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“That, my sweet Reggie, was not a kiss.”

Chapter Six

He had thought of little else, month after month being apart from her, but this moment.

Once the idea had taken hold, he could not shake it. Tristan had wanted to kiss this woman, and more, for years. When a newly knighted member of his father’s retinue asked Regina’s father for his permission to wed her, Tristan had seen red for days. He’d even threatened not to answer King Edward’s call to court knowing he could not be away from her as Reggie agreed and married another. It would have torn him apart, but thankfully Regina’s father said no. Despite his elevated station, the man in question, for whatever reason, did not meet her father’s approval.

Disaster had been averted. And then Tristan was forced to London and later France. To spend his days reliving the many moments he and Regina were together. Her missives, the curl of each letter like a love note itself, kept him sane among the trials that ensued from being a border lord in a place where he did not belong. He was a borderer and missed the people up north.

But perhaps he had gone about this all wrong. Tristan should have first spoken to his parents. To her parents. But he didn’t, yet, for one simple fact.

He wanted to kiss her immediately. More than anything he had ever wanted in his life, save having his baby sister returned to them. That, unfortunately, was not possible.

This was.

“Say nay,” Tristan said, his voice thick, “and I will not kiss you properly.”

She didn’t answer. Had he misjudged her? Tristan did not think so. He knew Reggie well, had seen the signs, the looks, she tried and failed to hide. Surely she also knew, deep inside, how he felt about her.

“I . . .”

He dropped his hand, Tristan’s chest suddenly very heavy.

“I should say nay.”

And there it was. The fleeting look of desire he’d thought he remembered. The same sort of desire he felt for her. ’Twas all that was necessary. Tristan was a patient man. If at least an ember was there, he could stoke it.

He pulled her closer and looked deep into her eyes. Tristan knew every kiss she’d shared with a man. The story of each, from her first, when she and the stableboy were just ten and six. To the one that had seen the desk in Tristan’s bedchamber overturned in his rage. When she admitted being attracted to the visiting knight, Tristan nearly had him sent away. When the man kissed her—“with his mouth open,” Reggie later admitting—Tristan challenged him in the training yard with the intent of killing him.

Not that he would have, of course. But he’d certainly imagined the scenario.

After their second kiss, when Reggie admitted it was “pleasant enough” but that she felt nothing in her gut, no “flutters like you said I could expect,” Tristan had been the happiest man alive. The knight eventually left, without any more kisses from Reggie.

Lowering his head now, he breathed in the scent of her, disbelieving this moment had truly arrived. Then, when their lips met, it was as if he’d been tossed directly into the fire in the corner of the room. Within seconds, her hesitant touch enflamed him. Tristan slipped his tongue to the slit in her lips and coaxed them open.

His arms encircling her now, Reggie’s breasts pressed to his chest, Tristan refused to allow himself thoughts of regret. Of the perfection of this kiss and his knowledge it should have happened years ago.

More importantly, it was happening now.

Tristan touched his tongue to hers. Showed her how it was done, kissed her thoroughly and completely. Savoring the sweetness of her lips and forcing his hands to remain where they were. Until she made a sound, half sigh and half moan, that snapped his resolve in half. Deepening the kiss, if such a thing were possible, he attempted to clear his head, to enjoy the moment.

But he couldn’t.

Tristan could not think. Only feel. Her lips. Her tongue. Her body against him. How long had he wanted this? Dreamed of this? Stroked himself to this very scenario, of Reggie giving herself to him so openly and completely?

If he was not careful, Tristan would be showing her much more this night than his true feelings for her. More than what a kiss between them would be like.

He knew. Known it would be like this.

By the time he did, somehow, drag himself away, pulling from her lips proving nearly as difficult as walking away from her that day long ago when Tristan knew she planned to allow another man to kiss her.

But he had to pull away. He’d be dammed if he took her virginity before they were wed.

Which was precisely what would happen if she would have him.

Breathing heavily, Reggie’s lips still wet from his kiss, she stared at him as if unsure what had just happened. Tristan understood. That was an otherworldly kiss, shared with an otherworldly woman.

The finest, most beautiful of women. And she would be his.