She nodded gingerly. ‘I just always thought you had it all together when we were growing up, even if you were a bit of a dweeb.’
‘Cheers.’
She giggled. ‘I’m sorry you had that experience. Maybe I don’t believe in rose petals and all that, but you deserved for it to at least be with somebody you trusted.’
‘And so do you. You deserve special, Rae. Somebody who shows you how much they…’ He trailed off, but she could finish the sentence:How much they love you.
Not him, then.
He dropped his chin. ‘Even if you did want to, here, now, we couldn’t. I didn’t bring protection. I didn’t even consider you’d want it to happen like this.’
She fished for the condom she’d pocketed earlier, after a swift visit to the pharmacy at lunch. The foil winked in the sunlight. ‘I did.’
He blinked in disbelief, and she felt his breath hitch where her arm rested against his chest. He’d been softening, but now his cock nudged her centre again, reassurance enough that she didn’t need to feel embarrassed by being so forward.
‘I’d trust you,Struan. Maybe we won’t ever be able to go any further than this, but I can’t think of anybody I’d feel safer with.’ She rutted against him, hoping he’d feel how wet she still was. How ready. ‘And I certainly can’t think of anybody else who would make me feel this good.’
‘You’re doing wonders for my ego,’ he teased.
She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t hide her smirk. He soon sobered, tugging her hip gently to regain her focus.
‘You have no idea how precious it feels to have you like this.’ He nuzzled his face into her tits, sending another spark through her with his vibrating grumble. ‘To know you feel safe with me. To know I can give you the pleasure you deserve.’
‘So give it to me,’ she said softly. ‘And let me give it to you, too. I want to.’
‘You’re so fucking sweet, Rae. I don’t think anyone else sees it.’ His eyes were glossy, kisses trailing over her neck. ‘I do. I see all of it.’
She could smell her arousal on his unshaven stubble and a chasm of yearning opened inside her, dark and terrifying. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if she couldn’t be with him. If she had to feel forever the emptiness his absence left.
‘Because it’s for you,’ she said. ‘It’s yours. So take it. Take me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure. Really, really sure.’
He hitched her legs around his waist without warning, lifting her so she squealed, only to place her carefully down on the rock, still warm from both the sun and them. He moved the baskets and bags away,kisses rougher as anticipation built. She was doing this. With Struan. For years, she’d wondered if maybe she just wasn’t desirable enough, or maybe it was her own pickiness that sabotaged her sex life, until eventually, she’d accepted that it would probably never happen for her. She’d die alone with her vibrator, and she wouldn’t mind, because it was a good vibrator, and she’d had a career across the globe to be proud of.
She’d been wrong about all of it. She was desirable, because he desired her, and she was picky, because she deserved to be, and it was a good vibrator, but he was better.
She arched off the rock to allow him to tug her dress over her head, laughing when the material stuck to her sweaty skin. He draped it over a tree stump, then peeled off his T-shirt and shorts before drinking her in – not a sip, but a gulp, languid and long until it felt as though even the waterfall had stopped flowing to join in.
‘I could spend all day like this,’ he said. ‘Looking at you, memorising you.’
‘Well, don’t. I’m impatient and I haven’t shaved my legs.’
His lips curled as he took the outstretched condom from her, repeating, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Did you not just hear what I said?’ Shewasimpatient, catastrophically so, and more than that, very aware that her bare bum was currently touching a rock. Even though she hadn’t seen a soul since they’d parked at Struan’s, she couldn’t help but eye the surrounding trees, just in case.
‘Right. Impatient.’ Finally, he removed his boxers, letting them spill to her feet. His length stood to attention against his belly.Perfect. She loved how soft he was around his middle, how mussed he left his hair, a man with nothing to prove. A man sunlight flocked to, all of him golden, from the happy trail under his belly button to the peachy flush of his mouth.
With her heart bellowing in her ears, she fixated on the furrow of his brows as he rolled the condom on, and the way it smoothed the second he lifted his eyes back to her.
‘How is this happening?’ he muttered, the corners of his eyes creasing as he kneeled over her on the rock.
She let out a nervous laugh, wondering the same thing. ‘No fucking clue.’
She’d had her future planned since the age of seventeen: culinary school, travelling the world as she worked her way up the ranks, until one day, she would have had enough experience and money to open her own fine dining restaurant somewhere in Lochaber to better establish Scotland on the culinary map, hopefully in synergy with the farm’s exceptional produce. Never had she stopped to think she might come home, burnt out and discouraged, to find intimacy in the most unextraordinary, most familiar of corners with a man she’d known for over half her life. He’d seen sides to her she could barely remember now, and sides she’d worked hard to forget: face covered in pizza toppings after she’d fallen asleep with her head in the box; exhausted after an all-nighter spent watching horror movies that meant she’d been too scared to walk home from Martha’s alone; in tears the day she’d broken the old swing-set in the Macgibbons’ backyard; a nervous wreck on the first day of secondary school. He had always been there, in her periphery, yet she’d never thought to turn her head.
