“Yes . . . and for teaching me to be brave.”
“Och, lass, I’m not sure ye needed any lessons in that.”
Isla’s hand cupped his cheek, her wee fingers cold against his skin.
Her blue eyes searched his.
“I’m tired of this in-between,” she murmured. “The knowing of not-knowing.”
Tavish smiled. How like her, those words. And how like him to immediately understand them—
I want to know what it is like to kiss you. I want to decide that we will fight to be together.
Bending down, Tavish pressed his forehead to hers. “Are ye sure, lass?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything, Tavish Balfour.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
She smiled, looking around them—the dark water swirling againsttheir bodies, the black cliff at their back, the trees and grass rimming the pool, the sunlight glittering on its surface.
She turned back to him.
“Yes. Now.”
Her grip tightened on his head and, stretching upward, she pressed her lips to his—soft, fleeting, tentative.
A riot erupted in Tavish’s chest—the wonder of her trust warring with the urge to chase her mouth and feast.
She went to pull back, but Tavish stopped her with one hand around her waist. His hand trembled, caught between opposing desires.
Isla touched a finger to his lips. A finger that also trembled, he noticed.
“You appear so . . .” Her voice drifted off.
“Appear so . . . what?”
“Yearning,” she finished.
He nearly laughed. Of course, he yearned. He ached and craved.
Capturing her fingers, he pressed a slow kiss into her palm.
Her lungs caught.
It was all the permission Tavish needed.
Shifting his hand to the back of her neck, he tilted her chin upward, his mouth unerringly bending to hers.
Her lips were chilled, soft and pliant, and he sucked her gasp into his lungs.
She was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.
Lady Isla Kinsey wasn’t the first lass he had kissed.
