Her Dearest Sin

She was too shocked to close her lips, so that his tongue had invaded before she realized his intent. His breath mingled with hers, the smoky warmth of the cigarillo pleasant.

She didn’t dare protest. Not with those footsteps coming closer and closer to where their bodies, entwined like lovers, were sheltered by the tree.

That was a lesson she had learned too well. Julián did not listen to explanations. He wouldn’t now. He would kill the man whose mouth was fastened over hers, his lips ravishing them expertly.

All she could hope was that the darkness would not betray them. And that what had happened before…

His mouth lifted, allowing her to draw another breath. During the past few seconds, she had forgotten how necessary that was to life. She had forgotten everything but her fear and the feel of this man’s lips moving over hers.

Warm and firm and knowing. So knowing.

Belatedly she realized the footsteps that had terrorized her were fading. Julián was returning to the lights and the crowded ballroom, while they…

Their breathing—his as ragged as hers—was still mingled. Just as his body was still intimately pressed against hers.

As the danger that Julián would discover them lessened, she gradually became conscious of other things. Sensations she had not been aware of before. The muscles of the Englishman’s chest moving against the tightening nipples of her breasts as he breathed. The strength of his erection, obvious through the silk of his knee breeches, which offered no more barrier between their bodies than the thin silk of her gown. And of long callused fingers that trembled as they touched her face.

“Why?” she whispered, finally daring that one word. “Why would you take this risk?”

“All life is risk,” he said. “Nothing makes it sweeter.”

“You risked death for a kiss?” she accused, her anger with his recklessness building again, now that the immediate danger had passed.

She raised her hands and forced his wrists apart, freeing her face. She put her palms against his chest, trying to push him away, but he refused to move.

With each passing second she had become more aware of the intimacy of their position. And for the first time, her fear of his intent was almost as great as her concern for his safety.

“Aren’t your kisses worth dying for, señorita?” he mocked.

“You’re a fool,” she said, pushing more strongly against his chest.

Suddenly his hands closed over her wrists once more, and he pulled her roughly away from the tree. Then, maintaining his hold with only his right hand, he began to drag her along behind him. Again she twisted and turned her captured arm, finally using her free hand to strike at his shoulder. He ignored the repeated blows.

“If I had a weapon, I swear I would kill you,” she said.

“Steal one,” he suggested. “You seem to be very good at that.”

At that same moment she realized he had been dragging her toward the palace rather than away from it. She stopped the barrage of ineffectual blows, trying to make sense of both that destination and his words.

By the time she had realized they were too reminiscent of that terrible reality to be coincidental, he had already accomplished what he had brought her so dangerously near the palace to do. The light from the torches on the balcony above them flickered over his face, revealing the scar Julián had slashed there almost a year ago.

“We meet again, señorita,” he said. “And this time, I believe the advantage is mine.”

Chapter Two

There was a definite satisfaction in watching the slow dilation of her eyes as she recognized him, Sebastian decided. It was not enough to make up for what she had done, but it was something.

“Who are you?” she whispered, her tongue moistening lips that had not seemed dry as they responded to his kiss only seconds before.

Kissing her had been a mistake. One he freely admitted. He had never been able to determine in his own mind what he would do if he found this girl. After the sensation of her mouth trembling beneath his, carrying out any of the punishments he’d devised during the past eleven months would be an impossibility.

“Sebastian Sinclair, señorita. I would add ‘at your service,’ but considering what happened the last time I attempted that…”

He deliberately let the sentence trail. Her eyes again traced the line of the scar, and he felt the muscles of his stomach tighten as he was forced to endure their scrutiny.

“I never meant that to happen,” she said.

“His name,” Sebastian demanded.

Her eyes found his, searching them.

“No,” she whispered.

“Someone will tell me.”

“Let them. Then, if you aren’t a fool, you’ll hear the name and let it disappear from your memory. What he did—”

“Requires retribution,” he interrupted softly.

“If you attack him, you’ll disgrace your king, and Julián will still kill you.”

“Julián?”

“Colonel Julián Delgado.” Despite her avowal that she wouldn’t tell him, she enunciated the name deliberately, almost defiantly, as if it had weight and substance. “A man more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

“A man,” Sebastian mocked. “Nothing more and nothing less. He’ll bleed and then he will die. Like any other man.

He fought to control the same rage he had had to conquer when he’d seen her making her way across the ballroom. He had followed her out into the darkness because, once he had found her, this confrontation was inevitable.

He had sworn he would know the name of the man who had disfigured him. Now that he did…

“He isn’t a man,” she said, the words low enough that for a moment he believed he must have misheard them.

The silence, broken only by the music from the palace above them, expanded as he considered what she had said. And, far more troubling, the tone in which she had said it.

“Then…what is he?” he asked, touched, in spite of his long-held anger, by an almost superstitious dread.

A sudden noise from the balcony above their heads caused them both to turn. Three men, one carrying a torch, were descending the steps that led out into the garden. The flame streamed behind them like a banner. At the sight, the girl shrank back into the shadows of the building, drawing Sebastian with her.

“You mustn’t be found here. Not with me.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Sebastian said.

He wasn’t, despite that almost preternatural chill her characterization had created. Finding this man was something he had thought about every day since the bastard had laid open his cheek.

“You should be,” she said. “If nothing else, be afraid of what he will do to me if he finds you here.”

“Whatever tenderness I once harbored for damsels in distress was destroyed the day you allowed him to do this,” he said, touching his cheek with the tips of his finger. He could feel the rough texture of the scar beneath them.