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)
Then sunset arrives in full and the sky goes from gold to bruised, that strange burgundy and orange, the kind of evening light that makes you want to break out the alizarin crimson and goldenrod and make a shoddy attempt of capturing it.
But there is no painting tonight.
I step outside to find the breeze enough to keep the midges at bay and strangely warm for this time of evening. I gaze at the surface of the loch, that metallic sheen rippling slightly in the wind, and then I see him.
He’s halfway across the bay, his head surfacing, dark and featureless and backlit enough that his black hair shines dark rose gold.
I’m down the slope and onto the rocks in less than a minute. He is closer than I thought, he has crossed most of the bay already, the white of his shoulders breaking the copper of the water with a slow easy stroke. Fuck, he’s fast.
He sees me come. He stops swimming for a second. and lifts his head out of the water. Even at this distance I can see the smile he gives.
He swims the rest of the way toward me with a slow easy stroke. He is maybe fifteen feet out from the rocks when his head comes up out of the water properly and he plants his feet on the bottom, the loch chest-deep on him, his hair slicked back, the wet of his face catching the gold-burgundy light. He starts wading in.
“Stay in the water,” I tell him. It comes out of my mouth before I have worked out what I’m going to say.
He stops and blinks once. “Pardon?”
“I’m coming in.”
His face contorts, and he looks both apprehensive and pleased. He doesn’t say yes, please, but he also doesn’t say no, don’t. He stands there with the water gleaming around his ribs, and watches me start to undress.
I’m quick about it. I’m quick about it because I know exactly what my body looks like in this light, and I know that quick is the most flattering. The last person I undressed in front of was Ryan, and I don’t have the body I had when I was first with him. I have softness in places I used to have firmness. I have the white lines on my hips from when I gained and lost weight in my twenties. I have the small belly that no amount of walking can lessen, but stress sure does know how to add to it. But the sundown is being kind to all of it, and if I am decisive, I can be in the water before he can find any of the parts of me I would rather he didn’t peer at too closely.
With my clothes off, I leave the pile on the flat rock and get straight into the water with laser focus. I try not to think about how dark it is, what could be in there—never mind Nessie; the last thing I want is to step on mussels or a salmon—or how deep it is. I just go, the water sloshing at my legs.
I shriek like a banshee.
No surprise—it is cold as fucking hell. It punches all the air out of me in one breath, the cold going up to my hips and then to my ribs and my breasts as I keep walking out. I hyperventilate slightly because my body is not under my command anymore. I just keep moving. If I stop, I’ll panic and flounder, and then I’ll be a naked embarrassment.
I get out to where he’s standing, chest-deep. He reaches for me before I quite reach for him.
I’m so cold that the warmth of his hands feels like fire. His arms come around me, one across my back and the other under my arms, and he pulls me close to him in the water, and the long press of his body against mine is—there is no other word for it—hot. He is so warm in the cold water that I cling to him without deciding to. Also, because he’s nice, and what was I saying earlier about climbing him like a tree?
“Christ, you’re freezing,” he says. His face is so close now I can’t look anywhere else. His hair is dark and slicked back, water beading along his lashes, the wet glinting at the line of his jaw and the small hollow at his throat. The sundown is doing ridiculous things to him—gold and burgundy in the wet of his skin, the high cut of his cheekbone catching the light, the cleft in his chin holding a small bright drop of water. He is impossibly beautiful like this and I feel dazed in response to it.
“It was warmer at the cottage,” I mumble, willing my teeth to stop chattering.
“First time in a Scottish loch?”