Page 246
“Done.”
Tristan tilts his head slightly, turning his profile to study his reflection.
“Oh, wow,” he murmurs.
“You like it?” I ask, an eyebrow arching.
“Absolutely.” A slow, easy smile spreads across his mouth as he glances up at me through dark lashes. “Getting really good at this, I see.”
I tsk, giving him a flat, unimpressed look that does nothing to hide my smugness.
“You know I’m the best at it.”
I set the mirror aside and climb onto his lap, straddling him. His hands find my waist before I’ve even settled, drawing me closer as I loop my arms around his neck. I look at the braids again, then at his face.
“They aren’t too tight, are they? Does anything hurt?”
“No.” His thumbs glide slowly over my hips. “They feel perfect, baby. They look perfect too. Thank you.”
“You look handsome,” I say quietly, my fingers trailing along the hard line of his jaw, tracing the high sweep of his cheekbone down to the corner of his lips.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I kiss him before he can make me say it again, and his mouth parts for me with an ease that is dangerously familiar, warm and entirely his.
Two whole years of kissing Tristan Sinclair, and somehow, this man still gives me butterflies.
It makes absolutely no sense.
I’ve kissed him in hotel rooms, on balconies, in kitchens, in the middle of arguments, after arguments, when we’re half asleep, when we’re supposed to be leaving for somewhere and somehow end up twenty minutes late because one of us decided making out was more important than punctuality.
I’ve kissed him enough times that I should be immune to it by now.
I’m not.
The second his lips move against mine, something warm twists inside my chest, and I smile into the kiss because apparently my body still hasn’t received the memo that this man is mine.
Tristan pulls me closer, one hand sliding higher along my back as I deepen the kiss, and for a moment, the world disappears.
There is only him.
The warmth of his body beneath mine.
The familiar scent of him.
The softness of his mouth.
The ocean crashing somewhere below us.
And the strange, beautiful certainty that this is my life now.
Two years ago, I couldn’t have imagined this.
Hell, two years ago, I could barely imagine getting through a week without doing something catastrophically stupid. Now I’m sitting on my fiancé’s lap in our villa in Sardinia, kissing him while I’ve just braided his hair.
As I pull back, lingering against his lower lip with one last lazy press, my left hand stays curled at the nape of his neck. The cool metal band on my ring finger presses against the warmth of his skin.