Her voice was softly teasing. Perhaps the naughty poetry had not been a mistake after all. The ice had melted from her vivid, green eyes. The air between them was suddenly heavy with an acknowledgment of all that had passed between them.
Longing hit him.
“I have missed you,cariad,” he found himself confessing.
The smile curving her lips slowly slipped away. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“I have missed this easiness between us,” he elaborated. “I dislike being at odds. Can we not call a truce?”
Her lush lips parted. “I thought we already had.”
He set the book aside on a small table and leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. “I want the old Izzy back. The one who threw herself into my arms and kissed me in the midst of a ball.”
A slight flush stole over her cheeks, painting them a pretty pink. “That Izzy had drunk far too much champagne. She was reckless and unwise and thoroughly foolish.”
“She was bold and daring,” he countered.
“I never should have done what I did. If I hadn’t, we would not be here now, trapped together into marriage.”
Trapped.
He frowned, disliking the word. “Is that how you feel? Truly?”
“I do not know how I am meant to feel now,” she said, her voice soft.
He moved, acting on instinct, kneeling before her on the carpets and taking her hands in his. They were cool and smooth and soft and delicate. She did not withdraw, and that pleased him. He well understood her reticence after she had witnessed Beatrice kissing him. And he was willing to give her the time she needed, but he was also not about to stop from doing everything in his power to bring down the wall she had erected between them.
“Feel as you did before that night,” he urged, kissing the knuckles of first her left hand, then her right, careful to keep from jarring her injured arm with a hasty movement.
Soon, he would be sliding his ring on her finger. Claiming her as his forever. The thought sent a surge of pure satisfaction accompanied by animal lust straight through him. He was a beast, and he could not deny it.
“How?” she asked. “I cannot simply forget, Anglesey.”
And still she refused to call him Zachary.
His jaw clenched. “I’m not asking you to forget. But live in the moment with me. Grant me that chance, Izzy. Grantusthat chance.”
Let me love you.
It was what he wanted to say, but those words were yet too new. Too foreign and frightening. And he had no wish to push her any further than he already had.
She made a soft sound, and he could not tell whether it was need or frustration, but he took it as a good sign. At least she was not unmoved. He kissed her knuckles again.
“You are determined to wear down my defenses,” she said.
“Yes.” He would not lie. “Am I succeeding?”
He kissed to the wrist on her unaffected arm, where he knew he would find a sweet trace of her scent and was rewarded with a little shiver of pleasure that went through her.
“Anglesey.”
There was protest in her voice.
He was having none of it. He was keenly aware of her injury, of course. But that did not preclude him from selfishly wanting her to allow herself to be vulnerable to him again as she had before. Having had a taste of what their union could be like, he wanted more.
“Will you continue to deny me?” He kissed his way back down to her fingertips instead of proceeding up the curve of her forearm as he would have preferred. “Will you not call me by my given name?”
“Are you trying to distract me?” she asked, without heat.
