The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie(50)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Violet could think of only one thing to do. She shoved his hands from her shoulders, slammed her arms around him, closed her fingers in his hair, and yanked him down to frantically kiss his lips.

Chapter 16

The force of Violet’s kiss, the small pain of her tug on Daniel’s hair, made everything go foggy for him. Her mouth was hard on his, her tongue scraping inside him. Daniel opened his lips for her and tasted her desperation.

Violet’s hands scrabbled to open his frock coat, his waistcoat. She pulled on the buttons of Daniel’s shirt until a few ripped away, then she grabbed the waistband of his kilt.

Daniel broke the kiss and caught her seeking hands as one snaked down to cup him through the plaid wool. Violet’s eyes held need, but also fear, the same fear she’d shown in London the moment before she’d reached for the deadly vase.

“Love,” Daniel said. “Slow down a little. Let me savor you.”

“I can’t.” Violet yanked her hands out of his grip and seized his shoulders, dragging him against her. “I can’t go slowly. I can’t.” She kissed his lips, his chin, the rough stubble of whiskers. “Please, Daniel.”

Daniel gently but firmly held her back. Violet looked up at him with wild blue eyes in a face pale behind the dark powder.

“Lass, I’m hungry for you too. Believe me, I am. But I’m not going to fall on ye and devour you. Much as I’d like to. I want to get to know you.” His grip softened, and he drew one finger across her cheek. “I want to know all of you, Vi, my sweet South London Sassenach.”

“I can’t.” Violet grabbed his shirt, jerking it apart, the remaining buttons tinkling to the floor. “I need to do this. I need to.”

“Violet.” Daniel’s voice went stern. He seized her wrists to still her wild clawing. “Stop this.”

“I can’t. Why should a man be able to rip into a woman . . .” She trailed off as the fear welled up, spilling tears from her eyes. “I can’t.” Her sobs came up, heaves that shook her chest. “I can’t. It’s not fair.”

“Vi.”

Violet jerked out of his grasp, spun away, and ended up sitting on the window seat. She clasped her arms over her belly and rocked back and forth.

“I can’t have you,” she said. “I can’t . . . have . . . you.”

The room undulated under Violet’s feet, the window seat like a rock in a rushing tide. Her breath was coming too fast, but she could find no air. Violet heard the sobs in her throat and knew she was going to pieces, but she couldn’t stop it.

The scent of whiskey brushed her nose, and something cool and metallic touched her lips. Burning liquid poured into her mouth.

Violet gasped, started to cough, then swallowed hard. The whiskey slid down like a river of fire. The next gasp let in air, and Violet could breathe again.

Daniel sat down next to her on the window seat, his hard thigh against hers. He kept the flask at her mouth, waiting until she drank a little more before he took the flask away.

Violet coughed again, pressing her fingers to her wet lips. She had no idea where her handkerchief had got to.

Daniel’s strong arm wrapped around her shoulders, his warm hand rubbed her arm. “There now,” he said, voice low and soothing. “It’s all right.”

Jacobi used to hold her thus, when she was ten years old and scared. He’d given her comfort—and then he’d taken it all away. After that, Violet had never known comfort again.

Until now. Daniel was strength beside her, his warmth touching where she was so cold.

“Someone hurt you, didn’t they, love?” he said, his voice a soothing rumble. “I asked you that before. I’m thinking someone pushed you against a wall and forced you. They must have done.”

Violet nodded. She didn’t wonder how Daniel knew. He was good at reading people, almost as good as Violet was.

“You’re going to tell me all about it,” Daniel said. No question, no asking her.

“I can’t.” Shame, misery, and pure rage clogged Violet’s heart, stopping her words.

“I want to know, sweetheart,” he said. “I want to know what we’re fighting.”

What we’re fighting. As though she and Daniel were in this together.

She’d never told anyone except the Parisian courtesan Lady Amber, and the woman had guessed most of it. Violet had trained herself so well not to speak of it that she couldn’t think in words, only in images, sounds, impressions of pain.

Daniel caressed her shoulder. “Let me start. How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Oh, love.” Daniel brushed his lips to her hair. “Just a child.”

“Girls marry at sixteen.”

“Don’t justify it. Tell me. Who was he?”

“Jacobi.” The word slipped out before she could stop it. She hadn’t meant to say it, because it wasn’t true, but then again, it was.

“Jacobi,” Daniel said, steel in his voice. “And who is he?”

“He didn’t . . .” Violet swallowed, tasting the whiskey bitter in her throat. “It wasn’t him. Jacobi taught me everything I know. I met him in Paris, when my mother was first starting to understand her clairvoyance. He recognized that I had a gift for figuring out what people wanted . . . what they needed. I was ten. He taught me all the tricks, how to give them a show, an experience they’d never forget. I wanted . . . I pretended . . . that he was my father.”

“And he took advantage of that?”

Violet chanced a glance up at him. Daniel’s eyes held a hardness she’d not seen in him before. His ancestors, she thought dimly, had been brutal barbarians, killing each other in bloodbaths for pieces of rocky land in the Scottish Highlands. Violet had done research on Daniel and the Mackenzies—they went back for centuries, to a man called Old Dan, who’d been granted the Scottish dukedom in the fourteenth century.

That Daniel had likely carried a heavy claymore and been given the dukedom based on how many other men he’d cut to bits. Violet looked into Daniel’s eyes and saw that Highland barbarian looking out at her.

“No,” Violet said. “That is . . .” The red-bearded man had been nothing like Jacobi. Jacobi had dark hair, brown eyes that could be kind, and pale white fingers that shook if he didn’t drink enough wine.

“Then who? Give me a name.”

“I never knew his name. Jacobi owed him money, a great deal of money, which he couldn’t pay. So when the man came to collect, and threatened Jacobi . . .” Violet swallowed, her throat tight.