“Amelia…” He groaned and nuzzled his sweat-slick cheek against hers. “You are making it impossible for me to initiate you as you deserve.”

“I ache inside,” she cried, holding him so tightly. “And you are not there yet.”

“You are tiny and untried, and I am thick and hard. If I go too quickly, it will bring you pain now and soreness later.”

“You are too big…”

“No, damn it all!” He did not want to be surly, but her hungry cunt was tugging on the head of his cock, goading his primitive instincts to take over and leave the gentlemanly ones behind.

“Then let me watch. Perhaps if I can see, I would be less anxious. This moment is too intense without my sight. Every noise, every touch is magnified.”

Colin went rigid. Now was not the time, and yet he could not bear for any part of this night to distress her. He was in heaven. He wanted nothing more than for her to be also. “I am afraid of what will happen if you see me now. If you turned me away, I do not think I would survive it.”

Her lower lip quivered. Then she asked, “Do you have one of your masks with you?”

“You ask me to withdraw?” He stared down at her with wide eyes. “Are you insane? I am inside you.”

“Not all the way,” she argued. “Not as I need you to be.” Her voice took on the pleading, cajoling note that he had never been able to resist.

She would kill him, he realized with an odd mixture of pride and wryness. She would never be passive in the bedroom, just as she had never been passive out of it. He half feared the day when she’d be fully awakened sexually. How would he survive the full assault of her feminine wiles? He wasn’t yet buried to the hilt and he felt like he was dying.

“It excites me,” she whispered, releasing the stunning statement with panting breaths. “The sight of you in the mask.” Her fingers came up and traced the shape of his lips. “You have such a wicked mouth. I have dreamt of it. Longed for it to move across my skin and whisper hot words of wanting.”

Shuddering with desire, Colin pushed restlessly into her streaming cunt. She was melting around his cock. Her nipples were hard against his chest, her stomach was quivering against his.

“It would please me to watch you. Do not deny me.” Her hands cupped his buttocks and tugged, pulling him fractionally deeper.

She became tighter the deeper he went, her virgin tissues resisting the remolding of her body to fit his.

“Please…” she breathed with such heartrending yearning. “Do not leave me in the darkness at this moment in my life.”

Cursing, Colin wrenched himself free, his body shaking with its need. He rolled from the bed and stalked on nerveless legs to the armoire where his valise waited. Reaching inside it, he withdrew the mask, which he had kept as a tangible reminder of the stolen moments he had shared with Amelia.

He stared down at the gleaming white item in his hands with a building resentment for its purpose-that of keeping Colin Mitchell away from the woman he loved.

How he wished he would have seen where this deception would lead when he first purchased the mask! One look at Amelia-a sip of water for a man dying of thirst-was all he had expected the ruse to provide.

“Hurry,” she urged in the throaty voice of a consummate seductress. The feminine allure so practiced and studied in other women was simply innate to her.

Colin lifted the half mask to his face and tied the black satin ribbons that would hold it in place, then retied the ribbon that restrained his queue. Turning his head, he looked at her and knew he would not leave this room as the same man who had entered it.

She reclined against the piled pillows, her legs and arms crossed modestly, the blindfold gone. In her verdant gaze he saw lust, longing, and appreciation of such magnitude that he could scarcely breathe.

Pivoting on his heel, he faced her directly, affording her a clear view of his raging cock and taut musculature. He watched her swallow hard and understood how intimidating the sight of him must be. She was a tall woman, but he was still much taller. He was more than twice her size, his body hardened by both his common lineage and frequent physical activity.

And he was in full rut. Thick veins pulsed with his raging blood, and he fisted the shaft to ease the pain of it.

“Does the sight of me this way arouse you,” he asked, “or frighten you?”

Amelia licked her lips. “I am not frightened,” she whispered. “I am nervous and perhaps apprehensive, but I do not fear you.”

“You are a strong woman,” he praised, striding swiftly toward her.

Without preliminaries, he kneeled on the bed and climbed over her, tugging her arm out of the way so he could claim a nipple with his mouth. He attended the stiff peak with hard, rhythmic suction, urging her silently to make some sound of her delight.

Her hands cupped the back of his head and held him to her breast. “Come inside me,” she whispered. “I hate this feeling of uncertainty and ignorance.”

Sitting back on his heels, Colin pulled her legs over either side of his own, spreading her thighs wide to expose her cunt to his gaze. With the angle of the pillows and her semi-reclined position, she had a clear view. Before she could register the size of her tiny pink slit compared to the girth and length of his cock, he was in her, pushing the thick head into the tender opening.

She whimpered and dug her nails into his thighs.

Holding her hips, he took her, rocking gently but relentlessly deeper and deeper. His gaze moved between the place of their joining and her beautiful face.

With his back shadowing her from the rapidly dwindling glow of the fading fire, he could not discern color, but he saw the telltale shimmer of sweat on her brow, and her eyes glistened with a sheen of tears.

“Am I hurting you?” he gasped, his fingers bruising her as she responded to his voice by rippling along the buried length of his cock. She was so damn tight and hot, it felt as if he were fucking into a tightly closed fist.

“No…” Her voice was thready and faraway sounding.

Colin lifted one of her hands from his skin and set it over her distended clitoris. “Stroke yourself,” he instructed.

To his utter delight she obliged without embarrassment, her long, slender fingers circling the slick flesh with only slight hesitation.

Her lovely cunt responded as he had known it would, clenching and grasping at him with renewed fervor. With every suck, he pushed deeper, groaning with the ecstasy of it, gulping in desperate breaths of air filled with the scents of sex and honeysuckle.

She began to writhe and mewl in a show of such wanton craving, he would wonder later how he managed to work inside her completely without coming at the midway point. Finally, with a last desperate lunge, he hit the end of her, the sensation of being balls-deep inside her enough to make his eyes tear.

Amelia cried out as Montoya’s hot, heavy length finally struck deep. A flare of torturous relief spread outward from the aching spot inside her that begged to be rubbed, and then coiled tight again.

When he held still, she struggled, circling her hips, grinding against the root of his shaft. The growl that left him was more animal than human, and her body shivered in response, spurred to greater lust by the sound.

He held her still with powerful hands, his gaze burning from within the eyeholes of the mask. His beautiful mouth was hard, his jaw taut.

“Why won’t you move?” she cried.

“Because I am about to blow, and I refuse to go without you.”

“I am ready!” Her voice was high with her distress, her womb clenching and tightening in a way that was nearly painful.

With effortless strength, he scooped her up and lifted to his knees, impaling her deeper on the rock-hard length of his cock. Amelia clung to his broad shoulders, her mouth suckling across the salty, whisker-roughened expanse of his throat. The room spun as he rearranged their positions, every movement sliding her over him until she bit him in retaliation for her sexual frustration.

Montoya cursed and pushed her away from him.

“Ride,” he said roughly.

He sat on the edge of the bed, her legs astride his, his erection buried deep. So deep. Canting his arms back, he supported his torso and gave her full access to use him as she willed. The display he made was searingly erotic, his abdomen laced tight with muscle, his furred chest damp with sweat.

And the mask. Dear God, the mask added a dark, alluring mystery that urged her to recklessness.

“I-”

“Now!” he barked, making her jump.

Her shoulders went back and her chin lifted in answer to his challenge. She thought this must be difficult for him for reasons she had not considered before. He made love with the expertise of a man who had his choice of women, which suggested the marring of his face might have been a recent event. Perhaps she was the first woman to welcome him to her bed since the injury was inflicted. The thought added poignancy to an already remarkable event.

Amelia decided in that moment that she would love him well, with all that she had, better than any other woman ever could. She would reach for the turmoil she sensed inside him and soothe it with her passion, showing him with her body that it was his heart that lured her to him.

Setting her hands on his shoulders for balance, she pushed onto her knees and lifted, sliding her sex upward along the length of him. When she lowered, the feel of the broad head of his cock stroking over that quivering spot inside her made her gasp and shake violently.

“That’s it,” he praised in a dark whisper, watching her through thick black lashes. “See how well I fit you? I was made for your pleasure.”

Biting her lower lip, she repeated the movement, venturing slowly as she found the way of it. Her thumb brushed across a scar that marred his shoulder, the wound so old, it had long since turned silver. She caressed it as she undulated, feeling the circular shape surrounded by ragged edges. In the back of her mind the injury bothered her, prodded at her…