Passion for Him

Chapter 15

Francois Depardue assumed a vaguely bored expression as he entered the inn in Bristol. He took the stairs to the guest rooms above and knocked on the appropriate door. A shout of permission for entry was heard from the interior, and he answered it by stepping inside.

“Well?” Cartland asked impatiently, glancing up from the maps he had spread across the small, round table.

It was with great effort that Francois bit back an angry retort. With every day that passed, he disliked the brash, arrogant Englishman more and more. He’d argued with and then begged his superiors to have Cartland held in custody until he could ascertain who was truly guilty of Leroux’s murder, but to no avail.

If he is lying, they said, he will be close at hand for you to eliminate.

They had insisted that Cartland join the search, and the Englishman had immediately assumed that he was in charge. He was an excellent tracker and even better killer, but those skills were tempered by his mistaken belief in his own superiority.

“It appears that Mitchell will be staying with Lord Ware. The manse is heavily guarded for some distance around. I would guess that is due to the presence of Christopher St. John.”

Cartland smiled. “The earl is likely concerned that Mitchell will flee like the coward he is before the challenge can be met.”

“So you say,” Francois said.

The Englishman’s features darkened. “I think the presence of Mademoiselle Rousseau has spoiled your temper.”

Lysette. Francois smiled at the thought of her. Once, she had been harmless, but he and his men had ensured that she would never be harmless, or innocent, again. Aside from his sincere desire to see justice brought to Leroux’s killer, his one pleasure in this miserable assignment was the thought of crossing paths with Lysette again.

His blood heated in anticipation. She would fight him, she always did, and she improved with every encounter. The harder she resisted him, the more he enjoyed it. Now that the Illuminés, on whose behalf she worked, had tasked her with ensuring either Cartland or Mitchell paid for Leroux’s death, he imagined his inevitable domination of her body would be that much sweeter.

Perhaps the Illuminés thought he would welcome their assistance, but he did not like being second-guessed, which was how he viewed their interference.

“Do you have any suggestions for how we should proceed?” Francois asked.

“We could possibly lure the bulk of the guards away, using me as bait. Then we can attack the manse at night and kill him.”

“But that will not tell me who is guilty, will it?”

Pushing to his feet, Cartland snapped, “I am obviously innocent, or they would not have sent me to find Mitchell!”

“Why, then, is Mademoiselle Rousseau here?” Francois smiled. “You think she is merely present to observe and support my efforts? Surely you are not so stupid. It was well planned to send you with me and Quinn with her. Nothing has been left to chance. You think your spy”-he gestured to the stocky man in the corner with a jerk of his chin-“gives you an advantage, but you are wrong.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Cartland’s face flushed.

Francois debated a moment, then shrugged. “Mitchell is dueling over a woman. Perhaps she is the key to his confession.”

The Englishman paled. “You think to take St. John’s sister-in-law? Are you insane?”

“Surely he cannot be as fearsome as is rumored,” Francois scoffed.

“You’ve no notion,” Cartland muttered. Then his features took on a mien of wily determination. “Then again…perhaps you are right.” He smiled smugly. “I will think of a way. Give me time.”

Francois shrugged, but inwardly he was making his own plans. “Fine. I will go eat downstairs. Either of you care to join me?”

“No. We both have work to do.”

“As you wish.”

Cartland watched Depardue leave with a narrowed glance.

“He is becoming more trouble than he is worth,” he muttered. “Since killing him myself is out of the question, we must find another way to hasten the man to his reward.”

“Send him to capture the girl, then,” Jacques replied easily. “Since it was his idea, he should not object.”

Grinning, Cartland considered the beauty of the plan. If Mitchell or St. John took care of Depardue for him, it would only strengthen his own protestations of innocence.

“Can you arrange for him to gain entry?”

“Mais oui.”

“Excellent. See to it.”

Amelia found Pietro leading a bridled horse from the nearby corral to the stable yard. For a long moment, she was struck dumb by the resemblance he bore to Colin. With her memories of her childhood love arrested in the past, she had not noticed before. Now that she had seen him as a man, the similarities were unavoidable and agonizing. Tears welled, and though she tried to blink them back, they were plentiful and blurred her vision. She wiped them angrily away.

“Miss Benbridge.” Pietro looked at her with commiseration in his dark eyes. “It hurts. I know.”

She nodded. “How are you faring?”

“I’m angry,” he admitted, “but grateful to have him back. If you still love the boy he was, perhaps you feel the same?”

“I am glad he is alive,” she managed. “Is there anything you need?”

A smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “It is sweet of you to think of me during this time. I can see why he adores you as he does.”

Her face heated at the gentle praise.

“He has loved you a long time, Miss Benbridge.” Pietro’s deep, slightly accented voice soothed her, though his words did not. “From the beginning, I tried to discourage him, but he wouldn’t listen. I think it says a great deal that you both care so deeply for each other after all these years apart.”

“That does not change the fact that he feels inferior to me”-she released a shaky breath-“or that I do not like the person I become trying to convince him of his worth.”

He watched her for a long moment, then nodded. “Will you help me?”

“Of course.” Amelia stepped closer. “What do you need?”

“Can you lead this horse into the stable for me? I have a few more to round up before the sun sets.”

She accepted the proffered reins. The smile he gave her was strange, but presently everything in her life felt odd.

“Thank you,” he murmured, then walked away.

Amelia turned and moved through the open stable door. The moment she stepped inside, she realized Pietro’s intent. She paused, her breath caught in a mixture of surprise and volatile lust.

Colin worked with his back to her, but his identity was never in question. His torso was bare, his legs clad in worn coarse breeches, his calves hugged lovingly by polished Hessians. Powerful muscles bunched and flexed beneath sweat-sheened skin as he stroked a brush rapidly over a horse’s flanks.

The sudden assailment of memories from their youth almost brought her to her knees. The sight of scratches left by her nails in the golden flesh added a carnal claim to his beautiful body that she longed to enforce.

As she watched, he stilled. Her exhale was a pant, and his head swiveled to face her in a lightning quick movement.

“Amelia.”

He straightened and pivoted, baring the chest she had worshipped with both mouth and hands.

Dear God, he was divine. So handsome and virile, he made her heart ache.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“Utterly.”

Colin flinched and stepped toward her.

“Please do not come closer,” she said.

His jaw tightened and he halted. “Stay. Talk to me.”

“What is there to say? I heard your reasons. I understand why you acted as you did.”

“Is there hope for us? Any at all?”

She shook her head.

Agony transformed his features. “Look at me,” he said in a broken voice. “Look at where we are. This is where I would be if I had not left-tending St. John’s horses while you lived your life in a manse I am not allowed to enter. How could we have been together? Tell me that.”

Amelia covered her mouth to stifle a sob.

“What if I gave it all away?” His words were laced with a desperation that broke her heart into even smaller pieces. “What if I resumed my place as a servant in your household? Would you have me then?”

“Damn you,” she cried, her shoulders straightening in self-defense. “Why must you change yourself to suit me? Why can you not simply be who you are?”

“This is who I am!” He spread his arms wide. “This is the man I have become, but he is still not what you want.”

“Who cares what I want?” She stalked toward him. “What about what you want?”

“I want you!”

“Then why are you so quick to leave my side?” she snapped. “If you want me, fight for me. Do it for you, not for me.”

Amelia thrust the reins at him.

He caught her hand and held it. “I love you.”

“Not enough,” she whispered, yanking free. Then she turned and ran from the stable in a flurry of skirts and lace.

Colin stared after her for long moments, attempting to reason what more he could do, what more he could say to win her love back. He had done everything, lost everything…

A dark shape filled the doorway, and he pushed his roiling emotions aside. “St. John.”

The pirate stared at him with knowing eyes. “There was a lone rider spotted on a hill nearby. He is being followed back to town.”

Colin nodded. “Thank you.”

“Supper will be served shortly.”

“I do not think I can bear it.” The thought of the façade he would have to wear while Ware publicly laid claim to Amelia was too much.

“I will make your excuses, then.”

“I owe you a great deal.”

St. John hesitated a moment, then stepped farther inside. “Did you ever have the misfortune to meet Lord Welton?”

“Once. Briefly.”

“What do you recall about him? Any impressions that lingered?”

Frowning, Colin thought back to the long-ago day. “I remember thinking he had no warmth in his eyes.”

“Nothing like Miss Benbridge.”

“Bloody hell. Nothing like her at all.”

“Yet she seems to think they are similar creatures,” St. John murmured. “Or at least that she is capable of becoming more similar. Any action she takes that is prompted by her desires rather than her reason is a suspected weakness.”

Colin digested the information carefully. With him, Amelia was a creature of passion. She always had been. But they had been separated at the same time she’d learned of her father’s treacherous nature. Certainly the revelation of Welton’s true evil would have changed her, altered her in some way. In his heart he was attempting to woo the girl of old, but she was not that same girl any longer. He had to take that into consideration.

“Ware is the reasonable choice,” Colin said, but he no longer thought the earl was the best choice. Amelia’s vitality came from the passionate fire within her. It needed to be celebrated, as it would be with Colin. Not extinguished by the decorum Society would demand from Ware’s wife.

“Yes,” St. John agreed. “He is.”

The pirate made his egress as silently as he’d arrived, leaving Colin with a great deal to consider.

Amelia sat stiffly during dinner, highly conscious of the fact that Colin took his meal in his room. The discussion she’d had with him in the stables prodded at her and gave her no rest. She was poor company, speaking little and casting a dark cloud over everyone’s already somber mood. Despite her best efforts, she could not forget the sight of Colin working in the stable, a station he might still occupy if he had stayed in her employ. It was a shocking revelation to her, and she did not know what to think of it.

She retired early and hoped exhaustion would claim her, but fate was not so merciful. Unable to sleep, Amelia spent long hours tossing about in her bed. She finally abandoned the effort and left the confines of her disheveled linens. Donning her robe over her night rail, she slipped downstairs to the library.

The hour was late, all parties abed, leaving her the massive manse to herself. There were many times she roamed the St. John house at night, finding comfort in the silence and feeling of aloneness so reminiscent of her youth. Her imagination wandered, creating stories and tales in her mind, her memories picking up various passages from favorite books until she found herself at the library.

The door was slightly ajar, the flickering light of a blazing fire betraying the presence of someone inside. A shiver of awareness coursed over her skin in a wave of gooseflesh, urging her to forsake thoughts of reading and return to the safety of her bed. She debated a moment, internally examining why she would proceed when she valued stability so highly.

Ever since Colin had returned to her life, she had been acting with reckless disregard for anything but her own wants and needs. The correlation to her pater could not be ignored, and her jaw clenched with determination. It was most likely Ware in the library, and his presence would ground her and mitigate the riot of emotions she did not know how to deal with.

She pushed open the door.

Entering on silent feet, she noted the shirtsleeve-clad arm hanging over the side of a wing chair and the large hand holding a crystal goblet at a careless angle. From the darkened color of the skin, she knew she had incorrectly guessed the occupant’s identity, but she did not retreat. Something about the way the glass was held alarmed her. The amber liquid inside was tilted perilously close to the rim, threatening to spill onto the English rug.

The room was warm and comfortable, the walls lined floor-to-ceiling with bookcases displaying a mixture of worn volumes and priceless artifacts. Overstuffed furniture was scattered around the space, as were many side tables. It was a library that was actually used, rather than serving as merely an ostentatious display of wealth. Despite the inevitable upcoming confrontation with the man in the chair, she was soothed by the smells of parchment and leather, and took comfort in the silence inherent in a place of learning and discovery.

Amelia rounded the wingback and found Colin sprawled within its cradle, his long legs stretched out to rest his booted feet atop a footstool, his torso sans a coat and waistcoat, his throat bared by a missing cravat. He looked at her with heavy-lidded, emotionless eyes and lifted the goblet to sculpted lips. There was a scratch near his brow and a trail of dried blood below it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked softly. “How were you hurt?”

“Stay away,” he said in low, rough tone. “I am in a dark place, Amelia, and I have consumed more liquor than is wise. I cannot say what I will do if you come too close.”

Draped on the carved wooden arm of a nearby chair were his waistcoat, coat, and weapons-a small sword and dagger.

“Where did you go?”

“I have yet to leave.” He turned his head to look into the fire.

She heard the sadness and despair beneath the words, and her heart hurt for him. For her. “I am glad you did not go out.”

“Are you?” Colin’s head turned. In the light of the flickering fire, his beautiful face was hard, his dark eyes cold. “I am not.”

“What could you have done in this condition?”

“There is no reason for me to evade Cartland. I should turn myself over to him and spare everyone the jeopardy my presence creates.”

“Your life is the reason!” she protested. “If you concede, you will die.”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Without any hope of having you, perhaps such a fate would be merciful.”

“Colin! How can you say such a thing?” She covered her mouth and fought the tears that welled.

He cursed softly. “Go away. I am not fit company, as I warned you.”

“I am afraid to leave you.” She feared that he would do as he threatened and surrender.

“No, you are not. You already left me, remember?”

Amelia almost said more, but his dangerous mood stilled her tongue. She had seen St. John in similar moods at times and had always wondered at Maria’s fortitude in seeking him out when he was so afflicted.

He needs me, Maria would say in explanation.

It was obvious that Colin needed comfort, too. And Amelia had distanced herself from him, which left him only the bottle to turn to for solace.

She approached him with shoulders squared, lifting the hem of her robe to her lips where she wet it. Reaching him, Amelia raised his chin with one hand and used the other to smooth away the blood. He was still, his eyes watchful, the tension that gripped him reaching out and surrounding her as well, making every nerve ending tingle and every breath a pant.

With an edgy snarl, Colin turned his head and pressed his lips to the sensitive skin of her wrist. She froze, unable to move as his tongue stroked over her now madly fluttering vein.

His glass hit the rug with a soft thud and a splash, and then he was on her, wrapping his big body around her and pulling her to the floor.

“I want you.” His hot open mouth moved ravenously over the tender flesh of her throat. “So badly, it’s eating me alive.”

“Colin…” The feel of him, over six feet of potently aroused male, ignited her simmering passion to a raging fire. “We shouldn’t…”

“Nothing can stop it,” he said, his hand pushing open the halves of her robe and cupping her breast. “You belong to me.”

Her gaze turned to the door she had left open when she entered. “The door-”

His lips surrounded her nipple through her night rail. Amelia gasped and clutched his hair.

“Remember that night,” he whispered against her breast. “Remember how I felt inside you. Remember how deep…how I filled you…”

She quivered in longing, her blood hot, her breasts heavy and aching. His callused fingertips rolled and tugged at her nipple, sending waves of pleasure along the length of her body.

“Colin-”

He came over her and took her mouth, inundating her senses with the taste of brandy and the exotic spice that was uniquely his. She moaned in delight, sucking at his thrusting tongue in a desperate effort to drink in more of him.

Distantly, she felt his hands on her thighs. The chill of the evening air over feverish skin betrayed the lifting of her gown. As everything tightened and coiled in anticipation of his touch, Amelia whimpered into his mouth. His knee intruded between hers, urging her legs apart. Shameless, she complied, spreading her thighs to give him access to the throbbing flesh at the apex.

Colin lifted his head and watched her as he cupped her sex in his hand. “You melt for me,” he breathed, his chest lifting and falling rapidly. He pushed two fingers inside her, and she arched in helpless pleasure. “You were made for me.”

The feel of him there, where she ached, was too much. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she breathed, “Come in me. Fill me.”

His gaze darkened, the irises swallowed by dilated pupils. “There is so much I can do to your body, Amelia. So many ways to impart pleasure. Shall I show you what you will miss when we part?”

“You left me first.”

“I came back.” His seductive tone was in sharp contrast to the pain she saw on his features. “Will you come back? If I love you well enough…if I addict your body to mine…will you come back to me?”

Her lower lip quivered and he licked across it, his breath hot and scented of liquor. His fingers advanced and retreated, plunging shallowly into her clenching sex, building her ardor with tender skill. It was searingly intimate, but in a different way than before. The emotions they bared were not hope and pleasure but despair and pain.

“It would be worth everything,” he said in a serrated whisper, “if there was any chance that you might love me again.”

“I never stopped.” She cried softly, tears trailing down her temples to wet her hair. “Lack of love for you is not the problem.”

Colin pressed his cheek to hers. “My greatest regret is that I could not be enough for you, despite my best efforts.”

Amelia turned her head and pressed her lips to his, unwilling to argue again about their differences when he was already hurting. He took her kiss with tangible desperation, his heart beating so violently, she could hear it over her own racing pulse. All the while his shoulders flexed beneath her touch, the muscles working to propel his fingers into her drenched, aching sex. She cried out softly, a thready sound of female surrender and lust.

The sound changed him; she felt it. The wounded boy from her past gave way to the determined man of her present. Desperation altered to dominance; despair altered to desire. When his head lifted and he met her gaze again, he had the devil in his eyes.

“If only you could see what I see,” he murmured, gentling his fingers, pulling free of her to slide across her clitoris with a slick, expert touch.

She gasped, her hips lifting involuntarily in an effort to increase the pressure of his teasing rubbing.

“Always hungry,” he whispered, “always passionate. You burn for me, Amelia, as if you had Gypsy blood in your veins.”

Colin nipped at her chin, then slid lower, licking along her throat until he reached the obtrusive ruffled neckline of her night rail. He moved, taking a kneeling position, hovering over her in a way that made her feel ravished. She was splayed beneath him, her clothes in disarray, his fingers touching her as only a husband should. The wantonness of her pose only increased her ardor, made her hotter and more desperate.

He pushed up her gown, higher and higher, until her stiffened nipples were kissed by the air and then by his mouth. His tongue was an instrument of pleasure and agony. The gentle licking over the tight peak made her clutch at his hair and pull him closer. As he suckled her, his cheeks hollowed, goading the sensations bombarding her until there was no way to register them all.

Colin. Her beautiful, exotic Colin was making love to her as she had never dreamed he would, and she could not resist him. His need and longing tapped into her own, freeing her of her inhibitions, making her a willing supplicant to his demands.

“Such beautiful breasts,” he praised, kissing across the valley between them to pay a like service to her neglected, jealous nipple. Colin cupped the swollen flesh with his hand, plumping it with gentle kneading, rolling the beaded point between thumb and forefinger. “You are so sweet and soft. I could lose myself in you for days…weeks…”

The thought of being the recipient of the full force of his desires was as arousing as his touch, and Amelia rode his hand, the need to orgasm becoming a driving urge. “Please…”

His teeth bit into her nipple, eliciting a gasp of surprise. Then he traveled lower to circle her navel with the point of his tongue. “Not yet.”

“Now,” she begged, her need so intense, she could hear how wet she was. “Please…now.”

Colin reared up to a kneeling position, leaving her bereft of his warmth and touch. He smiled as she protested, revealing the rakish dimples she had always loved. His shirtsleeves were tugged from the confinement of his breeches and pulled over his head, baring a sculpted chest and abdomen that made her mouth water. His skin was dark and stretched tightly over a highly defined musculature. She loved his body, always had. She adored the way hard labor made him powerful and strong.

“The way you look at me will keep us up all night,” he said with darkly sensual promise.

He reached for the placket of his breeches and freed the straining length of his erection. Whatever arguments of reason she might have uttered died a fiery end, her entire focus narrowing to encompass only the man before her. He was a sensual fantasy come to life with his glistening torso bared to the waist and his thick, hungry cock curving upward in proud enticement.

Licking her lips, she sat up and reached for him.

“Amelia…” His tone was a warning, but he made no move to deter her as she angled him down to meet her waiting mouth.

“Just a taste,” she whispered, licking her lips. “One taste…”

Her tongue swept across the tiny hole at the tip.

Colin’s breath hissed out between his teeth.

The skin was softer than anything she had ever touched before, and the taste of him, salty and primitively male, was an aphrodisiac. With a moan, Amelia circled the wide, flared head with her lips and gave a tentative suck.

“Dear God,” he groaned, shuddering. His hands came up to cup the back of her head.

Emboldened by his response and a wild desire to have him at her mercy, Amelia tilted her head and licked the pulsing length from top to bottom. The point of her tongue followed the path of a pulsing vein to the thick crest. She licked around and around, tasting the thick essence of his seed.

Colin was certain he would die of the pleasure Amelia bestowed with such enthusiasm. She seemed lost in the act, less focused on him and more on her own enjoyment. Her beautiful face was flushed, her green eyes glassy with arousal, her lips red and swollen and stretched tightly around his girth.

“Yes,” he whispered, as she moaned and sucked harder. “Your mouth is heaven…take me deeper…yes…”

His body ached with the force under which he leashed it. He was trembling, burning, gasping for air. The sight of his cock sliding in and out of the ring of her lips was killing him. An hour ago, he had thought he would never touch her again, never hold her or feel her hot and wet around his cock as she climaxed beneath him. The pain of that loss was nearly too much to survive. To lose all hope and be left with nothing, only to see this-his breeches barely parted, his cock engorged and throbbing with need, and Amelia…the love of his life…servicing his lust with such passionate fervor. It made the ecstasy of her luscious mouth agonizingly intense.

“My love…I won’t last…” His voice was so guttural, he barely understood himself, but she knew. She collected his meaning. He felt it in the way she touched him, saw it in the way she looked at him.

“Do it,” she breathed, her words warm against his wet skin. Her hand fisted around him and pumped, drawing up his bollocks and making his thighs quake with the intensity of his rising climax. She cupped him there, her fingers sliding through the rough hair and fondling his sack.

He cursed, the tension in his spine painfully acute. “I will flood you-damn it…”

Her eager mouth flowed over the aching head of his cock in a burning caress of drenching heat and hungry suction. His lungs seized, his vision darkened, his fingers tightened on her scalp.

He was moving on instinct alone; his hips bucked and thrust, running his cock over her flickering tongue and against the back of her throat. Her clenched hand prevented him from moving too deep, kept him from taking too much. Amelia moaned in sensual supplication, the vibration tingling up the length of his erection and freeing his coiling orgasm.

Colin growled as he erupted, his cock jerking with every wrenching pulse of semen, his fingers tangling in her hair. Over the mad beating of his heart and harsh, panting breaths, he heard her seductive mewls and desperate swallows as he came such as he’d never come before, pumping hard and fast into the milking depths of her mouth until he was completely and utterly spent.

She released him with a last, lingering suck, her lips shiny with his seed and curved in a purely woman’s smile. Colin stared down at her in a daze, his thoughts lost in an alcohol-soaked, orgasm-induced fog. His heart, however, was as alive as it had ever been.

Had he truly thought sex would temper his love for her and make it more manageable? He loved her more now than ever, with a reckless, saturating abandon.

Lose her? Never.

Pushing her back, he slid down. He parted her thighs with his palms and buried his face in the slick, humid paradise of her glistening sex. Colin licked her, parting the pouty lips to stroke across her clitoris.

“Colin!” she cried out, her voice filled with startled, embarrassed pleasure.

He smiled against her, then kissed her deeply, turning his head to push his tongue inside the tiny, clenching slit that was made to hold his cock. The taste of her intoxicated him, addicted him.

“No…Please.”

There was something in her voice, a note of panic that urged him to lift his head. He stared at her, saw the wild light in her eyes and asked, “What is it?”

“Please. Stop.”

He frowned, noting the high flush on her cheeks and the trembling of her thighs beneath his hands. She was hopelessly aroused, yet she stayed him.

“Why?”

“I cannot think…”

Reason. Conscious thought. She wanted it. Servicing him gave her power. Being serviced by him took it all away.

“You think too much,” he said hoarsely. “Give in. Free the woman who took me to her bed without care for anything or anyone.”

She struggled beneath him. “You want t-too much…”

“Yes,” he growled. “All of you. Every piece…”

He was in her then, giving her pleasure with avid lips and tongue, eating at her, drinking her in, inhaling the primal scent of her deep into his lungs. The innate hunger he felt for her stirred in response, rousing and climbing, swelling his cock as if she had not just drained him.

Amelia twisted beneath Colin, clawing at his shoulders, begging for mercy in a voice roughened by pure female lust. She was on the edge of a steep cliff that terrified her, and he was pushing her, giving her no quarter, allowing her no space to retreat.

His tongue was an instrument of torturous pleasure, lashing and flickering, driving her higher and harder. His lips circled her clitoris, sucking and pulling. And the noises he made. The wet smacking, the rumbling purrs, the groans of need that made her slicker and hotter.

Thick skeins of dark hair tickled her inner thighs, moving as he did, narrowing her focus until all she knew was the tightening of her womb and the helpless rolling of her hips.

He demanded her response, forced it from her, turned her into a mindless creature of desire and need and desperate wanting.

“No…no…no…” she gasped, fighting him even as her fingers tangled in his locks and pulled him closer.

So that he could not leave her again.

Colin cupped her buttocks and lifted her, altering the angle, urging her thighs to widen so that he could take everything. He thrust his tongue hard and fast into the spasming opening, and she climaxed violently, her arms falling heavily to the floor, her nails clawing at the rug.

“Colin!”

She was devastated, destroyed. But he was not done with her. Before she could catch her breath, he was over her, inside her, pushing deep into the heart of her with the thick, hot length of his cock.

“Yes.” He groaned, sliding his arms beneath her shoulders, holding her in place as he lunged with sensual grace and seated himself to the hilt. “Jesus…you feel so good.”

He ground his hips against her, rubbing deep inside her, making her feel every throbbing inch of him.

Gasping, writhing, Amelia accepted his possession with ravenous greed, her swollen tissues parting for his relentless drives with a quivering welcome. He gripped her throat with one hand, her hip with the other, pinning her down. Dominating her. Possessing her. Branding her as his.

“Mine,” he growled, sliding in and out of her, the movements of his hips leisurely, though nothing else about him was.

There was a look on his flushed and sweat-dampened face. Part agony, part pleasure. So austere and focused. So intent. His eyes blazing with heat. His handsome features stretched tautly with strain. It was searingly erotic. Intimate.

Colin was making love to her. He was alive and in her arms, in her body. Whispering words of love and desire, making dreams come true that she had thought were forever dead to her.

Again the tension built and coiled, causing her to tighten around his straining cock and ripple along its length, making him curse and growl. She felt the chafing rubbing of his waistband between her thighs, heard the sound of his boots digging into the weave of the rug, realized he was still partly dressed just as she was.

The image in her mind of how they must look-she with parted robe and lifted night rail, he with boots and breeches lowered just enough to free his beautiful cock, both locked on the floor in carnal congress-took her to orgasm.

“There,” he purred, watching her with a feral smile of possession, thrusting strong and sure, extending her pleasure until she thought it might kill her. The surge of sensation was unbearable, tingling across her skin until it was too tight and sensitive.

When she was limp and whimpering, he sought his own pleasure, his dark head thrown back, his neck corded tightly, his cock so thick and hard.

Amelia watched him as he had watched her, her legs wrapped around his working hips, her hands at his waist. Pulling him into her.

His pace picked up, his grip tightened. She felt the climax coming, felt it grip him in a fist, felt it tighten his lungs. It burst from him in shocking spurts of molten liquid inside her, again and again, the breaking dam heralded by his ragged, extended groan and jerking, wrenching shudders.

“Dear God,” he gasped, quaking, rubbing his pelvic bone against her swollen, oversensitive clitoris and making her come again. Suffusing her body with delight that seeped into her bones and heart and soul. Making them one.

“My love,” he breathed, rubbing his big body against hers, drenching her in the scent of his skin. “I won’t release you. You’re mine-”

She stemmed further words with a desperate kiss.