The knowledge landed in his brain with all the subtlety of cannon fire.
With a quick tug, he pulled her to her feet . . .
. . . and then kept right on pulling until she was flush with his chest.
Just as before, their bodies touched and everything combusted.
Her fingers dove into his hair, and his mouth found hers.
Theirs was less a kiss and more a collision of two fiery objects intent on incineration.
Tavish drew her tight against him, a groan shuddering his lungs.
He couldn’t get enough of her—of her delectable mouth, of her breathy sighs.
Her wee hands left his head and were suddenly everywhere—skimming his chest, his shoulders, his spine—as if she were frantic to touch every inch of him at once.
She bit his lip and laved away the sting. Tavish nearly saw stars.
Just as before, some quiet part of him pleaded for sanity . . .
Ye need to stop. She doesn’t want ye as a husband.
But she had called himhusbandnot fifteen minutes past. And she had gazed at him as a wife gazed at a husband. Wanting—no, needing, demanding!—his touch.
And now, that was all he could picture.
Husband. Wife.
The two of them together.
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Ilove him.
Oh, how I love him.
Those were the only words swinging round in Isla’s brain, the only longing in her veins.
She hadn’t intended to seduce Tavish. No. She well understood his warning from last night.
Her thought had been to join him in bathing and . . .
Bah! Why lie to herself?!
All rational thought had fled when she saw him treading water in the pool.
It had been untenable. Listening to his labored breathing as she had bathed. And then shamelessly watching him rise from the pool, water pouring off his broad shoulders and chasing his spine.
A truly refined lady would have looked away. Perhaps more of her mother remained than Isla would have liked, because she had tracked every motion of his body with ravenous greed.
It feltimperative—required, even—to show him with her body all the adoration brimming in her heart. To let her hands and lips declare the words her mouth still hesitated to utter.
And now she had that glorious maleness in her arms, the taste of him filling her senses. His skin had the give of silk-covered steel under her palms, warm and smooth and deliciously firm.
Husband.
The word hummed in the very air.
