He set his mouth against her sex, and she stopped. “Sebastian. Oh, God. I’m not sure…”
“Tell me if you want me to stop. And don’t worry. There’s no such thing as juvenile. Tell me.” His tongue did something she couldn’t quite comprehend—something fabulous, something that radiated from her clitoris outward in waves.
She let out a gasp. “Sebastian.”
“Go on,” he said, “and I’ll keep going.”
“It’s not about…sex. Every time I started to think of intercourse, I’d make myself stop.” He kept going. God, he kept going. She didn’t know what he was doing, how he was doing it. His thumb pressed against her; his lips spread her wide, and his tongue—oh, God, it felt like his tongue was everywhere, coaxing her desire from her.
“It wasn’t even about kissing,” she confessed. “Or about being touched.”
He was using two hands now, spreading her wide, his mouth hungry against her sex.
“And it was actually something that happened. So. A memory, more than a fantasy.”
He was going to think her so weak and insipid. But, oh, God. He slid a finger inside her. It had been so, so long since she’d let herself think about this. She could feel herself freezing, could feel every fear, every worry flooding back to her.
His mouth was still on her, hot and warm, but he murmured. “Don’t stop. Tell me.”
“It was a few years after my husband passed away. Before that…I don’t think I could have mustered up desire, not if an entire herd of rakes had descended upon me, intent on seduction. You and I had been talking. And…I forget what we were talking about.”
He was relentless. His tongue was on her again, seeking out that nub of pleasure. Every stroke was sending shivers radiating out and yet concentrating on that one point.
“But I said I was a freak. And you said—”
“‘No, Violet,’” he quoted, “‘You’re brilliant. And I wish everyone could know.’”
And then he was doing something more—his mouth came down hard on her. Pleasure swept up her, hard to push aside.
“There,” she said. “That’s it. That’s the thing that makes me shiver with desire, the one I could never push away. It’s the thought that maybe, maybe I will tell one person and they won’t shrink away from me.”
He didn’t let up.
“It took me years to figure out that it was true.” Her breath was coming in gasps; each phrase slid out between jolts of pleasure. “That I’d told that one person. And that all those years, he’d been telling me over and over and over—”
Every cell in her body seemed to explode and shiver. It swept through her, hard and powerful. He didn’t relent; his fingers inside her stretched her, expanding the moment; his mouth wrested waves of pleasure from her. She screwed her eyes shut and let the orgasm wash through her, scouring everything from her. When it passed, she lay on her back, shivering. Waiting for him to take advantage of the moment. Waiting for him to come on top of her and have his way with her while she was too weak-willed to say no.
But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
It was Sebastian. He would never hurt her. She’d known it all these years; she understood it now, understood it with a clarity that she’d never until now.
“Thank you,” he said gravely, extending his hand to her. She took it, and he pulled himself up to curl beside her. His arm slid around her with an easy affection. He nuzzled her neck.
“I needed that,” he breathed.
He didn’t say a word about his brother. She didn’t say one about her mother.
“That’s the thing,” Sebastian said. “Tomorrow—we can always make it better. Whatever happens, we can make it better. I don’t know what anyone will think or what they will say, but so long as we’re together, it can’t be so awful.” His hands tangled around her. “I love you.”
I love you. It felt wrong to accept that, wrong to let him love her when everything could still go so wrong.
She shivered, but he pulled her close.
Chapter Twenty-one
EVEN THE MEMORY OF THAT PREVIOUS NIGHT could not keep Violet warm the next morning. Her mother’s house had always seemed dark. Today, it seemed positively gloomy. The curtains had been drawn halfway to keep out the worst of the summer sun. The dark furniture absorbed whatever light had been left. It made the whole house seem dank and humid, a forest shrouded in clouds.
Violet had a good idea of the sort of storm that she was about to set in motion. There were some things that her mother would never forgive.
Her mother—her ever-so-practical mother—the woman who had taken Violet under her wing when her father had sent her away and taught her the steps of knitting—was going to hate what Violet had to say.
Despite her worries, Violet squared her shoulders at the threshold of her mother’s parlor. She nodded to the footman, as if nothing were amiss, and swept into the room.