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 fel 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 downfal . 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 frantical y 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 tip 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 gal ows 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 chil ed your desire.” Cupping her hip, he rolled her into him so that the heat and hardness of his erection pressed into her bel y. “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 tel 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?

“Tel 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. “Al the way inside you. As deep as I can go.”

She pressed down, fil ing 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, tel 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.

“Tel 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 tel .

“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, swol en 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, fil ing her, flooding her with his seed.

Breathing erratical y, he took her mouth, sharing the air in their lungs.

Making them one.

Chapter 20

A melia 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 stil ed 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?”