Best Laid Plaids (Kilty Pleasures)

by Ella Stainton

  “No touching until I say so.” He licked the back of Cockburn’s neck, where hairline met salty-sweet skin, sucking hard enough the poor man would have to wear a high collar for a week. Joachim’s hands scrabbled the air around his erection, following orders and making Ainsley that much stiffer.

  He pried open Cockburn’s firm arse and swiped his cock against the hole pulsing with need. Joachim bucked back, pressing desperately, and Ainsley dug his nails into the meaty flesh of his shoulder. Bit down again on the soft underside of his neck until his lover stilled completely.

  He pulled Joachim’s knee perpendicular and pressed his cock against the tight ring of muscle until it was received with a long shuddery sigh. Waited until the hard body wriggled against him, eager to be plunged.

  Ainsley’s hand tilted Cockburn’s face around so his mouth was accessible, and their tongues battled for primacy. All the while, his hips dipped to and fro, deeper with each thrust. Joachim moaned loud enough to wake the dead, if they’d still resided here.

  He changed the angle so he hit the perfect spot and Joachim’s body tensed in a different direction, allowing himself to be fucked at Ainsley’s will, along for the intense ride of pleasure. His pants and sighs twined into the most perfect song he’d ever heard. He pulled at Joachim’s prick until the brute’s hole vibrated with such greed that it pumped Ainsley dry with a shudder and a bone-deep groan that drained them both.

  With the remaining drop of energy he could muster, Ainsley rolled Joachim to his back and slung his leg over. Their heartbeats matched time as they loved and kissed until neither had the wherewithal to continue and they lay there, smiling lips rubbing against more smiling lips.

  Finally, Joachim’s fingers strayed to Ainsley’s hair and grasped a lock between his fingers. “I’m mad for you.”

  Ainsley ran the tip of his nose along the planes of Joachim’s cheeks. “And you keep me sane.”

  “You’ve always been sane, love. Just fidgety.” Joachim exerted the last of his energy into a chuckle and held Ainsley tight to his broad chest. “I’ve an idea. I’m off school for a month. Shall we drive around the countryside and hunt down some ghosts for your next book? I believe we’ve become experts.”

  “We have.” He lost himself in the rasp of dragging his fingertips through the hair on Joachim’s chest for a moment. But only a short one. Lifting his head, Ainsley looked into his brute’s lovely eyes. “Will we spend all our time researching?”

  Joachim traced kisses along his collarbone soft as kitten fur, but it no longer made Ainsley itch to get away. “Heavens, no. I have a much better plan than only that.”

  Now Ainsley was intrigued by the slow grin spreading over Joachim’s face. “What will we do?”

  “My dear Dr. Graham, let’s misbehave.”

  * * *

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  To see what’s coming next and for teasers by

  Ella Stainton, please visit her website at

  http://www.ellastainton.com.

  Acknowledgments

  Quite simply, I am extremely privileged to have had an enormous amount of support—and more than a heavy dose of lucky circumstances—to get this book off the ground.

  To begin, I thank my parents, Chris and Mike, for moving to Scotland when I was a child. Living and traveling overseas—and hunting for ghosts in old castles with my scientist father—sparked my passion for history, folklore, and incorporeal beasties. Thanks to my sister, Melanie, for reading Enid Blyton books to me until I could read them on my own, and for a hundred things since then. Thanks to my grandmother Margaret for believing in me unconditionally—even when I was describing ghosts.

  A million thanks to my children, Aidan, Emma, Maisie, and Scarlett, for allowing me to creep away and write when I should have been mommying. Everything I do is for you.

  Thank you to Jeni Chappelle for teaching me how to edit my work. And to Michelle Hazen for sharing her Smut Bible, which taught me how to allow myself to write sexy scenes.

  Cheers to Deana Birch, who helped me crystallize Ainsley Graham on a walk through Paris, and for reading and all the encouragement. Many hugs and kisses to Amelia Foster for adoring Joachim Cockburn so much that he became real to me, and for all the chats we share that help me persevere. And to Blake Ferre and Marina Scott for just being simply amazing. All my love to the rest of RChat—Cora, Meka, Becca, Evie, Luna, Tia, Tara, Yaffa, Michelle, and Lauren—look how far we’ve all come since we first got together!!! I couldn’t have made it through the past year and a half without all of the laughs and internet hugs. Seriously.

  Much love to my local crew: Michelle, Laura, James, Steve, Dick, Jill, Craig, Marybeth, and to Heather and Lisa and (always!) Jackie, who listened to me babble for much longer than friendship required. I am blessed to have you in my life.

  Merci to Romu for restoring my confidence when it hit rock bottom, and to McCutchan for introducing me to his wind-chime tree that is the only thing I ever found to truly still my mind. Ainsley needs one.

  Thanks a million to my glorious agent, Jennifer Chalberg, and to enthusiastic editors John Jacobson and Kerri Buckley for taking the chance on me and my fellows.

  And to Felicia Grossman. I have no words to describe how dear your friendship and unconditional support has been over the years. All six or seven thousand of them. I’ll be happy to rule the island alongside of you for the next six or seven.

  About the Author

  Ella Stainton teaches history's scandals to teenagers. She has lived in both Scotland and Sweden—and nearly every Mid-Atlantic state in which you can get fresh blue crabs—and survives on noodles during the school year to afford trips overseas on summer breaks. She has four children, loves 1980s New Wave dance tracks, and men in kilts. You can find her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/astarte73 and on her website at http://www.ellastainton.com.

  Coming soon from Carina Press and Ella Stainton

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  Where There’s A Kilt, There’s A Way,

  the next book in author Ella Stainton’s

  Kilty Pleasures series

  Edinburgh

  June 1930

  It was Dr. Ainsley Graham’s very most favorite day of the year, and he’d spent the month leading up to it insisting to his best friend and lover, Joachim Cockburn, that he wished for nothing more than a quiet evening, just the two of them. And Violet, their black-and-white setter, obviously.

  Thank God Joachim knew better than to oblige that nonsense.

  Proclamations of Happy Birthday bellowed from every corner of their town house on Queen Street as a ragbag of persons jumped out of the shadows singing about what a jolly good fellow Ainsley was. The large downstairs was packed with half of the city. A few of the less catatonic faculty members from the university where both he and Joachim taught, the gang from Tuskers gentleman’s club—aside from Helle the barkeep, who was both uncomfortably attractive and too flirtatious with Joachim for Ainsley’s nerves. Both his sister, Trixie, and her monstrous twelve-year-old son, Freddy, and his brother Stuart, accompanied by his doe-eyed wife, Poppy, were about somewhere. And...hmmm. In the corner, nursing an ale, someone who appeared to be a modern-day Viking missing his horned hat.

  Ainsley appraised his guests over the flute of champagne Joachim thrust into his hand before gesturing to an enormous cake with creamy frosting and whorls of pink icing perched on the center of the dining table. Violet sniffed the air with appreciation before pressing her head into Ainsley’s thigh for a quick scratch behind her ears.

  Bottles popped and the lights dimmed as Trixie lit twenty-seven, twenty-eight—heavens, was he so old?—twenty-nine candles.

  He sq
ueezed Joachim’s big hand in the dark. “You shouldn’t have gone to such trouble.”

  Joachim snorted. “After all the pouting you did last year when I did as you asked, I knew better.” But he tightened his fingers back around Ainsley’s.

  “I say, pouting is an overstatement.” Ainsley’s bottom lip protruded, traitorously.

  Joachim’s gold-tipped honey-colored beard trembled with suppressed laughter. “You hardly spoke to me for a week, love.”

  Well, perhaps he had been a wee bit annoyed that his birthday wasn’t treated with great fanfare. This, though, was lovely. Rainbow streamers hung from the crystal chandelier to the corners of the room, and the air rang with a jazzy number Ainsley had been humming all week.

  “Blow them out, Ainsley, and let’s dance,” said Trixie, a conical party hat tilted over her chestnut marcel waves. She snapped a matching one in blue foil on his own head.

  At least it matched the blue in his kilt. It was the one day a year he’d allow something so ridiculous accompany his usually meticulous fashion sense. Just to remind everyone who was the man of the hour...well, week, to be honest.

  Fine.

  The month of June was his from top to bottom. Luckily for his nearest and dearest, no one dared to have a competing birthday.

  “It’s a shame you didn’t find a party hat in plaid,” he said to no one in particular and bent over, hands on the table to steady himself, poised to blow out the candles.

  Taking advantage of the dark, Joachim trailed a finger down the middle of his arse. “Something to aim for next year, Dr. Graham.”

  He turned and raised a brow toward his muscular Englishman. “Oh, I’d say you’ve got perfect aim already, darling.”

  The electric lights flicked on and his dear Dr. Cockburn blushed a shade more suited to a rosebush than a professor of psychology, but there was no time to think because Trixie pulled him by the arm into the sitting room, cleared out for dancing.

  Three songs went by and Ainsley needed to mop his brow with his hanky before he was able to sidle back up to Joachim and enjoy a piece of cake spoon-fed into his waiting mouth. A hunk of icing dangled on his lips for a half second before Joachim licked it off with a wink.

  “That was mine.”

  Joachim stood close enough to cause comment if anyone in the room had been the sort to do such a thing. “There’ll be plenty of cake left for me to roll around in it when our guests leave.”

  Ainsley found himself not pouting again. “I think perhaps it’s me who ought to be covered in it, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not my birthday, but I’m happy either way.”

  Christ on a stick, being in love was absurd.

  But lovely, just the same.

  “Dr. Graham, I’d like to bend your ear for a moment, if you’ve got the time?” The head of the history department, Bernard Tompkins, peered up at Ainsley through his thick lenses that magnified his eyes twice the usual size for a human.

  Bend your ear always sounded painful, but as Dr. Tompkins said it in nearly every conversation they’d ever had since Ainsley got his old lecturer position back two years previous, he no longer visibly winced.

  Joachim, who couldn’t keep a secret, tried to hide his grin. Though perhaps he could keep a secret as Ainsley hadn’t actually had an inkling there was going to be a surprise party and there must have been a lot of planning considering the scope of the decorations. What else didn’t Ainsley know about?

  For months, his Geordie had moaned that they’d spent all their time together on Ainsley’s home turf. In a moment of weakness, Ainsley had agreed that the two could spend a few months someplace else even though it was silly. Anything that belonged to Ainsley—like his Austin motorcar or either of his two houses—he happily shared with his lover. Why couldn’t Joachim get that through his thick skull? But now, this was it. He’d finally learn which esteemed university had won their bid to have Ainsley as a visiting professor of folklore for the summer. And had agreed to generously tack on Joachim’s lectures on treating brain fidgets because Ainsley would hardly go without him.

  Paris?

  Possibly Berlin. That was said to be a right old place since the end of the damned war, even if it was still filled with bloody Germans.

  But still, Paris would be best.

  Oh! Or even Athens. Hadn’t they applied to go to Athens? All those well-built men in togas. Though, they wouldn’t be wearing those anymore, would they?

  Perhaps he ought to hint that next year’s birthday party could be the fancy-dress sort. Joachim would be perfect in a toga. Or better yet, one of those wee loincloth jobs that wouldn’t leave much to his imagination. Gracious, he might need to figure out a reason for costumes on his own and not wait an entire year for that particular treat.

  “Dr. Graham?” Joachim tapped his shoulder, bringing Ainsley out of his reverie.

  He blinked twice as though he’d been present throughout. “Yes, I’m waiting.”

  The anticipation buzzed in his stomach. There’d been a war on when he was younger or he might have gone for a Grand Tour. A conflagration that left behind a devastated Europe after which was too dismal for words. Therefore, at the ripe old—no...seasoned age of twenty-nine...and really, he needed to do the maths on that because twenty-nine sounded much older than he felt—Ainsley Graham had never once been to the Continent.

  And it wasn’t as though he couldn’t afford it, because as common as it was to think of money like that, he had buckets of it in the bank. More than he could possibly spend.

  Only that was a lie because if he put his mind to it and had thirty tailors stitch up every smart suit he could imagine, he could easily run through his inheritance after a while, but he wouldn’t.

  “Ahem.” Joachim cleared his throat, but his smile didn’t waver, so it didn’t matter that Ainsley’s brain was a mass of fidgeting nerves.

  But Joachim couldn’t think that he was too scatter-brained because that might be tiresome at this point and somehow, Ainsley wasn’t ready to cut the man loose yet. His mouth went dry at the thought.

  Might not ever be, at this rate. Thank God that after two years together, Joachim still looked at him like a cat pining after a saucer of cream.

  “Yes? Don’t keep me in suspense.” Though it was a wee bit exciting—the not knowing. Once he knew, there would be a finality to it. Planning and packing and arranging dull things like passage over the Channel.

  “Dr. Jeppsson is visiting Edinburgh doing some of his own research. Martin, would you like the honors?” Bernard Tompkins crooked his finger at the enormous blond skulking in the corner. Dr. Jeppsson. Not a Viking, after all.

  Joachim, who had glorious muscles to spare, was downright petite next to this fellow who looked as though he hefted a battle-ax for sport. Gracious. He was fit in all the right places. His enormous paw nearly broke the bones in Ainsley’s hand in his shake.

  “Dr. Graham.” Jeppsson’s voice was gruff, though not unpleasant with a melodic accent.

  A particularly non-French accent. And unlikely to be Greek, either, though Ainsley wasn’t sure he’d ever spoken to a Greek. But probably not with that thatch of white-blond hair and steel-gray eyes.

  Surprising that someone with such fair eyelashes could be so...striking.

  But dear Lord, the man might have stepped out of a bloody Norse myth.

  Joachim pressed a hand on Ainsley’s shoulder like he was staking a claim. “Dr. Martin Jeppsson is with the University of Göteborg and has come to give us the good news in person.”

  No no no no no. Bollocks. Wherever Göteborg was, it wasn’t someplace Ainsley had any desire to go. For one, he’d never even heard of it. He took a step back and waved at Trixie for an emergency top-off.

  “Forgive my ignorance, but geography was never my strong point. Where, exactly, is that?” Please be France. Or Italy. Or Spain, even
. Someplace warm and pretty and—

  Joachim’s voice took on that tone like he was trying to do his best to jolly Ainsley into something he had no desire to do. “Sweden, Ainsley. The west coast, not terribly far from here. Just across the North Sea.”

  Fucking hell, wasn’t Sweden gray and cold and gloomy as anything? There’s no way that he’d applied for a brief residency there, was there?

  He turned to his Englishman and scowled. Ainsley wouldn’t have, but he knew who might’ve. Joachim wouldn’t meet his eye.

  “Erm, remember, Ainsley?” Joachim cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I’m sure it was this past February. We were chatting about trolls. And gnomes?”

  Ainsley’s mouth dropped in horror. “You mean those ridiculous garden dwarves? I never did such a thing.”

  The Swedish professor intercepted and chewed his lower lip with obvious consternation. “I beg your pardon, Dr. Graham. I suppose it was too lucky that we were going to have access to your internationally known reputation. I suppose I’ll just see if one of the other names on our list is available for our needs.”

  Internationally known, eh? The words were a balm to his prickled soul. And perhaps he had spared a thought or two on gnomes. Perhaps.

  “I do apologize, Dr. Jeppsson. But a scholar of Dr. Graham’s stature is in great demand.” Joachim raised his lovely blue-green eyes to Ainsley’s and he smiled deeply enough to show his teeth. “I’m sure we can have a conversation about this after your party, but I’ll miss you terribly this summer.”

  Ainsley gripped the stem of his champagne flute. His stomach dropped like a penny in a wishing well. “Miss me? What do you mean?”

  Joachim’s plump lips tilted into a perfectly upside-down smile. “I’ll be headed to Göteborg in two weeks, and won’t be back until August. I had been pleased that it worked out that both of us could spend the summer together, but if you aren’t sure you could do research on trolls and gnomes and—”