His other arm banded her waist. “You would send me away?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her hands fisted in his sweater. “Yes, I would.” Anything to avoid seeing him with another girl.
He nuzzled hard against her. “An earl…It must be Lord Ware. Damn him.”
“He is nice to me. He talks to me, smiles when he sees me. Today, he is going to give me my first kiss. And I’m-”
“No!” Colin pulled back, his irises swallowed by dilated pupils leaving deep black pools of torment. “He may have all the things that I never will, including you. But by God, he won’t take that from me.”
“What-?”
He took her mouth, stunning her so that she couldn’t move. Amelia could not understand what was happening, why he was acting this way, why he would approach her now, on
His head twisted, his lips fitting more fully over hers, his thumbs pressing gently into the hinges of her jaw and urging her mouth to open. She shivered violently, awash in heated longing, afraid she was dreaming or had otherwise lost her mind. Her mouth opened, and a whimper escaped as his tongue, soft like wet velvet, slipped inside.
Frightened, she stopped breathing, then he murmured to her, her darling Colin, his fingertips brushing across her cheekbones in a soothing caress.
“Let me,” he whispered. “Trust me.”
Amelia lifted to her toes, surging into him, her hands sliding into his silken locks. Unschooled, she could only follow his lead, allowing him to eat at her mouth gently, her tongue tentatively touching his.
He moaned, a sound filled with hunger and need, his hands cupping the back of her head and angling her better. The connection became deeper, her response more fervent. Tingles swept across her skin in a wave of goose bumps. In the pit of her stomach a sense of urgency grew, of recklessness and flaring hope.
One of his hands slipped, caressing the length of her back before cupping her buttock and urging her up and into his body. As she felt the hard ridge of his arousal, a deep ache blossomed low inside her.
“Amelia…sweet.” His lips drifted across her damp face, kissing away her tears. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
But he kept kissing her and kissing her and rolling his hips into her.
“I love you,” she gasped. “I’ve loved you so long-”
He cut her off with his lips over hers, his passion escalating, his hands roaming all over her back and arms. When she couldn’t breathe, she tore her lips away.
“Tell me you love me,” she begged, her chest heaving. “You must. Oh God, Colin…” She rubbed her tear- streaked face against his. “You’ve been so cruel, so mean.”
“I can’t have you. You shouldn’t want me. We can’t-”
Colin thrust away from her with a vicious curse. “You are too young for me to touch you like this.
Her arms wrapped around her middle, her entire body quaking as if she were cold instead of blistering hot. Her skin felt too tight, her lips swollen and throbbing. “But you do love me, don’t you?” she asked, her small voice shaky despite her efforts to be strong.
“Don’t ask me that.”
“Can you not grant me at least that much? If I cannot have you anyway, if you will never be mine, can’t you at least tell me that your heart belongs to me?”
He groaned. “I thought it was best if you hated me.” His head tilted up to the sky with his eyes squeezed shut. “I had hoped that if you did I would stop dreaming.”
“Dreaming of what?” She tossed aside caution and approached him, her fingers slipping beneath his sweater to caress the hard ridges of his abdomen.
He caught her wrist and glared down at her. “Don’t touch me.”
“Are they like my dreams?” she queried softly. “Where you kiss me as you did a moment ago and tell me you love me more than anything in the world?”
“No,” he growled. “They are not sweet and romantic and girlish. They are a man’s dreams, Amelia.”
“Such as what you were doing to that girl?” Her lower lip quivered and she bit down on it to hide the betraying movement. Her mind flooded with the painful memories, adding to the turmoil wrought by the unfamiliar cravings of her body and the pleading demands of her heart. “Do you dream about her, too?”
Colin caught her to him again. “Never.”
He kissed her, lighter in pressure and urgency than before, but no less passionate. Soft as a butterfly’s wings, they brushed back and forth across hers, his tongue dipping inside, then retreating. It was a reverent kiss, and her lonely heart soaked it up like the desert floor soaked rain.
Cupping her face in his hands, he breathed, “
“Tell me you don’t kiss her like this.” She cried softly, her nails digging into his back through his sweater.
“I don’t kiss anyone. I never have.” His forehead pressed against hers. “Only you. It’s only ever been you.”
The sound of her name spoken in Christopher’s raspy voice made Maria whimper with a mixture of need and fear. He heard the sound and pulled her closer, his lips moving urgently across hers.
She did not know how to handle the feelings he incited in her, the strange mixture of endless desire that went beyond the physical and wavering hope, as if something could come of this affair between them.
“I wanted you with me when I woke this morning,” he said, his arms strong around her.
She stared up into his austerely handsome features, noting that his skin was pale beneath his tan and his countenance as weary in appearance as hers. “I wanted to stay, but
“It was, perhaps, fortunate that you left. Otherwise, I might never have realized how it would feel to lose you completely.”
Lifting her hand, she pressed her fingertips to his lips, stemming the intimate confession. She winced as he caught her wrist and pressed an ardent kiss into her palm. What happened to the pirate she first met in the theater? Physically, the man before her looked the same, perhaps even a little worse for wear, but the eyes that stared back at her were far different. Though familiar. For a long moment, she stared at him, trying to place why she felt such a mad fluttering in her stomach. And then it came to her in a flash of frightening comprehension.
“What is it?” he asked, frowning with concern.
She looked away, her gaze darting around the room, trying to find something, some object that would ground her in reality.
Christopher caught her shoulders, preventing her from escape. “Tell me. By God, we have too many secrets between us. Too much left unsaid. It’s killing us.”
“There is no ‘us,’” she whispered, sucking in a fortifying breath only to find her senses inundated with the scents of bergamot soap and starch. The scent of Christopher.
“You know I wish that were true,” he said softly, his head lowering, his lips parting an instant before they touched hers. His hand slipped into the neckline of her chemise and cupped her bare breast. She gasped at the lancing heat that burned through her, and he took advantage, his tongue gliding deep.
Expert fingers found her hardened nipple and pinched it, rolled it, plucked at it until her knees weakened.
He caught her up then, lifting her feet from the floor and carrying her to the bed.
“How will we end this,” she asked, with her hot face pressed into his shoulder, “if we make love again?”
“That question requires reason to answer it,” he murmured, laying her down carefully. Leaning over her, his hands on either side of her hips, he gave her that slow seductive smile that she was helpless to resist. “But there is no reason to what is between us. There never has been.”
Maria was touched by his gentleness. Her heart began to race, and suddenly unable to look at the emotion in his eyes, she closed her own.
She felt the mattress dip as he sat beside her. His fingertip dipped into the hollow of her throat and then slid downward between her breasts. “Talk to me,” he urged.
“I’d rather-”
