Bent over her, he devoured.
Like she was bread after weeks—no, years!—of hunger.
Like she was salvation and damnation all in one.
His lips moved from her mouth to her throat, then lowered to graze her collarbones before returning to her mouth and starting anew.
His hands were everywhere, slipping inside her dressing gown to clutch fistfuls of her chemise.
She felt fevered. Frenzied, even.
Seven years!
Seven long years she had hungered and yearned for this passion. This claiming.
This inferno of desire she had only ever felt with him.
Tavish was aman possessed.
He had intended to leave, to walk away before either of them did something regrettable. Kissing Isla that day on the path, no matter how brief, had been a colossal mistake.
Because it had taken up residence in his brain, that fleeting taste of her.
He felt akin to a former drunkard receiving a thimble of gin. Just enough to inflame the craving for another swallow but not nearly enoughto quench it. And now, Tavish had dunked his head in the stuff, and he couldn’t drink fast enough.
But like a drunkard with gin, he feared no amount of Isla would satisfy him. He would need a lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, of just this—of touching, of tasting, of devouring her.
The sound of her choking gasp when his tongue found that sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder.
The curving arch of her spine that pushed her soft bosom to his chest.
The taste of her mouth, the honey and peppermint of her tooth powder.
Slow down. Ye need to slow down.
He knew this. He did.
If they continued, they would end up naked on the bed at her back.
He tried to hold onto the thread of that logic, willing it to douse the wildfire consuming them both.
But all his brain could summon was the devotion in her eyes as she gazed at him over the ribbon of their handfasting. And the seven years of lonely nights and aching want for his wife between that moment and this.
Her lips on his skin had never felt more vital.
That she matched him—kiss for kiss, touch for touch—only fanned the flames.
Shedidwant him, no matter what she said.
Her teeth nipped his throat, drawing a deep hum of approval from his lungs.
She skimmed her hand inside the open collar of his shirt, laving a kiss to his sternum, before tugging at the cotton fabric, wanting it free. He helped her, pulling his shirttails from his breeches. And then her palms were underneath, skimming across his bare skin, moving from his spine to his stomach and back again.
It was . . .
Words failed.
Her body felt pliant as putty and just as yielding. He couldn’t pull her close enough, couldn’t kiss enough of her.
