Lord of the Isles: International Billionaires VIII: The Scots

by Caro LaFever

  “Yes.” In more ways than one, she realized. The love was too fresh and new and painful to assimilate fully, but somewhere, deep inside, she knew she was coming for him and intending to keep him.

  “Are ye,” he said in a soft, wondering voice, although he masked his eyes in that sultry way of his. “Then come on.”

  She did. She came right to him and laid her head on his brawny shoulder. “Iain.”

  “Iain, she says,” he sing-songed back.

  “You can’t be everything to everyone, you know.”

  “Do I know that?” His arms came around her, shifting her so she lay on her side with him.

  “Well, clearly you don’t.” She slung her arm across his waist. “Not yet, anyway.”

  He sighed, a gusty sound. “I suppose you’re aiming to make me see this eventually.”

  “Yep.”

  Silence fell between them. It should have been filled with wary anger or fraught emotions. Instead, it seeped between them, a warm, gentle connection.

  “I’m thinking, Lil.”

  “Mmm.” She snuggled closer.

  “I’m thinking I need to do some things differently than my da did.”

  “On the islands.”

  “On my islands.”

  The claim of ownership thrilled her because there was confidence in his voice, and a determination she’d never heard before. “Okay, Your Majesty, what are you thinking?”

  He chuckled, the movement of his chest butting against her breasts, making her realize the passion for him was there beneath the friendship. “Donal might have been right about a few things.”

  “Donal?” Lifting her head, she looked at him. “Who’s Donal?”

  A dark, nasty emotion drifted in his eyes before he blanked it away. “I’m thinking we need to do some exploring.”

  Before she could grasp the change in conversation and figure out what had happened, he’d jumped from her arms and stood. “Let’s go,” he ordered.

  “Wait. What?” She scrambled to her feet. “Go back to the castle?”

  “No.” He turned to pace off across the beach. “We’re going to explore.”

  Looking around at the tiny island, she shook her head in confusion. “Explore what?”

  “My past.”

  Chapter 21

  The cove on the other side of his island and the small grassy indent into the rock wall were exactly the same as when he’d last been here.

  A thousand years ago, it seemed like.

  He wasn’t that boy anymore.

  So who was he?

  Lovely Lilly rattled to his side, her breathing short, the lemony scent of her swirling in the air mixed with the sweet smell of her sweat. “I thought maybe we were racing to escape some Viking raiders.”

  The gift of her humor, when she should have been yelling at him for his rude behavior, made the sudden guilt even thicker inside. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” She pushed her blonde curls off her forehead. “For what?”

  He paced away, before he knelt at her knees in supplication. “For not slowing my gait so ye could keep up.”

  “I kept up. As you can see.”

  He turned to catch her waving her hand at herself in a grand gesture. The expression on her face was wry and kind.

  Something broke inside. Was it his heart? His pain? Iain couldn’t tell. He only knew he needed to make it up to her in some way. So he gave her a gift of himself and his past. “This was my place as a lad.”

  “Was it?” She looked around.

  He wondered what she saw. Did she see the subtle beauty of the color of his sea here? The green more prominent, the blue less so. Did she see the way the solid rock formed a cover over the indent, like a ceiling or a canopy? Did she see the whisper of the wind moving along this grass, caressing the blades with a soft touch?

  Did she see what he’d seen as a boy?

  “What’s the island called?”

  “Bha Innis.” He gave her a little smile. “And before ye ask, ye curious woman, it means His Island.”

  “That sounds appropriate.” She smiled right back at him.

  Her lovely smile sunk into him like a heatstroke, making him venture further into his past. “My da brought me across the first several times. But after a while, he let me come here by myself.”

  “You liked that a lot, didn’t you?”

  “Aye.” Bracing himself, he put his hands on his hips. “I enjoy being by myself.”

  “You say that as if you’re making some horrid confession.” She wandered closer, her gaze keen. “It isn’t, you know.”

  “Do I?” He forced himself to keep meeting her gaze.

  “If you don’t, you should.” She cocked her head. “Tell me.”

  “What?”

  “Was your mom as boisterous as your dad?”

  “Boisterous?” Iain gave her an immediate frown. “My da was a great man.”

  “I’m sure he was. I enjoyed him every time I met him.” She stepped a bit closer. “Still, he could be rather overwhelming.”

  “I don’t know what ye mean.” A rough sound came from his throat because he’d loved his da. Loved his loud voice and big laugh. Loved his pride in the McPherson name and his devotion to their island kingdom.

  “But we weren’t talking about your dad. I asked about your mom.”

  “I loved my mum.” The memory of her had faded, a lingering, loving presence who’d fallen aside in the face of his da’s needs.

  “I’m sure you did.” She crept closer. “Tell me about her.”

  Grief, a grief he hadn’t been allowed to feel for almost twenty years, roared through him. He sucked in a deep breath, pushing back the tears. “I’m quite like her, actually.”

  “Are you?”

  “She was quiet.” He closed his eyes and remembered. “She was very quiet.”

  Lovely Lilly only hummed.

  “She liked to read and she liked her garden.”

  “Oh, Iain.” The sorrow in her voice made him snap open his eyes.

  “What? What’s wrong with that?” He scowled at her once more.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” The donas came right to him and looked into his eyes.

  And it hit him, just like that.

  Her eyes were exactly the green of his sea. Her determined spirit was exactly like the rock arching over them. Her tender friendship and care gave him exactly the same touch of pure happiness he’d experienced whenever he’d arrived on this island. As a boy, he thought of this as his place, when all along, he’d been searching for her. His Lilly.

  “Iain.”

  “Iain, she says,” he choked out the words because he still wanted to protect himself from the wondrous need filling him.

  Maybe she realized he couldn’t say anything more without giving her everything. She reached up on her tiptoes and put her arms around him and put her lips on his.

  Everything inside him went silent. The howl of his pain, the bittersweet memory of his boyhood, the wonder of what he’d found.

  Everything went away except her.

  She hummed on his lips and, like an incantation, the sound made him open to her, taste her. The buttery remnants of the cheese they’d just eaten coated her tongue and his, binding them together. Beneath it, lay her. The sweet, subtle taste of Lilly. This time, he savored, this time he took his time and got all of her mouth.

  But not all of her.

  His past and his plans fell away to leave him with only the male, with only the primitive need pounding inside. He yanked his mouth from hers to confess what he had never wanted to confess again to a living human being. “I need ye.”

  “I need you too.” Dropping down from her tiptoes, she smiled.

  The smile lit inside him. Drove away any lingering darkness or wary worry. He didn’t know anything other than this.

  This moment. This woman.

  “Come here, donas.” He tugged her hand and dropped them both to their knees.

  “Someday, you�
��re going to have to tell me what that name means,” she teased. “But right now, I don’t want to talk.”

  He thought he should probably attempt one of his own teases. “Ye? Don’t want to talk…”

  With a female move as old as Eve, she pulled her shirt over her head and shimmied as she did it, making his tease clutch in his throat.

  “Lilly.”

  She was impossibly, improbably, exactly right for him.

  Her glossy skin glowed in the sunlight, so warm and tan and lovely. Her breasts brimmed over her bra, making his mouth water and his teeth clench. Her shoulders and arms were graceful, lyrical in the way his music was. She was everything and anything and his.

  “Lilly,” he breathed in again. With the air, came a sliver of his brain. “What are ye doing? Aren’t ye the one who thought we should only be—”

  “Not now.”

  Her two words were simple and yet, incredibly confusing. He frowned, trying to wring his mind back into functioning control. “But I thought—”

  “Not now, Iain.” Sighing, she crawled closer until she plastered herself against him. “Things have changed.”

  Instinct howled at his brain to shut up. Emotion welled inside, breaking around his wobbly heart like a hurricane. “I want ye. Don’t think I don’t.”

  “I know you do.” The muffled words came from his neck. “And I want you.”

  Then, she hummed again on his skin.

  The sound went through him like a tsunami, cutting through any last objections. Until all he could take in was her fragrant, warm body, and the fact she’d finally admitted what he’d wanted to hear from the moment he’d seen her.

  As the fairy girl, he’d wanted her spirit to heal him.

  As a winsome woman, he wanted her to become one with him.

  Throwing away his brain, Iain grabbed her naked waist and tugged her into another kiss.

  And another. And another.

  Lilly’s heart expanded in her chest until all she had was her love for Iain McPherson. All her plans for her future, all her memories of her past were swept away. The love spread inside, filling every empty crevasse, every lonely gap. All the chinks into her soul, all the cuts and fractures and slices of her past filled, pulling her into completeness.

  “Donas,” he whispered on the side of her mouth. “Take my shirt off.”

  His raspy plea broke through her emotions, drawing her back into the physical reality of him. She yanked off his T-shirt and pressed her hands on the center of his chest, feeling the steady, solid beat of his heart beneath her palms. “I want all of you, Iain. Everything,” she confessed in a hushed voice.

  His finger poked her chin and she lifted her head to meet his gaze. His eyes were wide open, no dark lashes hiding himself from her. The blue was stark with need, and God help her, she hoped with something much more profound. “Lil.” His mouth wasn’t sultry and suggestive, but rather firm and determined as if pronouncing an important truth. “Ye have had me since the moment ye walked into my castle.”

  Hope burst inside her and she laughed with joy, a deep, simple joy of understanding she’d found her place on this planet. Found the place she’d been looking for with an unconscious knowing.

  “No more laughing or talking,” he growled before snapping open the clasp of her bra, tugging it off her willing arms, and throwing it aside. His focus dropped from her face to her breasts. Groaning out a tortured, male sound, he stared. “Ye are beautiful.”

  Sliding her fingers through her hair, she arched, giving herself to him. “Touch.”

  “Jesus.” His hands rose to cup her, jiggling the weight in his palms. His eyes closed and he made another hoarse sound in his throat.

  Fire and the warm pull of desire flashed from her breasts down into her womb. Lilly arched more, into the heat of his hold and his need.

  His thumbs brushed her hard nipples, making her hum again. “Come here,” he crooned as he lifted her, his strength easily moving her where he wanted.

  His mouth latched onto one nipple and she gasped at the lightning stroke of passion roaring through her blood. Switching to her other nipple, this time his tongue twirled over it, a light, gentle taste.

  Then he nipped her right on the side of her breast.

  “Ah!” she cried, taking in the quick cut of painful pleasure. Dropping her head back, she closed her eyes, accepting his tender desire and male possession.

  He murmured something she couldn’t understand before laving her skin, drenching the bite in his hot, wet need.

  “Iain,” she breathed, opening her eyes to the blue sky.

  “Lilly,” he responded, his hands tightening on her torso before laying her on the soft grass.

  He rose above her, his gaze locked with hers, his big shoulders tense with sexual need, the hair on his chest damp with sweat. There was something elemental about him now, something primitive and wild. Something that came from the past, came from the earth, animalistic and untamed.

  Reaching up, she grabbed for all of it. All of him. His skin was hot, the muscles underneath rigid.

  “Don’t hold back, love.” Her voice thrummed with a female knowing. “Take what you want.”

  He jerked as if she’d cut right into his heart. His eyes went opaque and then a second later, narrowed into lasers of desire. Wrenching off her jeans and panties, he jumped up and tore off his own.

  Iain stood, staring at her naked body, taking everything she offered and more. So much more. The sky-blue gaze went from her face, down across her full breasts, along the dip of her waist, the small pillow of her tummy and landed right at the juncture of her legs.

  “Open to me.” His words were a command and yet, the harsh need edging them told her he was as much under her sway as she was in his.

  Sliding her hands over her body, Lilly dropped her thighs open.

  He gasped and threw his head back, closing his eyes like she was too much for him to take.

  But she wasn’t. She was exactly what he needed, exactly what he needed to take.

  “Come here,” she commanded herself.

  The sun shone around him, a halo of light silhouetting his warrior body in gold. He seemed a part of the land beneath him, the sky above, the sea and rock and sand.

  “Iain,” she called for him once more, so needy and wanting and willing to give everything she thought she might burst. “Please come here.”

  He landed on her, his body blazing with heat, his weight and power making her gasp.

  “I can’t stop.” Staring into her eyes, his own were glazed with a fevered intensity. “I can’t—”

  “You don’t have to.” She grabbed his beautiful ass. Finally. It was as tight and amazing as she’d dreamed. She grasped his firm cheeks and pulled him right into her.

  He moaned, throwing his head back again, his mouth going lax. His hips pumped his cock straight into her core, no finesse, no skill.

  Only need. Only want.

  Lilly closed her eyes and took him. Took the starkness of his passion and the clear urgency of his potent demand.

  His hands landed on the ground by her shoulders with a solid thud. His head dropped, hair brushing along her collarbone. His hips began a driving, determined pace.

  Lifting her legs and her arms, wrapping them around his heaving, straining body, she let him take everything.

  For so long, his body had been a weapon. A fine piece of flesh he’d been trained to polish into a sleek, smooth killing machine. A machine his mind controlled, his intelligence directed.

  “Mmm,” Lilly murmured beneath him.

  That machine had not reacted to emotions or need. That machine had spent years protecting his life and his men’s lives with concentrated focus. That machine had only failed once.

  “Harder,” she gasped into his ear. “Faster.”

  Iain couldn’t catch his breath or his brain. He couldn’t find the machine inside him any longer. Everything was a vague, shimmering mirage in comparison to what his body wanted. Right now. />
  With her.

  He’d had good sex before. Many times. He’d been choosy and careful, yet he’d been a man who needed physical release and some comfort when he walked away from his duty.

  So he’d found women.

  Women in Istanbul who were pleased to show up at his hotel room. Women in Athens who could be picked up at a bar. Women who loved the thought of being with a Royal Marine. But he’d never felt this way when he surged into a woman. Never felt like if he had to stop he’d die. Never felt like if he couldn’t have this woman over and over again he wouldn’t want to live.

  Never had he felt this way about sex.

  He groaned, the noise coming straight from his trembling gut, from his aching cock. Punching himself into her wet, hot flesh he couldn’t find any smoothness, any polish. His lust and need took over, drowning his brain in a froth of frenzy.

  He took. He took and took and took her. He took her body and her warmth. He stole her mouth with his frantic kiss. He grabbed her soft breasts in his greedy hands and sucked and bit into the taste of her peachy skin as if he’d gone mad.

  “Donas,” he moaned into the shell of her delicate ear, trying to find an explanation for why he took so much.

  She hummed her acceptance once more.

  Acceptance.

  Of him and his insistent, greedy need.

  Wrenching his head up from the crease of her neck, he stared at her lovely face. Her sea-green eyes were dark and deep, like a stormy sea rolling its waves over the sands of his soul. Her lips, so provocative and pouty, were open, panting out her sweet breath, making his senses swirl. Her glossy skin glowed in the sunlight like she was a fairy tale creature come to this world to shed her riches across his barren, human heart.

  “Lilly.” Her name came from him as a chant, an incantation of surprise and shock.

  Because this wasn’t sex, he realized. His body roared for her body and his lust curled inside him, a raving beast. And yes, he was very close to coming, coming like a randy teenager during his first time.

  But this was more. So much more.

  This was joining, committing. The male in him shuddered at the knowledge, shook and shivered, understanding he was giving her more.

  Everything.