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“Amelia. ” He pressed his cheek to hers, his voice carrying an aching note. “Don’t cry. I can’t bear it. ”
“Release me, then. And keep your distance.” She swallowed hard. “Better yet, perhaps you could find a more prestigious position elsewhere. You are a hard worker—”
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 this day, and kiss her as if he were starved for the taste of her.
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 into 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. No. Don’t say anything else, Amelia. I am a servant. I will always be a servant, and you will always be a viscount’s daughter. ”
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 touch 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 wrist again. “Never.”
He kissed her, lighter in pressure and urgency than before, but no less passionately. Soft as a butterfly’s wings, his lips 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. ”
Amelia jerked awake with a violent start, her heart racing with the remnants of adolescent passion and yearning. Tossing back the covers, she sat up, allowing the chilly night air to seep through her thin night rail to her perspiration-damp skin. She lifted shaking fingertips to her lips, pressing hard against the swollen curves in an effort to stem their tingling.
The dream had been so vivid. She imagined that she could still taste Colin, a heady exotic flavor that she craved to this day. It had been years since she’d been plagued with such recollections. She’d thought they were fading, that perhaps she might be healing. Finally.
Why now? Was it because she had agreed to proceed with the wedding? Was Colin’s memory rearing up and demanding that the love of her life not be set aside?
Amelia closed her eyes and saw a white mask above shamelessly sensual lips.
Montoya.
His kiss had made her tingle as well. From head to toe and everywhere in between.
She had to find him. She would find him.
“What does he say?”
Colin refolded the missive carefully and tucked it into a drawer of his desk. He looked at Jacques. “He believes Cartland is leading a group of men here in England.”
“He will not want to bring you back alive.” Jacques walked over to the window and brushed the sheer panel aside to look down at the front drive.
The town house they occupied was a rental in fine shape. It was a short distance from the city, near enough to be convenient, but far enough away to ensure that no one would find them noteworthy. The distance also allowed them to ascertain if they were being followed or not, which Colin had been just a few nights past. The night he had danced with and kissed Amelia.
“It is good that you stay indoors during the day,” Jacques said, turning back to face him again. “You are being hunted on all sides.”
Shaking his head, Colin closed his eyes and leaned into the back of his chair. “It was foolish of me to seek her out that way. Now I have attracted St. John’s attention, and he will not rest until he knows why I displayed such interest in her.”
“She is a beautiful woman,” Jacques said, his voice laced with a Frenchman’s innate appreciation of such delights.
“Yes, she is.”
Beyond beautiful. Dear God, how was it possible for a woman to be so perfect? Stunning green eyes framed by sooty lashes. An imminently kissable mouth. Creamy skin, and the fully ripened curves of a woman grown. All carried with an air of latent sensuality that he had always found alluring.
/> He could admit now that his attendance at the ball had been goaded by his hope that he would see her and find his attraction unfounded. Perhaps absence had made his heart too fond. Perhaps he had embellished her memory in his mind.
“But that is not why you love her,” Jacques murmured.
“No,” Colin agreed, “it’s not.”
“I have rarely seen a woman with such yearning in her soul. Although I watched her as you did, she did not take note of my interest, only of yours.”
That was his fault, he knew. Repeated glimpses of her profile had only whetted his appetite to see her directly. Look at me, he’d urged silently. Look at me!
And she had, unable to resist when followed with such ravenous attention.
The eye contact had cut him to the quick, piercing across the distance between them and stabbing deep into his heart. He’d felt it, the yearning Jacques spoke of. That longing elicited a primal response in him to deliver it, whatever it was that she wanted. Whatever she needed.
“You could take her from the other man,” Jacques said.
He knew that, too. Had felt the wavering in her as they had danced and then again when they had kissed.
“I wish I’d never followed Cartland that night!” Colin growled, the frustration inside him a writhing, powerful thing. “Everything would be different.”
She would be in his bed now, writhing and arching beneath him as he rode her hard and deep, awakening the wanton he sensed was waiting just beneath the surface. In his mind, he could hear her voice hoarse from crying out his name, her satin skin covered in a fine sheen of sweat.
He would push her beyond reason, take her body places she never knew it could go . . .
“The twists in our lives happen for a reason,” Jacques said, returning to the desk and sitting across from him. “I could have lived the whole of my life without leaving France, yet I was destined to follow you here.”
Colin pushed the lewd images from his thoughts and opened his eyes. “You are a good man, Jacques, to carry your debt beyond the grave.”
