Page 63 of Bonetide

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.

After what feels like a long time, his arm loosens. He pulls back enough to look at my face. His eyes are back on me, not past me. He smiles, and, though lovely, though ludicrously handsome, the smile is forced.

“I think I should get you out of the water.”

“What was that?”

“I think I should get you out of the water,” he repeats, voice firmer now, enough for the dread to take hold in my stomach.

He swims us toward the rocks, his arm across my chest, holding me up. The shallows come up under my feet and I find my footing on the mix of sand, pebbles and slippery seaweed. I walk up out of the loch alone, the cold air worse than the cold water, making me emit another banshee-like shriek, and I’m suddenly very aware of being naked on a stretch of rock with dusk coming down hard.

He doesn’t come up after me. He stays where he is, chest-deep, watching, as if I’m putting on a show. A really fucking awkward show called Iris Galloway Walks Away Naked!