With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Had she fainted again?

  Her gaze flew to his, searching for signs that she was truly going mad.

  “You…don’t have to—”

  “I do,” he insisted, his visage claimed by an emotion both desolate and resolute. “The truth is, I don’t know you like a man should know his wife, but that is my failing, not yours. Beyond that, I think you are an honest person, possessed of integrity I’ve only ever pretended to have.”

  She stalled, blinking over at him in wonder. “You do?”

  His features softened as he regarded her with such infinite tenderness, she felt as though it might melt her completely. “Yes. You’re so open and vulnerable. You tell me everything you’re thinking. You tell me what you want, and what you feel and what you know to be true. Hell, that very first night, your shocking candidness was the first thing that drew me to you. From the beginning of it all…I’ve been inclined to believe every word from your mouth.”

  The mouth he referred to fell open in abject incredulity. “Then…why?”

  “Because everyone—literally everyone else—is a liar, including me, and with that, I have made my peace. But Prudence,” he brushed his thumb up her jaw, his eyes touching her face everywhere, searching for something. “You are the one person who can truly betray me, do you understand?”

  She tilted her neck, pulling away from his distracting touch to shake her head with incomprehension.

  “You’re going to make me say it,” he realized wryly, giving the impression of a boy squirming beneath a scolding adult’s insistence he explain himself. The electric blue of his eyes disappeared as he hid his expression behind his lids. “You are the epitome of every desire or dream I’ve conceived of since before I can remember, and that is a very specific kind of torment. An unparalleled beauty, a superb lover, a woman of grace and kindness and intellect whom I can only respect and admire. A fantasy in the flesh, here in my house. With my name.”

  He lifted his empty hand to swipe it through his hair. “Christ, sometimes I have to just stand in the hall and stare at the door you sleep behind because I cannot believe my luck, my undeserved good fortune. You are here. You are real. And so is our child.”

  A sob escaped her. Not one adorned by tears, but disbelief. “But…” She didn’t even know where to start. A part of her had awakened at his words, the part made of need and love and hope and happiness. “But…only this morning you thought that I—You said—”

  “I know what I said.” His jaw tightened before he continued, his brow crimping with earnest anguish. “Trust is not a word I understand. Faith is a foreign concept to me. Despite that, my instincts have screamed at me to trust you.” His gaze cast down as his jaw worked over powerful emotion.

  “And then that insidious voice inside of me warns that if I did believe you, and then discovered you lied? That you’d somehow swindled me, possibly the most incredulous man alive. Well…I’ve survived any number of disappointments, treacheries, and sorrows. But I don’t see the way back from that. You could break me, Prudence, don’t you see? It’s why I’ve been pushing you so hard. Why I almost needed you to be guilty, so the terrible truth—if it was a truth—would be out. So it was safe to fall for you because you were just as dishonest as the entire world. Just as deceitful as me.”

  Prudence yearned to say so many things. To ask so many questions. To soothe him and set his churning mind at rest, but now that he’d begun, his torrent of words tumbled out in escape, like the freed captives of a heavily fortified prison.

  Her hand stayed against his heart hammering beneath the hard muscle of his chest as he released his grip to tenderly cradle her face in his palms. The spark of warmth he’d ignited within her bloomed to an incandescent radiance, reanimating the spirit within her.

  “I meant what I said earlier,” he whispered, his gaze searching hers, beseeching her. “Even though I was being an inconsiderate ass when I said it. I don’t care about scandal in the paper but for the fact that it distresses you. I’ll send anyone to the devil before they hurt you. I am a knight. A man with a code. A warrior with a creed. I vow, from this moment onward to be your knight, wife. Someone who is honor bound to protect your name, your life, and your soul. I swear to you, that before this child is born, the world will know who did this. And they will know you didn’t.” His voice grew in fervency until he finished with the one thing she’d yearned to hear. “They will believe you, as I believe you.”

  His words eroded any thought of erecting barricades between them. Her next sob was filled with joy as she flung her arms around his neck, pulled him toward her body, and brought his lips down to receive her kiss.

  The kiss that contained her heart.

  She was lost. She’d been lost to him since the moment she’d tumbled into his lap. A fated fall, she realized, as if destiny had pushed her over.

  And he’d caught her, as he ever would.

  The moment tilted from overly emotional to intensely erotic in the space of an instant as he gathered her close and crawled up onto the bed, pulling her beneath him.

  He was a remarkably self-contained man, her husband…until he wasn’t.

  His kisses began as soft as prayers and then built in power and demand as his grip on his own control became less tenuous. Hot glides of his tongue became deep, mating dances with her answering passions.

  She melted beneath him, and he filled her spaces with the force of his ardor.

  A voice inside urged her to let go of the brittle, desperate edge she’d been clinging to, realizing it was safe. She wouldn’t fall. No, she’d join him here, to dance among the clouds.

  His kiss contained so many things they’d still left unsaid. So many parts of his fractured being. He was at once the Knight of Shadows. A man possessed of unmerciful darkness, devouring her with breath-stealing intensity. And so, too, was he the Chief Inspector, assessing and observant as he brushed his lips across hers, creating delicious friction with his mouth, evoking an ache in her sex that demanded satisfaction.

  And maybe the thief was here with her, threatening to steal her heart, even the parts of it she was still afraid to give. There was the sense of marvelous reverence in his touch, a bit of disbelief that belonged to the youth he’d been, the one unused to any kindness or affection.

  Though she felt a fervency in him, he lingered over her mouth, kissing her with slow, languorous efficiency and tantalizing promise.

  For the first time, he kissed her as if he should be doing nothing else. As if his mind was empty of naught but this moment. And the next. As if they were immortals who might go on kissing for a hundred years and never tire of it.

  And, indeed, she wished it were so.

  If ever there was a moment in need of prolonging, it was this one.

  And yet…a pressure built within her that urged her legs apart so he could settle his big body between them. The barrel of his erection ground against her between the impediments of their clothing, and she was suddenly anxious to be rid of them.

  She wanted all of his skin next to hers. All of his heat and his need and his sex.

  As if reading her mind, he broke the kiss, lifting away from her only to tackle the placket of tiny buttons that stretched from her chin to her waist.

  He made it to her clavicles before ripping the garment open, and lowering back to swallow her faint protestations with more distracting kisses.

  “I’ll buy you a dozen bodices,” he whispered against her mouth. “If you only let me tear them from you each night.”

  Appeased, she let him unwrap her like a present, releasing this strap, undoing that ribbon, unclasping a hook. His mouth explored every inch he uncovered as if finding it for the first time.

  Her chemise caught beneath her swollen, tender breasts as he dragged it up, and she felt them pop free with a little bounce before he swiped it over her head and tossed it somewhere on the floor.

  “You are so beautiful,” he groaned.

  “So are you,” she replied with breathless c
andor.

  His smile was touched with chagrin as, instead of reaching for her breasts, he lifted his fingers to her hair, deftly searching the plait for pins, pulling them from a head she hadn’t known was aching until the pressure had ceased.

  He returned to kissing her with new depth and untried angles as his fingers wended through the braid, unspooling it softly until her hair fell in soft waves down her bare back.

  Questing fingers slid up her spine, thrilling her to the core and mingling a shivering chill with the answering heat of need.

  No longer willing to stay dormant, Prudence slid her arms around him, sinking her fingers into the heavy, lambent locks of his neatly trimmed hair before lowering them to tug at his collar.

  His fingers lifted to help, and their hands tangled in a newfound haste to divest each other of the trappings of their garments.

  Once they’d wrestled themselves naked, he climbed up her body like a cat, laying her back beneath him as he pressed a muscled thigh dusted with golden hair between her legs.

  They spoke in smiles and sighs as she tested the taut ridges of muscle at his ribs, and down over his corrugated abdomen to reach for the hard and tender flesh below. She still marveled at how silky the skin of his sex was, pulled canvas tight and pulsing with blood and lust. It was hot velvet poured over steel, and she loved nothing more than the moment it fit inside her. As if he’d always been made for her. The key to her lock.

  A apropos metaphor, as whenever he’d finished with her, she became quite unlatched. Undone. Open.

  He began to chart a course with his lips down her body, pulling his sex from her grasp with a plaintive moan. A little moisture lingered on her fingertips, and she knew by now that meant his arousal had reached a peak. That he approached a point of no return.

  His golden head bent over her breast to release a steaming breath against the puckered peak. He browsed at the nipple with only his lips, laved at it with a barely there lick of his tongue.

  Moaning her encouragement, Pru squirmed beneath the attentions, not too far gone to be touched by his conscientiousness. Her breasts had been unabatingly tender before, and he was the kind of man who didn’t forget that.

  One who always cared about her pleasure and her comfort.

  He didn’t use his teeth until he nuzzled into the valley between them, nipping at the skin and then soothing it with a velvety lick.

  In the light of the lamp on her dresser table, he became a silhouette of sin, his powerful body hunkered over hers as if protecting his next meal.

  And a meal, she was certain to become.

  He swiped his tongue across his lips, making them glisten before he dipped his head to press a butterfly-soft kiss to the delicate swell of her belly.

  The sight of it touched her eyes with the burn of emotion to rival that of the heat of desire. It was him that put this child inside of her. This act. This bit of miracle of making allowed mere mortals, the culmination of which one might call a glimpse of divinity.

  “Mine,” he growled possessively. The tickle of his breath against her bare stomach set every hair on her body to vibrating in awareness. Her muscles coiled with need, and her knees fell further apart, inviting his kiss to the throbbing center of her.

  Offering herself.

  His hands smoothed up her taut thighs as he nuzzled into the soft, fleecy curls, inhaling deeply.

  “Christ, you’re perfect,” he breathed against her sex, causing an intimate spasm of anticipation.

  His tongue split her in one upward stroke.

  He kissed her there as he’d done her mouth, with feverish ardor. His tongue slow and long, hot and hard as it tangled with the satin of her intimate flesh. Sliding forward, withdrawing, slipping in and about as she writhed beneath him.

  Struggling to breathe, Pru reached for him, lacing her fingers in his hair as he nibbled and tugged with his lips, explored with his tongue as if he couldn’t decide which part tasted the best.

  And then he was there, at the tight, clenching opening of her body, delving against it, entering her in shallow thrusts that sensitized her so exceedingly, her hips came off the bed in a sinuous arch.

  Unable to contain herself, she chased the pleasure of his mouth in lithe, supple movements. She trembled and strained, danced and bucked, until he was forced to seize her hips and pin her down, so he could thoroughly dismantle her by enclosing his mouth over the stiff, tender bud.

  Euphoria suffused her in spasms of delight as the culmination of desire broke over her in wave after wet wave of release. She wanted to thank every pagan god of sex and sin, and she rather thought the rhythmic, ecstatic sounds she made might have paid sufficient tribute as he wrung from her a bliss she’d never before reached.

  Only once he was certain she’d been sufficiently brought back to earth, did he leave her with one last naughty kiss before wiping the gloss of her from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  His features were taut with a particular wickedness as he kneeled up between her parted thighs and gazed down at her exposed sex with the reverence of a man at the end of a grail quest.

  Suddenly shy, she went to close her knees to hide the still-pulsing flesh from his view. He stopped her by shaping his hand over her mons, stroking it gently, dipping inside to wet his fingers, then spreading her nectar on the jut of his sex.

  He lifted to retrieve a pillow, and effortlessly maneuvered her to slide it beneath her hips, tilting them upward.

  Leaning over her, he caught himself on his elbows as he slid the head of his shaft along the slick cleft, lodging against her entrance.

  His eyes burned down into hers, as he fed her his cock inch after pulsing inch until he’d embedded himself so deep, she felt the stirrings of a new pleasure. Of a glory left untapped.

  Something unfurled as he seated inside her. Something previously dormant and unaccountably sweet. They’d been lovers a handful of ecstatic times now, and each time had been incredible in its own right.

  But this. This connection…it reached beyond the physical. She could feel his heartbeat, but in her own chest. The cavern of his loneliness and the space she took up inside it, making it smaller.

  His gaze became incredulous, and he gasped out her name as if unsure of what was happening.

  “I know,” she whispered, drawing her hands down the splendor of his skin. “I feel it too.”

  The uneven struggle of his breathing called to her, and she twined her arms about him, pulling him in for a searing kiss. Tasting her pleasure on his lips. The essence of his skill and her unending desire for him.

  Then he moved.

  He set a deep, primal rhythm, angling into her with maddening proficiency. She felt the heavy weight of him inside her, against her, over and around her, cocooning her body with his.

  Though her limbs felt liquid with the torpor that followed such a consuming climax, she couldn’t bring herself to remain still beneath him. She lifted her knees to his sides, wrapping her legs around his pistoning hips.

  His cock touched something inside of her, eliciting an instant pleasure so keen, it bordered on pain. She arched toward it. Or maybe away, feeling as though he’d thrust a rod of lightning against her spine and the currents lifted her into thunderclouds where a storm shook her asunder.

  She was dimly aware of his own breath catching before a sound ripped from him, something like a growl snagging on velvet as his muscles built upon themselves. Tightening. Trembling. Seizing. Before the warm rush of his release spread inside of her.

  It took her a while to find her way back from the stars. Her husband, as was his way, took care of everything. He washed her, then himself, pausing at the lamp to turn down the light, melting the shadows down the walls until they were only encased in a dim amber glow.

  He settled them both beneath the coverlet, resting his shoulders against a pile of pillows, and pulling her to lean back against his chest so he could rest his chin on her head and twine his arms around her. Big hands encased her tightening belly, an
d he idly stroked her as she lazed in the aftermath. Their limbs entwined and the fine down on his legs tickled her bottom, but she was too spent to care.

  Prudence tuned to the aftershocks of their joining, the twitches and throbs of her body, the resonant beats of her heart. She loved the scent of them, the bloom of sweat and heat and come, subtle and alluring. Tempting and erotic.

  He’d never held her like this before. He’d…never stayed.

  Lanced with a sudden anxiety, she swallowed. “If you’re going to leave, you’d better go now.” She injected a teasing note into her voice. “I’ll be cross if you wake me later.”

  “I would stay…” he hesitated. “If you’d have me.”

  “What about the Knight of Shadows?” she protested, angling her head to look up at him. “Doesn’t he have somewhere to be?”

  His hands coasted up her ribs and gently palmed the weights of her breasts, testing the thin, silky skin beneath. “He’s exactly where he should be.”

  She relaxed against him, her heart swelling until it felt two times too large for its chamber. This was bliss. This moment. Were she a cat, she’d be purring.

  “I’m going to be a better husband to you,” he murmured, his voice full of self-approbation as he curled around her as if he could create a buffer of skin and muscle and blood from the rest of the world.

  Nestling deeper against him, she turned to press a kiss to his jaw, feeling the tug of sleep against her lids. “You already are.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  What they needed was a honeymoon, Morley decided.

  He’d eschewed the very idea at first—no—that wasn’t right. He’d never even entertained the notion for obvious reasons.

  But now…

  Now he’d lost all ability to focus on his work.

  Reports needed briefing, men required orders and permissions, warrants begged approval to go to the courts. He had half a dozen active crime scenes in this borough, alone, and an iron worker’s strike waiting to happen right on London Bridge.

  He signed the correct papers, assigned the appropriate investigators, listened as best he could to debriefings and such. But now, as he waded through reports, he realized he’d read the same paragraph going on fifteen times now.