She held his gaze as he rocked into her hand, as her hips began rolling over his thighs, an answering ache twisting inside her.
He took his hand from her hip and slid it between her legs, grunting when he discovered the wetness there. She bucked against his palm involuntarily, the pleasure so acute it was blinding.
“Come with me, aye?” His gravelly voice was rougher than she’d ever heard it, as though his control had been shredded and he clung to the last vestiges of sense.
“Yes, please, Callum.” A cry fell from her lips as he slid one finger, then another, into her slick channel. The stretch was delicious, terrifying and wickedly pleasurable, and she gave herself over to the sensations volleying inside her, pushed higher by his grunts and moans.
Callum cried out and gripped tighter around her hand as his cock swelled, then erupted his release, spilling on her stomach and breasts. The sight was so carnal, so overwhelmingly erotic that her body shuddered with her orgasm, her core gripping his fingers, desperate to hold on to him, to make the pleasure last longer. Last forever.
Any sort of corporeal control drained from her muscles all at once, and she collapsed against his chest, her head settling in the space below his jaw. Callum seemed to have given up the fight as well, as his shoulders slumped and arms wrapped around her, engulfing her in his warmth.
She must have slipped into slumber, as she started when he spoke.
“We cannae stay here.”
Was she imagining regret in his voice? For what they did or at having to part ways? “Unless we want to be discovered.”
He tensed beneath her. “Is that what ye want?”
She hesitated, fighting through the post-almost-coital fog to find something sensible to say. “Not at all.”
The arms banded around her tightened. “I want to see ye again.”
She pressed a kiss to the side of his neck, felt his pulse under her lips, then pushed back to see his face, the twin blotches of pink staining his cheeks. “Then I need to return to my room. Perhaps clean up a bit.”
He grimaced, then gave her a soft smile, and she glimpsed the boy he had once been, or perhaps the man he could have been, had he not taken the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He pushed a rogue curl off her forehead. “Before I take ye back, can we make one thing clear between us?”
“Of course,” she breathed, oddly giddy.
One dark brow raised. “When ye said ye couldnae come again, how many more times did I make ye come?”
And that was how Violet discovered Callum was very, very ticklish.
Chapter 23
“This isn’t rain, mydear Violet, it’s merely mist.”
Violet gave her great aunt a long look before pulling the hood of her cloak over her head. “I appreciate your optimism—” she skittered to the side to avoid stepping into what was either a deep puddle or a portal to the underworld, “but this is most certainly rain.”
Margaret scoffed as her ever-loyal footman Barney pulled an umbrella from the carriage and opened it above the women, leaving himself subjected to the elements.
The angry Yorkshire sky was barely visible through the buildings of the Shambles, the timber-framed Tudor buildings leaning over the street as though stretching to touch each other. Rainwater ran in steady rivulets along the cobblestone streets, devoid of pedestrians in the late afternoon.
“Ah, this is the place,” Margaret declared as she ducked into a tidy shop, Biddle & Marks according to the sign hanging low over the threshold, its mullion-framed windows stuffed with hatsand neckties, ribbons and fripperies. “Bridget told me this would be just the place to get your gown taken in, and I can replace my gloves.”
“What happened to your gloves?”
“That bloody goose took after me. What’s his name, Carl?”
“Kevin, I believe.”
“Well,Kevinplucked the thing off my lap and took off running like a naughty puppy. Bridget found the entire matter hilarious.”
A bell tinkled as they crossed the threshold, and a man emerged from the back of the shop, lifting thick glasses from his face and popping them on a sleek gloss of silvery white hair. If this gentleman was the shop’s tailor, his sharply cut tweed suit and crimson waistcoat spoke of his skill. “Good afternoon, ladies, and welcome to Biddle and Marks. I’m Tobias Marks, proprietor. Can I help you find a new hat today?”
Violet opened her mouth to demur—after all, she’d need every penny of pin money to start her spinster life in Hampshire—but Margaret interrupted. “My niece needs to have her dress taken in. I’d also like to see your selection of gloves. A goose stole mine and I’ll need a replacement.”
