Chapter Twenty-Seven
In which Ethan uses the "old-fashioned" way to break a fever.
Sloan…
“What is this place?”
I’m strolling around the apartment, the entire fourth floor of an old-fashioned stone and brick building. The architecture is almost medieval, with rounded arched columns and thick walls. There’s a bit of Gothic in there too, with the gargoyles perched on each corner of the building.
This place feels better than Ethan’s fancy penthouse in Glasgow. The warm brick and shining oak floors are welcoming, and the enormous stained-glass windows in the living room send shards of colored light over the leather couches and carved wood tables and bookshelves. I note that these shelves are crammed with all kinds of books, like the little library I relied on in his guest room when I was being held prisoner.
Am I still being held prisoner?
The dynamic between Ethan and I has whiplash twists and turns. The sexy man who ravished me in Club Vice to the coldly amused kidnapper on the jet, to the competent, courageous hero who ferried me safely through the mountains. Then, of course, Cold and Scary as Hell Ethan when he captured me again to the caring and protective man who fought off an insane amount of rabid Irish mafia men.
Just thinking about all the lighting fast changes is enough to give me vertigo.
The current Ethan (whichever one he is today) is leaning against the granite kitchen counter, checking texts and watching me explore the apartment. Which Ethan is this?
“I like this place, it feels cozier,” I say, running my hand over a carved wooden pillar.
“I’d say this is a safe house, because there’s no paper trail leading to the MacTavish Clan, but since there’s half a dozen family members living in the building, it’s not exactly a secret. But I have another place out on the coast, that’s where anyone trying to track us would go.” He puts away his phone and gives me his full attention, which is always a little unnerving.
“So…” I’m trying to think of a polite way to ask him what the hell he has planned for me, but he beats me to it.
“I need a shower,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I have someone coming by to stock the fridge for us. You, however, need to lie down and let me hook you back up to your IV and oxygen.”
“I don’t need it!” I protest. I am pretty tired, but the memory of huddling in that tub and crying yesterday while bullets flew everywhere makes me feel weak, useless.
“Do it for me, aye? Then I can take a minute without being concerned for your safety.”
“You’re trying to guilt-trip me? Really?”
The worst part? It’s working. I know he’s exhausted and that whole explosions, guns, and stabbing episode yesterday isn’t helping.
Taking me by the arm, he leads me over to the big sectional and covers me with a soft blanket, hooking up my IV and oxygen as if he does this every day. Maybe he does, I don’t know what’s required as an assassin for the MacTavish Mafia. When he hands me a bottle of water and the TV remote, I give up protesting his high-handedness.
“Patrick’s here if ya need anything.” Then he has the audacity to stroll away, pulling off his shirt and exposing all those muscles. Good lord, it’s like his giant muscles are giving birth to baby muscles while I watch. The beautifully detailed wings on his back flex and move, almost looking like he’s about to take flight.
I wish I could fly away.
Just fly away from everything and live on the beach in Costa Rica with my brother and Carmella. Falling asleep on the couch, I dream of wings and water and Nate smiling at me, healthy and whole again.
“Darlin’ time to wake up…”
Opening my eyes, I find a freshly showered Ethan looming over me in a tight t-shirt, his hand gentle against my cheek. A glance at the dark windows tells me I’ve slept through yet another day.
There’s a light feminine voice laughing and looking over his shoulder, I see a beautiful girl with long, dark hair pulled into a ponytail, wearing jean shorts and a t-shirt with a university logo. She’s putting packaged meals in the fridge and looking over her shoulder at Ethan.
I want to throw her out the window. A third-story fall would just like, break a leg, right? My weird bolt of aggressive jealousy is startling. I’m not that girl. Besides, Ethan isn’t mine. So why I am so pissed off, watching her sway over to us, eyes fixed on him?
“You’re all set up, then,” she says cheerfully, gaze still fixed on Ethan. He looks at her briefly over his shoulder and nods.
“Thank ya, goodnight Freya.”
She looks a little disappointed by his dismissal, but she nods and slinks away, throwing a flirty glance at an expressionless Patrick as he holds the elevator door open for her.
“That’s your professional chef?” I ask, my tone far more waspish than is warranted, “I’m going to eat your portions in case she poisoned mine.” There’s a quickly smothered chuckle from Patrick and when I look over, he’s standing by the elevator, hands folded and staring in the opposite direction.
“Are you jealous, darlin’?” Ethan sounds unreasonably pleased by this.
“No!” I scoff, “I just don’t want to get between you and one of your many conquests.”
Oh, my god why can’t I shut up?
His full lips twitch in his beard and I just want to smack him. “That would be my second cousin, Kenna MacTavish. No matter what ya think of my clan, we dinna marry relatives.”
“Oh. Well… I’m kind of an asshole, then,” I sigh, rubbing my eyes.
“I enjoyed it,” he says with a diabolical little wink. “Just relax, I’ll plate up dinner and bring it over. Patrick? Give me a hand.”
They talk in low, concerned tones as they pile three bowls full of mussels and risotto. Setting it in front of me, Ethan proclaims, “This is a specialty here in Edinburgh, mussels in a white wine sauce with sausage.” Patrick puts a loaf of bread in the middle of the coffee table and they dig in.
Whatever they were concerned about earlier doesn’t seem to be hindering their appetite. Ethan eats voraciously, and it reminds me with acute clarity of how he dove in between my legs and made me scream as I came that night after the auction. Watching him consume his dinner is unsettlingly sexy.
“Do ya not like mussels?” Ethan asks. I realize my fork’s poised halfway to my mouth, the little shellfish dripping butter onto my borrowed t-shirt.
“Oh! No, I love them,” I squeak, popping the mussel into my mouth. Patrick’s got his head down, steadily eating and pretending we’re not there. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to get in the middle of… whatever the hell this is, either.
They reminisce about past adventures in Edinburgh, Ethan kindly pausing to explain who they’re talking about when referring to their partners in crime. It’s all cousins or second cousins or random friends who are as close as clan… I realize that he’s just as protective and cautious about his people as I am, even though my little family has shrunk to Nate, Carmella, and me.
“Why is it that most of these stories seem to involve the two of you getting someone else out of trouble?” I ask.
“That’s only because the boss here is too slippery to get caught,” Patrick says.
“Yeah, that tracks,” I laugh.
When I start trying to hide my yawns, Ethan swiftly cleans up the dinner rubble. “It’s time to get ya to bed, lass. Patrick, ya did good work over the last twenty-four hours, and I’m thinking ya could use a break.”
“Ian and Clyde are patrolling the building,” Patrick says, rubbing his eyes, “Bryce and Craig are on exterior watch. Ya may see them on the terrace outside.”
“Excellent. Oidhche Mhath, good night.” Ethan nods, picking me up like I weigh less than the pillow I’m holding.
“Aye, Oidhche Mhath to ya both,” he says, disappearing into the elevator.
The apartment is too quiet, just the two of us as Ethan takes me down the hall. I notice that there’s at least two other bedrooms, but he carries me to the big double door at the end and into what is clearly his master bedroom. The bed is ridiculously huge, a four-poster with a mattress the size of an ocean liner.
“I know you’re a giant,” I say, a bit peevishly, “but is there a reason you need a bed big enough to safely land a 747?”
He gives me the most shameless grin. “Well, I must keep an eye on ya, aye? I’m tired of sleeping in a chair. There’s plenty of room here. Ya need not touch a single toe to mine.”
“Uh, huh,” I eye him distrustfully, “this is for my health.”
“And my lower back,” he retorts.
“Fair enough,” I sigh. I find the suitcase with my borrowed wardrobe and change into a soft little tank top and pajama pants in the bathroom, which is beautifully tiled in blue with copper fixtures. I could spend the rest of the night playing with all the shower heads and handles in the enormous shower, but I put down my tooth brush with a sigh and head back to the bedroom.
By the time I emerge, he’s made a nice blaze in the bedroom fireplace, and it feels wonderful. I know it’s late spring everywhere else, but Scotland seems to stubbornly hold its chill, regardless of the season.
Ethan’s already in bed, wearing nothing but thin sleeping pants. The sane part of me wants him to put on a shirt, but the other 83% of me feels that covering up his perfectly sculpted musculature would be a crime against nature. I settle on the other side of the bed, happy that I’m finally well enough to be free of my IV and oxygen.
Looking over, I can see he’s trying to contain his amusement. “If ya scoot over any close to the edge, you’re gonna fall right off.”
“I’m fine.”
His hand settles on my forehead and he frowns. “You’re still too warm.”
“This fever does not want to go away,” I sigh.
This admission is a mistake.
“I do know a way to break a stubborn fever,” he says confidently.
“Why do I feel like I should leap from this bed and run screaming into the night?”
With a move almost too fast to track, he rolls and hovers over me, keeping his weight off me by bracing his forearms on either side of my head. This close, I can see the gold speckles in his dark brown eyes, the fine lines around his mouth when he smiles. “It is a well-known remedy to break a stubborn fever.”
“Why do I get the feeling that this is blatantly sexual?”
“Oh, it is,” he agrees with absolutely no shame. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.”
I should heave him off me. There should be a stern lecture about taking advantage of a sick woman. I should grab my pillow and stalk off into the living room to sleep on the couch.
I do none of those things. Instead, the vision of getting myself off on his muscled thigh when we were lost in the mountains takes over and almost instantly, I’m wet. Then, the additional mental slideshow of how he made me come three times after he’d bought me at Club Vice deflates my reservations faster than a badly made souffle in a too-hot oven.
“Let me make ya feel good, lass,” he says, running the tip of his nose down my throat, placing a kiss there. “Just for tonight.”
“Just for tonight?” I whisper. “This doesn’t mean anything else. Just… for my fever?”
His thick lips twitch. “Aye, for your fever.” He takes advantage of my hesitation, kissing the top of one breast and then the other as he pulls down my tank top.
Am I doing this? With the Scottish Demon?
It’s so confusing. I’ve heard the stories about what he’s done, the horrors he’s committed. But this is the same man who saved me in the wilderness, protected me in a shootout (and explosions and whatever else those Irish guys had planned) and nursed me back to health. Can he really be both, the Scottish Demon and Ethan MacTavish?
My conflicted self missed the part where he’d managed to pull down my sleep pants and he’s leaning back, spreading my legs and groaning.
“So fecking perfect, baby. You’re so beautiful, sweet as candy.”
I’ve been unwillingly attracted and intrigued by Ethan’s thick, sensuous lips from the first time I’d seen him at Club Vice. How he’d smile with the slightest, most carnal little smirk, or absently lick them while thinking. But I was not prepared when he launched the formidable assault of lips, tongue, and teeth against my bare and defenseless center. Licking a broad stripe up the middle of the slim furrow between my legs, he gives a very deep and satisfying groan.
“So perfect, baby. So fucking perfect.” He dove in again, his stubbled chin digging gleefully into the opening of my passage and itching in the most filthy, delightfully carnal way. I’m balancing on my elbows on the bed, body straight and held aloft by his hands gripping my ass and holding my pussy against his mouth as I squeal and try to move away from the intensity of his lips fastening around my clitoris and suckling, groaning again. The sound vibrates from his throat through my suddenly oversensitive center and right up my spine. The sheer intensity of it makes my thighs clamp against his cheeks and I can feel his grin against the thin skin there.
“God, I just wanna be inside ya,” he groans. “My mouth. My fingers. My cock.” As if to prove his point, he slides a thick finger inside me. He blows lightly on my soaked center, his breath cool, and the gentle chill of it against my wildly overheated girl parts is incredible.
There’s another muffled chuckle and I look down to see his face is nearly buried between my thighs. “Oh, I’m sorry!” I gasp, trying to loosen the vice-like grip my inner thighs have on his head, but he briskly shakes his head and growls, like a dog worrying at a beloved toy. That, along with another rough finger slipping inside me as his plush lips pull against my clitoris again sends me off, back arching, head flopping backward, and looking vaguely at the flickering fireplace upside down as I detonate. The swirling heat of his tongue against my center prolongs my orgasm to an almost alarming amount of time until I push my heels weakly against his broad back.
Finally coming up for air, Ethan gleefully makes a show of wiping his mouth, lips and chin, still glistening with my slick. “I knew you’d taste that way. Like raspberries, warm off the stem, ya do.”
“P- P- poetic,” I wheeze, “you smooth bastard.”
He chuckles, pulling up my sleep pants again. “I’m thinking your fever’s broken, baby. You’re welcome.”
“You are so…” I’m almost asleep and I put my hand on his warm chest and remember my manners. “Thank you.” I’m asleep before he has a chance to answer me.