Chapter 7
Seven
FYFE
“ Y ou’re on holiday?” I repeated, because I wasn’t quite sure I believed her. Eilidh had been working nonstop since she was a teenager.
She was sitting on the cool hardwood floor of her flat, her back to an armchair and her knees drawn toward her torso. Sweat glistened on her chest as she drank from her fourth beer. I was on my fifth. The alcohol was making our hot bodies already hotter and had loosened us both up. As I sprawled on her couch, beer bottle dangling from my fingers, it pleased me that it hadn’t taken too much for those nine months of distance to melt away.
“My agent wasn’t very happy about it. Says I could lose momentum since the show isn’t as talked about anymore. But I’m exhausted. When a fellow actor offers you a pill to give you energy and you seriously consider taking it, that’s when you know you’ve got a problem.”
Anxiety flickered hotly through me at the thought of Eilidh going down that path. “Fuck, Eils, please tell me you’re exaggerating?”
She shook her head grimly. “I didn’t take it, of course. But the fact that I considered it scared the shit out of me. That was around the time Harley was born. I was about to sign on to a movie shooting this summer, but I know I’m burned out, so I said no. That went down like a lead balloon with my agent.”
“Fuck your agent.” I’d like to mash the bastard for overworking her. “You’re really taking a break all summer until the next season of Young Adult starts filming?”
“I am.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Were you planning on coming home?”
She gave me an exasperated look. “Of course. But Mor is coming to stay with me for a few weeks as soon as school’s out. She wants to spend some time in London, and I want to get to know my wee sister again. I didn’t see any point coming to Ardnoch now. I’ll visit when I bring Mor back.”
Looking around her flat, I hated that she was here alone in this place. It was more art gallery than home. Not that I could talk. My house had very few knickknacks in it or personal touches.
“What is it?”
“Merely wondering if it’s a break you need or a change of career,” I told her bluntly. Eilidh hadn’t been happy for at least a few years now. She was only twenty-four and she couldn’t go on like this.
“Well … I have been writing.” She didn’t meet my eyes, and I couldn’t tell if the flush on her cheeks was the heat, the beer, or her insecurity. Most likely all three.
I sat up, intrigued. “Writing?”
“Screenwriting.” Finally she looked at me. “I’ve been writing a script. It’s inspired by my family. By Ardnoch Estate. The club. The members. The weird shit that’s happened to us.” She grinned wryly, yet just as abruptly, her amusement fled. “I think it might be something, but I’m not sure and … I don’t know if my family would see it as a violation of their privacy.”
Eils was writing a script?
Awed, impressed, I shook my head. “Sweetheart, their lives have been splashed across national news. Also you said inspired , right?”
“Right. Different names, fictional village and estate, etc.”
“Then I don’t think they’d see it as a violation. This is amazing. I can’t wait to read it.”
“Really?” Her eyes were adorably round with surprise. “It might be shit.”
“I doubt it.”
A pleased smile curled her lush mouth. “Fyfe … I … it feels right. Writing. It feels right in a way I’m not sure acting does. But at least with acting, I know I’m good at it.”
“You are twenty-four years old and you’ve been acting since you were fourteen. I think you’d know by now if it’s what you wanted to do with your life. If it’s not, you’re only twenty-four. You’ve still got time to figure it out.”
“I miss home.” She exhaled the confession. “I feel like a failure because I miss it so much.”
“How is that failing?” I pushed up off the couch and crossed the room to sit down on the floor beside her. Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I drew her against me. “Eils, when I was eighteen, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Ardnoch and leave behind … all of that shit with my mum. But being away from Lewis and Callie and … you … I realized I’d been so focused on the bad stuff that I didn’t pay attention to what I’d found there. You all gave me a home, a family … and that’s why I ended up back in a place I never thought I would. It’s not failing to need people.”
She rested her head on my shoulder and I could smell her perfume beneath the slight musk of our sweat. “I’m glad you found your way home.”
I kissed the top of her head. “You will too.”
Eilidh clinked her empty bottle against my nearly empty. “Want another?”
“Why not? Got any food?”
“I could order takeout.” She pushed to her feet and stumbled a little.
I instinctually reached out to steady her with my free hand, and it landed on her pert arse for a second before she straightened. Eilidh’s giggle was almost but not quite enough to distract me from the flash of smooth, tan skin beneath her shorts.
“Maybe food is a good idea.” She chuckled as she wandered into the kitchen. “Soak up some of the beer.”
Twenty minutes later, the Thai food from the takeaway place down the street arrived, and it helped a little with the alcohol. However, two hours after that, we were drunk.
Not wasted, can’t see straight drunk.
But tongues loose, feeling good and relaxed kind of drunk.
We’d been talking for hours. I don’t think I’d ever been able to chat away with someone for so long with this much ease. We didn’t have any awkward pauses or moments of grasping for conversation. The topics veered from trips down memory lane to shows we were enjoying lately, to work, to family, to places in the world we wanted to visit. And back to family again.
“Have you heard from your mum?” Eilidh asked. We were both on her leather sofa now, sitting close, our hands almost touching where they met on the back of the couch.
“Nope. Not since last year. Thank fuck.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to kill her.”
I flashed her a buzzed grin. “You would too, wouldn’t you?”
Our eyes locked and Eilidh’s expression was intense. Heated. “I’d do anything for you.”
All evening, I’d been doing my very best to ignore the way her tank clung to her breasts. There was a difficult moment when she stood in front of the fan to cool down for a bit and turned around, nipples visibly hard through the material. The thought of mouthing those nipples flashed across my mind before I put an abrupt halt to it.
Now, brain hazy with alcohol, skin hot and already coated in a layer of sweat, I lost control of my wandering eyes. There was very little material between me and her skin. Just a flimsy tank top and barely there shorts. I could peel them down her legs and have my mouth on her pussy in seconds.
The horniness that had been building slowly over the evening hit peak hunger.
Abruptly, Eilidh threw herself into my arms. I stiffened, blood rushing toward my dick as her soft curves pressed against me. She tucked her face into my neck, her arms wrapped around my shoulders. Fuck, she felt so good.
“What’s happening?” I asked gruffly, my arms closing around her.
“I missed you.” Her words were muffled but audible.
I tightened my embrace, breathing her in. My hand rested on the bare, damp skin between her tank and shorts. “Me too, sweetheart.”
She didn’t move. Instead she buried her nose deeper against my skin and inhaled.
My balls tightened. “Eils …”
Her lips were at my ear now. “You smell good.”
The husky words, her breasts flush against my chest, the feel of her skin under my hand … I was too drunk to think straight. All I could think about was how amazing Eilidh felt in my arms and how much I’d give my left nut to bury my dick inside her. My hand moved of its own accord, sliding down inside her shorts and knickers to cup her round arse. I squeezed, pressing her closer, my erection pushing against her.
Her breath hitched and then she pulled back to stare into my eyes.
Hers were hooded, smoky with want. She searched mine for a second and then leaned in to brush her lips against my mouth in a whisper of a kiss. I didn’t move. There was this tiny wee voice in the back of my head yelling at me. But yelling what, I didn’t know. Eilidh’s mouth brushed over mine again. And again. The fourth time, her tongue gently licked along my bottom lip.
It was like a spark on kindling.
I groaned, crushing my mouth over hers. She tasted of beer and something sweet. And her tongue … fuck, the woman could kiss. I licked at her, devouring her, sucking on her tongue until she whimpered, clawing at my shoulders. I groaned as she pressed deeper into my body. When we came up for air, my skin was on fire, sweat trickling down my spine, and I had no thought other than the animalistic need to be inside this woman.
My fingers dipped inside her shorts as the desperate need to feel her, claim her, battled and won. Possessiveness roared through me when I discovered she was already wet. She gasped as my thumb found her clit and my mind blanked. I became nothing but my wanting . It took me over. Nothing else mattered but Eilidh and sex.