Eloisa James (12 page)

Two

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.

Three

“W
hat are you doing?” Grace shrieked, her hands going to her head.

Colin caught both of her wrists and pinned them over her head. “Putting us on equal footing,” he said with satisfaction. He bent his head and caressed her lips with his own, letting a sharp ache of desire bubble up from his groin and fill his whole body. “I can’t see you, and now you can’t see me.”

“I liked seeing you.” She sounded a little sulky.

“This is our first time, Grace,” he said, kissing the arch of her cheekbone. “In the carriage . . . that was something else, a dream, really. But this is our first time truly making love.”

“Oh.”

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, so he let his mouth drift down the angle of her jaw. “I want you to be with me,” he murmured, stroking her soft skin with his tongue. She shivered under him, and he laid a trail of kisses to her ear, nipped the elegant shell with his teeth.

She didn’t react, and he made a mental note, went back to her jaw and kissed his way to her neck. Then she sighed and arched her neck, giving him more flesh.

He made another mental note, and dropped farther down her body, allowing her hands to fall free. They dropped to his hair. “I want to see!” she wailed. “You didn’t undress in the carriage and you’re my first . . . You know that.”

Colin smiled against the soft skin of her breast. “Do I?”

She clearly heard the laughter in his voice. “Yes, you do. I only got to look at you for a moment, whereas you had your eyesight when you were with other women.”

He reared up, put a finger over her lips. “I will never be with another woman again. Not in the whole of my life, not if you die tomorrow and I live to be one hundred.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t a woman to give up easily. “Still . . .”

“You and I will find each other in the dark, and I swear it will be all the sweeter, Grace. I’ve never made love to a woman without my sight, before you.”

She made a little humming sound in the back of her throat that he loved. That he wanted to hear a hundred thousand times.

“We’ll both be new to each other.”

“All right,” she whispered, her fingers still tight in his hair. “All right. But I feel terribly vulnerable. It’s frightening.”

“When you can’t see, you have to trust your touch. My eyes would have told you everything you wanted to know in the parlor.”

“The windows to the soul,” she said, understanding.

“You would never have spouted that drivel about how I felt about Lily if you could have seen my eyes. Never.”

She shifted onto her side, her body sliding under his hands like water. The feeling of her skin sent a rage of pure lust up his body.

“All right,” she said. “All right. I’ll . . . I’ll touch you then.”

His hands stroked down her bottom and she startled. “
I’ll
touch you,” she dictated. “Not both of us at the same time.”

He sighed, rolled on his back, let his arms fall away. “I am here.” Though he didn’t like it. Lying on his back felt too exposed.

“Where?”

She sounded a bit tentative, but then her fingers descended on him like little flames. She started on his chest, her fingers tracing the muscles rippling under her touch as she stroked down his chest, across his stomach. Under her fingertips, he felt like a battering ram, a body honed into muscles for one reason, and one reason only: war.

He shook the feeling off. Somehow, it was easier in her presence. He hadn’t felt the drowning weight of black memory all day, not even when in the grip of laudanum.

Instead, his body was tingling all over, his tool rigid against her hip, his stomach clenched with lust. Perhaps his body wasn’t made for war, but for her. For her pleasure, for her amusement.

She had stopped caressing him; her fingers seemed to have stalled around his waist. “Here,” he murmured, pushing her hand lower. At the mere brush of her fingers, his hips rose in the air and a groan burst from his lips.

“I wish I could see you,” she breathed. Then she was silent for a moment, her fingers roaming from the curve of his inner thigh to an erection so pounding and fierce that he’d never experienced anything like it in his life. Her touch was close to causing him pain.

When her hand finally curled around him, he couldn’t stop a surprised curse from erupting from his lips. He had the sheets clenched in his hands, forcing himself not to touch her. Not to throw her backward and bury himself inside her.

“You like that,” she said, and the delight in her voice made the erotic hum filling his body more tight, more potent.

“I do,” he managed. Her fingers tightened as she stroked him. If she kept that up, he would find himself begging. “Do you think that you’ve touched me enough, darling?”

Her grip froze. “
Darling?
”

He couldn’t bear it another moment, not without losing all control and disgracing himself. He pulled her hands apart and then rolled her into what was quickly becoming his favorite position. He tucked her small body inside the shelter of his and kissed her, loving every touch of his fingers, the way her hands trembled as they caressed his shoulders.

“You’re mine,” he murmured, keeping his weight on his elbows. Then he kissed her forehead. “Mine. My darling. My Grace.”

Her hands stroked down his back, but she made a stifled noise, almost like a little sob. He let a smile curl his mouth, knowing she was blind to it. “And I’m yours,” he told her. “This body, such as it is, is yours, Lady Grace, soon to be Mrs. Barry.”

“Mrs. Barry.” Her voice was wondering, with an undercurrent of astonishment. But he knew her. Every word of her letters had taught him to love her and to know her. She was more joyful than surprised.

“My wife,” he said, with satisfaction. “Are you all right?” He kissed her nose.

He caught her
yes
in her mouth, stifled it with a kiss that went on and on. When he finally surfaced from a pool of desire, he found that he had lowered all his weight on her, and he was grinding into the soft cradle of her body, his breath coming fast and hot in his chest.

“I want you.” Grace’s words came with a sigh and a sob that sounded hungry. He felt between her legs, realizing his hand was shaking. She was wet and warm, and she cried out at his touch.

“I want to kiss you there.”

“No!” she cried, fierce as a warrior queen, pulling at him. “Just come inside me now. Do it!”

“Grace,” he whispered against her lips. “Weren’t you a bashful maiden all of five minutes ago?”

She was rubbing against him, as uninhibited as a lady of the night. “It’s this blindfold,” she breathed. “I feel as if my skin is alive. The feeling of you is making me mad.” Her hands stroked down his hips and then across his arse. “You are so . . . I love touching you.”

He loved it, too. The very feeling of her hands shaping his rear made the blood roar in his ears.

“I want you,” she sobbed.

He was her knight. He could not say no. “I’m afraid this will hurt,” he said.

“I know all about that. I understand. Just . . . just please come to me, Colin. I feel so”—she twisted up against him again—“strange. Like when you were kissing me, in the carriage.”

Kissing her? Thank God, it sounded as if he had done that, at least. He wanted to lick her now, but at the same time, if he didn’t plunge inside her, he felt as if he would die.

So he rubbed himself against her soft, wet folds and then slowly began to work his way inside. “Gods,” he gasped after a second. “You’re so tight, Grace. I’ve never felt anything like this. Is it painful?”

“No,” she replied, but her voice was a bit odd, so he paused.

“Really all right, or just telling me so?”

“It doesn’t hurt like last time. In fact, it feels quite good.”

He was spending every ounce of control he had going slow, desperate not to hurt her. “Just tell me,” he said through clenched teeth. “If it hurts, we’ll try again some other time.” When she didn’t answer immediately, he started to withdraw.

Grace’s hands tightened on his shoulders; she arched her hips and pushed back at him. “It’s not enough, it’s not enough. I feel . . . I feel empty and
wanting
.”

Her words were like a dam breaking during a storm. Colin heard the tone in her voice over the thudding of his heart. He felt her fingernails on his shoulders—gentle Grace, beside herself with passion, wanting him as much as he did her. He thrust inside her, seating himself where he most wanted to be.

She cried out, from pleasure, not pain.

He pulled back, felt her tighten as he escaped, heard a thread of sound. “Nooo.”

Captain Colin Barry hadn’t laughed in a year, perhaps longer. He had smiled now and then, with genuine amusement, sometimes. But laughter . . . laughter comes from joy, and joy comes from the heart, and his had turned to stone at some point.

Now, in Grace’s arms, hearing her cry out as he sheathed himself deep inside, then whimper again as he withdrew . . .

This laughter came from true joy, that of heart’s delight.

He only stopped laughing because Grace pulled his mouth down to hers. She was kissing him wildly, pulling his body closer as if she could stop him from leaving her body.

But he insisted on withdrawing, even though she sobbed every time until he thrust back again, and again, until the fire spread up his legs and through his body. He slipped a hand between their bodies and touched her . . . just the faintest pressure.

She tightened on him until it almost hurt, except it was the kind of pain he wanted to feel every day. Then she cried out again with a kind of guttural, raw pleasure, wrenched from her chest, followed by a pulsing that coursed through her body and gave wings to his desire.

He wrapped her in his arms and pumped into her, mad with lust, loving the fact she was tucked under him, safe, warm,
his
.

“I love you,” he gasped, at the moment when everything he had in his body and heart coursed out of him. “Oh God, I love you, Grace.”

She arched into him, caught by a second wave of pleasure. He caught her scream with his kiss, saying it again, and again, silently, without words.

It didn’t matter.

She had heard him.

“I love you. I love you, too,” she whispered.