With This Kiss

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