Bound by Bliss (Bound and Determined #2)(88)

“You’d promised to give me my first kiss when I asked you to marry me. I know it seems silly now, but it was important to me then, when I was seventeen.”

“I truly don’t remember. I am not sure if that makes it better or worse.”

“It was at the Daremoors’ house party. I was there as a friend of their daughter’s. You were out in the garden. It was one of the only times I ever found you alone in private. I was so determined to get my kiss. It was time. But you said no. You told me I was a child and that you had other things to do.” Her voice rang with hurt.

Shit! He did remember, or at least he could almost recall that night. He’d been with Clarissa, an older and much more experienced widow, and he’d been just beginning to discover who he was. They’d been scheduled to meet in the summerhouse. All of his thoughts had been on what they were going to do, what she was going to teach him. And then he’d seen Bliss, so young, so pure, and so different than what he was heading for. He’d felt dirty and ashamed, for the first time unsure of what he truly wanted.

And he’d hated her for it in that drunken moment.

He’d just been coming into his own, and she had made him doubt, had made him dislike and distrust himself.

What had he said to her? He had no recollection of the actual words, but he did remember her eyes, so bleak and injured.



It was no wonder he’d thrust it from his mind all these years.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Bliss.”

“But you did—and I think you did mean it. You looked so angry at me.” She rolled in the bed, turning from him.

He wanted to insist that he hadn’t, but how could he be sure? “Bliss, you were still a child. I did not want to sully you.” Now that was the complete truth. He had felt that his very touch would corrupt as she’d stood there so innocent and sweet.

“I was not a child. I was a woman.”

“Bliss, you were. You were all things innocent and I was not.” He placed a hand upon her shoulder, but did not force her to turn.

She sniffed. Was she crying? “I was as much a woman as she was.”

He froze. “She was?”

“I don’t know her name, but I saw you.”

“Saw me?” He was afraid he knew where this was going.

“I couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t kiss me. I’d been waiting for months for that night. I was sure you would kiss me and it would be heaven. And then—then—then I saw you with her. You were at the far end of the gardens, just entering some small building, and I followed. I couldn’t think why you would go there alone. I crept up and peered in the window—and I saw you, saw her. You kissed her, you pressed your mouth to hers like you wanted to eat her, and—and fondled her when you wouldn’t even grant me the lightest brushing of lips.”

Shit. What else had Bliss seen? Clarissa had been a woman of extreme tastes. He tried to remember that night, but it was mostly a blur of alcoholic haze. “Clarissa, that is her name, was not an innocent. There was no need to protect her.”



“There was no need to protect me.”

“There was.” He rolled over and picked up the candle again. “Would you have been ready for this at seventeen, ready for my spank, my slap? I was only beginning to know what I wanted then. I had no restraint, no bounds. You were not ready for that.”

“You could have taught me.”

He closed his eyes. “No, I could not. I was still learning myself, and you were so pure, so innocent. You dreamed of kisses and I craved…God, I cannot even now whisper to you the things that I craved.”

“And so you abandoned me for her. Only my mother’s death has hurt as much.” There was a level of despair within her voice.

“I did not abandon you, I tried to save you. You were not meant for the things I needed.”

Bliss lifted a hand and tapped the candle. “I think I did rather well myself.”

That was true, but…“It has been years, you are older now—and I have learned that the world is not as black and white as I saw it then.”

“I felt that you had left me, as everyone I cared for left me.”

God, he could understand that, could see it through her eyes, even if he could not in any way see changing his actions. Bliss had not been ready for him then; he was only just coming to believe that she was ready for him now. “You mentioned a dance. I don’t remember dancing at the Daremoors’. I wasn’t there for the dancing.” That he was sure about. He’d only gone there to meet Clarissa, and he didn’t think they’d left the summerhouse before dawn.



“No, you didn’t dance with me at my coming-out ball the next year. I am not even sure that you attended. I’d spent that whole year working up my courage to talk to you again, to ask you to kiss me again. I was willing to try one more time, to see if we could find that place that came so easily to us when we were younger. I was going to persuade you that we should be—be friends again. I was prepared to do whatever it took to make you see me, to make you understand me. And you didn’t even attend. It was my coming-out ball. The most important thing to happen to me up until that point in time and you didn’t bother to come. I felt like you were telling me that I meant nothing to you.”

He’d been at the ball, but only for fifteen minutes, just long enough for Swanston to tell him that if he touched his sister they’d both be bloody in the morning. It was right after the first time they’d run into each other at Ruby’s and Duldon had not blamed him, not in the least. He couldn’t tell Bliss that, however. “I was there. You wore a dress of white with silver lace and more silver in your hair. I almost believed you were an angel, that you would spread you wings and fly far away from us all.”