“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, “This is making love, Amelia.”
“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.”
“Maria.”
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 this,” she gestured between them, “cannot be between us.”
“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-”
His hand cupped the weight of her breast, then moist heat surrounded her nipple through her chemise. Her back bowed upward in startled pleasure and her eyes flew open.
Christopher sat up again and shrugged out of his heavy silk coat. “Tell me. Before I move on to more persuasive forms of coercion.”
“I am a woman grown, but you make me feel like an adolescent,” she confessed, experiencing a riot of emotions such as a girl of Amelia’s age would-frightened but curious, anxious but eager. Her stomach fluttered in anticipation, although she knew well what was about to happen.
This time would be different, she knew. Beyond her experience.
A dark golden brow arched as his fingers moved to the ivory buttons of his waistcoat. “My first sexual encounter was against a wall in a filthy alley. She was a decade older than I, and an accomplished whore. I pretended to the others that I was highly knowledgeable in such matters, but she knew and took it upon herself to instruct me. She caught my hand, led me outside, and lifted her skirts. I was determined to hold to the lie, of course, so I rode her hard and well, and didn’t stop until every one of the men I wished to impress had heard her coming.”
Although his voice was light, she heard something beneath it that touched her deeply. Who was this man? How did he become the lover undressing in her bedroom? A man who would come to her, as she had gone to him, attempting to save a relationship that had nowhere to go?
Christopher stood and divested himself of the waistcoat, then quickly followed it with his shirtsleeves, breeches, stockings, and heels. Gloriously naked, he crawled onto the bed next to her. He rolled her into his side, arranging her into a similar position as the last time. Once she was properly situated, he sighed with deep pleasure.
Her hand over his heart, Maria looked out the window through her sheers and appreciated how, for the moment, she felt cocooned from the world at large.
“So tell me,” he murmured, his lips in her hair, “what do you mean when you say you feel as an adolescent would?”
If we cannot discuss the present, that leaves us with only our pasts.
“Dayton was many years older than I,” she said, her breath gusting through the light matting of golden brown hairs on his chest.
“I had heard that.”
“He was very much in love with the first Lady Dayton. But even had he not been, I think he would have found my age off-putting regardless.”
“Oh?”
Maria felt the expectation and curiosity within the tension of Christopher’s frame. “But I was young and curious, and-”
“Hot blooded,” he supplied with an affectionate kiss to the crown of her head, which she returned with one pressed to a hard brown nipple. “Do not attempt to distract me,” he admonished. “You will finish your tale first.”
“Dayton noted my growing preoccupation with ogling young men and took me aside. He asked if there was one of the servants in particular I found most appealing.”
“You told him?” Christopher tilted her chin up to reveal his raised brows.
“Not immediately. I was too embarrassed.” And she still was, if the heat she felt spreading across her cheeks was any indication.
“How lovely you are when you blush,” he murmured.
“Don’t tease, or I will not be able to finish.”
“I’m not teasing.”
“Christopher!”
He smiled, his eyes sparkling, making him look younger. Not adolescent, by any means. A man who had seen and done the things Christopher St. John had would never be able to recapture any hint of innocence, but the transformation of his features amazed her and affected her deeply. She had wrought this change in him.