Click to Read Excerpt Maria left her chamber, resigned to descend the staircase slowly and elegantly to greet him this time, instead of in the impatient leaps and bounds as were her standard. After all, she was a young woman now. However, when she had descended half the distance of the staircase, Brock entered through the main door. Maria was overcome with excitement, springing at him as a happy sparrow. He caught her in his wonderfully familiar embrace as she threw her arms around his neck. “You’re home! You’re home,” Maria whispered into his ear. She could feel Brock’s roughly shaven face nuzzle her neck, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice the goose flesh breaking over her because of it. Her senses were overcome—thoroughly and entirely overcome! She found her body trembled within and without, her mouth watered, and her breathing was labored. Oh, how she loved him! Loved the scent of him, the feel of his cheek against hers, the power of his arms around her! Another moment and she would be undone, confessing her true feelings for him aloud. Maria Castillo Holt, the only daughter of a valiant lord and his Spanish beauty. Following the tragic deaths of her parents, Maria would find herself spirited away by conniving relatives to endure neglect and misery. However, rescued at the age of thirteen by Brockton Thorton, the son of her father’s devoted friend Lord Richard Thorton, Maria would at last find blessed reprieve. Further, Brockton Thorton became, from that day forth, ever the absolute center of Maria’s very existence. And as the blessed day of her sixteenth birthday dawned, Maria’s dreams of owning her heart’s desire seemed to become a blissful reality. Yet a fiendish plotting intruded, and Maria’s hopes of realized dreams were locked away within dark, impenetrable walls. Would Maria’s dreams of life with the handsome and coveted Brockton Thorton die at the hands of a demon strength?
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