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. “Tel 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 careful y. 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 hol ow 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. “Tel 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 wal in a filthy all ey.

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 tel 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 stil 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.

She touched his cheek with reverent fingers and his smile faded, his gaze heated. “Hurry with your tale,” he urged.

“One day, Dayton sent for me, tel ing me to meet him in the bachelor house. It was not an unusual request.” It was where they had studied maps and cryptology, away from the prying eyes and ears of servants. “But when I arrived, it was not Dayton who awaited me, but the handsome young man who had caught my fancy.”

“Fortunate bastard,” Christopher said.

Maria returned her cheek to his chest, her hand cupping his lean hip. “He was kind and patient. Despite being young, randy, and obviously eager, he tended to my pleasure and comfort before he saw to his. It was an exceptional way to manage the task of losing one’s virginity.”

Christopher rolled and pinned her beneath him, gazing down at her with liquid, heated eyes. “I feel rather dul -witted. I stil cannot col ect what it is about today’s encounter that goads feelings of adolescence.”

She pursed her lips, afraid to reveal any more.

“Must I resort to coercion, then?” Reaching between them, he tugged down her bodice and freed her breasts, his warm furred skin an intimate delight when pressed to her nakedness.

“Christ,” he said, leaning his weight on one arm while rol ing a nipple between the fingers of his opposite hand. “You are so beautiful.”

“Silver-tongued devil,” she teased, pressing a kiss to his chin before spreading her legs, all owing his hips to sink intimately between them.

“You like my tongue,” he purred. “And I am prepared to use it on you to gain your confession. Now tel me how and why you feel like a schoolroom girl so we can move on.”

“With a threat like that, why would I say anything?”

Christopher nipped her lower lip with his teeth. “Very Well, I will guess, then, based on what you have told me so far. You feel apprehension, but also desire. Surprise, but also eagerness. Uncertain, but also decided. You don’t want to have me, and yet you do.” He smiled. “Am I close?”

Maria lifted her head and rubbed her nose against his. “I suppose the first time feels the same for everyone.”

“I felt nothing of the sort the first time,” he scoffed. “Al I felt was a physical desire to spend my seed. Emotional feelings had nothing to do with it.”

Her brows rose. “Then how do you know how I feel?”

“Because,” he whispered, his lips lowering to hers, “I feel that way about you.”

Chapter 17

Maria moaned softly as Christopher took her mouth in a luxurious kiss, showing no haste or urgency, enjoying her as if she were a delicious treat.

His tongue slipped between her lips and then retreated, licking deep. all the while his large hand cupped her breast, kneaded it, his wickedly knowledgeable fingertips tugging at the taut point, making it harder and more tender.

She shivered beneath him, so aroused she could not bear to be stil , her body writhing and aching.

“Maria.”

God, how she loved the way he said her name, so fervently and fil ed with awe.

Her hands cupped either side of his spine and stroked the powerful length of his back. His muscles were so hard, his flesh gave not at all as she tried to pul him closer.

This was what she had wanted when she returned from Brighton, this deep passionate intimacy and wild conflagration of desire. Unlike Simon, Christopher did not retreat when she asked. The pirate forced her to acknowledge him, to take him…to take him with pleasure.

Suddenly, he pulled away, his breathing hard and erratic, his entire body shaking. He pressed his cheek to hers and groaned. “Do you have any notion of what you do to me?” he asked.

The yearning note in his voice brought tears to her eyes. “Is it anything similar to what you do to me?”

Christopher’s hot, open mouth sucked erotical y on her neck. “Bloody hel , I hope so. I do not think I could bear it were I in this alone.”

Maria’s hands moved to his shoulders and pushed. He grunted and continued his oral appreciation of her throat, his tongue rubbing back and forth across her fluttering vein.

“Al ow me to perform a like service to your cock,” she whispered.

Lifting his golden head, he looked down at her with dark, fathomless eyes. “Yes.” He rolled to his back, taking her with him. His hand at her nape, he kissed her. A hard quick kiss that conveyed his gratitude.

It made her smile, that simple gesture. She slid down his big body with deliberately provoking movements, her mouth moving down his chest, her fingers teasing his nipple similarly to how he had teased hers. He tensed, his breaths shal ow, waiting. Her tongue flicked rapidly across the tightened peak, wringing a cry from him.