The thought caught me by surprise. I paused with a forkful of spiced potato half-way to my mouth. I laid down the fork and finished my wine, my throat suddenly dry. Brody ordered another bottle as the waitress cleared our plates.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I said, stupidly.
“Not exactly,” he replied, filling his own glass then mine. “But last night you seemed to relax more after your drink. I like you relaxed.”
I made myself hold his look. “Is Ogdell making you do this?”
“Do what?”
“This,” I said, gesturing between us.
“Jon’s my boss,” he replied easily. “He pays me well, but not well enough to make my private life any of his business.”
I watched him for a long moment. He watched me right back, still smiling. “I’m sorry,” I said, looking out of the window. “Property developers and me? Well…we usually have different agendas, let’s say.”
His honey-colored brows drew together in a slight frown. “If I wasn’t so sure this was something very important to you, I think I’d be offended.”
“Sorry. I don’t do this much.”
“Do what?” he asked, his smile back.
“This,” I said, gesturing again.
He laughed. “What? The brooding Heathcliff thing doesn’t have all the guys in the neighborhood lining up at the door?”
“There are no guys like me in the neighborhood,” I murmured, swirling the wine around my glass, “and there is no neighborhood.”
“You’re not a virgin, right?”
I gave him a look.
“Okay, okay. I figured not. Look… I’ll lay it all out, shall I?” He put his elbows on the table and leaned close, lowering his voice. “I would very much like to kiss you right now.” I froze with the wineglass to my lips. “I’d like even more to take you back to my hotel for the evening. And I think you’d quite like that too.” I gripped the glass tighter. “But if you wouldn’t, say the word. I’ll pay the check and you can head back to your castle and carry on roaming the moors or whatever it is you do for fun. I’ll let you go with no hard feelings, other than a little disappointment, to which I think I’d be entitled.”
My skin was hot. It had been so long since anyone had looked at me that way. The neglected parts of my body and brain were clamoring for attention. His hot blue eyes held mine for a long time, but when I still hadn’t spoken, he sighed and gestured to the waitress for the bill.
“Shall I get us an Uber?” I heard myself saying.
He grinned. “You do that.”
* * * *
Brody’s hotel suite was one of the finest that the Blythswood Hotel—if not all of Glasgow—had to offer. The furnishings were dove-gray and white. The bathroom gleamed with marble and glossed ceramic. There was a large kitchen area and several big-screen TVs, and the delicate smells of Egyptian cotton and branded hand soap were threaded in the air.
I barely noticed any of it. Brody had a full mini-bar and a chrome cigarette case filled with Karlsson’s finest cocaine. He talked and laughed with the easy grace of someone who’d never doubted anything in his life. He made it so easy not to think. I battled daily with the effort of not thinking, but Brody took the fight right out of me, leaving me prone, unburdened and raw in all the right places. His smile was warm, his skin was hot and his body that of someone who had grown up in the sunshine and the sea.
We didn’t talk much. When we did, he did most of it. Like Olivia, he knew the art of holding the conversation without having to say anything of significance, which was good because, under it all, I knew we had nothing of any significance to say to each other.
We started as soon as he shut the door. First it was hands and mouths, hot and heavy. We rid ourselves of our clothing without breaking stride. I heard buttons ping free but didn’t know if they were from his shirt or mine, and I didn’t much care. He drew me onto the bed and we groped each other with increasingly demanding need. The small part of me that wasn’t completely caught up in the moment was quietly pleased when I didn’t come the minute he touched me, so long had it been since I’d done this with another human.
His mouth tasted like wine and cocaine. His skin tasted like salty ocean air. I breathed him deep, bright and hot, like a midsummer’s day on a sunbaked, foreign shore, unfamiliar and yet entrancing. I sank myself into it, reveling in the touch of his knowledgeable hands and the sound of his arousal-tightened groans. But when he drew me on top of him and whispered in my ear that he wanted me to fuck him, I had to pull away.
“What’s the matter?” he said, voice gravelly with need. “I’ve got protection.”
“It’s not that,” I managed to get out. He pressed against me and the friction as his body rubbed against my cock made me gasp.
“Then what is it?” His breath was hot in my ear. “I’m guessing you like to top, right?”
“Yes,” I rasped into his neck. “I do… Christ, I do. I just…”
He put his finger under my chin and lifted my face to meet his eyes. “It’s cool,” he said, smile dimpling his flushed cheeks. “Too soon, I get it. I’m a patient guy. Next time, then.”
I swallowed his smile with a deep kiss and he reached for me with both hands. I came in hot explosions of white light, like breakers crashing on a beach, the sound of him calling my name as he joined me nearly drowned out by the rushing in my ears.
He grinned up at me from the pillow, his cheeks flushed and eyes hot. He drew me down, kissed me deeply and rolled me under him.
“I hope you’re not done yet, Lord Aviemore,” he purred in my ear. “We’ve got all night, you know.”
* * * *
When I came to, an unknowable amount of time later, darkness had fallen. I sprawled on the bed, my skin cooling in the air-conditioned air, feeling pleasantly empty for the first time in…a long time. Even the fading swirl of alcohol and coke felt mild, warm and comfortable.
“You need to come down from the mountains more often,” Brody drawled whilst searching out clean glasses for more whisky. “Clearly you don’t get the chance to relax as often as is healthy.”
“You sound like Meg.”
He chuckled softly. The bed dipped as he sat, holding out the glass to me. “Seriously, though. What’s it like?”
I sipped the whisky. It was good. Not my favorite, but good. “What’s what like?”
“Living at Glenroe.”
“It’s quiet.”
“And you like it quiet?” he ventured.
I shrugged one shoulder. “I’m used to it.”
He shifted a little closer. “And it doesn’t freak you out? Living alone, in the middle of nowhere?”
I took in his serious expression. “No. Should it?”
It was his turn to shrug, but it seemed some of the easiness had left him. “It would freak me out these days, with vampires out of the closet and all.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Vampires?”
“Haemophiles…whatever.”
“There’s no such thing as vampires, Brody,” I said, smiling.