With This Kiss Part 13

"Please," she said, swallowing back the tears. "Let me go, Colin. Just let me go. For the sake of our friendship. Don't make me beg."

She could feel his glare even from behind his blindfold. But he didn't answer as she caught her breath, trying to stop herself from crying.

Then he grabbed one of her hands with that uncanny ability he had of knowing where her limbs were. Before she could stop him, he reared upright-and placed her hand directly on his crotch.

Grace squeaked and tried to pull away. "What are you doing?"

He held her hand firmly against his breeches. "You won't let me speak," he growled. "You refused to believe it when I said I desire you, not your sister."

Grace was so shocked she was sputtering. "Ladies don't- You can't do this!" He was pressing her hand firmly against him, and under her palm, that part of him pulsed. She felt a hot flush sweep up her chest, and her fingers instinctively curled slightly.

"That's it," he breathed, and thrust forward, into her palm. A sound escaped his mouth, something between a groan and a laugh.

Grace's mind was reeling. She was touching the part of Colin that she'd last seen in the carriage. It wasn't limp now. It felt large and strong as steel. He had responded instantly to her small caress, his breath hitching.

"I am not feeling any effects of laudanum now," he stated, his organ throbbing against her hand.

"What?" she asked, unable to think clearly, not when his voice took on that craving tone, a note of primitive sensuality that aroused her senses and made her dizzy with hunger. He was here, and everything in her body desired him. She even desired the strong organ under her fingers, the very thing she'd sworn to avoid.

"I knew it was you in the carriage, Grace. I want you. Not Lily."

Her traitorous body had forgotten the discomfort. All she could think of was the way pleasure had rippled through her body like sweet fire. The way he had shouted at the end, arching his throat back, completely taken by pa.s.sion. Even though it had hurt, she had thrilled to that moment.

"I want you, Grace," he repeated. "You. I've dreamed about making love to you so many times."

"No, you haven't!" She pulled her hand away with a sharp jerk. "That's not a nice thing to say, not when we both know it isn't true."

He laughed, a savage pirate's laugh. "A gentleman always knows which lady he finds in his bed, even in his dreams."

"You have never looked at me in such a fashion," she stated, her voice shaky but firm. "You never wrote to me, you never wooed me. I know why you're doing this!"

"Why?"

"Because we did that in the carriage. You feel obligated to marry me. You needn't feel that way. And this isn't very nice of you. It's not kind of you to try to-to take advantage of my foolishness."

"I don't feel kind when I think about you. Did I rip your gown in the carriage?"

"Yes."

"I thought so." There was a distinct ring of male satisfaction in his voice. "I remember that. May I rip this gown as well?"

"What?" Somewhere deep inside her, she was reeling at the brutal way he said he didn't even feel kindness for her. This was like a nightmare. "Of course not!"

He bent toward her and thrust a hand into her hair. Pins scattered as he pulled the long sweep of it free of the simple knot she had shaped that morning. He muttered, "Your hair is like silk."

Grace was so confused and miserable that tears were welling up in her eyes again. "Please," she gasped. "Please let me go. Please let me-"

He cupped her head, bringing her mouth to his. At the mere touch of his lip, Grace's traitorous body melted. He was kissing her, just as she'd dreamed so many times, only better.

She was such a fool and yet she couldn't stop herself. She should fight back, but she surrendered instead.

His mouth was beautifully shaped, with a sensual lower lip that she had drawn in her sketchbook a million times. And now he was kissing her. She'd dreamed of that, too, though in her dreams, he was always gentle and reverent.

He wasn't gentle. He wasn't kind, either. His tongue was a.s.saulting her, making all her objections and words and tears melt away under the force of a kiss that couldn't lie. It simply couldn't. He was claiming her.

She let that truth sink into her mind, kissing him back with the pa.s.sion she had felt for years, with all the longing that drove her into the carriage in the first place.

Colin wasn't drugged.

Yet he was tasting her, playing with her tongue, marking her for all time as claimed. By him. By Colin.

Naive as she was, she knew when a man's body was pulsing with l.u.s.t. When his blood was pumping as hard as hers was. When that man had plans to take her, whether she would or no.

She would.

Oh, she would. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

Two.

Colin had survived battles without feeling a surge of grat.i.tude this profound. He had jumped from burning ships, felt bullets whistle past his temple, gone below just in time to miss a direct hit on deck. He had never felt a raw emotion so potent that he lost all common sense.

He had a hand at Grace's bodice before the feeling of fabric under his fingers triggered a memory. The cloth was thin, not made of st.u.r.dy worsted. He remembered that other fabric well enough-and then the memory of her body coming up from the seat came back to him as well.

He wrenched his lips from hers. "Did I hurt you when I ripped your gown in the coach?" He barked it, knowing that there would be a hundred questions like this, a thousand, if he didn't recover his memory.

"No," she said, her voice a husky song that made him want to devour her. To feast on her until she pleaded for more, and then he would give her more, and more again.

"Good," he managed. It was the work of a moment to rip this light gown off her shoulders. She wasn't wearing a chemise, which was all to the better.

She squeaked something about having nothing to wear, but he pretended not to hear, just as he had in the carriage. That thought made his fingers still. "Did I hurt you the first time?" he whispered. "Was it terrible, Grace? You didn't tell me."

There was a second of silence. "Not all of it."

Not all of it. He could work with that. He made a silent vow to himself: he would never cause Grace even a whisper of pain from this moment forward.

Under his hand, her breast was round and unsteady. He brushed his fingers across her nipples and she squeaked.

"Are we making love again?" Her voice was breathless.

"Yes," he said, wondering why she was so hard to convince. "Again, and probably again after that. I don't know that I will ever have enough of you, Grace." There was silence in return, and he d.a.m.ned his loss of vision.

Was she frightened? Repulsed? Injured? "Are you too sore to make love again?" he whispered, thinking that he would probably embarra.s.s himself by coming in his breeches, but better that than hurting her.

She was silent for another moment, and then she said, her voice shy and so Grace-like that his heart thumped in his chest, "I don't think so."

Grace had expressed so many emotions in the last hour that he felt exhausted by trying to keep up with her. It would be easier when he had the use of his eyes. She had screamed at him, and told him to leave, and told him she was leaving, and then kissed him so pa.s.sionately that he felt as if his heart left his body.

Things were better when they weren't speaking. He felt the connection between them when they kissed, and no matter how she slashed at their bond with words, it was there. He simply had to make her understand that.

He shifted, lying down on his side next to her, his hand sliding from her breast to her waist, holding tight in case she tried to run away again. "I can't follow all the things you've said to me, Grace."

"Oh," she said. And then she took a deep breath. "What I said-"

"No." He was interrupting her again, but he had to. "You think I don't desire you. Do you still believe that?"

He heard the fabric of her ruined gown rustle as she shifted uneasily. He caught back a smile. Grace couldn't tell a lie. She never could, not even when she was a child.

"I suppose I do not entirely believe it," she whispered.

"It would be fair to say that I am mad with l.u.s.t for you." He tugged at her dress, pulling it down so that he could feel her soft, flat stomach. "You're so small."

She shifted, moving onto her side, which made her body form a lovely curve under his hand. He let his fingers wrap around her hip, telling her without words that he would never let her go.

"I don't see how we can make love again without further discussion," she said, her voice resolute.

Poor Grace. She made life harder for herself than it had to be. He shook his head, knowing she could see the gesture.

"Why not?"

"We can talk afterwards."

"But I am not going to marry you, even if we make love."

He wanted to roar like a lion and kiss her into silence. "I can't explain why I didn't write, Grace."

"You wrote to Lily."

The pain in her voice struck him to the heart, and he held her tighter. If she ran away, he would rip off the bandage and follow her. "I wrote to her because I wanted to know how you were."

She sniffed, a noise resonant with disbelief. "Colin, you danced with her, and you told my father you wanted to marry her. I don't even . . . You didn't write to me. And you didn't do more than ask for me when you were on leave, nothing more than politeness demanded."

He had a sense of panic, as if seawater were closing over his head. "I couldn't," he said, his voice hoa.r.s.e. "You-you knew what it was like at sea. You knew how horrible it was. If I saw you, if I wrote to you, I was afraid that I couldn't keep it to myself. I didn't want that."

"You didn't want to see me?"

He hated himself, but it had to be said. "I was grateful when you didn't leave your room, and when I discovered that you were not at the ball."

"Oh." The word was so sad that he felt a stab of self-hatred that threatened to cleave his heart in two.

"I would have unmanned myself," he said doggedly, gripping her hip even tighter. She might have a bruise, but he didn't care. He couldn't let her escape. "You knew, Grace. I could tell in your letters. I felt as if we were having a conversation, even though we weren't." That was so stupid that he couldn't believe he had said it.

He should let her go to a decent man, a man who wasn't as mad as he was. What was he doing, taking her? Seducing her? Marrying a woman like her, given the kind of damaged man he was?

He forced his fingers to uncurl and pulled his hand away. "You're right," he said, the word burning his chest. "You deserve better than I."

"Mmmm," she said, and then he felt the light touch of her fingers on his neck. "I like the fact that you knew we were having a conversation, even if you didn't contribute very often."

"I was too much of a coward."

"You were in pain." Her fingers slipped up his neck to his cheek. "I have no idea how you survived the pain and guilt, Colin. You are so strong."

There was a sudden stinging in his eyes, and he spared a second to thank G.o.d for the bandage. "No," he said, his voice miraculously steady. "I am not strong. You need to understand that if we are to be married, even though I don't see how either of us can back out now, Grace. We made love in that carriage, and the fact won't disappear simply because you wish it would. I ruined you; I took your virginity. You had no choice in the matter."

"I meant to seduce you," she said, her voice barely a thread of sound. "Or announce that you had compromised me, if I didn't find the courage to actually do anything."

His mouth fell open. "You did?"

"You didn't wonder why we were alone in the carriage?"

He hadn't had time for that sort of logic; emotions had blown about them as wildly as a winter storm. But now she mentioned it . . . "The d.u.c.h.ess allowed you to travel without a chaperone?"

"I forced her. If I changed my mind, we planned to announce that I had accompanied you as any family friend would have done, and that would be that."

"Her Grace agreed?"

"She did. I told her . . ." The words trailed away and her fingers left his cheeks, an unwelcome coolness following.

"That you wanted me." He shouldn't be astounded, and yet he was. "Even though you knew what a coward I am?"

She sat up abruptly, the bed shifting under her weight. "You are no coward, Colin."

"But I am." It had to be said. It all had to be said, if only to Grace, those things he had told her silently in the night, but never put on paper. "I was afraid, day and night. I still dream about it. Sometimes I think I hear a cannonball that doesn't exist, even though I'm merely walking down the street."

"And you felt guilty that you weren't injured, that you weren't killed," she added.

He was right. She had known. "Yes. And like an a.s.s, like a coward, still afraid."

A small hand cupped his cheek. "Any man not afraid in the middle of battle would be mad."

"It's not manly," he muttered, thinking that he would never be able to explain how he felt, not to a woman.

Out of nowhere, soft lips descended on his, brushing a kiss. It was the first kiss she'd ever given him. He could feel the joy of that melting some of the self-hatred that consumed him.

"I think you're very manly," she whispered against his lips. "Your medals show how brave you are, Colin. You saved your men's lives, again and again."

His throat was too tight to answer.

"A man who was untouched by the violence and death around him would not be a man, but some sort of animal. An uncaring animal."

How did she know to say that? He had looked at his friend Philip sometimes, at the way he would tell a joke five minutes after a sailor died at his feet, see his blue eyes untroubled, clear . . . and think just that very thing. Philip was like a wolf, a predator who killed with impunity.

Grace's next question eliminated all his interest in that thought. "Are you going to take off your clothes this time?" Her voice was an enchanting mixture of timidity and curiosity.