Dappled sunlight kissed his black hair and handsome features. She hated that her stomach knotted at the sight and her heart hurt anew until it throbbed in her chest. Dressed in an oatmeal-colored sweater and brown breeches, he was all male. Dangerously so.

“I want to tel you I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse, gravel y.

She glared.

He exhaled harshly and ran both hands through his hair. “She doesn’t mean anything.”

Amelia realized then that he was not apologizing for scaring the wits from her. “How lovely,” she said, unable to hide her bitterness. “I am so relieved to hear that what broke my heart meant nothing to you.”

He winced and held out his work-roughened hands. “Amelia. You don’t understand. You’re too young, too sheltered.”

“Yes, Well, you found someone older and less sheltered to understand you.” She walked past him. “I found someone older who understands me. We are all happy, so—”

“What?”

His low, ominous tone startled her and she cried out when he caught her roughly. “Who?” His face was so tight, she was frightened again. “That boy by the stream? Benny?”

“Why do you care?” she threw at him. “You have her.”

“Is that why you’re dressed this way?” His heated gaze swept up and down her body. “Is that why you wear your hair up now? For him?”

Considering the occasion worthy of it, she had worn one of her prettiest dresses, a deep blue confection sprinkled with tiny embroidered red flowers. “Yes! He doesn’t see me as a child.”

“Because he is one! Have you kissed him? Has he touched you?”

“He is only a year younger than you.” Her chin lifted. “And he is an earl. A gentleman. He would not be caught behind a store making love to a girl.”

“It wasn’t making love,” Colin said furiously, holding her by the upper arms.

“It appeared that way to me.”

“Because you don’t know any better.” His fingers kneaded into her skin restlessly, as if he couldn’t bear to touch her, but couldn’t bear not to either.

“And I suppose you do?”

His jaw clenched in answer to her scorn.

Oh, that hurt! To know there was someone out there whom he loved. Her Colin.

“Why are we discussing this?” She attempted to wrench free, but to no avail. He held fast. She needed distance from him. She could not breathe when he touched her, could barely think. Only pain and deep sorrow penetrated her overwhelmed senses. “I forgot about you, Colin. I stayed out of your way. Why must you bother me again?”

He thrust one hand into the hair at her nape, pul ing her closer. His chest labored against hers, doing odd things to her breasts, making them swel and ache. She ceased struggling, worried about how her body would react if she continued.

“I saw your face,” he said gruffly. “I hurt you. I never meant to hurt you.”

Tears fil ed her eyes and she blinked rapidly, determined to prevent them from fall ing.

“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 swal owed 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 swal owed 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 ful y 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, all owing him to eat at her mouth gently, her tongue tentatively touching his.

He moaned, a sound fil ed 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 rol ing 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.

“Tel me you love me,” she begged, her chest heaving. “You must. Oh God, Colin…” She rubbed her tear-streaked face against 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 tel 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 caress 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 tel 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 to him again. “Never.”

He kissed her, lighter in pressure and urgency than before, but no less passionate. Soft as a butterfly’s wings, they 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.”

“Tel 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.”

“Maria.”

The sound of her name spoken in Christopher’s raspy voice made Maria whimper with a mixture of need and fear. He heard the sound and pulled her closer, his lips moving urgently across hers.

She did not know how to handle the feelings he incited in her, the strange mixture of endless desire that went beyond the physical and wavering hope, as if something could come of this affair between them.

“I wanted you with me when I woke this morning,” he said, his arms strong around her.

She stared up into his austerely handsome features, noting that his skin was pale beneath his tan and his countenance as weary in appearance as hers. “I wanted to stay, but this,” she gestured between them, “cannot be between us.”

“It was, perhaps, fortunate that you left. Otherwise, I might never have realized how it would feel to lose you completely.”

Lifting her hand, she pressed her fingertips to his lips, stemming the intimate confession. She winced as he caught her wrist and pressed an ardent kiss into her palm. What happened to the pirate she first met in the theater? Physical y, the man before her looked the same, perhaps even a little worse for wear, but the eyes that stared back at her were far different. Though familiar. For a long moment, she stared at him, trying to place why she felt such a mad fluttering in her stomach. And then it came to her in a flash of frightening comprehension.

“What is it?” he asked, frowning with concern.