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.

Chapter 16

Amelia 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 stilled at the command, her eyes opening wide, her heart racing madly as her sleep-fuzzy brain came to an 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?”

“The horses woke me as the men walked by the stable. ” Colin stepped back and yanked off her counterpane. “I snuck out the back and came round to fetch you. ”

Embarrassed to be seen in only her night rail, Amelia yanked the covers back over her.

He yanked them off again. “Come on!” he said urgently.

“What are you talking about?” she asked in a furious whisper.

“Do you trust me?” Colin’s dark eyes glittered in the darkness.

“Of course.”

“Then do as I say, and ask questions later. ”

She had no notion of what was happening, but she knew he wasn’t jesting. Sucking in a deep breath, she nodded and slipped from the bed. The room was lit only by the moonlight that entered through the window glass. The heavy length of her hair hung down her back in a thick, swinging braid, and Colin caught it, rubbing it between his fingers.

“Put something on, ” he said. “Quickly. ”

Amelia hurried behind the screen in the corner and disrobed, then slipped the chemise and gown she had worn earlier over her head.

“Hurry!”

“I cannot close the back. I need my abigail. ”

Colin’s hand thrust behind the screen and caught her elbow, tugging her from behind it so that he could drag her to the door.

“My feet are bare!”

“No time, ” he muttered. Opening her bedroom door, he peered out to the hallway.

It was so dark, Amelia could barely see anything. But she heard male voices. “What is going—”

Moving with lightning speed, Colin spun and covered her mouth again, his head shaking violently.

Startled, it took her a moment to understand. Then she nodded her agreement to say nothing.

He stepped out to the hallway with silent steps, her hand in his. Somehow, despite her shoeless state, the floorboard beneath her squeaked, when it hadn’t under Colin’s boots. He froze, as did she. Below them, the voices she had heard were also silent. It felt as if the house were holding its breath. Waiting.

Colin placed his finger to his lips. Then he picked her up and hefted her over his shoulder. What followed was a blur. Suspended upside down, she was disoriented and unable to discern how he managed to carry her from her second-floor bedroom to the lower floor. Then a shout was heard upstairs as she was discovered missing, and pounding feet thundered above them. Colin cursed and ran, jostling her so that her teeth ached and her braid whipped his legs so hard, she feared hurting him. Her arms wrapped around his lean hips, and his pace picked up. They burst out the front door and down the steps.

More shouting. More running. Swords clashed and Miss Pool’s screams pierced the night.

“There she is!” someone shouted.

The ground rushed by beneath her.

“Over here!”

Benny’s voice was music to her ears. Colin altered direction. Lifting her head, she caught a glimpse of pursuers, and then more men intercepted them, some she recognized, others she didn’t. The new additions to the fray bought them precious time, and soon she could not see anyone on their heels.

A moment later she was set on her feet. Wild-eyed, she glanced around to catch her bearings, and found Benny on horseback and Colin mounting the back of another beast.

“Amelia!” He held out one hand to her, the other expertly holding the reins. She set her hand in his, and he dragged her up and over, belly down across his lap. His powerful thighs bunched beneath her as he spurred the horse, and then they were off, galloping through the night.

She hung on for dear life, her stomach heaving with the jolting impacts. But it did not last long. Just as they reached the open road, a shot rang out, echoing through the darkness. Colin jerked and cried out. She screamed as her entire world shifted.