Chapter 22
Nerves jangled through Rae when Struan didn’t respond, his focus instead sliding past her to the falls. He didn’t want her. Not enough to do what she was proposing. Maybe it had just been a game, proof he could make her come, nothing more.
‘It’s okay if you don’t want to.’ She tried to unstick herself from his lap, but his grip on her hips tightened, keeping her there.
‘Have you got sunstroke? Of course I fucking want to.’
That tender spot between her legs, still half-numb, halftingling pleasantly from the ice, began to tighten against his length again.
She couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to have him buried inside her, sliding in and out, her body moulding to his shape.
She knew it wasn’t something she could ever take back, something she might come to regret when Martha arrived and they returned to whatever they’d been before, but that felt too distant in the face of this unrelenting heatwave and the pleasure he’d already brought her.
‘Then what’s stopping you?’
He pressed a kiss against her collarbone. It was so delicate, so unlike the ravenous ones he’d given her earlier, that something inside of her snapped. Her brain was too hazy to know where or what, only that it stung like an elastic band plucked against her skin.
‘Your first time should be special, not like this.’
She looked around her at the gorgeous scenery, a smudged finger-painting of greens and blues and golds.
The water reuniting itself with the river over and over, the purple thistles pointing towards patches of sunlight, swarmed by bees and butterflies.
Maybe the midge bites itching her skin were unwanted, and maybe she was too sweltering to form coherent thoughts, but she could think of few places more special than this.
‘What, like a trail of rose petals and candles leading to our marriage bed?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I didn’t take you for such a cliché, Struan.’
‘So… I should return the rose petals, then?’
She laughed until he didn’t, then sobered quickly as shock grasped her. ‘Wait. Are you serious?’
He cleared his throat, avoiding her searching gaze.
‘I may have picked up a few things from the candle shop earlier today, you know, just in case. That’s not to say I assumed you’d want your first time to be with me.
I just thought, maybe if you wanted to, I’d make sure it was everything you imagined it—’
She placed a trembling finger over his lips, though she hadn’t yet figured out what she wanted to say. What could she say in response to that? He’d…
Jesus, he’d wanted to give her a fairy tale. It might have been cliché and not at all what she’d had in mind, but it was still sweet. Thoughtful.
Devastatingly.
A fist closed around her heart, tight enough she couldn’t breathe for a moment. For the first time, she realised this might be just as complicated as she’d worried. Worse. He was making her fall for him.
They weren’t fizzling. They were combusting.
‘Do you plan on saying something, or are we having quiet time now?’ Struan’s question was muffled by Rae’s finger.
‘I’m trying,’ she admitted, a prickle beginning behind her eyes.
She clenched her jaw. Not now, not now, not now.
‘Look, I’m not the type of girl who needs a big fanfare about losing my virginity.
Honestly, I think that phrase is silly anyway.
You don’t lose anything by having sex. It’s just a made-up way of defining women based on whether they’ve been near a penis.
’ She faltered, realising she was digressing, even if Struan was nodding in timid agreement.
‘Anyway, what I’m saying is, I don’t expect you to treat me any differently just because it’s my first time.
I’m not some innocent, naive maiden or anything. ’
‘Believe me, I didn’t think you were.’ He tucked her hair behind her ear.
‘I just thought you’d want it to be memorable, that’s all.
My first time was in the car park near the loch with a lass I barely knew, who said “Is that it?” when it was over.
I ended up having a panic attack afterwards.
I mean, it might have had something to do with the weed, but still.
It put me off pretty much any kind of intimacy for a long time.
I didn’t think I was good at it, and I didn’t see it as something that was supposed to be pleasurable, just some anxiety-inducing rite of passage.
Whether you believe in that shite or not, it sticks with you. ’
Rae frowned, her stomach clenching on his behalf. Maybe she understood better already, because the idea of him going through that made her mouth turn down at the corners. He’d deserved better. It should have been with somebody who made him feel safe, cared for.
The way she felt with him, even if she wasn’t supposed to.
She sifted her fingers through his hair gently, an attempt at comfort.
‘You’re surprised again,’ he said.
She nodded gingerly. ‘I just always thought you had it all together when we were growing up, even if you were a bit of a dweeb.’
‘Cheers.’
She giggled. ‘I’m sorry you had that experience. Maybe I don’t believe in rose petals and all that, but you deserved for it to at least be with somebody you trusted.’
‘And so do you. You deserve special, Rae. Somebody who shows you how much they…’ He trailed off, but she could finish the sentence: How much they love you.
Not him, then.
He dropped his chin. ‘Even if you did want to, here, now, we couldn’t. I didn’t bring protection. I didn’t even consider you’d want it to happen like this.’
She fished for the condom she’d pocketed earlier, after a swift visit to the pharmacy at lunch. The foil winked in the sunlight. ‘I did.’
He blinked in disbelief, and she felt his breath hitch where her arm rested against his chest. He’d been softening, but now his cock nudged her centre again, reassurance enough that she didn’t need to feel embarrassed by being so forward.
‘I’d trust you, Struan. Maybe we won’t ever be able to go any further than this, but I can’t think of anybody I’d feel safer with.’ She rutted against him, hoping he’d feel how wet she still was. How ready. ‘And I certainly can’t think of anybody else who would make me feel this good.’
‘You’re doing wonders for my ego,’ he teased.
She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t hide her smirk. He soon sobered, tugging her hip gently to regain her focus.
‘You have no idea how precious it feels to have you like this.’ He nuzzled his face into her tits, sending another spark through her with his vibrating grumble. ‘To know you feel safe with me. To know I can give you the pleasure you deserve.’
‘So give it to me,’ she said softly. ‘And let me give it to you, too. I want to.’
‘You’re so fucking sweet, Rae. I don’t think anyone else sees it.’ His eyes were glossy, kisses trailing over her neck. ‘I do. I see all of it.’
She could smell her arousal on his unshaven stubble and a chasm of yearning opened inside her, dark and terrifying. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if she couldn’t be with him. If she had to feel forever the emptiness his absence left.
‘Because it’s for you,’ she said. ‘It’s yours. So take it. Take me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. Really, really sure.’
He hitched her legs around his waist without warning, lifting her so she squealed, only to place her carefully down on the rock, still warm from both the sun and them.
He moved the baskets and bags away, kisses rougher as anticipation built.
She was doing this. With Struan. For years, she’d wondered if maybe she just wasn’t desirable enough, or maybe it was her own pickiness that sabotaged her sex life, until eventually, she’d accepted that it would probably never happen for her.
She’d die alone with her vibrator, and she wouldn’t mind, because it was a good vibrator, and she’d had a career across the globe to be proud of.
She’d been wrong about all of it. She was desirable, because he desired her, and she was picky, because she deserved to be, and it was a good vibrator, but he was better.
She arched off the rock to allow him to tug her dress over her head, laughing when the material stuck to her sweaty skin.
He draped it over a tree stump, then peeled off his T-shirt and shorts before drinking her in – not a sip, but a gulp, languid and long until it felt as though even the waterfall had stopped flowing to join in.
‘I could spend all day like this,’ he said. ‘Looking at you, memorising you.’
‘Well, don’t. I’m impatient and I haven’t shaved my legs.’
His lips curled as he took the outstretched condom from her, repeating, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Did you not just hear what I said?’ She was impatient, catastrophically so, and more than that, very aware that her bare bum was currently touching a rock. Even though she hadn’t seen a soul since they’d parked at Struan’s, she couldn’t help but eye the surrounding trees, just in case.
‘Right. Impatient.’ Finally, he removed his boxers, letting them spill to her feet.
His length stood to attention against his belly.
Perfect. She loved how soft he was around his middle, how mussed he left his hair, a man with nothing to prove.
A man sunlight flocked to, all of him golden, from the happy trail under his belly button to the peachy flush of his mouth.
With her heart bellowing in her ears, she fixated on the furrow of his brows as he rolled the condom on, and the way it smoothed the second he lifted his eyes back to her.
‘How is this happening?’ he muttered, the corners of his eyes creasing as he kneeled over her on the rock.
She let out a nervous laugh, wondering the same thing. ‘No fucking clue.’