He shifted his weight to the side, and they were no longer one. Her body already ached for him. He slid idle fingers through her curls, watching them slip through. She’d never felt more right. Her future was here, with this man.Forever.
She met his gray gaze, seeing the same satiety in there. “I never knew coupling could involve acrobatics,” she said on a laugh. “My legs in the air like that.”
A lazy half-smile tipped about his mouth. “Coupling can involve any number of acrobatics. We’ve only just started.”
Twin frissons of desire and daring crept through her. She wouldn’t mind adding to that number in a minute.
A seriousness entered his gaze, an inscrutability. It only made him more attractive. “I have a question for you.”
Her breath caught in her chest. Here it was. The question she’d been waiting for him to ask—again—the answer—a different answer—poised on her lips. “Ask away,” she said, breathless.
“Do you expect this to be a regular occurrence?”
A little laugh full of nerves escaped her. It wasn’t quite the question she’d expected, but he would get there. “Oh, yes,” she said.
Now if he would only ask that other question, for anotheryeswas poised on her lips.
“How would you like to arrange it?” he asked.
Her brow crinkled. “Arrange it?”
What a strange way to ask her to marry him.
“That is generally how one manages a love affair,” he said. “With an arrangement.”
All the breath left her body. She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to breathe again.
“Of course, there’s another way to make it a regular occurrence.”
“Which is?” she was somehow able to ask around the knot in her throat.
“Marriage.” His gaze narrowed on her. “But I won’t be asking you to marry me again.”
“You won’t?” Tears threatened. Oh, the shame.
He shook his head.
“Why not?” she asked. She might have demanded.
“It isn’t what you want.”
Knowledge landed on her with all the violence of a piano fallen from a great height.
He wouldn’t be asking her to marry him.
Despair streaked through her. It was unreasonable, of course. She had refused him in Italy. But now they were in England. Now…
Oh, matters were different now.
Shewas different now.
“Unless…” he began, slowly, as if an idea was only now occurring to him.
“Yes?” she asked, impatient. The balance of her life felt in jeopardy.
His gaze bored into her, intense and questioning. “Unless you want me to ask you to marry me again.”
Oh. She’d bungled everything. It wasn’t Tristan who should be doing the asking.
