To Have and to Hoax(79)
Her head fell back on the pillows behind her and she slid her hands into his hair once more, keeping him cradled against her as he kissed and sucked. Violet felt as though she were on fire, the blood in her veins racing with a feverish heat. She gave a wanton arch of her hips against him, once, twice. He groaned in response and lifted his head, his eyes blazing, and the sight of him there, with his hair disheveled and his cheeks slightly flushed, his chin resting in the hollow between her bare breasts, was so intoxicating that Violet felt as though she might spontaneously combust.
The first year of their marriage had been one of love and lust, of desire, of a need and hunger that she had not previously known existed. And yet, nothing—nothing—could have prepared her for what she felt at this moment.
Had it been it simple deprivation? she wondered with the small part of her mind that was still capable of rational thought. Had four years of abstinence been enough to prompt this reaction? Yet she could not imagine feeling this desperate, frenzied desire for any man other than her husband. It was something specific to them, to Violet and James and Violet-and-James, impossible to define but here, crackling between them.
“I need you,” she said, barely recognizing the throaty sound of her own voice, so much deeper than its normal register. “Now. Here.”
“Are you certain?” he asked, even as his hand began a steady, sneaky slide up her bare calf under the voluminous skirts of her gown. In that moment, when he asked that question, even as Violet could feel the strength of his need pressed against her own body, she knew, without a doubt, how much she loved this man.
She nodded once by way of confirmation, and it was the only signal he needed, his hand continuing its journey up, up, over her knee and onto the silken skin of her thigh, moving ever closer to where she so desperately wished him to touch. He paused for a moment, as if sensing her own urgency and determined to thwart it, his thumb stroking a rough circle into the skin of her inner thigh.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked innocently, a wicked grin curving at his lips even as his thumb continued its movements—so close and yet still so frustratingly far from where she wanted it.
“I might enjoy myself a bit more,” she said a bit unsteadily, “if you would get to where you were going.” She leaned forward then and placed a kiss at the base of his throat, then used her tongue to trace a slow path upward. A groan from James was her reward, and she finished her journey with a gentle kiss on his chin, leaning back to smile smugly at him.
“You do like to win, don’t you?” he asked, but before she could answer his fingers touched her slick folds, and she fell back against the window seat with a moan that she just barely managed to stifle against the back of her hand. Said hand was torn away from her mouth a moment later and replaced by James’s lips, kissing her with a frenzy that matched the rough movements of his hand below. His tongue slid into her mouth just as he slipped a single finger inside her, and Violet whimpered against his lips, her hands rising to clutch at his shoulders.
“James,” she gasped against his mouth as his thumb rubbed a particularly delicate spot. She shoved her hands under his coat, pushing it from his shoulders, and James pulled back to shrug it off. Violet tugged his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, her fingers greedy for the feeling of his bare skin. She slipped her hands up under the fabric of his shirt, moving them over the muscled expanse of his abdomen before sliding them around to clutch once more at his strong back. He leaned forward and placed a series of kisses against her neck, while his fingers resumed their distracting rhythm beneath her skirts.
“Enough,” she said, and reached forward to fumble with the placket of his breeches. He sucked in a breath as her fingers brushed against him, but a moment later the buttons were undone and he was spreading her legs, hooking them up and over his hips.
“Are you—”
“Don’t ask me if I’m certain,” she said, reaching up to twine her arms around his neck. She pressed her forehead against his, their faces so close together that all she could see was the intense green of his gaze burning into her own. “I am.”
This was all the confirmation he needed, and with a flex of his hips he slid into her, the sensation enough to make Violet’s back arch and another helpless moan escape from her lips.
“God . . . Violet . . .” he panted, then withdrew before sliding forward again with a powerful thrust. Violet buried her face in his neck, her arms still wrapped tightly around him, her lips sliding over his skin without much finesse or purpose.
He continued to thrust, her hips rising to meet his, and it was just like every time they had ever done this before—and yet somehow different, and better, and entirely new. If their kiss had been a conversation, then this was something else entirely—a bond that went beyond words, beyond thought. The world outside the window seat shrank and vanished, until Violet couldn’t remember her anger, her hurt, her loneliness—she could barely remember her own name. All she could focus on was the feeling of James moving inside her, the delicious friction that accompanied every move he made, the warmth of his hand at her breast, his face buried in her hair, his lips forming unintelligible syllables against her scalp.
For the first time in a fortnight, Violet didn’t care about revenge, about teaching anyone a lesson, about winning. She only cared about James’s hips flexing against her own, and her desire for him to never stop.