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She tilted her head, and the hair he’d just tucked back swung free. She seemed about to question that statement, and he cursed himself for making it.
“Let’s get ye inside.” He reached past her and shoved at the door. It gave way with a thick clunk.
Kris stared at the broken door. “How did you do that?”
“This place has been rotting in the damp for decades. I dinnae know why Effy doesnae get it fixed.” He lifted one shoulder. “Now she’ll have to.”
Liam urged Kris inside. Since he’d broken the lock, he’d have to stay all night again to make certain she was safe. Not that he hadn’t planned to anyway.
Women were being killed, and whoever was doing it appeared to be very interested in having Kris become one of them. Why? She was a writer, come to write a children’s book about Nessie. What possible threat could she pose?
Liam had no idea, but he was going to find out.
“Hot shower,” he ordered, and urged her toward the bathroom. “I’ll make ye some tea.”
“Coffee,” she muttered, but she went. Seconds later the water beat against the shower curtain, and Liam began to imagine things he had no business imagining.
The steamy heat curling her golden hair about her face, the droplets sliding across the freckles on her nose. He would sip them one by one as they trembled on the edge of that nose or perhaps beaded on the cusp of one breast. Would her freckles taste of their cinnamon shade? Would her nipples be the same?
Liam groaned. How was it that the very thought of her made his hands tremble, even as the rest of him hardened to the point of pain?
Yes, he was a man. He’d spent a lifetime in seduction. But this time she was seducing him.
He shouldn’t be surprised. Years of lips whispering lies against sweetly scented skin, his palms skimming waists, thighs, breasts, his mouth tasting ambrosia, then nothing. In truth, the slightest brush of a hand on his shoulder should have made him spurt like a youth.
Liam finished with the coffee, shoving the carafe beneath the brew basket with a little too much force. He had to grab the machine with his free hand before it tumbled backward. He needed to get a grip as they said in the states. Sadly, all he wanted to grip was her.
An odd noise made Liam lift his head, the hairs on his neck and arms ruffling as a second muffled sound drifted from the bathroom.
He took the few steps to the door and shoved it open with such force—he’d expected it to be locked—that it slammed into the opposite wall, bouncing back and nearly smacking him in the face as he came through, fists clenched.
Kris, warm and wet, leaped into his arms.
“What is it?” she cried, at the same time he demanded, “Who’s here?”
His gaze swept the small area—empty but for them and the steam—then he reached out and yanked back the shower curtain. Nothing was behind it but the still-pounding pulse of the water.
“I heard ye cry out.” Liam tried to hold her close, but she kept sliding through his grasp like the loch through his fingertips.
Her lips rounded, a perfect, peach o. He wanted to taste her so badly his mouth watered.
“I—” She shoved the tumbling mass of curls from her face.
His gaze was caught by the silver Celtic cross around her neck. Had she always worn it, or was the addition recent? Perhaps a gift from Edward. If so, the old man was betting on shape-shifter.
Liam brushed his fingertips against the cool, bright metal. He’d never known Edward to be wrong.
At Liam’s touch, her breath caught. The sharp movement dragged the now-taut buds of her breasts—more rose than cinnamon but perfect nevertheless—across his pecs and his own nipples hardened.
“I slipped,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from the chill of the loch, or perhaps the heat of the room, the heat of them. Wherever their skin met—his hands on her arms, his chest to her breasts, his hips bumping hers as she shifted, restless—he burned.
Then he was kissing her, tasting her, touching her in ways he hadn’t kissed, tasted, or touched in years.
*
Kris wasn’t sure what got into her. She wasn’t the type to kiss a stranger. She definitely wasn’t the type to tear at his shirt, yanking it over his head and tossing it to the floor so that she could spread her palms across that smoothly muscled chest.
But Liam wasn’t really a stranger, now, was he?
