The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister #3)(53)

But it was all so horribly wrong—that fist at her side, as if she needed protection from him, that glare in her eyes. The way she threw out the word desire as if it were a knife, one she intended to use to disembowel him.

“I don’t understand.” He took a step back. “Something is wrong.”

Her eyes glittered.

“Shut up,” she said, and before he knew what she was doing, she launched herself at him. There was no other word for it. One minute, she was standing before him, bristling in bedraggled fury; the next, her hands were on his shoulders and her lips were seeking his.

He’d imagined kissing Violet so many times that at first, he let it happen. Her mouth was cold and her hands were shaking, but that—he could tell himself—was the rain, and it would stop once he warmed her. He didn’t want to ask what had changed. He didn’t care why she was kissing him. He’d loved her for years and she was here. He pulled her close and she didn’t shrink from him. Her kiss was all ferocity, no tenderness. Her tongue warred with his before they’d even had a chance to warm up to one another. And while he tried to hold her close, her hands slid all over him—down the lapels of his coat, tracing the buttons on his trousers.

Christ. She was undoing his trousers.

“Don’t wait, Sebastian,” she was saying. “Don’t wait. I need you now.”

His body needed no encouragement to come alive. He’d dreamed of holding her; now she was in his arms. The wet fabric clung to her curves—sweet, slight curves that he’d dreamed of exploring for so long. His c**k came to immediate attention as her fingers undid his fly.

“I need you,” she was saying. “I need you so much.”

He’d wanted her hands there—precisely there, pulling his smallclothes down roughly, rubbing up the side of his c**k without any shyness—for so damned long that he almost didn’t want to question his luck.

Her fingers were cold, but he was hot enough for the both of them. And if her hands shook, at least they were eager and bold in their exploration.

He didn’t want to ask questions, not now. Not with his erection coming to life in delighted surprise. But the bloody damned questions wouldn’t go away.

He pulled away from her. “Violet, what are you doing?”

She looked up at him. “Why are you stopping? You said…” She paused. “You said it was…” She swallowed, and there was another pause, a longer one. “You said it was not platonic.”

Oh, God. Those pauses. She wasn’t stopping to search for words. She was scarcely coherent.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, pushing forward in miserable defiance. “You’re a rake and you want me. You said you did.”

“First,” he said, trying to marshal his thoughts, “I’m a rake who uses sheaths, and I don’t keep any in my greenhouse. Second—”

“You don’t need sheaths,” she told him.

“I bloody well do. For one thing, it’s not just about preventing pregnancy. For another, you don’t know that you’re barren. It could have been your husband.”

She folded her arms around herself.

“And one last thing. I said I loved you. What part of that makes you think that I would slake my lusts on you, in complete indifference to the fact that—that—”

“That what?” she growled at him.

“That you’re on the verge of tears.”

“I am not.” She turned her head away, her shoulders shaking. “I am not on the verge of tears. I don’t cry.”

The damnable thing about that was she was right. He had never seen her cry before—not ever. Not at her father’s funeral. She hadn’t shed a tear in the last year of her marriage—she’d been pale and listless and wouldn’t say a word about what was happening to her, but she hadn’t cried. He pulled up his trousers and redid his buttons.

“Violet,” he said, “sweetheart. What on earth is the matter?”

She collapsed on the ground and put her face in her hands. She wasn’t crying; just shaking.

Thunder boomed around them. He couldn’t hear her over the booming rumble. The sound of rain striking the glass windows around them drummed out her words. He only knew she was distraught by the shake of her shoulders. He sat next to her and slid his arm around her sopping shoulders.

She never would have let him hold her if she’d been in her right mind. He put his arms around her, bringing her to him, trying to breathe some semblance of warmth into her cold flesh.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “Everything will be all right.”

She gasped into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll make it better. Whatever it is—I’ll make it better.”

She lifted her face to his. Her eyes were dark, so dark that he couldn’t see the bottom of them when he peered into her face. “I’m not barren,” she whispered.

It took him a moment to understand the words, spoken so quietly in the middle of the storm, and when he did, he couldn’t make sense of them.

“You said I didn’t know if I was barren. I know I’m not. I’ve been pregnant before. I think I became pregnant on my wedding night. I was so happy, so excited when the doctor told me.”