Pure and simple.
Every coherent thought fled his overheated brain. All he could do was listen—the slosh as she washed, the soft humming under her breath, the cascade of water as she rinsed off soap.
Finally, she laughed.
“You seem rather distracted,” she said from behind. Closer than he might have supposed.
The fact did nothing to cool the fire in his veins.
“Ye be naked and bathing only a few feet from my spine. A man would have to be dead and cold in the grave to not be preoccupied in such a moment, Wife.”
She said nothing for a moment.
And then, on a whisper, “Wife.” She cleared her throat. “You have never once called meWife.”
“Och, ye are.”
“Indeed, I am . . . Husband.”
The word landed with an almost exquisite pain.
Husband.
Tavish closed his eyes.
How he longed to be that in truth.
She splashed behind him again.
It was simply . . . too much.
He couldn’t remain in this water another minute. Not with his yearning so close to the surface and so poorly contained. Calling him husband and deciding to keep him as such were two rather separate things.
“My fingers have gone rather pruny,” he said. “Ye might want to turn your back as I get out.”
“Concerned for my missish sense of modesty?”
More like my own sanity, he thought grimly.
“Something of the like.”
He swam toward the bank, eyes focused on the grass there and nowhere else. And even so, he still caught a glimpse of her bare shoulders as her arms circled in the water.
He couldn’t say if she watched him get out. Pondering it sent lightning crackling along his skin.
Snatching up one of the towels she had brought, he dragged it over his body, the soft cotton engulfing him. He dried off in quick movements before pulling on his kilt and belting it.
At first, he thought to return to Cairnfell Castle—remove himself from sure temptation, as it were—but he could scarcely leave his wife bathing in an outdoor pool where any stranger could happen upon her, no matter how unlikely.
Instead, he sat on the grass beside her discarded clothing—his back to the water—trying not to ponder the fact that only her dressing gown and a pair of shoes rested on the bank.
No chemise or any other sort of undergarment.
Hell and damnation.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
Certainly, this was one of Dante’s circles of Hell. The one where a man desired his wife but could never have her.
