With This Kiss

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