With This Kiss

under her fingers, the very thing she’d sworn to avoid.
    “I knew it was you in the carriage, Grace. I want you . Not Lily.”
    Her traitorous body had forgotten the discomfort. All she could think of was the way pleasure had rippled through her body like sweet fire. The way he had shouted at the end, arching his throat back, completely taken by passion. Even though it had hurt, she had thrilled to that moment.
    “I want you, Grace,” he repeated. “ You . I’ve dreamed about making love to you so many times.”
    “No, you haven’t!” She pulled her hand away with a sharp jerk. “That’s not a nice thing to say, not when we both know it isn’t true.”
    He laughed, a savage pirate’s laugh. “A gentleman always knows which lady he finds in his bed, even in his dreams.”
    “You have never looked at me in such a fashion,” she stated, her voice shaky but firm. “You never wrote to me, you never wooed me. I know why you’re doing this!”
    “Why?”
    “Because we did that in the carriage. You feel obligated to marry me. You needn’t feel that way. And this isn’t very nice of you. It’s not kind of you to try to—to take advantage of my foolishness.”
    “I don’t feel kind when I think about you. Did I rip your gown in the carriage?”
    “Yes.”
    “I thought so.” There was a distinct ring of male satisfaction in his voice. “I remember that. May I rip this gown as well?”
    “What?” Somewhere deep inside her, she was reeling at the brutal way he said he didn’t even feel kindness for her. This was like a nightmare. “Of course not!”
    He bent toward her and thrust a hand into her hair. Pins scattered as he pulled the long sweep of it free of the simple knot she had shaped that morning. He muttered, “Your hair is like silk.”
    Grace was so confused and miserable that tears were welling up in her eyes again. “Please,” she gasped. “Please let me go. Please let me—”
    He cupped her head, bringing her mouth to his. At the mere touch of his lip, Grace’s traitorous body melted. He was kissing her, just as she’d dreamed so many times, only better.
    She was such a fool and yet she couldn’t stop herself. She should fight back, but she surrendered instead.
    His mouth was beautifully shaped, with a sensual lower lip that she had drawn in her sketchbook a million times. And now he was kissing her. She’d dreamed of that, too, though in her dreams, he was always gentle and reverent.
    He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t kind, either. His tongue was assaulting her, making all her objections and words and tears melt away under the force of a kiss that couldn’t lie. It simply couldn’t. He was claiming her.
    She let that truth sink into her mind, kissing him back with the passion she had felt for years, with all the longing that drove her into the carriage in the first place.
    Colin wasn’t drugged.
    Yet he was tasting her, playing with her tongue, marking her for all time as claimed. By him. By Colin.
    Naïve as she was, she knew when a man’s body was pulsing with lust. When his blood was pumping as hard as hers was. When that man had plans to take her, whether she would or no.
    She would.
    Oh, she would. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

 
    Two
    C olin had survived battles without feeling a surge of gratitude this profound. He had jumped from burning ships, felt bullets whistle past his temple, gone below just in time to miss a direct hit on deck. He had never felt a raw emotion so potent that he lost all common sense.
    He had a hand at Grace’s bodice before the feeling of fabric under his fingers triggered a memory. The cloth was thin, not made of sturdy worsted. He remembered that other fabric well enough—and then the memory of her body coming up from the seat came back to him as well.
    He wrenched his lips from hers. “Did I hurt you when I ripped your gown in the coach?” He barked it, knowing that there would be a hundred questions like this, a thousand, if he didn’t recover his memory.
    “No,” she said, her voice a husky song that made him want to devour her. To feast on her until she pleaded for more, and then he would give her more, and more again.
    “Good,” he managed. It was the work of a moment to rip this light gown off her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a chemise, which was all to the better.
    She squeaked something about having nothing to wear, but he pretended not to hear, just as he had in the carriage. That thought made