It was then he gave up his attempt to be gentle, knowing it was hopeless, understanding that he had regressed to some primitive frame of thought that cared only about how desperately aroused she made him.

Catching both of her wrists in one of his hands, Christopher slid over her, then forced her legs apart by settling between them.

Maria paused for a moment, collecting his intent. Then she fought him as he had urged her to do earlier-like a feral cat. She struggled, attempting to crawl across the English rug to the sitting room door but not budging an inch. “Oh no! You will not have me!”

He snorted, then tore her night rail in his impatience to bare the beautifully rounded curve of her derrière. This time he managed a sound that resembled something vaguely apologetic.

She was not impressed. “I would sooner share the bed of Lord Farsham than I would yours.”

That comment earned her a slap to the ass, which made her yelp. Farsham had two score years, at least, and was said to be impotent, neither fact mitigating Christopher’s rising agitation at the thought of any other man seeing her thusly.

In retaliation, Maria sank sharp teeth into his forearm with vicious fervor. He roared in pain and felt a trickle of moisture slide down the crown of his cock. He thrust his hand between her legs and found her cunt slick, hot, and ready. Studying her features, he noted her state of arousal reflected in her passion-dazed eyes and the flush of her skin.

Thank God. He was nigh undone, his seed leaking in its eagerness to flood her with his lust.

Maria stilled for a moment, her gasp the only sound in the room, his own breath trapped in his lungs at the feel of her beneath his touch. He stroked through the lips of her sex with trembling fingers and closed his eyes. Without forethought, his head dipped, his lips pressing against the curve of her shoulder.

His hand moved, leaving her, aiming his aching erection at her creamy opening.

“Maria.” Finally. A word. Squeezed out of his clenched throat by the fisted grip of her cunt around the flared head of his cock.

She whimpered and arched her hips upward as much as his weight would allow her, altering the angle with which he pressed into her. He slipped a fraction deeper.

Christopher’s breath hissed out between his teeth. Christ, she was fevered inside, hot as hell, and so exquisitely tight…

“How long?” he bit out.

She threw her hips at him impatiently.

He nipped her earlobe with his teeth. “How long?”

“A year,” she said, her voice low and breathless. “But continue with this pace and it may be two. Did you forget how to have sex when you forgot your manners?”

“Maddening. Contrary. Vexing wench.” He punctuated each word with a thrust of his hips, working his way into her, forcing her thighs wider with his own.

“That. Is. My lady. To you,” she retorted with gusting breaths.

Then he hit a spot deep inside her that made her moan and writhe in a completely different fashion than she had before-in sensual invitation, not anger.

“Like that?” he murmured, his mouth curving lazily. Her sudden capitulation soothed him immeasurably. Being inside her helped also. From the moment he first touched her in the theater, this was where he wanted to be. “A little more?”

Christopher clenched his buttocks and slid deeper, dizzy with the feel of her beneath him, clasped around him.

Her cunt rippled hungrily, sucking him deeper, the sensation so intense he shuddered against her.

“Maria,” he breathed, his head hanging down next to hers. “You…”

With his brain presently wallowing in sexual madness, he could think of nothing to say to describe…whatever it was he wished to describe. Instead, he pulled free of her, groaning at the caress of her soft, silky tissues on his withdrawal.

“Damn you,” she muttered, rolling to her back when he slid off her. She glared at him, her beautiful face betraying her frustration and renewed anger. Oddly, the sight of a furious woman did not make him wish to be rid of her. Just the opposite with Maria.

She was not cowed by him and made no attempt to hide who she was-his equal. Her response made him ache from head to toe with the need to spread her wide and sink his hard cock into her. Over and over again.

“Not here,” he growled, rising to his feet and yanking her up with him. When she tripped, Christopher caught her and tossed her over his shoulder.

“Brute!”

“Witch.” He watt her again. Then, unable to help it, he rubbed the firm flesh with the palm of his hand.

“Craven! Fight me face-to-face. Instead you strike when my back is turned.”

He smiled, adoring the sound of her voice, filled with such challenge. Leaving the sitting room, he entered his bedchamber. He crossed the large space and threw her down upon the mattress.

She bounced, then kicked out at him, slapping at his grasping hands while heaping a thousand curses upon him. None of which was able to save her night rail. He tore it from her and tossed the remnants aside.

“I shall fuck you face-to-face, my passionate heathen,” he purred, pinning her down with his much larger body. “Hence the necessary change of venue. We shall be at this for some time, and I’ve no desire for burns on my knees or on your luscious breasts.”

Her nails dug into the backs of his hands as he laced his fingers with hers. With a strong push of his knee, he spread her wide and then thrust into her. The sound that left his throat as he sank to the hilt was harsh and visceral. Inwardly startled by it, he lowered his lips to her bared breast and sucked her nipple into his mouth.

“Yes!” she hissed, wiggling madly under him.

“Stop that,” he admonished, lifting his head to look into her dark eyes. “You shall exhaust me before I have the chance to ride you properly.”

Maria bucked. “Move along with it, damn you.”

He laughed, the sound swelling to fill the intimate space created by the canopy above them.

She blinked and went still, watching him. “Do that again,” she urged.

Christopher’s brows rose, and he flexed his cock inside her. The soft pant that left her parted lips made his balls draw up. “I can laugh or fuck, but not both at the same time. Which would you prefer I do first?”

The instantaneous sexual tension that gripped her was palpable.

“Good,” he murmured, licking her bottom lip. “That was my choice, too.”

He moved then, pulling their joined hands down to her shoulder level, using his elbows to support the weight of his torso. His hips lifted and fell slowly, dragging his cock out, then pushing deep again. Maria whimpered and he nuzzled his cheek against hers.

“Let it out,” he whispered, his lips to her temple. “Tell me how much you enjoy it.”

She turned her head and bit his earlobe. Hard. “You can tell me how much you enjoy it, if you ever start the business!”

He growled and stepped up the pace, knowing he was mere moments away from a brilliant orgasm of epic proportions. It could be nothing else. Because of her, and her blasted mouth and her temper that drove him insane. He intended to occupy that mouth with a much more pleasurable task. Later. At the moment, he was so bloody aroused, his cock and balls were pained with it, his skin coated in perspiration, his exhales bursting from his lungs as he rode her lush body with hard, deep plunges. All the while, he tried to make it good for her, a concern he had never had before, but one that goaded him fiercely now.

Maria took his lust and gave it back in like measure, her legs locked around his hips, her lithe thighs working with equal fervor. Her nipples were hard, and every thrust he made brushed his chest across them, making them both moan. All the while she whispered in his ear-naughty things, sexual things, tiny barbs and insults that drove him to the edge of reason.

Christopher lunged into her, balls deep, and rolled his hips, glaring down at her. He watched her eyes widen, her lips part, her neck arch as his pelvis circled against her clitoris. He watched the orgasm take her, move through her. Saw it darken her eyes and soften the tension that always bracketed her mouth.

The word “beautiful” was incapable of describing her. Maria was far beyond that, so stunning that he noted it even within the throes of his own building climax. He felt her cunt ripple along his cock, squeezing, sucking, drawing him deeper, until he could not hold back.

The pressure built at his shoulders, poured down his spine, pooled in his testicles, and burst from the end of his cock in a stream of white-hot semen. How he managed to keep from roaring out his relief, he would never know. He knew only that he was held tight against soft curves, tiny hands cupping his buttocks, a breathless voice crooning, anchoring him in the midst of a toe-curling orgasm.

And a kiss. Feather light in the crook of his neck.

Lost to a violent climax, he still felt that kiss.

Maria stared up at the shadowy recesses of the canopy above her and shifted restlessly. Christopher mimicked her pose an arm’s distance away. The silence between them stretched out uncomfortably. Had she been in bed with Simon, he would have glasses of wine in their hands and some inane tale to tell her that would make her laugh. With Christopher there was only this damnable tension. And an all-encompassing tingle that thrummed through her entire body.

She sighed, reexamining the night’s events.

Christopher’s laughter had caught her off guard. How wonderful the sound how been, how delicious it had felt vibrating against her. It had transformed his features, making her heart stop altogether. On the whole, the entire encounter had been…intense, as she had known sex with him would be. His dangerous edge excited her, made her reckless, urged her to goad him into a fine temper. It was thrilling to push such a controlled man beyond his limits, to make him lose control. He fucked with such passion, such strength, his body a finely honed instrument of pleasure.

She shivered with renewed desire and turned her head to find him watching her. He canted an eyebrow and then yanked her closer, tugging her body to drape over his side.

It was nice to be held so tightly to him, his long legs tangled with her much shorter ones, his powerful arms wrapped around her torso. Remnants of perspiration made their skin cling together. Maria closed her eyes and breathed in his scent, now intensified by his exertions. It was obvious such tenderness was unknown to him. His hands moved over her hesitantly, as if he were unsure of what to do.

“Are you sore?” he rasped softly.

“We can have sex again, if you wish. Or I can retire, if you would lend me a robe.”

His grip tightened. “Stay.”

It was nearly dawn. She would have to leave soon, regardless-both his room and this manse. Dover and the possibility of finding Amelia was a strong lure. Optimism was a luxury, but if she had no hope at all she could not go on.

Christopher’s hand stroked down the length of her spine, arching her into him, an action which revealed the hard length of his renewed erection against her thigh. Arousal, more languorous than the fever they had experienced earlier, moved through her veins. It made her breasts swell into his chest and her nipples harden next to his skin.

“Hmm…” he purred, drawing her completely on top of him.

She stared down at her fallen-angel lover, gifted with the beauty of the heavens on his exterior but the conscience of a predator on the interior. Her hands shifted through his golden hair, making his eyelids lower with pleasure and his pupils dilate with desire.

“I do not find blond men all that attractive,” she said, mostly to herself.

In response, he laughed that rich deep laugh that made her belly warm. “I am grateful other parts of you disagree.”

Snorting, she rose up to a seated position.

“I do not like shrewish women.” The curve of his mouth deepened. “But I do like you. God only knows why.”

His praise, offhand as it was, pleased her. In the distance, she heard a timepiece sounding out the hour.

Christopher’s smile faded. “A pity we are not at home,” he said, his sapphire gaze intense. “I dislike being rushed.”

Maria shrugged, refusing to acknowledge that she felt the same. Neither of them knew how to deal with the other, but the level of awareness between them was so high, she knew she would feel its lack.

Arching her hips, she found the hot length of him with the lips of her sex and glided along his cock, the movement aided by the slickness of their mingled release. His large hands gripped her thighs and urged her to repeat her actions. She did, then paused.