Coward. Liar.
She couldn’t wait. A little thing like rain wasn’t going to stop her from telling the truth and losing everything, once and for all.
Chapter Thirteen
SEBASTIAN WAS IN HIS GREENHOUSE trying to sort out the muddle of his feelings when the rain began to come down in earnest. It fell in great sheets out of nowhere, a fury of water. It obscured the view of his shrubbery, ten yards distant, washing the entire world in gray. The air chilled and the panes of glass on his greenhouse began to fog over.
He was searching for the umbrella he was almost certain he’d left among the hooks and jackets at the entry when the door opened.
He turned, expecting one of his servants, perhaps bearing the umbrella he needed—but it was Violet.
He saw her skin first. She was wearing a simple gown of gray muslin, the sort of thing she wore to work in her greenhouse. Calling it a gown was being overly generous. Now it was a bedraggled, dripping cloth, one that clung to Violet’s curves in ways that he suspected she really didn’t want him to see.
Violet swiped back a sopping braid and slammed the door shut behind her. The frame of the house rattled, shook by the wind. He couldn’t read the expression on her face. It might have been sad; it might have been defiant. A bead of water slid to the end of her nose, and her hands curled into fists at her side.
“Violet?” he asked. “Whatever is the matter?”
Her chin went up. Those fists at her side clenched into tight balls, and she came toward him, step by squelching step. She advanced on him as if he were an enemy force to be surrounded. She was a full half-foot shorter than he was, and yet somehow that martial light in her eyes made him want to back away.
She stopped an inch before him. “Violet,” he breathed.
“I have been concealing the truth from you.” She announced this in cold tones. At her side, her hand clenched, then unclenched. “You think that I have no physical desire for you.” Her eyes bored into his in sharp challenge.
Sebastian didn’t know what to think; his entire being seemed to catch fire, breathlessly awaiting the completion of that thought.
“You think I don’t want you.” She brushed more rain from her face. “You’re wrong. I can’t stop thinking about you. About what it would be like to…” She swallowed. “To hold you. And touch you.” Another pause. “You see how wrong you were? I desire you.”
Yes, some part of him was chanting. Yes, yes, yes.
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.”