Anything—something—of you that you do not tell me. What happened to you in those years since we last knew each other? Give me something to make this real—something to trust. Something real of you. Something that makes me believe you won’t disappear on me.”
“Disappear on you?” His eyebrow cocked as the hard line of his jaw softened. He lifted his hand, tucking back a lock of hair that had fallen along her face. “You say you trust me, Vee, but is that a lie?”
“No—I do trust you.” She looked to the side, staring at the smooth curve of the top bar on the back of the bench. “But this is where I lose myself, Theo. I trade this—passion, feeling—for rational thought. I have been an idiot before. I have been humiliated before.”
“Your husband?”
She nodded, not able to look at him.
He reached to the left, grabbing her robe from the bench and then setting it about her shoulders, tugging the sides of it forward to ward off the growing gap of cold between them. “He is why you don’t trust in my intentions, even in this moment?”
Her look slid to meet his blue eyes. She nodded.
His voice dropped to a growl. “What in the hell did he do to you, Vee?”
She took a deep breath, expelling it after a long moment. “Aside from spending every last coin of my inheritance and leaving me in a heaping mound of debt—all of it, without my knowledge?”
His arms slipped under the fabric of the robe and around the sides of her, pulling her closer to his body. “There is more?”
Before he could flatten her against his bare torso, she curled forward to rest her forehead on the dip along his breastbone. Hiding. She couldn’t tell him this to his face. Couldn’t watch the pity form in his eyes. Couldn’t bear to see him think her a fool.
But he had right to know—she couldn’t expect him to trust her with his past if she wasn’t willing to do the same.
She inhaled, buoying her words as her fingers folded into tight fists resting on his abdomen. “Malcolm told me he loved me every single night he was in residence at Vandestile Manor with me. He would take me to
bed and make me feel it. And because he did that—because my body would feel it, I trusted him. I was blind to things I should not have been. Blind to lies. I believed him when he said I was the only woman he would ever desire. The only woman that knew who he truly was. The only woman that could please him. The only woman that would ever hold his heart. I believed all of it—never questioning the money, never questioning his love, never questioning his long disappearances. Then he died and within days the creditors came pounding on my door. Two weeks later, his mistresses appeared at Vandestile Manor—three of them—together, a band of vicious malkins, demanding I settle his debts with them as well. In my home. His mistresses.”
“Bastard.” The muscles in Theo’s stomach clenched, hard rocks beneath her fists.
“I am not stupid. I know how common mistresses are amongst the ton. But that wasn’t us. It couldn’t happen to me. My life was perfect and my husband loved me and only me.” Her head shook against his chest. “He had told each one of them he loved her. They told me that—told me to my face. And I knew they were telling the truth—I could see myself in each one of them. That was when I realized he never loved any of us. I was just the unfortunate one that was fool enough to believe him—a humiliation like no other.”
“Double the bastard.”
“That—listening to those women—that was when true devastation fell upon me. Everything I ever believed of my life was a lie.” Her fingers uncurled, stretching to flatten along the hard lines of Theo’s stomach, needing to hold onto the stability of him to ground herself. “Those—those were dark days—that was when Adalia found me.”
“What he did, his lies—that was his failure as a man, Vee. That failure is not yours.”
“But I believed him.” She kept her face hidden, burrowed into his chest. “It was so easy to believe him—to want to believe him. To never question. To shut my eyes. As long as I was satisfied and happy and I heard the right words, I believed in his carefully constructed world of deceit. That is what he gave me as a husband—a sinfully wonderful life wrapped in lies. But he never gave me more than that. Nothing of himself. Nothing real. I knew nothing of him but his lies.” She paused with a deep sigh. “And that is how I lose myself. How I lost myself. I am incapable of finding ballast enough to recognize truth from deception.”
Of Sin & Sanctuary: A Revelry’s Tempest Novel Page 12
