Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
“Are you offering to take me romping through the heather?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of keeping the curtains open.”
He smiles before his eyes seem to blaze. “I can’t stop thinking about last night.”
My stomach tightens greedily in anticipation.
“I knew it would be good. I’ve dreamed of it often enough.” Pleasure pulses through me at his admission. Not that he’d dreamed of sex, but of our wedding night. “But my imaginings never came close.”
“I always thought you had a very fertile imagination.” My voice sounds calm despite snapshots of the evening filtering through my brain. His hand on my breast. The hard length of him pressed between my legs. His strong, tanned throat as he’d thrown his head back. The sound of him as he came. The feeling that moves through me feels like electricity, my body rocking forward, chasing the sensation.
“Fertile or furtive?” he murmurs. I swallow a moan as he captures my nipple between his knuckles. “Hmm?”
“A little of both.” The words sound strained, my body aching for more.
“But you’ve always liked that about me, haven’t you?” I bite back a whimper as his knuckles skate down my body. “No one has ever fucked you the way that I do.”
“Such a dirty mouth.”
“This dirty mouth makes you come like no other. Say it, milaya.”
“It’s true.”
“And now I’m it for you. From now on, no one else gets to fuck you.” His statement is as fierce as his sudden grip against my thighs. “If someone as much as looks in your direction, I’ll blind them. If someone insults you, I will pull out their fucking tongue.” His dark words cause a wash of goose bumps along my arms. “You’re mine now. Anything you want, anything you need, you’ll get it from me.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s time someone looked after you.” His voice turns soft, his fingers exposing my other breast now. “That someone is me. Better get used to it.”
“This wasn’t supposed to be—”
“Now who’d being furtive? Lying to themselves? I see you, Isla. I know you better than you think. I know what you want and what you need. You just have to let me in. Let me in, darling,” he whispers fervently, his eyes not leaving mine as they slip under the fabric of my bikini bottom. I whimper as he breaches me, his fingers finding me already wet. “You just have to let me. You just have to be.”
My spine goes rigid. This feels so wrong—I being to turn my head.
“No.” Two fingers at my cheek, and two inside me, he holds me there. “No need to worry. I’ll take care.”
His eyes quicksilver and cool, blue glass as I lift my hips, bearing down on his fingers. I bite my lip to stop from crying out, a deep, secret part of me awakening. There is such pleasure in being vulnerable, in allowing him to set me free. And all the while, he croons such things.
He is mine and I am his.
How we were made for each other.
“Ask me who I love,” he demands.
I shake my head because, “I don’t need to.”
My body tightens around his fingers, I press my arm to my mouth to stifle my cries. I am boneless, liquid, as he watches me. I am deeply flawed, and I am his. His to love.
Moments, maybe hours later, I watch as he readjusts the red fabric and, as easy as sliding into a pool on a hot day, I turn on the sun bed, curling against his broad chest. If it catches him off guard, he doesn’t say so, his arms coming around me as though fifteen years haven’t passed.
“They love this place,” I whisper, watching my boys floating now like starfish in the pool. Starfish that giggle and occasionally splash.
“I have a pool.” He pauses, then rushes on, “We can build them a pool in Scotland. The house has land?”
“A little.” Half turning, I glance briefly up at him. “And a summer that’s about five minutes long.”
“So we’ll build an indoor pool. Or buy a house with a pool, whichever—”
“Or we could just come here again.”
“Yes.” He slides his lips across my hairline. “We could. Anytime they like.”
“They should be getting back to school.”
“Yes. Reality has to intrude sometimes.”
As though invited by our discussion, the real world steals back in when Sergei’s voice calls from the terrace.
“Kolya, there is telephone for you.”
Behind me, Niko expels a breath. I sit forward, and he slips out from behind me.
“What’s Kolya?” I whisper, sliding my fingers around his wrist before he can leave.
“It’s short for Nikolai,” he explains without emotion.
“I thought Niko was?”
“No one calls me Niko but you.” He brings my hand to his lips, then presses it to his cheek. “I have only ever been your Niko.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, straightening, the palm trees above covering him in lacy shadows. “Oh.” He turns, glancing over his shoulder. “This morning, Hugh was using your phone. He said he needed to check his school email for homework.”