Chapter 9
nine
CLAIRE
I never thought copper and steam could be sexy, yet there I was, back in the distillery with Isla and Owen, trying to act as if I wasn’t on heat.
Almost a week had passed since our pub flirting, and I’d finally braved venturing over.
Okay, it might not have been the distillery itself, but the kilted wonder hammering barrel tops within.
Isla marched me through the tour like a drill sergeant with a clipboard.
‘Our buyers are largely older and male, and we just need to figure out how to breathe new life into whisky. Gin nailed it, going from a drink that made your aunt sob to being the hot new thing. We desperately need a slice of that pie.’ Isla clicked her pen top almost incessantly as she spoke.
‘Translation, you need to get women on board. Maybe a younger crowd too.’
‘Exactly. The older male market doesn’t need our ads,’ Isla said. ‘But there must be some people who would give our brand a bash.’
I tipped my chin at Owen, all thick-armed and glowing as he worked. ‘Well, if you want women, you just need to show off your brother more. Have you seen those wood-cutter guys online? Tattoos, axes, going through wood like it’s made of butter? Instant fanbase.’
Isla made a face. ‘Gross. Who wants to see Owen?’
‘Who doesn’t?’ I said with a grin. My outfit consisted of a flirty maroon skirt, a soft jumper, bare legs, and an intention to bend over in front of Owen until he made a move. I’d been trying to catch his eye all morning, and the man dared focus on his work instead.
He was in his kilt of forest greens, his legs bare below it until they hit some thick wooden socks and big boots.
Boots that, if legend is to be believed, promised quite a member hidden below the tartan.
Not to mention those rolled-up sleeves and angled jaw.
Every time he bent to pick up another barren lid, I resisted the urge to peek under his kilt.
‘Let me try something,’ I said. ‘Can I borrow your phone? I’m currently on a brick for my own sanity.’
‘Um, sure.’ Isla handed it over with only a small knitting of her brows. ‘Tell me you’re not making a thirst trap.’
‘Absolutely I am,’ I said.
I walked over to Owen, brandishing the phone. ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing. Ignore me’
He grazed his lower lip with his teeth before shrugging and going back to his hammering.
I hit record. Close-ups of his hands. The way they veined and flexed. The flop of his hair and him pushing it from his eyes with a shake of his head. I stepped in and pressed a lock of hair away from his forehead.
He stilled. For a second, I let my fingers remain on his temple. His eyes met mine in a blaze of green.
Isla gagged theatrically, bringing the situation back into sharp focus.
‘Hush,’ I said, resuming filming. A half-smile, and the way he exhaled with the effort.
The faint sheen of sweat at his temple. His thick calves.
Dragging myself away from him, I took some B-roll footage as well.
One of the whisky bottles balanced on a cask, gleams of copper behind.
It wasn’t exactly a marketing firm's standards, but by the time I’d edited it, there was little doubt it had the desired effect.
I salivated. Forearms, hair, kilt, glinting stills, the tiniest curve of his mouth at the end, before cutting to the whisky.
I added some text before handing the phone back to Isla.
She watched, winced, and gave the phone back as if it had bitten her. ‘Ew. But also… ok, fine. I get it.’
Owen viewed it over my shoulder, face unreadable except for a tick at his jaw that said he knew exactly what I’d captured.
‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘I would follow your page in a heartbeat.’
‘Post it. It can’t be worse than the no views we get currently.’ Isla leaned over and swiped the screen to bring up her Instagram account. ‘If it summons a thousand thirsty girls, I’ll buy you enough muffins to see you through your stay here.’
We uploaded the clip to all of their accounts. I applied every marketing and PR trick I could think of on short notice. I’d never been wholly on the marketing side, handing the public relations side more, but I’d worked closely with so many marketing whizzes to be able to show them a trick or two.
Isla got a call from the fair committee, grabbed her phone and vanished, leaving Owen and me with a knowing look. The small distillery had started winding down for the day, with staff heading home and tourist groups long gone.
And then there were two.
Silence hung between us like a heavy curtain, and I itched to barge through it. I’d never been feral for a man, but Owen made me feel like I needed a giant fan any time I was close to him.
‘You know you look dreamy in that video, right?’ I said, placing my elbows on a barrel top and bending over enough to make my skirt ride high. ‘I’d be saving it in a heartbeat.’
‘That so?’ Owen closed a barrel while looking utterly unperturbed by my attempt to flirt. The way those competent hands flexed sent my mind on a deviant sojourn about what else those hands were good at.
He caught me looking. I fixed him with a sunny smile and toyed with a loose lock of my hair. That’s what they do in the movies, right?
Grumpy pants remained stoic.
I shifted again, sticking my butt out as I pretended to wipe an imaginary drop from the other edge of the barrel. Cool air whisked around my nether regions, and a modicum of shame filled my cheeks. A tiny amount. Not enough to make me stop.
Damn. I had to be ovulating or something.
Stop being so needy, Claire.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see his eyes lower to the hem of my skirt.
Caught you.
It danced over my exposed skin, slow as dripping honey. When he met my eyes, the temperature rose a multitude of degrees in my face alone.
When he moved, I followed, watching as he washed his firm hands and put away his tools. I leant against the wall and ate him right up with my eyes.
‘Why are you playing so hard to get?’ I asked. ‘Am I barking up the wrong tree?’
Owen sighed, running a hand through his thick hair.
‘Because you don’t know what you’re trying to get yourself into.’
God, his voice did unholy things to me.
His warning sounded suspiciously like a test of the waters. I needed more information.
‘I’m thirty.’ I tried to be demure and hoist myself up onto the barrel beside me, using the wall behind it for leverage. Not so easy in heeled boots.
It required a wriggle, a squeak, and a mortifying half-fall to squirm most of the way there.
Hardly the vixen I was hoping to be. Owen rushed to me and put one solid hand on my waist, steadying me until I sat with the wood against my backside.
The slick city version of me would be appalled.
’I can get myself involved in whatever I like. ’
He kept one hand at my hip until he was sure I wasn’t going to topple, then dropped it to the barrel beside my thigh. Good lord, he smelled like wood and whisky. I wanted to devour him.
‘And what if what I like is too much for you?’
‘Define too much,’ I said lightly. ‘Anal? Feet? Calling me awful names?’
For a second, his lip quirked into a smile before falling.
There was nothing funny at all in his eyes.
He reached for my wrists and encircled them in his hand.
I let him take them. The sensation of him touching me gave me goosebumps.
He brought them up above me and pressed them firmly against the wall as I gasped.
Tension rose as he paused there, with me pinned, and took an achingly slow look at me. A shiver stole up my spine at the delicious pause.
Then he leant closer, his mouth finding my ear.
‘I like control,’ he murmured. ‘I like telling you what I want and having you so eager to play. I want to learn what you like and touch you until you beg me to stop. I want to hear you using my name as a plea and a curse all in one.’
My heartbeat went bananas. I hadn’t dabbled much with power games, but the thought of Owen commanding me in the bedroom has me foaming. ‘That’s a very long way of saying you’re a kinky grump.’
Owen smirked and ran a finger of his free hand along my collarbone. It drew a whimper from me that caused his pupils to dilate.
‘If you behave like a brat,’ he said, voice softer and darker, ‘I’ll treat you like one.’
The world went out from under me in the very best way.
‘Show me,’ I breathed.
Everything about him intensified. He lifted my hands higher on the wall and held my wrists tight enough that I couldn’t squirm free. Not that I wanted to. No, he had me utterly captivated with the hunger in those icy eyes.
‘There are rules.’ Owen held my eye contact, watching my face with rapt attention.
‘You only touch me when I say you can.’ Leaning forward, his mouth skirted over my throat, making me tip my head back. The touch of his lips was so light that it infuriated me. ‘I touch you whenever I please, unless you use your safeword.’
It would be mad to agree to that. Totally mad.
But the puddle in my underpants told me I’d agree to just about anything he said. His mouth moved higher, the whisper of his breath causing me to bite my lip.
‘No photographs of anything intimate. No dirty texts. We keep what we do together between us.
My stomach hitched. Owen wanted to keep me a secret? Just like Marty had. Why was I never enough for anyone to want to have on their arm?
‘You’d be ashamed to be fucking me?’ I swallowed hard when his eyes narrowed a fraction.
‘No. But what we do in the bedroom…or anywhere else…is between us. You’ve seen how nosy people here are, and I don’t need the gossip paddlers to me talking about what kinks I’m into.
I’d be delighted to have you on my arm. You’re funny and sexy as all hell, but that’s not what this is.
You’re going to leave in a few weeks, and I’ll be left with all the questions. ’
Owen had a point. Fingers crossed, I’d get my fill of the unholy Scot and then bugger off home. He couldn’t run away in quite the same way.
Plus, it wasn’t like we were in a relationship. I barely knew him.
It’s just sex.
‘Deal,’ I said.
I wet my lips and waited for him to kiss me. God, I hadn’t wanted to be kissed so badly since I was a spotty teenager awkwardly standing against a wall at a school disco. Before I’d grown into my face and wild hair.
When he narrowed the space between us to a hairsbreadth, I tipped my face upwards, my insides churning with anticipation.
His free hand cupped my jaw, his thumb caressing my lower lip.
‘You’re so fucking delicious, Claire.’
The roll of the R had me practically vibrating against the barrel.
‘Kiss me,’ I whispered.
‘No.’
Confusion hit me like a cartoon frying pan.
‘No?’
His thumb grazed my cheek as he read the emotions passing over my face.
‘No. I can’t go giving a brat everything she demands. Now, know that I want to kiss you more than I want just about anything. I’m dying to taste you. Dying. But you are all pepped up on lust, and that’s no place to be making clear decisions.’
Injustice flared.
Because he was right about the lust, I was wound tighter than I’d ever been.
‘I can make my own decisions.’ I hated the way my voice cracked.
‘I know. But I need to know you’re coming at them with a clear mind. And that I am too.’
Owen dragged his thumb down over my throat, watching as I swallowed. The war he fought against not taking me there and then was clear as day in his face, and as much as I wanted to buck against his choice, I recognised the deliciousness in him making us wait.
It only makes me want him more.
It might well have been the first time since I entered adulthood that I’d had a man say no when offered sex up on a plate. He needed a bloody wall plaque or something.
When he removed his hold on me, I mourned the loss of his tight grip, but accepted his help to get my feet back on the ground.
‘You owe me an afternoon of painting,’ I said, because if I didn’t deploy banter, I might well melt into the floorboards.
‘Saturday,’ he said.
‘Saturday,’ I echoed.
He drove me back to my cottage with wet knickers, a bruised ego, and the intention to drive him so feral that he’d be begging me for a kiss.
Owen Harris had no idea the monster he’d unleashed.