Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
First time with a Scottish man too, I think.
“Aye,” I say with an exaggerated accent. “It’s fuckin’ freezin’.”
“You get used to it,” he says with a slight curve to his lips.
“You’re warm,” I point out.
“Aye, that I am.”
“But you’re like, really warm. How are you so warm?” Even still, I can practically feel the heat radiating off him. On land, he’s quite cool to touch, but underwater, he’s like a furnace.
“I don’t know,” he replies.
But I know he’s lying. It’s not even a good lie—I don’t know, about his own body, from a man who seems to know everything? I add it to the list, the one that’s getting long: the things this man won’t answer straight, the questions that hit him and slide off like rain off wax.
And then, the way it keeps happening whenever I’m near him, the wanting-to-know, the endless questions I have for him, my relentless curiosity just… loosens. Lets go of me. Like the warmth itself is talking me out of it, or his grip around me, or that dreamy look in his eyes. It’s not even that he looks dreamy, no his gaze is as intense as ever, but when I look into his eyes I get this sensation that I’m the one in a dream. And somewhere far off, the sensible version of me—the one safe on the shore, fully dressed, not wrapped around a beautiful stranger in a haunted bay—is pointing out that once again he evaded my question.
But I’m not on the shore. I’m out here, wrapped up naked in his arms, in a loch that should be killing me with cold and isn’t, and I let it go. And every time I let it go, is another moment when the truth slips right past me, and in its place lies something more dangerous than not.
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.”