“
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.
G
race woke early the next morning, just as a cool, pinkish light came over the windowsill. At some point in the night she had pulled off her blindfold. Colin,
her
Colin, lay beside her, tousled hair falling over his face, an arm thrown above his head.
She was so happy that her heart hurt. Colin loved her; he had said so again and again. He wasn’t pretending. She knew him better than anyone else in the world, so she knew that.
He was hers.
Just then he made a small noise and she saw his hand clench into a fist. His jaw tightened and he made a noise so pained that her entire body froze.
“Colin,” she whispered, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“The blood,” he said, turning his blindfolded eyes toward her. “It’s running over my boots again. Send my boots to be cleaned.”
“I will,” she said, but his face remained anguished. So she moved and lay down on top of him, naked body to naked body. “Your boots are clean now,” she whispered into his ear.
She could feel little shudders running through his body. “Did you wash off all the blood?” he rasped.
“I did,” she told him. “I washed it all off.”
His hand touched her back. A small smile curved his lips. She held her breath. If he didn’t know who she was…
“Grace,” he breathed. “My Grace.”
She waited a long time, but his breathing became regular and he never woke up. Finally she slipped off his body, thinking hard. It seemed that war didn’t go away once a man walked off a ship.
She finally eased from the bed and crept to the bathing alcove. She used the chamber pot hidden in a small chair, and then washed at the basin. It was interesting to discover a jumble of little red marks on her body, as if his kisses had burned a pattern into her skin.
She washed herself between her legs and her touch caused a tingle, but not of pain. Her nipples seemed a darker rose, perhaps from all those kisses. She frowned at that, and then pulled on a nightgown: it was literally the only thing she had left to wear, given that Colin had destroyed two gowns.
The gown was a muted pear color, sewn from a silk that shifted color constantly, going from milk to faint pink. The problem was that she had never thought of wearing it in front of a man, though, of course, it was designed for just that.
Now a look at the glass showed her that the gown was more like a scrap of cloth with pretensions to being a garment. It didn’t even reach her ankles, and the fabric was far too sheer. She crossed her arms over her chest. That was not acceptable.
It wasn’t really a sound that warned her; it was more like a change in the very quality of the air. She turned and there he was, wearing nothing more than a twist of sheet around his hips. He was smiling at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and gleaming with an emotion she’d never seen in them before.
“Where is your bandage?” she gasped. “Colin!”
“Six weeks today,” he replied, holding up a black swatch of cloth with one finger. “But I am not throwing this out, Grace.”
“Because your eyesight is hazy?” she asked, anxiety streaking through her body. “The doctor said it might be. You should put it back on.”
“My vision seems absolutely normal.” He emphasized the words. The look on his face was akin to the giddy joy that lit his eyes on seeing Lily at the ball. But it was a deeper, more intoxicating joy that bound love and desire together.
Grace smiled back, as delighted as he was. “Oh, Colin, I don’t have the words to say how happy I am!”
“But perhaps I should test my eyesight. May I say how much I love that gown you’re wearing?” He slowly looked over her entire body, starting at her toes, taking his time, enjoying it. When he reached her breasts, she folded her arms in front of her chest again.
He shook his head.
“What?”
“Drop your arms, darling.”
She frowned at him. “I won’t. In fact, you shouldn’t have looked behind the bathing screen. I’m certain that’s not what married couples do.”
“Who knows what married couples do? We’re both new at this.”
“And not even married,” she said, remembering that.
“We will marry tomorrow morning. I’m guessing your mother will send a special license by messenger this afternoon.”
She laughed. He was right.
“I’ve known the duchess almost as long as you have,” he remarked. Then: “Drop your arms, Grace.” His voice was quiet, but his eyes burned into hers. There was a moment between them that weighed the years she had known him, the trust she had in him, her love.
She dropped her arms. And then, just to make him happy, she arched her back the slightest amount because her nipples… well, she knew he could see them.
She saw his throat ripple, and that was a victory of sorts. But he held up the black cloth again. “I’m not throwing this away, because last night was a revelation.”
A flush swept up her cheeks. It was true that after he blindfolded her, she seemed to lose all dignity, all claim to being a lady.
Colin stepped forward and dropped a kiss on her nose. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world, Grace.”
She bit her lip. His head bent and he brushed a kiss across her lips. His eyes closed, and thick lashes lay on his cheekbones.
“I am not,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I am nice-looking rather than beautiful, and I don’t like fibs.” She gave him a kiss to make up.
He opened his eyes and looked down at her face. “Can you read my eyes?”
“I think so,” she said cautiously. She had certainly spent enough years watching his face.
“I love you. I want to marry you. I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world.” His eyes were the color of the ocean at twilight: deep and tranquil, yet shining with a luminescence lent by the last rays of the sun.
“Oh,” she said, rather foolishly. “I see.”
“We both see,” he whispered, rubbing her nose with his. “Your love kept me alive, all those years at sea.”
She buried her head against his shoulder and held on tight. “Don’t say that. I hate to think that you were in danger.”
“I think my heart would have withered entirely, but for your letters. Will you come to Arbor House with me?”
She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his warm chest.
“We’ll leave immediately. After eating.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Grace pulled away and walked a few steps, to the edge of the screen. Then she turned and looked over her shoulder. Who would have thought she had such a coquette inside her? Not she. But she didn’t like the idea that Colin thought she was brave only when her eyes were bandaged.
His jaw looked tight. He wasn’t a man who liked to be countered. Which meant it should be on her daily list of activities.
“Colin,” she said, rather amused to find that her voice was throaty and soft.
“Yes?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Do you remember how you ordered me to lower my arms?”
“Yes.” His voice deepened.
She let her hips swing as she walked from the bathing alcove. The gown helped, rippling against her skin.
Then she turned around and pointed at the bed. “On the bed.”
“What?
” His voice was quiet but with a dangerous undertone. Captain Barry was clearly not accustomed to being given a direct command, except perhaps from an admiral.
The bashful side of her was anxious, but Grace ignored her own burning cheeks. “I
order
you to lie down on the bed.”
There was a moment of dangerous silence in the bedchamber. But she raised her chin and met his eyes. She didn’t want to be forced to obey a man, even a man whom she loved as much as Colin. He was used to captaining a ship, and she understood that he had been the leader onboard. But not on shore.
Instead of obeying her, he walked over, tipped up her chin, and stared down into her eyes. To her extreme annoyance, he was smiling. “Grace,” he said quietly, “are you making a point?”
She just stopped herself from chewing her lip. “Perhaps… Yes.”
“You don’t like being told what to do, any more than I do?”
She nodded. “You were a captain, Colin. But I am not a member of your crew. We’re to be
married
. I don’t want to be ordered about as if I were no better than a midshipman.”
The spark in his eyes was positively wicked. “What if I promised that I wouldn’t order you about… most of the time?”
“Never,” she said firmly. She’d had years to examine the relationships of men and women from the edge of the ballroom and the quiet side of a dinner table. Some men felt free to command their wives to do as they wished. She’d even seen one particularly horrid fellow order his wife not to eat another sweet, because he didn’t care for her hips.
A man would
never
behave like that to her.
Colin nodded. “May I order you to leave a house in case of fire?”
“Yes.”
“And will you do the same for me?”
“Of course.”
He grinned. “I am looking forward to being saved by you.”
She smiled back, rather uncertainly.
Then, with no warning, Colin scooped her up into his arms. Grace blinked and wound her arms around his neck. He smelled so good, with just a hint of the sea still hanging about him. “I only want to order you about in the bedchamber,” he said, growling it.
“Oh,” she breathed, her whole body jolting into sensual awareness.
He bent his head and nipped her lip. “I don’t need to be the captain on land, Grace. I don’t even want to be.”
He smelled so good. One whiff of potent, sweaty man, and her legs turned liquid. “I suppose I could allow it sometimes,” she said, her voice coming out a throaty moan. “If you want it that much.”
“I
do
want it, Grace,” he stated. His eyes burned into hers. The question wasn’t even a question; one look from him like that, the look that told her that he found her more desirable than anyone in the world, that he loved her so deeply, that he wanted to…
“All right,” she whispered giving in.
He carried her over to the bed, and then put her on her feet. “But first, was there something you wanted, Grace?”
Morning light was pouring in the window now, emphasizing that broad chest. His sheet had fallen, and he was so masculine, so
perfect
. No wonder she had never managed to paint him. The thought made her feel painfully shy.
“I’d like to paint you,” she said, offering it up because she couldn’t shape those other words he wanted.
He grinned at her and threw himself on the bed. As she watched, he rolled on his back, just as he had the last night, and spread his arms wide. “I’m on the bed, Grace. As you ordered.”
It sent a bolt of pleasure through Grace just to see him there, his eyes glinting. He would do whatever she wanted; she knew it instinctively.
But at the same time, just as clearly, she could see that the position didn’t come naturally to him. Maybe it would years from now. Just at the moment his muscles were rigid, for all he was smiling. He needed to be in control. There had been too many rivers of blood over his boots, too much danger coming from all directions.
“Just a moment,” she said, running back into the bathing chamber and returning with a basin full of fresh water, and a clean cloth. Then she climbed onto the bed and knelt beside him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Caring for you,” she said. She wrung out the cloth and began washing his shoulders. She drew the cloth over the wide shape of his chest, stroking him softly down the rippled muscles of his stomach.
He didn’t make a sound and neither did she, even when she reached his groin and his body involuntarily shook and arched into her hands. She kept going, washing every inch of him, loving him as she did it.
When she reached his legs, she washed his thighs, learning the shape of a man’s leg… so different from the slender shape of her own. His hair was rough under her fingertips, the contained power in his thighs unbearably erotic. She kept going, letting her hair fall over her face so that she didn’t embarrass herself.
But without a word he reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. She knew that he could see raw lust on her face, even as she washed his feet.
When she finished, she dried him off with a soft towel, touching every part again with a softer stroke, a sweeter kind of torture. Her breath came fast by the time she reached his shoulders.
Neither of them had said one word. She hadn’t met his eyes. She had no idea whether he remembered asking her to wash off the blood.
By the time she had finished drying the strong column of his neck, Grace didn’t know what to do next. Her body felt wrung with desire. Every time she touched him she felt a stab of heat in her body. And yet, she didn’t know what to do.
“Would you order me to do something else?” Colin asked. His voice was low and inviting. “I’m at your service, Grace.”
She shook her head, feeling desperately embarrassed. It was different, making love when the sun was streaming in the windows. She was overwhelmed by a feeling of impropriety.
Colin made a stifled noise and then surged up, hauling her into his arms. A moment later she found herself tucked under his body, and all the anxiety and embarrassment drained out of her.
Her legs were spread, pressed to the bed by his weight, and her silk gown was up around her thighs. “I want you,” he growled.
Grace’s heart thumped at the wildness that entered his face. This was the Colin only she saw: the one who existed only for her. “I’m yours,” she breathed, reaching up to give his ear a little bite.
In response, he pushed down the bodice of her nightgown. His mouth at her breast drew a cry from her. When he added in a hand, kneaded and suckled and caressed her, she bent her knees and began to plead… Instead, he moved back and lowered his head between her legs.
Grace stared at the ceiling, hardly seeing the boards over her head while Colin licked and petted her, making her writhe and cry out, over and over.
Finally, he said, voice dark and lust-filled, “Fair warning. I’m going to give you an order, Grace. I want you to come.”
So she did.