Chapter 13 #2
He holds me against him in the water, his warmth going into me through every place we touch, and the cold of the loch continues to slowly losing its grip.
My face is against his throat. I can smell him properly for the first time, his skin in front of me without fabric between us, the salt of the water on him, and something underneath the salt that is doing things to my brain.
He smells like cold water and warm smoke and something sweet underneath that, like wood that’s been burning a long time. I want to drown in it.
I press my mouth against the place where his throat meets his shoulder and breathe him in. He makes a small sound, his hand at my back tightening. His cock, this always-present behemoth, twitches, making itself officially known.
“There’s my foxglove,” he murmurs. “You have no idea how dangerous you can be. How badly I want things from you that I’m not allowed to have yet.”
I lift my head and look at him curiously.
His face is close enough that the tips of our noses touch briefly.
His eyes are doing the thing again, the vivid ice-blue almost gone, the dark center wide.
He has me lifted slightly so the cold doesn’t get to my chest, and I can feel the long hard line of him against my hip under the water.
In all the magic—and horniness—of the moment, I almost forget what transpired today.
And though it will break the spell, I have to know.
“Tell me about Sinclair,” I demand, feeling like I had to fight through fog to ask the question.
He breathes out. He puts his forehead against mine, which makes my heart skip several beats, and then he starts.
“He sat in my front parlor, took my whisky, and made it clear he wasn’t there to charge me.
Said he just had some questions. He asked me if I’d been on the road to Ullapool in the last two months, or to Applecross.
I said I had not. I said he was welcome to check any CCTV of my car if he wanted.
He asked me if I knew any of the missing women.
I said I did not. He asked me where I was on the night the body washed up at Gairloch. ”
“And?”
“And I said I was at the castle, alone, as I am most nights.”
“Can you prove it?”
“He didn’t ask me to.”
“Why do you think he came alone?”
“He’s careful, I take it. He wanted to look at me. He wanted to look at the castle. He wanted to take what he saw and put it next to what MacRae has on file. He’s building something.”
I swallow uneasily. “Building what?”
“A case, or the start of one. Or a conviction in his own head, which is often the same thing.”
No fucking thanks to me.
“Think he has it in for you?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug and I loop my hands around his neck. “Maybe. Maybe he just wants the truth. Can’t blame a man for that.”
And what is the truth?
The water laps at my shoulders. He shifts his weight, treading slightly for both of us as a small swell passes through, and his arm tightens around me. His eyes sweep the dark bay for things I can’t see.
“He asked me about you.” His voice is low, his gaze meeting mine again.
I knew he would. I still feel my stomach drop.
“And? What did you tell him?”
“That you and I are acquainted. That we have spoken on a few occasions. That you have never invited me into your cottage, and that I have never been there.”
“I suppose that’s true. You’ve never been inside…”
Don’t let him in, don’t let him in.
“Aye. And then he left when his whisky was done. He told me he might come back. He told me to call him if I thought of anything else.”
“Thought of anything else? He thinks you’re to help him with it otherwise?”
“I suppose it’s better than nothing.” He pauses, his gaze darkening slightly, or maybe it’s the fading light. “I told him one more thing, Iris.”
“What?”
“I told him I’d become acquainted with you, and that I respect you, and that I would not want my acquaintance to cost you peace of mind. That if he had questions about me, he could come to me with them, and leave you out of it.”
“Oh, no.” I shake my head. “Why did you tell him that?”
“He took it badly,” he says instead of answering. “Said I was not in a position to tell him whom he could interview. He said it more politely than that, but that was the gist. I expect he will come back to your cottage now. Sooner than he might have.”
“You drew his attention to us,” I hiss.
“I drew his attention to me.”
“That’s not the same. Now he knows we’re together.”
“He already figured that out; he’s not dumb, this one. He was going to come back to you anyway. Better to have the truth in the open.”
The truth…
The water is very cold again, and his body is very warm, and the bay is going darker around us, the bruised burgundy going to slate. His arm is hard as iron at my back, and his eyes are going past me to the dark again—as usual, I don’t know what to do with any of this.
But I know what my body wants to do with it, that much is clear.
I lift my mouth and kiss him.
The kiss is mine this time. I’m the one who reached for it.
He goes still for half a second, surprised, or trying to remember whatever discipline he had a minute ago, and then his mouth opens against mine and he kisses me back, and the kiss is the kind that takes the rest of the cold out of me at once.
He tastes of salt and whisky. My legs go around his hips.
The hard line of him is against me again through the water.
I roll my hips against his length, slow, and he makes the sound he made in the woods, a low guttural sound I feel in my frozen toes.
“Iris,” he rasps against my mouth.
I don’t answer, nor do I stop. I kiss the wet of his throat, then the line of his jaw. I get my hand between us under the water and find him, thick, hard and impossibly hot.
“Christ,” he swears, and I’m swearing too because my god, he’s a fucking big boy, I can hardly wrap my fist around it.
He lets me hold him for one long second.
His forehead drops to my shoulder. He breathes against my collarbone.
His hand at my back has gone stiff, fingers digging into my flesh.
I run my hand along him under the water, slow, the way I have been thinking about doing for weeks, and the sound he makes is one that belongs to a barely leashed animal.
Then he catches my wrist.
He does it gently. He moves my hand off him, back up between us, and holds it against his chest, his fingers around my wrist, his thumb at the small pulse on the inside of it.
“No, lass.”
He says it the way you say no to a child reaching for a knife. Gentle and immediate.
It’s the kind of no that I don’t respond well to.
“Why not?” I grumble, trying not to whine.
“Not in this water, not in the cold, not where I cannot give you the attention you deserve. Not where…”
He trails off.
“Not where what?”