An apology on her tongue, Isolde pulled her hand back.
But she had retreated scarcely an inch before his long fingers wrapped around hers.
They both stared at their conjoined hands, electric heat licking up her arm.
Slowly, so slowly, he lifted her hand to his mouth and, with infinite tenderness, pressed a lingering kiss to her wrist.
The precise spot he had kissed that long-ago afternoon in Montacute’s garden.
Gooseflesh erupted over the entirety of her body—up her arms, across her shoulder blades, down the backs of her legs.
His eyes closed as if in pain, his exhale an almost moaning breath.
Bloody hell.
She was in so much trouble.
Because a man who looked at her as he had this afternoon, who kissed her wrist with such fervid reverence . . .
“Tristan,” she breathed, a note ofsomethingin her tone that even she couldn’t decipher. Warning? Pleading?
“I know . . . I won’t.” He moved to nuzzle her palm, bestowing kiss upon kiss, as if helpless to stop. “I would never . . . you need never fear that I . . .”
Her eyelids fluttered closed at the riot of sensations. His whiskers abrading her skin. The gentle pressure of his lips. The heat of his breath on her fingers.
It was all Isolde could do to resist sliding her hand into his hair and pulling his mouth to hers.
He was her husband.
At some point, she would kiss him. She would do significantly more than that.
But they had both had such a shock today. Their close encounter with Death had certainly affected him.
What if she kissed Tristan tonight, only to have him revert to scathing Kendall tomorrow?
No.
She couldn’t . . .
To set an expectation of something that she wasn’t willing to continue when this uncharacteristic mood of his passed.
She tugged on her hand, and he instantly released her.
He looked up through hooded eyes, his lungs heaving as if just pulled from the ocean once more.
Isolde took a step back, clasping her hands behind her back, digging fingernails into her palm to interrupt the phantom memory of his touch.
“Let me check the lentils,” she whispered.
Isolde turned for the fire before he could answer.
It was only much later, as she lay alone, warm and comfortable in the matrimonial bed—the bed he had insisted she take—that she realized.
Tristan had never answered her question—
Whatdidhe wish from their marriage?
20
