‘I want this to be about you.Foryou.’
‘So make it about both of us.’ She frowned, thumb pressing against his chin to direct his surprised gaze back to her. ‘Fuck me, Struan. I want you to fuck me.’
Struan’s chest cracked open. It was the last thing he’d been expecting to hear after she’d laid her truth down for him this morning.
If they did this, he would be her first – and yet, somehow, it was him that felt vulnerable and inexperienced under her intense, pleading features.
More so because he knew he had to turn her down, a fact he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forgive himself for.
22
Nerves jangled through Rae when Struan didn’t respond, his focus instead sliding past her to the falls. He didn’t want her. Not enough to do what she was proposing. Maybe it had just been a game, proof he could make her come, nothing more.
‘It’s okay if you don’t want to.’ She tried to unstick herself from his lap, but his grip on her hips tightened, keeping her there.
‘Have you got sunstroke? Of course I fucking want to.’
That tender spot between her legs, still half-numb, halftingling pleasantly from the ice, began to tighten against his length again. She couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to have him buried inside her, sliding in and out, her body moulding to his shape. She knew it wasn’t something she could ever take back, something she might come to regret when Martha arrived and they returned to whatever they’d been before, but that felt too distant in the face of this unrelenting heatwave and the pleasure he’d already brought her.
‘Then what’s stopping you?’
He pressed a kiss against her collarbone. It was so delicate, so unlike the ravenous ones he’d given her earlier, that something inside of her snapped.Her brain was too hazy to know where or what, only that it stung like an elastic band plucked against her skin.
‘Your first time should be special, not like this.’
She looked around her at the gorgeous scenery, a smudged finger-painting of greens and blues and golds. The water reuniting itself with the river over and over, the purple thistles pointing towards patches of sunlight, swarmed by bees and butterflies. Maybe the midge bites itching her skin were unwanted, and maybe she was too sweltering to form coherent thoughts, but she could think of few places more special than this.
‘What, like a trail of rose petals and candles leading to our marriage bed?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I didn’t take you for such a cliché, Struan.’
‘So… I should return the rose petals, then?’
She laughed until he didn’t, then sobered quickly as shock grasped her. ‘Wait. Are you serious?’
He cleared his throat, avoiding her searching gaze. ‘I may have picked up a few things from the candle shop earlier today, you know, just in case. That’s not to say I assumed you’d want your first time to be with me. I just thought, maybe if you wanted to, I’d make sure it was everything you imagined it—’
She placed a trembling finger over his lips, though she hadn’t yet figured out what she wanted to say. Whatcouldshe say in response to that? He’d…
Jesus, he’d wanted to give her a fairy tale. It might have been cliché and not at all what she’d had in mind, but it was still sweet. Thoughtful.
Devastatingly.
A fist closed around her heart, tight enough she couldn’t breathe for a moment. For the first time, she realised this might be just as complicated as she’d worried. Worse. He was making her fall for him.
They weren’t fizzling. They were combusting.
‘Do you plan on saying something, or are we having quiet time now?’ Struan’s question was muffled by Rae’s finger.
‘I’m trying,’ she admitted, a prickle beginning behind her eyes. She clenched her jaw.Not now, not now, not now.‘Look, I’m not the type of girl who needs a big fanfare about losing my virginity. Honestly, I think that phrase is silly anyway. You don’tloseanything by having sex. It’s just a made-up way of defining women based on whether they’ve been near a penis.’ She faltered, realising she was digressing, even if Struan was nodding in timid agreement. ‘Anyway, what I’m saying is, I don’t expect you to treat me any differently just because it’s my first time. I’m not some innocent, naive maiden or anything.’
‘Believe me, I didn’t think you were.’ He tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘I just thought you’d want it to be memorable, that’s all. My first time was in the car park near the loch with a lass I barely knew, who said “Is that it?” when it was over. I ended up having a panic attack afterwards. I mean, it might have had something to do with the weed, but still. It put me off pretty much any kind of intimacy for a long time. I didn’t think I was good at it, and I didn’t see it as something that was supposed to be pleasurable, just some anxiety-inducing rite of passage. Whether you believe in that shite or not, it sticks with you.’
Rae frowned, her stomach clenching on his behalf. Maybe she understood better already, because the idea of him going through that made her mouth turn down at the corners. He’d deserved better. It should have been with somebody who made him feel safe, cared for.
The way she felt with him, even if she wasn’t supposed to.
She sifted her fingers through his hair gently, an attempt at comfort.
‘You’re surprised again,’ he said.
