Page 63 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
Her hands went to his biceps and trailed downward, tracing the tendons and muscles of his forearms through his shirt as she gave a self-satisfied little smile.
“Do you want to know whatI’vebeen thinking about?” she asked then, her expression conniving as she watched the way his eyes grew hooded at her touch. She mapped the line of his shoulder, then ventured down across the plane of his chest. Touching him like this was even better than stolen looks and late-night imaginings, she decided.
“If it’s anything to do with this, then yes, desperately.”
“I could tell you.” She teased him lightly with her fingers, one hand finding his belt. “Or I could show you.”
The sound he made then could only be described as a growl. “Show me,” he demanded, squeezing with the hand he’d wound into her hair, and there was the bossy apothecary she wanted, the one who more and more filled her thoughts and featured in the hazy, pleasure-filled fantasies she had begun to allow herself at night before slipping into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
She made short work of the buttons at his waist, and he let go of her long enough to help slip the fabric over his hips, stepping out of his trousers and underthings until he stood before her, lips swollen, hair a mess, in nothing but a shirt and an unbuttoned waistcoat that had seen better days. He was beautiful, and Violet couldn’t take her eyes off of him.
“This too,” she said finally, her hands sliding up his arms to the collar of his shirt, where she began to undo his buttons. He reached for her as well, unlacing the top of her blouse.
“Fair is only fair,” he said, and she laughed as they shrugged out of their shirts.
Nathaniel’s hands dropped to her waist, quickly skimming over her hips and to the backs of her thighs. He pinched the fabric of her trousers playfully and said, “These will have to go as well, you know.”
She laughed again and repeated his words, shimmying out of the rest of her clothes. “Fair is only fair.” Then he lifted her to thesurface of her worktable, right there in the spilled dirt, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him closer to her until she could feel him everywhere.
To her surprise, he froze, extricating himself from her. “Hold that thought for precisely one moment,” he said urgently as he dashed across the greenhouse and pulled open a drawer in his worktable, riffling through the contents until he procured a slim silver bracelet and slipped it onto his wrist. He returned as quickly as he had promised and drew her legs around his hips once more.
“It’s infused with a contraceptive solution,” he said with a self-conscious smile, showing her the bracelet. “I can get you one too if you like, but they work for either partner.”
“Did you invent this?” Violet caught his hand in hers, gaping at it as he nodded curtly. “Nathaniel, that’s marvelous. You’ll have to sell them in the—”
He cut her off with a hungry kiss that she suspected had as much to do with embarrassment as it did passion. “You can tell me all about how clever I am later, how does that sound?”
Entirely perfect was how it sounded. She smirked. “Impatient, are you?”
“Little witch, you’ve no idea,” he rasped against the skin of her throat, drawing a delighted laugh from her.
This, now, was entirely new to Violet. She had never laughed so much during sex. Playfulness and fun, so closely interwoven with pleasure that they became one and the same. The tension between them was as tightly wound as ever, but now instead of caustic banter in chalked messages, they exchanged touches with fingers and mouths and tongues, counting each other’s shivers and gasps like points in a game that was all their own. She had never wanted so badly to win. She had never wanted so badly, full stop.
She let out a moan as he cupped her breasts, his thumbscircling over her sensitive flesh. “You’ve been hiding these under all those oversized shirts of yours? All this time?” His voice was mildly scolding as he dipped his head to appreciate them further.
“You’re one to talk,” she teased on a gasp, running her hands over his forearms like she’d been wanting to do for weeks. “Besides, a woman’s allowed some secrets.” He peppered her with biting kisses that had her grasping at his shoulders to ground herself.
“I want to know all your secrets.”
He sensed the change in her, lifting his head until they were eye to eye once more. He cradled her jaw, thumb brushing the jagged scar that reminded Violet every time she looked in the mirror of the dangers of trusting someone.
No more, she decided.
“I want you to know my secrets too, I think,” she told him, struggling to keep her voice steady. She wanted to take him at his word. She wanted to trust that he wouldn’t feel differently about her if he knew she was the Thornwitch. But this version of Nathaniel, the one who spoke to her like this and held her like this, was still too new. There would be a time and a place to tell him, she decided then and there. Her secret would not stay a secret for much longer, or it would salt their soil before they ever had a chance to see what could grow between them. But that time and place was not now. Not here. She couldn’t bear it if he stopped looking at her the way he was now.
So she shoved away the guilt and pressed her cheek to his, delighting in the slow rasp of his stubble on her face as she said low in his ear, “But we’ve got more important things to be doing right now, haven’t we?”
With one hand, she reached between them, wrapping her fingers around him and stroking, guiding him toward her.
“Much more important,” he agreed, leaning into her touch.
He kissed the edge of her mouth where her scar pulled at her lips and kept his eyes on her as he entered her, making Violet feel once again exposed. She forced herself to look right back as their breaths grew staggered and they began to move. The table beneath them rocked and creaked until Violet used her magic to strengthen its legs.
“Clever, clever woman,” said Nathaniel, breathless.
“Don’t you dare stop,” she responded before he could inspect her handiwork.
“Impatient, are you?”
