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)
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?”
He doesn’t answer. His eyes are past me again, scanning the surface of the dark water. The arm across my back stiffens, and his other hand cups the back of my head, pressing my face against his throat, and I cannot see what he is seeing.
Tendrils of unease cascade down my spine.
“Alasdair?”
“Hush.”
“What is—”
“Iris. Hush, please.”
I hush. His mouth is at my hair. I feel him breathing slowly, deliberately. The water around us has gone very still. Not even a ripple. There is no wind. There is no fish breaking the surface. There is nothing.