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“I’d see ye strutting about, looking so fucking beautiful… and then some lonely old soul would stop ye in the street to chat or beg or ask the time. Ne’er would ye bat them off, ye’d always speak wi’ em. And the way ye’d smile when people weren’t looking, when ye’d see an old couple still in love, or a mum cooing over her bairn. Or ye’d see, I dunno, a piece o’ art or a woman with a dress ye liked, and ye’d stop, and tell ’em so.”
I pulled myself out of his chest. “That’s because she’s in me still, Callie. In here.”
“I ken it,” he said smiling. “But that protectiveness, that ability to live, it’s in-built too, in here,” he said, pointing to my chest. “Some people learn it, some are born wi’ it. You’re the latter.”
He moved in and swept me up with a daring, passionate kiss that rocked my soul to its foundations. I moved into him, chest to chest, and straddled his thighs. He grasped my butt and my bare breast under my shirt, his tongue rampant in my mouth, then on my throat.
I pulled away, my clit singing with lust, but…
It wasn’t time.
He was shaking as we shared breath, our noses pushed together. My eyes closed, I caught my breath and just let myself feel the thwacking of his heart against mine.
“My mother loved me,” I whispered, “but she was a victim. She allowed herself to be. I would never allow it.”
“I kent it the moment I first saw ye, lass.”
I opened my eyes and stared at his body, at all those abs and side abs. His nice big pecs and those lethal arms, not bricks like Eric’s, but corded with fierce, determined muscle. No big show-off, nothing wasted, everything in proportion. My towering, violent, rapscallion of a husband. With those utterly delicious lines, dips in his hips, that slope down to his cock. Nobody else had such a nice set of hips and I was reminded how beautiful…
…and why I fell in love with him!
“I would take Logan if it was for the best,” I muttered. “Away from it all. I’d do it.”
“I ken it,” he repeated, “and I’d no blame ye.”
“I loved her, and I still love him, but staying a good person? Staying strong? Being, fuck, so alone… for so long, Caelan… it took so much guts. People do not understand.” I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, afraid to say the rest. “I’ve had to be—”
“So strong, aye,” he said, hurt in his eyes. “Then the big twat that I am, I forgot that beneath it, ye’ve just wanted to be looked after.” Tears rained down my face. “Ye’d just had a bairn no long ago. Then I left and ye were afraid, and I shoulda stayed… ye were vulnerable. Ye were broken. By the things Sherry spake, the loss of your da… so many things. And then ye decided…”
“To break it before it broke me!” I cried, shaking so violently, I lost all control and he had to hold me upright. After I’d finished heaving and sobbing, I said, “I was crying every day you were away.” My teeth chattered. “I could hardly breathe. I should’ve told you not to go. Morag spoke as if you might have died out there and I should face the possibility.”
“Here, come rest,” he said, and we moved so we were lying down again. I was wrapped on all sides by his arms and legs and his breath, his body, his love. “She’s just a bit… pragmatic sometimes.”
We couldn’t help a little chuckle between us.
“I admit, Eric came along and made me question things. Made me doubt you. But now I’ve had time, I realise looking back, I was trying to break it before it broke me. Because happiness is still so foreign to me, Caelan. So, so foreign.”
“I feel the exact same way,” he said, with grit in his voice. “I had whores throwing themselves at me in Ukraine and wasna tempted while sober, but… the drink tempted me while I was out there.”
“The drink?” This was new.
“Aye, when I’ve had a few, I just… tell myself nothing matters… and do things. In the past, that’s what happened. I’d have to be filthy drunk to… you know. I think ye were the first woman I made love to… ever… and the first woman I’d been with since Dani without me being drunk.”
“God.”
“Aye.”
“You didn’t drink, though?” I held my breath. “Out in Ukraine.”
“Nae, there was too much pain there, Flora. Too many broken souls. It would’ve felt like a betrayal of them. I wrecked myself nearly trying to help everyone from the fisherman to the candlestick maker… I’ll no darken your door with the truth about the terrors.”
I wrapped myself around him tighter. “I love you so much.”
“More than him?” he nearly growled.
“Much more… but I have some sense of what you were saying. Before, I mean.” He wriggled a little beneath me. “How you could never doitunless you were drunk. I could never do it unless it meant nothing. So long as they didn’t know me, not really, and the less they did, the better.”
“The stains and all?” he said.
