“This night, milaya, is the beginning.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks, instead half filling both glasses. “One night before all others,” he asserts, cutting a confident path across the room to pass one of the flutes into my hand. “To us.”
My mouth fills with the taste of crisp, cool bubbles that do nothing to ease this overwhelming nervousness. The proximity of his golden skin and how utterly comfortable he is in it. The gnawing sense that, no matter how long this marriage lasts, I’ll never get to know the whole of him.
“You’re so beautiful.” I duck my head at his compliment. “You always were, but age—”
“Watch it.” I feel my expression twist.
“You’re like a fine wine, Isla. Fine, full bodied, and the kind of delight I’d happily drown myself in.”
“Well, that’s better,” I demur. His compliments light me up inside. Something internal urges me to move closer, to press myself to him.
“And that nightdress.” He shakes his head slowly, almost as though he thinks his eyes are deceiving him. And maybe they are. Agent Provocateur is fabulously expensive for a reason.
“I didn’t pack it.” Heat seeps into my cheeks at my denial because I was the one who chose to wear it. Thankfully, it’s something we both pretend to ignore.
“Something borrowed,” he replies mildly, referring to the wedding tradition. “But it’s not the ribbon around a bouquet that makes it beautiful, darling.”
“There’s about a ribbon’s worth of silk in this.” My eyes dip to the gown, my blush deepening when I notice how my hard nipples are visible through the lace. If I can see them, so can he.
Something dark and delicious pulls at my insides.
“I must remember to thank your sister-in-law for such a wonderful wedding gift.” He pins me with his dark gaze, and I fight the urge to squirm. My skin feels alive, my insides pulsating with a pent-up kind of energy. An energy in need of a release.
There’s a tremor in my hand as I lift my glass to my lips. “I’m not sure Sandy will appreciate you using his wife’s name and the words thanks and Agent Provocateur in the same breath.”
“His wife is safe from my attentions.”
“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear it.”
“And you?” When I don’t answer, he speaks again. “There are no other women for me.” He leans closer, his thumb brushing the tiny, untamed curls from my face. “It’s your body I want to conquer. Your soul I want to enslave.” His ominous words dance across my pleasure centers. “No other men for you,” he adds, his lips a whisper over mine.
“That sounds like monogamy.” My heart pounds in the rhythm of those four syllables.
“As it should.”
He takes my hands, and I find myself lowering into the corner of the loveseat. Niko sits next to me. Half turned in my direction, he rests his knee on the cushion, his hand draping the back of the couch. He uses his other knee as somewhere to balance his glass, and I pretend that’s what I’m looking at and not how those soft lounge pants leave very little to the imagination.
A sudden breeze makes me shiver, ruffling Niko’s hair.
“What day is it?” I find myself suddenly thinking of Scotland. “I’ve barely looked at my phone since we got here,” I add, feeling foolish. “I seem to have lost track of the days.”
“Island life.” He lifts one shoulder in an indolent shrug. “It’s like its own magic.”
He lifts his glass to his lips, and my gaze glides over the tanned cap of his shoulder before following the curve of his bicep. He has such strong arms, and there was a time in my life when I used to feel nothing but safe when he held me. But isn’t that what he’s doing now? Keeping me and my loved ones out of harm’s way.
“What was that?”
“It’s Wednesday.” It’s obvious by his tone that this isn’t the first time he’d answered me. “I asked if you had pressing plans?”
“No, I was just wondering where the time had gone, and something silly flitted into my head.”
“What was it?”
“It’s silly.” I shake my head, wishing I’d kept the thought to myself.
“Peanut.” He drags the stupid name out. I shouldn’t find it endearing, but I do.
“You know, I hate that you call me that.”
“Why do you think I do it?”
“Because you’re perverse.” But we’re both smiling.
“Only with you. Tell me,” he coaxes in that midnight voice of his as his fingers begin to idly toy with the strap of my nightgown. “You know I’ll get it out of you eventually.”
The delicious hint of warning in his tone reminds me it won’t be the only thing he’ll get out of me this evening.
“It’s just a silly rhyme from when I was a young girl.”
“I love tales of young Isla.”