Eloisa James by With This Kiss

couldn’t remember being in a carriage with her before. He was blindfolded, unlike his other dreams, but he knew she was there. Somehow, he knew.
    Since it was only a dream, he followed his heart and asked, “Are you there?”
    He whispered it, but he heard a soft rustle of her gown, and then she was next to him, bending over him. She didn’t wear perfume, the way her sister Lily did. He could smell Grace, a scent of lemon soap and woman.
    A cool hand came on his cheek, and she murmured something.
    He didn’t care what she was saying. This was his dream, and so far it was going the way he wanted.
    So he reached out and grasped her gown. She seemed to be wearing a traveling gown of some sort of sturdy fabric. He spared just a moment to commend his dream-making abilities. That was quite a realistic detail.
    Dream Grace was still saying something, but rather than answer, he pulled her toward him. She fell onto his chest with a little squeak. The voice in the back of his head was laughing: Graceful! Not that she would appreciate the pun.
    But it didn’t matter. He began to shift their positions, which was hard to do when he couldn’t see, and he spared a wish that his damned dream would give him his vision as he usually had while dreaming—but no complaining. He was too afraid that at any moment Grace would dissolve under his fingers.
    Finally, he had her underneath him. His body felt massive in relation to hers, and he realized that all those exercises on board ship had probably made him even more muscled than he usually was. Good thing this was just a dream. An English lass would likely be put off by his size.
    He cupped her face with his hand and tilted it toward his lips.
    This time he heard her. “Colin, do you know who I am?”
    “Of course I do,” he told Dream Grace. “This is my dream, after all.” Then he kissed her. Gently. The way a man kisses a woman whom he adores and hasn’t seen since he left for the sea.
    Her mouth was sweet as honey and sent an instant flame down his body. She seemed startled, frozen almost, but then she murmured something and her hand slipped into his hair. When they were both gasping for breath—nice touch of realism there—he let his lips slide from hers, and started kissing the line of her jaw, the arch of her cheekbone, the curl of eyelashes that had stunned him when she was only twelve and had made him feel like some sort of filthy old man.
    But now she was twenty . . .
    “How old are you?” he murmured.
    “Twenty,” he heard, which was like a benediction.
    “Not twelve?”
    He had to make sure of that. He’d have to throw himself out of the carriage if he had started dreaming about young girls.
    “Of course not!” Dream Grace sounded indignant and a little cross. Everyone thought that the Real Grace was docile, but he knew the truth. She put a wicked sense of humor into her paintings.
    He kissed her until she was whimpering, and he was rubbing against her, and then he came to himself enough to realize that he’d better move quickly. He hadn’t dreamed about Grace in weeks, and this time, he wanted to actually take her instead of merely thinking about it.
    Without a second thought, he braced himself on one arm, reached for her bodice, and ripped it free. There was a bit more verisimilitude to the whole affair than he had expected—in his earlier dreams, Grace’s clothing had simply evaporated from her body. But this time, he actually pulled her body up from the seat. There was a sharp sound of cloth tearing, and she gave a little shriek of surprise . . .
    The dream was going to dissolve; he could feel it in his bones. So he went back to kissing her, because if he couldn’t have it all, he wanted every moment of her soft lips that he could have. She tasted of tea and faintly of sugar and mostly of Grace. When he was kissing her, he didn’t mind that he didn’t have his eyesight; he didn’t need it. Everything he wanted to know he could tell with his other