“Come.” I push the thought away and lead her to the wooden staircase wide enough for five people to walk abreast. “We’ll find you somewhere to sleep. And that was a long drive. You’ll want to have a shower, right? Or there’s a decent bath.”
“Oh, yeah. That would be amazing if you don’t mind. Are you sure? Is it only you here?” she doesn’t give me time to reply as she trips after me, assuming I guess from my unbroken stride what my answer is. I’m very sure.
“Aye.” Taking a left into the guest wing I open the first door into a guest bedroom I prepared back in the days after Duncan’s death when I was thinking about a wee lass living here.
While she peers around as though she’s never seen anything like it, I lean my hip against a chest of drawers. Convenient height, I notice. If I put Mia on it I could… Get my mind out of the gutter and not lust after a lass half my age. You’d think at thirty-seven I’d be able to control myself, and usually, yes. But Mia is temptation on a different level.
“I like…” She gestures at the cosy decor, all cream woollen tartan and solid pale oak. Her gaze skitters between me and the whimsical four-poster with floaty sheer curtains that dominates the room. “All of it.”
I nod. It suits her, as I intended. “I’ll make you dinner.”
“You don’t need to—”
She cuts off at my raised eyebrow.
“’Kay. Thank you.” Lowering herself onto the bed, she stares out of the window, where the day is turning towards evening. White into grey into black and silver. With her hair falling over her shoulders, a bit messy now the snow has dissolved, she looks young and tired.
“How long do you think the storm will continue?” she asks.
I shrug when she peeks at me from the corner of her eye. If I had my way it would never stop, so she’d never leave. But that’s why selfish kingpins don’t get to control the weather. “It might ease tomorrow.”
That doesn’t seem to please her.
“When the weather has moved off I’ll take you wherever you want to go in the helicopter. I’ll sort you out a new life. Whatever you need.”
Until then I’ll spoil her and pretend she’s here because she couldn’t stay away. Because she came here, to me, to feel safe.
“James.” Her back straightens as she rises, bracing herself. “The car. Is it going to be a problem?”
I don’t know, but I shake my head. “No one can hurt you while you’re here.” Because they’d have to go through me, and I’d die before she so much as broke a fingernail or spent an hour with anyone she didn’t like. Never mindmarry.
“Why not forget about your uncle until the storm clears,” I suggest, though it comes out as a decree.
She brightens. “So, we’re just snowed in? No mafia stuff. We’re… Us? Right?”
“Us,” I repeat. Mia makes me want to deny reality. I wantusto bealways. “Aye.”
She smiles shyly and damn, how am I supposed to keep my hands off her?
“Thank you,” she whispers.
One evening ofuswill have to be enough to provide memories for a lifetime. Because though she wants freedom, I wanther. On her knees. On her back. On my lap with my thick cock spearing her tight hot body. I’m already half erect and I need to get out of her room before I begin imagining her in the shower. Naked. Water streaming over her curves.
Fuck. This is going to be torture.
I turn away before I do something to scare her. The things I want, they’re perverted. They’d terrify a sweet lass like her. I’ll protect her until the storm passes, then send her to start a new life.
Untouched.
3
MIA
My tummy is rumbling by the time I find my way down to the kitchen. James looks up as I enter and all the pep talk I gave myself while I showered, about things being exactly as they were when I was a kid, hisses and melts and steams like a snowball tossed into an open fire.
From behind the kitchen island where he was chopping vegetables, he stills. His gaze drags down my body like he’s in a trance, and I go flushed and hot as I was in the bath, but with the addition of a stronger throb between my legs. I shift, rubbing my thighs together subtly.
“Mia.” He’s around the work surface and by my side in an instant, then looks away, a flash of guilt in his eyes. Then his gaze returns to my face as though drawn there by a string, and mutters, “You look lovely.”
