Chapter 17 Blythe
BLYTHE
I should be sleeping, but instead I’m lying in bed staring at the ornate ceiling painted with thistles and stags.
It’s probably for the best that he called me by the wrong name.
When he said Rosie—this time while not seasick—it was like someone dumped a bucket of cold water over me.
Here I thought we’d hit it off, and all along he thought my name was Rosie.
He probably thought that’s why I kept wearing dresses with roses on them too.
I should not care. I don’t care. I am actively not caring.
Sitting up and throwing my legs over the side of the bed, I make the decision to head down to the library and find something new to read until I’m tired enough to fall asleep without hearing the way he said Rosie.
Ugh, he’d said it in a way that really had me wishing he’d said Blythe. He called me Blythe before, though, so he does know my name.
He was also drinking tonight, so I can’t hold him totally responsible for not having a perfectly sober mind. Rosie while drinking, Rosie while seasick.
I’m still replaying the way he said the name as I slip into the grandiose room that smells like millions of words on old paper. There’s a single table lamp filling the room with a soft glow, and I stop dead when I see someone sitting on the couch, bathed in that glow.
Not just someone—Sam.
I should turn around and go back to my room. Why is he here? Is he too drunk to get back to his cottage?
He has his head tipped back on the couch, a book held open in his hand as if he’d fallen asleep mid-read. I approach quietly with the intention of moving the book to safety. That’s what I tell myself anyway, it’s not so I can get a closer look at him.
But when I’m next to him, he shifts and turns his head toward me.
“Hey, Rosie,” he whispers into the dark.
I huff, wrapping my arms protectively around myself. “That’s not my name.” I wish I hadn’t gotten so close. I suddenly feel vulnerable in my mismatched pyjamas and messy bun while he sits there with his tie loosened and legs spread wide under his kilt.
Manspreading is not attractive, I tell myself.
He leans forward, closing the book and setting it on the coffee table. Then he reaches out and gently takes my hand, tugging until I’m standing in front of him, his knees bracketing my exposed legs.
“I know it’s not your name, Blythe. But I’ve been calling you Rosie in my mind ever since that first night.”
He’s been calling me Rosie in his mind. I want to know how often he’s calling me that. What scenarios exist where I’m in his mind? This man with his gentle brown eyes and dimples calls me Rosie in his head.
I don’t know what inspires me to be so bold; maybe it’s his expression or perhaps—and more likely—it’s the fact I haven’t been touched in two years and all propriety has gone swiftly out the window, but before I can convince myself to step away and go back upstairs, I’m settling on the couch with my knees on either side of his hips.
Once my ass is perched on his thighs, I reach for his hands and guide them to my legs. His breathing changes at the skin-to-skin contact.
“I thought you didn’t hook up at weddings,” he says, a challenge coating his words.
I look over at the grandfather clock in the corner. It’s three a.m. The wedding is over. The grounds are silent.
“We’re not at a wedding anymore.” I take his face in my hands. “I don’t have any day-after-wedding rules. Do you?”
You should.
He shakes his head. “No. No rules.”
I came down to read and hoped I could stop thinking about this burly, kilted man long enough to fall asleep. Now I’m straddling him with a real desire to kiss him.
“Call me Rosie again,” I command. I mean it as a plea but it comes out far more forceful than I expect.
“Rosie,” he obliges as his hands slide further up my legs. “Rosie,” he says again, softer this time. “Rosie,” he murmurs as my lips brush his. “Ros—”
I silence his acquiescence with a kiss and immediately forget everything. I forget my own name. I forget the nickname. I forget my no-hookups rule. I forget time and distance and all the other reasons I’ve given for not allowing myself to openly want this man.
His hands move up my body, one reaching my hair and pulling the elastic free so it falls chaotically around my head.
His beard burns my skin, but I can’t seem to care because he tastes divine.
Spicy whisky and warm cinnamon overwhelm my senses as his tongue slips into my mouth, caressing my own as he moans against me.
I wonder if I can get secondhand drunk off his kisses. A thought that has me pulling back and scrambling off his lap. He’s drunk. I can’t be kissing a drunk man. My god, if the roles had been reversed, I can’t even complete the thought. I’m so disgusted with myself.
I knock my knee off the table as I continue to panic and scramble away from Sam, who is already on his feet, reaching for me to keep me from crashing to the ground.
“What? What’s wrong? What did I do?”
I pull myself free from his grip. “Nothing, you didn’t do anything. I’m so sorry. You’ve been drinking. I should never have… Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
Sam steps back into my space and reaches for me again, but I spin away, stubbing my toe on the leg of a chair this time.
“Jesus!” I cry out as I hop around. This is the most unsexy I’ve ever been. It’s somehow worse than that time I had a cold on a romantic getaway and sneezed snot straight out of my nose during a candlelight dinner.
“I’m not drunk,” he claims. “I swear. I stopped drinking hours ago and I only had two. I haven’t been even remotely tipsy tonight.”
This time when his hand lands on my arm, I don’t fight it, I let him guide me into the offending chair.
“Still, I shouldn’t have. I came down to get a book.”
He stares back until I have to look away to break the tension that is becoming nearly painful.
“I think I knew you’d be coming to get a book,” he admits, dropping to his knees in a bit of a role reversal of the position we’d just been in. “I can’t fucking stop thinking about you. I haven’t stopped since the damn plane.”
“Really?” I ask in disbelief because, what?
He chuckles, the warmth of it somehow more pleasant than the whisky kisses. Dammit, I thought I was going to crave his kisses, but that bloody chuckle has me in its clutches. What the hell is happening? Also, did I imagine the whisky on his breath? Or does he always taste that damn good?
He rises slowly, pulling me to my feet in the process and taking my face in his hands once I’ve reached my full height.
“I’ve usually got incredible self-control.” His eyes burn into me. “But with you I’ve wanted to say fuck it.”
“Fuck it,” I mutter, hoping he takes that as direction, which he does because “it” has barely left my mouth before his hands are on my ass and he’s hauling me up until I’m looking down at him, my legs wrapped around his waist, hands in his hair.
I’m being carried through the library of a Scottish estate by a hot man in a kilt. What is this life? How is this life?
I don’t have time to contemplate life right now, though, because a gentle humming has replaced thought as his lips meet mine and my back hits the wall. He must have found the only spot without an oil painting portrait or dead animal. Spatial awareness on top of everything else, hot damn.
His grip tightens on my waist, dragging me harder against him as he grinds up against me. It has been so long since I’ve felt this needy. So damn long since I’ve been touched like this.
I tip my head back so I can catch my breath, and his lips follow the column of my neck, his breath hot against my skin forcing a strangled moan out of me. I want his teeth on me, his body pressing me harder into the wall. His fingers? I want them fucking everywhere.
He pulls back, panting heavily, and I worry he’s about to let me down in more ways than one.
“Come home with me,” he pleads as his forehead comes to rest against mine, our breath mingling in the space between us. “Spend the night with me, Rosie.”
I should say no. Should put an end to this right now because I already know that only getting to have this once is going to be a special kind of torture.
So naturally, I nod quickly and offer an enthusiastic yes.