by Naomi West
“Isn’t the Loch Ness monster Scottish?” I ask him, staring out at the steely gray plain of the ocean.
He chuffs out a laugh. “Yeah, but she doesn’t live in the ocean.”
“Where does she live?”
“In a lake. In the center of Scotland.” He pauses and squeezes around my chest. “I’ll take you there someday.”
The ‘someday’ weighs heavy between us. I know what he’s telling me. He’s telling me that he wants me to be permanent in his life. He’s telling me he loves me, and those words are rolling around in my head, echoing and warming me.
I didn’t say it back. I wanted to. After we had sex, we were lying in bed, staring at one another, breathing hard, the sun streaming in over his hair, making him look so young and I almost said it. The words pushed up in my mouth but then Rett’s face flashed through my mind and I remembered how fucked up my life was right now.
We start walking down the beach, heading back toward his mother’s house when his phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He pulls it out and frowns at the number he sees flash across the screen.
“Guinne,” he snaps into the phone. His brow draws immediately at the voice on the other side. He turns and stares into my eyes and my stomach drops into the ground.
“What is it?” I whisper, gripping at his shirt. He says nothing but just holds the phone out to me.
I take the phone and press it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Baby,” my dad says to me, his voice tinny from across the ocean.
“Dad,” I say, and I can barely catch my breath.
“I can’t talk for long, baby, but you have to listen to me.”
“Okay.”
“You have to do what Guinne says. He’s a good man. He’s gonna keep you safe. And Greco is coming for you, Alessia. It’s all my fault, and there’s nothing I can do about it, but Guinne will protect you.”
My father is calling me from jail and I can think of absolutely nothing to say to him. I assume he can hear the ocean crashing behind me and I hope that’s enough for him to know I haven’t hung up on him.
“I’m going down for this, Alessia. I won’t be there. I won’t walk you down the aisle. I won’t meet my grandkids unless you bring them to the prison. And I have to live with that. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Tell your brothers that I’m sorry.”
“I will, Dad,” I whisper into the phone.
“And trust Guinne. Promise me that you’ll let him take care of you.”
“He already does.”
There was a healthy pause on the other end of the line as he took in the tone of my voice.
“Is that right?” he eventually asks. My eyes dart up to Dare’s and I let myself get tugged into his gaze.
“That’s right,” I say, “for a few months now.”
My father gives a little chuckle on the other end of the line. “Well.”
“Well,” I repeat back to him.
“Hand me back to Guinne,” he says, “I have a few things to tell him about Greco.”
I reach the phone back out to Dare but on impulse I press it back to my ear. “I love you, Dad,” I say and toss the phone to Dare, turning away from him and heading back down the beach toward his parents’ house. I can feel his eyes on my back but I don’t turn. I just keep walking. I don’t want to hear what he and my father have to say to one another. A few minutes pass before he catches up to me.
Immediately he pulls me into his side, tilting my head up for a kiss. I shiver against the feeling and against the wind whipping across the water.
“You’re leaving,” I say. I know what’s coming. I heard the tone in my father’s voice. I know what it means to protect me from Greco. I know that hiding isn’t an option. Greco finds people. He ends people. My mind flashes back to the picture of my friend that my father showed me so many months ago. It feels like years.
“I have to,” Dare says, his eyes searching mine. My hair slips loosely through his fingers. “I can’t stay here and wait for him to attack. He’s going to take us by surprise. I have to go back. I have to confront him.”
“Why?” My voice is almost lost on the wind.
“Because I love you. And I won’t live in a world where you’re in constant danger. I’m going to end that danger.”
I shove away from him and the wind whips my hair across my face. “I don’t want you to be in danger either!”
He reaches out for me but I dance away and keep going. “I’m supposed to just wait behind and let you sprint into an encounter with one of the most dangerous men in the western hemisphere? No!”
For some reason his eyes are soft when he reaches out for me again. He pushes the hair back from my face and kisses the breath out of me. “That’s nice.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying it feels nice to know you care that much.” He draws my lower lip into his mouth and lightly drags his teeth over it. “I love you so much, Alessia. You’re smart. And sweet. And so gorgeous.” I’m melting in his arms. “You have to stay here with my parents. And learn how to knit a sweater and make beer and whatever else. And in a few days, I’m gonna come back. And you’ll be free.”
“And then?” I can’t help but ask.
His eyes warm even further. He knows he’s cracking me. “And then you’re gonna finish your degree.” He puts my hands in his pockets to keep them warm. “And we’re gonna spend our summers here, in my cottage.” His eyes are like burning coals. Threatening to consume me alive.
I let a smile flirt across my face. His words make my breath come up short. They thrill me and there’s no way to pretend that they don’t. I take a step toward him and stab a finger into his chest. “Well, that requires you coming back alive, so maybe you should just skip this whole Greco business and stay in Scotland with me.”
“Can’t,” he says, tugging me back up the beach toward his cottage up on the little bluff. I’m almost immediately out of breath from huffing and puffing up the steep little path. “I promised your father I would take care of it.”
“Just now?”
He nods. “He knows that he can’t protect you while he’s in prison. Not the way that I can. He asked me to make sure you’re safe.”
“How will he keep paying you from prison?” I wonder aloud as I scramble up the path behind him. We’re almost at the top now. “Is that something his accountant will take care of?”
Dare stops walking and I nearly run into him. He turns to me and there’s fire in his eyes. He’s searching my face for some answer but I can’t give it to him. I don’t even know the question. Reaching down he flips me over his shoulder.
I squeak and squirm. “Dare! What the hell are you doing? Put me down!”
He doesn’t listen. He swats my ass and strides across the small lawn of the cottage. He barely even pauses at the door, slamming it behind him and setting me on my feet in the middle of the small living room. The fire that Dare’s father had started in the hearth that morning has burned down to coals but the little cottage is still warm.
“Apparently, I haven’t made myself clear.” Dare’s eyes bore into mine.
“What?” I’m completely confused as to what the hell is going on or why he’s suddenly so intense.
Suddenly, Dare’s mouth is on mine, his tongue pushing its way into my mouth. He rips himself away to come up for air. “I’m not doing this for money, Alessia,” he growls into my neck where his mouth has clamped.
I moan and sway and his hands drop to the button of my jeans, tugging them open. His hand snakes into my pants and finds my wet core, hot and hungry for him. I scream at the feeling of his big hand covering me, one hand pressing inside my channel. Just this simple touch and I’m already so close to orgasm.
“I quit just now,” he growls.
“What?” I shake my head to clear it and grip his shoulders for support.
“I just quit working for your father. Over the phone.”
“Why?” I ask, doing everything I can to stay on my feet
while his hand works and works at me between my legs.
“Because I’m sick of this fucking confusion over where my loyalties lie. Or why I’m doing the things I’m doing, Alessia.”
He steps back from me and I’m grabbing at the air, my eyes coming open. He falls to his knees in front of me and rips my pants down my legs, helping me step out of them so that he can toss them away.
His palms grip my hips as he stares up at me. His gaze is completely tense and penetrating. “Did you hear me this morning, Alessia? Did you hear what I told you?”
I might be flustered from the way he’s touching me, but I know what he’s referring to. “You told me you loved me.”
He nods like I’m a good student. “Yes,” he says, “I do. But then you’re asking me questions about how your father is going to be paying for my services and it’s making me think that maybe you don’t believe me.”
“What?” I ask, my voice shaky with need and desire and emotion.
He leans forward and tosses my naked leg over his shoulder, so that I’m standing on one foot and completely spread open for him.
“I think you don’t believe me. Because if you did, you’d know that I’m going to destroy Greco for threatening you. Not because it’s my job, but because I love you. I love you.”
He leans forward and his hot tongue licks up my slit in one sure stroke. Colors flash before my eyes and I come to my toes on the one foot I have on the ground.
“Do you believe me, Alessia?”
He drops his mouth to my pussy again but his eyes stay on mine as he nuzzles and suckles at my clit. I nod my head, completely unable to speak through the sensations rising in my body.
Apparently, he sees what he’s looking for from me because he tugs me by the back of my knee and pulls me down in a tumble before him. He twists me around so that I’m on all fours and he’s over top of me, his hands planted on either side of mine, his big body cages me in completely and I feel his huge cock press against my pussy.
“Have I made myself clear, Alessia?” he asks, pushing just the head into me.
I moan and drop my head, my hair cascading down over our hands. He tangles his fingers in it.
“Have I made myself clear that I love you?” he asks again and plunges into me.
“Yes!” I scream and push myself back into him, loving the feeling. It’s so intense in this position. He covers me in every way, his front pressing into my back, his face next to mine. I’m completely controlled by him. He’s protecting me and pleasuring me in every way possible.
“Have I made it clear yet that you’re the only thing that matters to me?” He thrusts into me again and I have to brace my arms against the intensity of it.
“Yes,” I moan, breathless and hovering on the edge of orgasm.
“Have I made it clear that I’ll do anything to keep you safe?” He’s thrusting into me faster and faster. He’s keeping a tight control on his own passions. He’s trying to make a point.
“Yes,” I say again and one of his arms comes up to wrap around my waist. He’s holding me in place. Pinning me down with his cock and keeping me from squirming. He controls all of it.
“Make no mistake, Alessia. I’m not your fucking bodyguard anymore. I’m your man. And you’re my girl. And there’s nothing I won’t do for you.” The slap of our skin sounds around the cottage and I squeeze my mouth closed at the scream that’s rising inside of me. I’m so close. I’m so close I can taste it. I start to work my hips in small circles. It’s the only thing his tight grip allows except for taking his penetration.
His voice is at my ear. He accentuates his words with bites and sucks at my earlobe and neck, his cock plunging deeper and deeper with each thrust. “And when you’re good and ready. When you’ve finally admitted how much you love me back, I’m gonna put a ring on your finger on that beach down there.” I freeze but he keeps going, pounding into me and talking. “We’re gonna put you in a little white dress that I’m going to tear off of you afterwards.”
He thrusts one last time, swiveling his hips and emptying into me and it takes me with him. I’m exploding around him, the air in the cabin furiously hot. My body is spiraling out into the cosmos. The world is nothing beyond the place where the two of us are joined. I can feel him, swollen inside of me, working me, and it makes my orgasm go on and on and on.
We collapse into a pile on the floor and he immediately pulls me onto his chest. His lips are on mine and he’s kissing me like his life depends on it. Maybe it does. It feels like my life depends on it.
I let myself be swept away in the sweetness of it. The kiss goes on and on, our legs tangled. My hair sticking to the sweat on our necks. He holds me so tight I can feel the knit of my sweater pressing into my skin. The light lengthens and dims around us before we finally fall away from one another. I shiver a little at the cool of the air and he sweeps a hand over my bare legs.
“I believe you,” I say, shyly making eye contact.
A smile breaks over his face and it momentarily stuns me. He loses ten years when he smiles like that. He almost looks like the high school version of himself that hangs in a picture frame back at his mother’s house.
“Good,” he says, swatting at my bare butt. “Now let’s get cleaned up before we go back for dinner with my parents.”
I stand and follow him back to the shower. I absently touch a hand to my lips and know that I would follow him anywhere.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Alessia
Annabelle slaps more mashed potatoes than I could eat in a week onto my plate. We’re sitting around their kitchen table again and I’ve found myself with another mugful of beer.
“Ma, she’s just one woman,” Dare says and tries to scoop some back into the pot but his mother slaps his hand.
“She’s too skinny!” Annabelle says and gives me an affectionate wink. “She could use a little meat on her bones.”
“I think I’ve got to much meat on my bones already!” I insist, glancing down at my curvy body.
Alistair clears his throat from where he sits at my left and tears a hunk of bread off the loaf. “I think my son would beg to differ on that point, my dear.”
I glance over at Dare to find him ogling my body. How can he possibly still have that much sex in his eyes? We literally fucked for hours today. I guess I can’t complain about it. He makes me feel the same way. I try to cover it up a little when we’re sitting at his mother’s dinner table.
I feel my cheeks go pink and he sends me a wolfish little smile, his hand searching for mine under the table.
“So, how do you find Adair’s cottage?” Annabelle asks me.
I swallow the swig of beer I’ve just taken. “It’s so lovely. The view and the shrub roses. Not to mention the colors on the inside. I love all the whites and the blues.”
Alistair grins. “Good. Maybe since you like it so much, Adair will have reason to come back and use it a little more often.”
“I’ll have a lot of time to use it actually,” Dare says and leans back in his chair, a serious look in his eye for his parents. “I quit my job working for Alessia’s father today.”
His parents go still and I can’t read the energy coming off either of them.
“Oh?” his mother eventually says.
Dare nods. “It was too complicated, trying to balance my relationship with Alessia and everything that’s happened. I don’t want to feel beholden to Patrizzio anymore. I just want to do right by Alessia.”
His thumb strokes over my hand under the table and my heart squeezes.
“So you’re out of work then?” His father has a fierce look on his face and I feel Dare tense next to me.
“I guess you could put it that way.”
The silence at the table stretches out and I fight the urge to wiggle in discomfort. I want to open my mouth and say something on Dare’s behalf, but I’m not entirely sure what’s going on and I don’t want to get in the way of something I don’t know anything about.
His father finally speaks. “That’s good. I think that’s really good.”
Dare’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead as he looks between his mother and his father. They are both smiling at him. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” his father says as he shakes his head. “I never liked you working for that man. No offense, my dear,” he says gently as he lays a hand over mine.
“No offense taken,” I say, “I wouldn’t want someone I love working for my father either.”
“It was always just too dangerous,” Annabelle says before starting to scoop roast chicken onto everyone’s plate. “We were more scared for you when you were working for Patrizzio than when you were enlisted.”
