“Why?”
He grumbled low in his chest as the tightness returned to his lungs. He breathed through it, kissing her neck, but she pushed back and met his gaze.
“Why do you want me to come to bed with you?”
“Because—”
Because I can’t waste a second of our time together. Because I think what happens here will change us both forever.
Because I’m falling in love with you.
He exhaled in a huff. “Because I thought ye wanted to. If I’m mistaken—”
“You’re not,” she interrupted. “I want to, but…” Her attention drifted to the swan. “I spent so long protecting my own heart, I haven’t paid attention to yours.”
His chest split open, the bands around his lungs breaking free and air rushing in, pinpoints of pain like the quick inhale of wintry air. “Violet, I dinnae understand this… this feeling between us.”
Her palm cupped his cheek and he leaned into it, his other hand tugging her close by the waist. She was so damn warm, so soft and fragile. He’d break her if he wasn’t careful.
“I don’t understand either,” she whispered. “And you didn’t answer my question. Why am I here?”
He spared little time in his life for existential questions; Callum embraced facts and logic, what could be proven and understood through experimentation and design.
Nothing explained the electricity that sparked in the air between them, the witchcraft that drew every secret from his lips in her presence, how the world became vibrant with color and sound simply because she existed in it.
Why was she here? Because he couldn’t be apart from her, and when he left, when he boarded the boat that would take him half a world away, his soul would remain in England with her.
Fortunately, he had no need for such sentimentalities where he was going. What he shared with Violet had the potential to wreck him beyond repair, and he couldn’t save his business, protect his cousin, with a broken heart. She deserved someone who would give all of himself, and too many pieces of Callum were promised elsewhere.
“Ye’re here because ye want to be. Because ye havenae stopped thinking about what happened in the carriage, aye?”
Her eyes darkened, the whisky brown blazing. “I haven’t. Have you?”
“No. I keep thinking of the sounds ye make when ye come. Fucking beautiful.”
She shuddered in his arms as his hand drifted down her back, palmed her bottom and pulled her closer, his swollen cock trapped between them. The corner of her mouth lifted. “You were a sight yourself.”
The smile was familiar but left him unsettled as he bent down to catch her lips with his, teasing with his tongue and teeth until she was breathless, liquid in his arms. She was closing herself off, keeping her concerns shut tight, protected from his invasion. He wanted to strip her down, bare her skin and her thoughts, leave her open to him, body and mind. But how could he demand such a thing from her when he wouldn’t do the same himself?
“Take yer clothes off.” His words scratched his throat as though they protested his retreat into his baser nature, a distraction from how frightened and overwhelmed he was.
Her smirk returned. “You first.”
His shirt was off in seconds, but his hands stilled as he watched her fingers release the buttons of her shirtwaist, revealing the alabaster skin beneath inch by inch. He’d seen her nearly bare before, but this seemed infinitely more personal, even as they raced to shed their clothing.
He was down to just his trousers when she removed her chemise, and his restraint ran out. She made an adorable noise, almost a squeak of surprise, when he lifted and carried her to his bed, laying her down and climbing over her until she was bracketed beneath him. “I’m in your bed,” she breathed, a flush crawling over her cheeks. “Are you pleased now?”
“Far from it.” He wanted to kiss every inch of exposed flesh, memorize her, mark and claim her so she’d never forget him, wouldn’t need a silly glass swan to think of him.
His mouth blazed a trail down her neck, pulling one taut nipple between his lips, then the other. She arched into his touch, tugged his hair as she cried out. There was nothing passive about his Violet, as he’d suspected, and he loved it,loved—
He paused, letting his forehead drop to the space between her breasts as he breathed, fought to fill his lungs.
“Callum?” She stroked his hair, shifted to see his face, but he pressed his lips to the side of her breast, then the underside. Pleasure, heat, and desire would distract her, distracthimfrom the knowledge that had become undeniable.
“Watch me make ye come,” he ground out, the thickness in his throat making his voice rougher than intended. But her gaze intensified, heated as her chest rose and fell more rapidly, the duskypink peaks of her nipples stark against the creamy swells of her breasts.
He nuzzled the coarse curls guarding her sex, breathing her in, flooding his senses with her. His arousal grew stronger, the aching need pushing out his fear of losing her, the separation racing inexorably towards them.
