Page 94 of Bonetide

“I’m asking.”

“Christ.” He exhales roughly.

Then his mouth is on mine, and he kisses me hard, like he’s been waiting downstream for this moment and the dam has broken, and the kiss is rougher than any kiss he’s given me yet, his teeth at my lower lip, his tongue in my mouth, his hand in my hair still gathered tight at the nape of my neck. The other hand is at my hip, then under the shirt, on the bare skin of my waist, and he’s pushing off the wall and walking me backward through the room. I pull his pants because I need them off, I need him bare, I need him here, in my kitchen, because I don’t think I’ll even make it to the bedroom.

He manages to shuffle out of his pants until he’s completely naked. I barely have enough time to ogle him before he’s picking me up.

He picks me up like I weigh nothing and sets me on the kitchen table where I eat my fucking toast in the morning. The crocheted runner slides under me, and his hands are on the hem of the shirt—his shirt—and he’s dragging it up over my head in one motion.

I’m naked on my own kitchen table.

He pauses and looks at me, eyes flicking over my skin. He stares at me in that way of his that’s made me feel both seen and slightly afraid of being seen—except his gaze is stronger, deeper. It seems to burn from within.

“God help me, foxglove.”

“Don’t talk,” I tell him.

“I’ll talk, love,” he says gruffly. “I just won’t use any words.”

He pulls me forward by the hips so my ass is at the edge of the table. Then he drops to one knee and places my legs over his shoulders. He puts his mouth on me like a man having a meal he’s been thinking about for too long; the groan that comes out of me reverberates—no rain this morning to cover it—no fire roaring, no four-poster bed soaking up sounds. There’s only the quiet of my own kitchen, the cry of the gulls in the bay, and him.

He works me with his mouth like he’s in no hurry, until I’m leaking onto his chin, my heels pressed into his back. When I’m close—so fucking close—he rests his forehead against my thigh like he has to take a moment.

“On the floor,” he rasps against my skin. “I want you on the floor.”

I attempt to say, okay, but it comes out as a garbled noise. I’m so damn greedy I don’t want him to stop, not even to change positions.

Smoothly, he lifts me off the table and sets me down on the rug in front of the wood stove. The rug is rough but warm, and he’s on me, hard and ready, his hand between my legs guiding himself. I’m opening for him with the easy slick of a woman who’s been undone by his mouth, and the dragging of him in is the slow stretching thing it was last night, yet it’s also new—because this is my floor, my home, the house that maybe he wasn’t supposed to be inside of.

Don’t let him in.

Too late for that.

“Iris.” He breathes. “Iris.”

“Don’t go slow.”

“You’re sore from last night.”

“I don’t care,” I say through a breathy moan.

“I care. I could hurt you, I⁠—”

“Alasdair.”

He looks at me with his forehead against mine, his weight on his elbows and his hips held at the edge of me. He frowns and then nods, seeing the wanting, the crazed desperation that must be written all over my face.

He pushes in to the hilt in one punishing stroke.

The sound I make isn’t pretty.

“That what you want, foxglove?”

“Yes.”

“You want it like that?”

“Yes. Yes.”