Page 62 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
Her hands roamed his waist, his back, pressing herself ever closer to the hard lines of muscle beneath his clothes. Nathaniel maneuvered them backward until her lower back was flush against the edge of her worktable, and she pressed closer still.
He tasted of mint and rosemary. As Violet kissed him, she was of a sudden mind to grow an herb garden, a constant reminder of him that would drive her wild every time she drew near. But there was no need when he was right here before her, his hands on her body and his tongue demanding of hers.
“You are all I have been able to think about,” he murmured against her lips. “The sound of your voice, the feel of your skin, the taste of your mouth…”
He hissed in pleasure as she slipped a hand between them, brushing her fingers over the fabric of his trousers.
“Violet.” He stilled.
“Mmm?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be very direct with me here. What is it you want?”
She pulled back just enough to look up at him through her lashes, and a spark of the Thornwitch buzzed through her just then, devilish, powerful, confident. She couldn’t tell Nathaniel who she really was, and that had started to eat away at her, but perhaps she could show him, just a little.
She smirked up at him. “I don’t want to go slow,” she said carefully, watching the way his throat bobbed and trying to judge his reaction. “Perhaps we should, but…I don’t want to be good right now.”
A matching smile began to form on his features. “You know, I rather think being good is overrated.”
Her heart swelled, and their lips met again. One of his legs parted hers, and she rocked against his thigh, delighting in the friction at her core, her hands winding around the back of his neck to tangle in his thick hair.
No, they weren’t beinggood, exactly, but Violet struggled to think of a time when she’d felt better than this.
Her head fell back when his teeth nipped at the exposed skin of her throat. “Oh, that is…” Violet’s words rode the low hiss of her breath like a leaf on the breeze, quickly losing track of their destination and fluttering aimlessly in the air.
He chuckled against her neck, and from this angle she could still see the quirk of his eyebrows as he asked, “Is that so?”
She moved against his leg again, satisfaction and heat curling together low in her belly, and greedily reached for the back of his head so his mouth could once again meet hers. “Shush.”
But he didn’t.
“I have imagined us a hundred different ways,” he admitted in a rough voice. His thumb traced the hills and valleys of her knuckles, lingering in a moment’s caress along each one and banishing the soreness in her hands to the furthest reaches of her mind.
“Have you?”
“Mmm.” A press of his lips to the corner of her mouth. “Here in the greenhouse, the other night in your kitchen…” His lips trailed up her jaw until his teeth nipped her earlobe, his whisper rough enough to make her shiver. “You have been endlessly distracting to my work of late.”
His words thrummed through Violet like a surge of electricity after a lightning strike. She was buzzing, she was galvanized, she was recklessly, splendidlyalive.She nudged the hollow of his collarbone with the tip of her nose, her hands roaming his arms. “And what, exactly, have you imagined?”
A growl of playful laughter escaped his throat, and his hand slipped between her thighs. Violet had never doubted for a moment that the alchemist would have talented fingers, and yet as he began to move against her, circling her sex through the fabric of her trousers, she gasped, still managing to be surprised.
“I’ve imaginedthis,” he said, low and rough in her ear. “You just like this, right here against this table, and touching you just like this, and hearing you make sounds just like—” He circled his fingers again, just so, and Violet moaned. “Yes,justlike that.”
Her laugh was breathy and strangled. She grasped his shoulders and threw her head back, eyes fluttering closed as he touched her. “And how does reality hold up to your fantasy?”
Nathaniel nipped at her earlobe again and pulled back until she looked him in the eyes. “Violet Thistlewaite, never doubt that you are a thousand times better than anything I have ever dared imagine for myself.”
She drew a shaky breath, unsure of what to say to that, and settled for grinding wantonly against his hand. Her hips jerked when, together, they found a rhythm that made her vision darken at the edges. Nathaniel’s mouth twisted into a smug grin. Violet clutched at his shoulders, pulling him in for another kiss so he could swallow the rather embarrassing cry she couldn’t contain.
“Whatever you do, don’t you dare stop,” she commanded against his lips.
“Sweetheart, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
In the past, Violet had sought her pleasure while in disguise, as well as from people who knew who she was and feared their own attraction to her. Before now, she’d have considered those dalliances satisfying. But here in the greenhouse, still fully clothed as she rode Nathaniel’s hand to chase her release, Violet had the sudden thought that all those times she’d been fumbling in search of something she could not name.
Until now.
When she came, it was with a cry that choked in her throat. Her hands flew behind her, grasping for purchase on her worktable, and she was dimly aware of knocking over a pot of soil. Violet blinked hard, her breath uneven, and found Nathaniel watching her with something like awe. She wondered what he was seeing when he looked at her. She wondered how much she had let her mask fall. How much further she could drop it before he saw all the parts of her she kept hidden.
