With This Kiss Read Free Page A

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