“I mean, a medical practice and my kid’s school trip aren’t really comparable . . .”
“It doesn’t matter, I do it with everyone.” He shook his head sharply. “I see a problem and I fix it, it’s the only way I know how to love. How can I expect my family to accept it, and not do so myself?”
I dared a step closer. He stared at me. “The surgery is mine. I’m keeping it.”
“You took me out of the equation?”
“You are the equation, Isla.” He gripped my cheeks. “When we started all this, I was thinking of quitting medicine altogether. You helped me fall back in love with it, because work isn’t my entire life anymore. You and Teddy are. Yes, I’m going to love being near my family. I want the surgery, and I like my patients – hell, I even think Amy and I might become friends. But I lived without any of that for years. I don’t want to live without you and Teddy for a single minute—”
I cut him off with my mouth, feeling his shock as I threw myself at him. Arms and legs. Teeth and tongue.
His lips were warm, and they tasted like the mints he always chewed andgod, I’d missed him so much. It had only been a week and I’d missed him – how could I ever have thought I’d last a lifetime without him?
He’d missed me too. I felt it in the immediate plundering of his lips, the rattle of his breath between kisses, the tremble of his hands as he tried to steady this into something slower. Sweeter. More appropriate for the moment.
I, however, didn’t want appropriate. I clenched his shirt between my fingers, pulling him into me. I needed his hands on me. My breasts dragging over his chest. He could take me right there in the sand for all I cared.
That’s exactly what he gave me as he lifted my bodyagainst his, carrying me to an outcropping of rocks. I don’t know how we got onto the floor, but his hand was on my hip, the other cupping the back of my head, protecting it from the sand. My legs curled over his hips, dragging him closer. He moaned, grinding against me, and then he pulled back.
“Wait, wait, wait.” His head hung as he swallowed steadying breaths. “This isn’t done yet.”
“It felt done.” I popped his top button.
“Fuck. I have more to say. I wrote it all down . . . we got off-track.”
I untucked his shirt. “Tell me later.”
He fell forward with a groan, sealing our lips. I momentarily thought I’d won when he fell to the side, groaning. “No, we’ll have sex and then we won’t talk. The next time I’m inside you I need you to know exactly what this is.”
“Okay, but make it quick.” I slipped a leg over his hips and drew circles around his heart with my finger.
“Make it quick? I’m trying to declare my love to you.” My hand froze. He flipped us until he lay on his back, fingers slipping under my hair to cup my cheek. “You deserve slow. Drawn out. Sonnets and fucking duels.”
“Duels?” I laughed.
“Aye, duels.” His forehead met mine. “This was never fake. From the second I saw you, I wanted you. And then I actually got to be close to you and loving you was . . . easier than breathing.” He sighed. “And Teddy too. She wormed her way into my heart bit by bit until suddenly the two of you owned it entirely. So, we can stay in Kinleith, or go anywhere you like. You want to pack up and live out of that tin can you call a car, I’m right there in the passenger seat.”
I scrambled up into his lap until I straddled him. Needinghim to see me as I said, “That would be a little selfish of me.”
“Iwantyou to be selfish with me. Every day for the rest of your life, because you can be damn sure I’ll be selfish with you.”
“You love me.” I gripped the sides of his face, my heart tattooing itself against his chest.
“Aye, I love you.”
“I love you too.” There was no fear this time.
“You better.” He grinned wickedly, as his hand crept up the back of my dress. “No fucking bra,” he hissed distractedly, finding my bare breast and rolling my nipple. He drew back a second later. “Fuck, what if another car comes? Tourists? We’ll get arrested. We should—”
“Have sex as quickly as possible then go home and do it again.”
His eyes darkened, and he slipped a finger beneath my underwear, groaning at the wetness he found there. “Sex in public does it for you?”
“Everything with you does it for me.” I rolled my hips, teasing his lips with mine. “We might even get anotherGazettearticle.”
As it always was with Alistair, a switch flipped, and he wrenched his shirt over his head, spreading it out across the pebbled sand. “On your knees,” he pointed to the shirt. “Put your hands on the rocks.”
I did so breathlessly. Eagerly. Head dropping with a low thud as he curled over me, yanked my underwear down to my knees, the skirt of my dress bunching between us. I immediately felt the head of his cock at my entrance. “Can I take you bare?”
