“I have. I do.” Breathing deep, Colin fought to control his temper. “You know I do.”
And it ached when he did; every woman he took beneath him was a temporary relief from his raging desires, but nothing more. His heart had belonged to Amelia since he was a boy. His love for her had grown and changed, matured, even as his body did. She was guileless and innocent, her love for him pure and sweet.
He rested his head against the horse’s neck. Amelia was everything to him, had been from the day Viscount Welton had hired his uncle. Pietro had agreed to work for far lower wages than other coachmen. It was the reason he had kept his job all these years rather than being replaced often, as the governesses were.
Colin would never forget the way Amelia had run up to him with that bright, open-hearted smile and placed a dirty hand in his.
“Play with me,” she’d said.
Having come from a large band with many children, he had been afraid of loneliness. But Amelia had been a dozen playmates in one. Blessed with an adventurous spirit, she had been willing to learn all of the games he knew and then she’d set her mind to besting him at every one.
Over the years he’d come to appreciate her with a man’s awareness enhanced by a joyous history of friendship and true companionship. He had grown into love with her, not fallen, his affection rooted deeply in the past. Perhaps Amelia’s was, too, but how could he know for certain? He had experience with other females. Amelia had only him. Her feelings could change as she gained understanding of her choices. His never would. He would love her always.
Colin exhaled wearily. Regardless, even if she felt the same, he could never have her.
“Ah, boy,” his uncle said, placing a large hand on his shoulder. “If you love her, leave her be. She has the world at her feet. Don’t take that from her.”
“I’m trying not to,” he said hoarsely. “I’m trying.”
Christopher sat in a wingback in his sitting room and stared into the glass in his hand. He was not quite certain what it was that he was feeling. It was rather the way he had felt when he’d overheard Eddington and Maria in Brighton, only now the tightening in his chest was nearly unbearable. Inhaling and exhaling was a conscious task.
“You should return,” he said to Tim, his voice so low and raw, it startled him a moment. He scarcely recognized himself. He was not thinking, acting, or speaking like the man he had been before meeting Maria. “We do not want you to be missed.”
He thought wryly about Tim’s position in the Wintry Widow’s household. She was so confident of her inevitable success that she freely allowed a serpent in her midst.
“Aye.” Tim turned to go.
“If Eddington returns, I want to know the details of the exchange.”
“Of course. I won’t disappoint you again.”
Christopher nodded, his gaze still deep in his glass. “Thank you.”
He was vaguely aware of his bedroom door closing, but other than that, he was lost in thought. He prided himself on his ability to judge character and read people. He would not be alive today if he lacked that skill. Why then did he find it nearly impossible to convince himself that Maria felt no tenderness for him? The facts were there, clear and indisputable, yet in his heart he still believed in her.
Snorting, he lifted his glass to his lips and drained it. Therein lay his problem. His heart was directing him, and not his brain. Sadly, he loved her. That traitorous woman. His Jezebel, a seductress whose livelihood was dependent upon how many men she could lead to their rewards.
A knock came to the door, pulling him from his maudlin thoughts. “Come in,” he called out.
Next he knew, he was rising to his feet by sheer habit, his pulse leaping into a passionate, riotous pace at the sight of his lover returning.
How much time had passed? A glance at the mantel clock told him nearly two hours.
Turning his head, he caught her gaze, saw the glimmer of pure pleasure that said she felt similarly, then it was quickly masked by a seductive smile. She was hooded, the black cowl framing her delicately seductive beauty, with those big, dark eyes and pouty red lips.
Christopher took a deep breath, then walked toward her before circling behind her. He set his hands on her cloaked shoulders and breathed her in. Warm, luscious woman. “I missed you,” he murmured, reaching around her to the frogs at her throat.
“Will you always greet me dressed only in breeches?”
Always, as if there were a possibility of a future between them.
“Would you like me to?” He unclasped the cloak, gently lifted the hood from her head, and then allowed the entire weighty mass to puddle on the floor at their feet.
“I would prefer you naked,” she said.
“As I would you, a preference I will see to directly.” He began the task of undressing her, appreciating how much easier it was to accomplish when sober. His fingers moved nimbly, quickly freeing buttons and tapes.
“How was your day after I departed?” he asked.
“Lonely. I missed you, too.”
Christopher’s hands paused. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to calm the part of him that flared white hot at her words. In his mind, he relived the afternoon—the way she had loved him, the way she had opened to him. That startled, almost frightened look she’d had when she came for him. The way she shivered when he touched her and melted when he kissed her.
When they were in bed, they were stripped and bared to each other beyond mere clothing.
“I have delicacies to feed you,” he murmured, kissing the angry scar on her shoulder, “and flowers to woo you. I did not intend to start the evening in bed, but I find I cannot wait.”
His hands slipped into the gaping back of her gown and reached around to cup her breasts through her chemise. He found her nipples hard, and he tugged on them with his fingertips in exactly the way she liked.
Maria’s head fell back against his shoulder with a low moan.
“I love your breasts,” he growled, his lips to her ear. “Tonight I intend to suck on them until you come with my cock deep inside you. Remember how that felt? How tight you gripped me?” He rolled his hips. “My cock is hard with the mere remembrance of it.”
“Christopher.” There was something sad and plaintive in the way she said his name, and all around them hung a heavy air of melancholy.
Impatient to reach the heart of the matter, he released her to tear open the back of her gown, which sent tiny, cloth-covered buttons flying out to either side.
“You will leave me with nothing to wear,” she said, her breathlessness betraying her secret desire to be taken. He knew this, of course, and suspected that Quinn’s relatively easy acquiescence to her ending of their sexual relationship was the other man’s downfall. Perhaps if the Irishman had pursued Maria more doggedly, she would not be here in Christopher’s house now.
His impatience grew at the thought and he tore at her tapes and ties with even more ferocity. Her chemise rent with a loud ripping sound, and then Maria turned and was in his arms, her bare breasts pressed to his bare chest. He caught her up, taking the mouth she offered, lifting her feet from the floor.
Her tiny hands cupped his face; her soft, sweet lips worked frantically beneath his. Desperation, he could taste it and felt it in his own blood.
He nearly ran to the bed, so quick was his stride. He tossed her down and tore at his breeches.
“Spread your legs.”
Wariness passed over her features, and Christopher knew why. He was not affording her the chance to hide.
Stepping free of his lone garment, he joined her on the bed, his hands catching her knees and opening her wide. She struggled, but he gave her no quarter, pinning her hips so he could take her cunt with his mouth.
“No,” she cried out, her hands gripping his hair. “Not that way…”
Framing the ebony curls with his hands, Christopher parted her, exposing the soft pink skin and the hood that shielded her clitoris. With the pointed t
ip of his tongue, he rubbed it, teased it, coaxed it to come out and play. The moment it emerged, he wrapped his lips around the surrounding area and sucked gently. Maria moaned and arched upward, all the while begging him to cease, to fuck her with his cock, to give her time to regroup and be less vulnerable. She did not say the last, of course, but he knew it.
He also knew the moment she opened her eyes and saw the mirror above his bed, because she gasped and stiffened.
“Appreciate the view?” he purred before returning to his ministrations.
Maria stared up at the lewd reflection of Christopher’s golden head between her legs and was devastated by what she saw. Glassy eyed and flushed from head to hipbone, she looked nothing like the grim, determined woman she had seen in the mirror at home. The woman she saw now was lost to the pleasures bestowed by a man she craved with a deep-seated, almost innate hunger. A man who had sought her out with the express purpose of leading her to the gallows in his place.
She could forgive that, knowing she had come to him with a nefarious purpose. She understood how many individuals relied on his support for their livelihood and that they were likely his motivation for saving himself. He would not bother for his own sake.
She knew this because she understood him, the man she thought he was, the man who once had a brother he loved as much as she loved Amelia. But the fact remained that his motives might not have changed from their original purpose and the man between her legs might be a man who wanted her dead.
“Maria.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and felt him move. He pressed a kiss to her clitoris, then moved up to lie beside her.
“You are far from shy,” he murmured, “yet the sight of my making love to you has chilled your desire.” Cupping her hip, he rolled her into him so that the heat and hardness of his erection pressed into her belly. “Is it too intimate?”
Maria opened her eyes and studied him, noting both the soft affection in his deep blue eyes and the intensity of his perusal.
“Is it ‘making love’?” she queried in a small voice. “Or is this sex between two people who fit well together?”
“You tell me.”
They stared at one another, and she felt the questions between them like another body in the bed. “I wish I knew.”
“Let us find out together, then.” Lifting her thigh, he moved into place, the wide, smooth head of his cock slipping through the folds of her sex. “Take me inside you,” he rasped. “Let me in.”
Was it possible to learn a man’s character through sex?
“Tell me what happened to the witness who would have testified against you,” she whispered.
“Who wishes to know?” he rejoined.
Her breath caught, then grew more labored. “Christopher.”
Could he know? Was it possible? Surely, if he knew what she was about, he would not be touching her the way he was now.
“Let me inside you, Maria.” He nudged against her, pressing against the small slitted entrance to her body. “Make love to me, and I will give you the answers you seek.”
As she settled her leg over his hip and reached behind her to position him properly, her hand shook and her indrawn breath shuddered in her tight lungs. She circled his thickness with her fingers and altered the angle of his penetration. He slipped in a fraction, spreading her wide, making her neck arch in pleasure.
“More,” he murmured. “All the way inside you. As deep as I can go.”
She pressed down, filling herself with his heat and hardness, whimpering at how big he was and how much she enjoyed him.
Christopher caught her chin and turned her head to look upward. “Watch.”
Afraid to look, but helpless against the desire she had to see them together, Maria focused her lust-dazed vision and stared up at their reflection. His large, muscular body dwarfed hers, the top of her head was below his chin, the foot of her straightened leg ended at his midcalf. The skin of his torso and arms was tanned by the sun and seemed impossibly dark next to hers, which had rarely felt the direct kiss of sunlight. His golden hair was even paler when compared to her raven tresses. They were opposites on the exterior, yet inside they were the same.
They were perfect together.
“See?” he whispered, bringing her gaze up to meet his in their reflection. Together they watched as his cock disappeared inside her. Her lids grew heavy with the drugging pleasure of the slow glide, but she refused to close her eyes again. Christopher withdrew, his cock now slick and shiny with her cream, then his buttocks clenched and he sank into her again.
Her gaze lifted as he moved, her attention riveted by his gloriously perfect features, now flushed with lust. As he pumped into her again, unadulterated pleasure swept across his face, and when she looked at herself, she saw the same intensity.
“Now, tell me,” he whispered, in that deliciously raspy voice she adored. “Are we making love?”
She moaned as his hips buffeted hers in a perfect thrust.
“Tell me, Maria.” His gaze locked with hers in the mirror. “I am making love to you. Are you making love to me?” He pulled out and thrust again. Harder. Deeper. “Or is this nothing but sex?”
Could he fool her so well? Was he that expert at deception that he could fake this level of intimacy?
No matter how she tried to reconcile the information she had with the man in her arms, she couldn’t.
Maria wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his. It was then she felt the wetness of tears on her skin. Whether they were hers or his, she could not tell.
“It’s more than sex,” she whispered, watching the flare of something sweet and possessive cross his beloved features.
He crushed her against him and began to fuck her in earnest, his lean hips working his cock into her with expert precision. She took him in return, with similar fervor, her gaze locked on the deeply erotic sight of their straining, intertwined bodies and the rigid, swollen shaft that pumped into her so quickly it was scarcely more than a blur.
Her mouth opened on a silent cry, her body tensing in the grip of a powerful, devastating orgasm. He growled and stroked through her spasms, murmured sex words and reverent praise that prolonged her climax until she thought she would die of it. Only when she settled weakly in his embrace did he ride her to his own completion, his cock jerking hard, then spurting harder, filling her, flooding her with his seed.
Breathing erratically, he took her mouth, sharing the air in their lungs.
Making them one.
Chapter 20
Amelia woke to a hand held over her mouth. Scared beyond measure, she struggled against her assailant, her nails clawing at his wrist.
“Stop it!”
She stilled at the command, her eyes opening wide, her heart racing madly as her sleep-fuzzy brain came to awareness of Colin looming over her in the darkness.
“Listen to me,” he hissed, his gaze darting to the windows. “There are men outside. A dozen at least. I don’t know who they are, but they are not your father’s men.”
She yanked her head to the side to free her mouth. “What?”
“The horses woke me as the men walked by the stable.” Colin stepped back and yanked off her counterpane. “I snuck out the back and came round to fetch you.”
Embarrassed to be seen in only her night rail, Amelia yanked the covers back over her.
He yanked them off again. “Come on!” he said urgently.
“What are you talking about?” she asked in a furious whisper.
“Do you trust me?” Colin’s dark eyes glittered in the darkness.
“Of course.”
“Then do as I say, and ask questions later.”
She had no notion of what was happening, but she knew he wasn’t jesting. Sucking in a deep breath, she nodded and slipped from the bed. The room was lit only by the moonlight that entered though the window glass. The heavy length of her hair hung down her back in a thick, swinging braid and Colin caught it, rubbing it betwee
n his fingers.
“Put something on,” he said. “Quickly.”
Amelia hurried behind the screen in the corner and disrobed, then slipped the chemise and gown she had worn earlier over her head.
“Hurry!”
“I cannot close the back. I need my abigail.”
Colin’s hand thrust behind the screen and caught her elbow, tugging her from behind it so that he could drag her to the door.
“My feet are bare!”
“No time,” he muttered. Opening her bedroom door, he peered out into the hallway.
It was so dark, Amelia could barely see anything. But she heard male voices. “What is going—”
Moving with lightning speed, Colin spun and covered her mouth again, his head shaking violently.
Startled, she took a moment to understand. Then she nodded her agreement to say nothing.
He stepped out into the hallway with silent steps, her hand in his. Somehow, despite her shoeless state, the floorboard beneath her squeaked, when it hadn’t under Colin’s boots. He froze, as did she. Below them, the voices she had heard were also silent. It felt as if the house were holding its breath. Waiting.
Colin placed his finger to his lips, then he picked her up and hefted her over his shoulder. What followed was a blur. Suspended upside down, she was disoriented and unable to discern how he managed to carry her from her second floor bedroom to the lower floor. Then a shout was heard upstairs as she was discovered missing, and pounding feet thundered above them. Colin cursed and ran, jostling her so that her teeth ached and her braid whipped his legs so hard, she feared hurting him. Her arms wrapped around his lean hips and his pace picked up. They burst out the front door and down the steps.
More shouting. More running. Swords clashed and Miss Pool’s screams pierced the night.
“There she is!” someone shouted.
The ground rushed by beneath her.
“Over here!”
Benny’s voice was music to her ears. Colin altered direction. Lifting her head, she caught a glimpse of pursuers, and then more men intercepted them; some she recognized, others she didn’t. The new additions to the fray bought them precious time and soon she could not see anyone on their heels.