“You’re my passion.” My words feel like stabs in my chest. “You. You and Ben, and I’d give this up in a heartbeat to be with you somewhere we can just be together. And nothing else would matter.”
Her eyes well with tears. “Ben’s dead. It’s been nearly three months. We’ve heard nothing. He’s dead, Isaac. It’s just us. I need you to be honest with me, even I can’t be the same with you. Not yet.”
I’ve never truly seen her filled with despair.
I could take it all away with just a few words. Tell her that Ben is alive and I can take her to him or he can find us. Tell her where we can go and it just be us and no one else, a perfect paradise where we don’t have countries to run or people to look after whose names we’ll never know.
But I don’t. Not yet. And I’m a bastard for not taking that pain away, but like always, there’s a bigger picture to plan for.
I shift across the room, pushing a chair out of the way and take her in my arms, pulling her as close as I can. She smells of the loch, of mountains and mist and it’s home.
She’s home.
The kiss isn’t full of finesse or tact or anything resembling two people who have more power than they possibly should. It’s desperate and it’s full of secrets and lies and manipulation.
I push her back against the door, making sure no one can come in. Teeth clash and hands paw under suits and onto skin. If we’re caught, it could be the end of everything before it’s even began but here and now, with her like this, that isn’t a consequence I’m afraid of.
I drop to my knees, bow in front of my queen and undo her trousers with fingers that stumble to be quick enough. She takes pity, helps push them down along with her knickers, leaving her exposed from the waist down until my mouth is there feasting between her legs, licking her from pussy to clit. She’s sweet and musky and the soft sounds she makes remind me that she’s mine.
I taste her, attend to her clit with quick little licks that make her clutch my hair and tense her legs. I don’t use my fingers, keeping my hands and arms wrapped around her legs, stabilising both of us.
It reminds me of the casino, when we were there and I had her alone for one of the very first times but now I’m allowed to do this.
“Want you to fuck me.” Her words are barely there. She comes straight after saying them, her hands gripping my hair so tightly it hurts. As soon as her orgasm subsides I’m on my feet, my trousers undone and cock out, pulling her leg up to my hip so she can hook her leg round and I slide home, hammering her against the door, not caring who’s on the other side now, or who can hear us, because if they do, if they decide I’m not suitable as a candidate, then fuck them.
She’s tight. Her warmth and wetness and the way she clings onto my suited back. The way she manages to wrap both legs around me so that I have all the control and the way she breathes my name as she comes again are my undoing.
I finally lose control. I tell her I love her as I come inside her, my forehead pressed against hers. We still. I hold her. There are no tears, and I kiss her again and again and again, trying to prove what I said.
I have priorities. It isn’t my job that tops them.
I just hope she believes me, thief that she is, having stolen my heart.
Chapter Sixteen
The next time I visit Scotland, I’m met with a surprise.
Ivy greets me as soon as I step out of the car, the weather a damn sight better than the last time I was there.
My sister has a sun tan for the first time in her life. Her red hair is lighter and her freckles have joined together to make her look brown.
Nate stands next to her, his tan as dark as mine and his hair longer. He looks more like a pirate than ever before except his expression is too soft when he looks at Ivy, which is often. Which is as it should be and he doesn’t have to care who sees it, because he can.
“Isaac!” She runs to me just as she has been doing since she could walk and throws herself at me as if she hasn’t seen me for a year. “How are you? I heard what happened to William. It’s terrible.”
She lets go and I shake Nate’s hand, which ends up becoming a less awkward man hug. He wasn’t the first choice for my sister, or maybe even my second, but now I know more about him and I’ve seen how he treats her, I can let myself like him.
“It’s been on the cards for a while.”
Her eyes widen, which means she has more to say, only now isn’t the right time, mainly because Blair is here, fussing over Ivy like she’s her little sister and I’m struck with something that’s new to me.
Belonging mixed with guilt, because Ben isn’t there.
There’s talk of islands and sunshine and the vague plan for a holiday somewhere on one of Nate’s boats, which would probably be the safest place in the world for her, and then there’s tea and cake and delicate sandwiches that Nate and I ignore in favour of the ribs that somehow appear as if by magic.
“Have you heard from Ben?” Ivy’s words are innocent, but the look she gives me isn’t. Given that Nate works intelligence as a freelance agent for whoever he wants to help out, she probably knows enough about Ben already.
Blair looks stricken, her eyes flicking from me to Ivy and back. “We don’t know if he’s alive.”
