With This Kiss: Part Three
E
LOISA
J
AMES
With This Kiss: Part Three
Contents
Dear Readers,
We left Colin Griffin and Lady Grace Ryburn in an inn, when she just realized that it would break her heart to marry a man who loves her sister Lily—
and
believes he made love to Lily, when in reality he was making love to Grace.
But Colin has decided that he should imitate his pirate father, throw propriety to the winds, and simply take what he most wants…
Be sure to read the first two parts of
With this Kiss
before leaping into Part Three!
With all best wishes,
C
olin stood in the corridor, leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed. All his male beauty struck her like a blow in the face, and she cried, recklessly, “You can’t stop me!”
His hands shot out and unerringly caught her shoulders. “Yes, I can.”
She began to wiggle, and realized how stupid that was. “Colin, I must beg you to allow me to leave. I need some time alone. I have to think, to decide what to do next. If you would simply forget the events of the day, I would—”
“I would surmise this is your bedchamber?” he asked, cutting her off. Then he let go of her right shoulder and pushed the door open behind her.
She stumbled backward, dropping her traveling bag. “Let go of me!” At least she didn’t feel like crying any longer. Instead, she found herself contemplating how hard she would have to shove a blind man in order to make an escape over his fallen body.
One glance at Colin’s wide shoulders, and this idea fell by the wayside.
“Lead me to the bed,” he said grimly, kicking the door shut and stepping forward again.
“I will not!”
He pushed, and she stepped back again. “If we’re going to stumble into the chamber pot, you might want to warn me,” he said, without a glimmer of humor in his voice.
There was something wild about Colin that she had never seen in the disciplined young officer who paid visits to her parents. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and his face was dark with stubble.
Even blindfolded, the set of his jaw expressed raw determination. He looked like a pirate, a man who would take what he wanted without regard for the consequences.
“No,” she cried, trying to sound authoritative. Despite herself, her knees went weak at the sight of him. He looked like a hunter focused on his prey. She was stupid,
stupid
, to think that was attractive.
He crowded her again and she stepped backward once more, retreating before him until her knees struck the back of the large bed.
“Stop it!” Grace shouted, even as he picked her up and placed her on her back. “You have no right to try to do—whatever it is you are doing.”
She twisted toward the far side of the bed, and for a moment she was escaping, but then he surged forward, pulled her back, and pinned her down. He was looming over her on his hands and knees, his hair falling over the bandage, his features so beautiful that her hand rose in the air toward his cheek before she snatched it back.
“Why have you changed your mind about marrying me?” he demanded.
“It is a lady’s prerogative. This misadventure is over.” She could feel a sob rising in her chest. How could she have allowed this to happen? His mouth… he was
beautiful
. He belonged with Lily, not with a quiet wallflower like herself.
“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 passion. 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 assaulting 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 passion 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.
Naïve as she was, she knew when a man’s body was pulsing with lust. 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.
C
olin had survived battles without feeling a surge of gratitude 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 sturdy 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 damned his loss of vision.
Was she frightened? Repulsed? Injured? “Are you too sore to make love again?” he whispered, thinking that he would probably embarrass 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 passionately 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 lust 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 hoarse. “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 God 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 duchess 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 ass, 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.
“I didn’t take my clothing off in the carriage?” Of course he hadn’t. His voice rasping, he said, “I didn’t treat you as you deserved, Grace. What an ass I was!”
“Because you didn’t take your shirt off?” Laughter threaded through her words, making the pain in his chest ease. “
Or
your breeches,” she added. “I had to button up your placket myself.”
“Unprincipled,” he muttered, one hand running down her back and pulling her ruined gown still lower, down around her hips. “Degenerate, repulsive, disgusting.”
She giggled. Grace. His solemn, sweet Grace. He thought for a second about where they were situated in the bed, and then pulled her underneath him. It felt safer this way. She was protected from anything that could harm her.
“Oh!” she gasped.
“Since we have to marry, we might as well practice what married people do.” He cupped a breast with his hand, found her nipple, and bent his head to it.
A moment later she wasn’t giggling any longer. The joy was still there, but she was twisting up, trying to suck air into her lungs, crying out with pleasure.
Colin waited until he thought Grace had breath again. “One thing I can’t remember,” he growled, the words caressing her skin even as he stroked her breast. “Did you touch me in the carriage, or did I just touch you?”
“No, I didn’t touch you.” She whispered it, and he felt a surge of white-hot possessiveness.
“Would you like to?” He held his breath. It might take months for Grace to be demonstrative. Especially since she had these ridiculous ideas about him stuck in her head. Love her? Damn, did she think that he could make love to another woman as he had to her?
Actually, what did she know? Grace had never been with a man before him. Had never . . .
It occurred to him that she had never said that she had been a virgin. But his hands knew it. He could feel the surprised pleasure in her kiss, in her every shiver. She didn’t love McIngle, so she would never have allowed him more than a kiss, not Grace.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the bed. It was the work of a moment to pull his shirt over his head, wrench off his boots, and strip off his breeches and smalls. Grace stayed quiet as a church mouse, even when he pulled the remains of her dress down her long, slender legs and tossed it to the floor.
“What do you think?” he asked, hands on his hips.
There was a giggle from the bed that made him aware that he was suffused with delight.
“This isn’t fair,” he said as he stared down at the general place he knew she was. “You are able to see, and I am only able to touch.” And taste, but he didn’t think she was quite ready for that, yet.
A soft hand stroked his knee with sympathy that he didn’t need. Luckily, he had an excellent memory, because he was able to swipe the remains of her gown back up from the floor.
“Are you enjoying the sight of me?”
“Yes.” She surprised him. There was nothing less than pure desire in her voice. She’d probably keep surprising him for the next sixty years of their lives. Grace had so many complexities, so many layers and feelings, and thoughts… he would happily spend his life trying to unwrap her.
Thinking about it, he tore a strip off the hem of her gown.
“What on earth are you going to do with that?”
Without answering, he put a knee forward onto the bed, making certain he knew precisely where she was. The last thing he wanted was to land on her like a felled tree.
He let a hand run from her stomach up and over those luscious breasts, causing a little hitch to her breathing. He lingered on her collarbones. They were delicate and strong at the same time, exquisitely shaped, like the rest of her.
And yet her narrow frame held a heart so large that it could encompass him. Even with his stupidity, with the way he never responded to her letters, with the way he danced with her sister… with his raw, unrelenting arse-hole qualities.
She loved him. He knew it. He could feel her love as a tenderness that fell on his skin like spring rain.
“You believe in fairness, don’t you, Grace?”
“Of course,” she said. But she was no fool: her voice was cautious.
Still, Grace was no match for hands used to tying sailors’ slipknots. It was the work of a moment to wind the scrap of gown around her eyes and tie it, not too tight, but snugly.