“So you kiss me out of lust, then?” He braced his arms on either side of her head.
Oh.
Well.
And what of it?
“Ye needn’t make it sound tawdry. I am permitted tae ogle your fine body.” She dragged her palms down said body in emphasis. “Ye be my husband, in case ye have forgotten.”
He laughed at that—a weary, pained-cousin of a laugh. “Oh, Duchess, I have not forgotten for one second that you are my wife.”
“What now?” She skated her fingers upward, liking how his eyes closed in pleasure as she raked them through his hair.
“What do you mean?”
“Ye be a wee bit obtuse, Husband.” She trailed her hands down his neck.
He opened his eyes.
She lifted her brows suggestively.
“I won’t have you out of mere lust, Wife.”
Isolde frowned.
“But . . . I believe your requirements wereenthusiasmandwilling participation.” She pressed a hungry kiss to the hollow at the base of his throat, drawing a rumble from his chest. “Am I not sufficiently displaying those qualities?”
“I changed my mind,” he rasped.
“Ye can’t do that.”
“I . . . I believe I can, actually.”
“Tristan.”
“Isolde.”
“You want me!”
“Yes, but I don’t want only your lust,” he growled. “I wantallof you.”
Och, this frustrating, stubborn, confusing—
“Ye already have all of me, Duke!” She pushed on his chest, forcing him to take a step back. “Yeownme—my body, my choices, my very life. What more can ye possibly want?”
“Everything. I. Want.Everything,” he enunciated with knife-sharp precision.
“Everything?”
“Yes.” He fixed her with his dark eyes, turbulent and ravenous. “When we finally come together, I want it to be because you love me. Not because I am a duke or your husband or a muscled chest you admired in a courtyard. I want you to come to my bed because you cannot help yourself. Because it is the only way to express the vast ocean of your longing. Because you willdieif you don’t have me. I want your heart, Isolde.”
“My heart?” She threw her hands in the air. “Ye be demanding my very soul!”
“I suppose . . . I suppose I am.”
She tapped her sternum. “So ye require my soul, but offer me what of yourself?Likeandadmiration, as ye said last evening? What if I want your heart—your own soul—in return?!”
She thought to taunt him, to force him to back down from his absurd request.
