With This Kiss

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