Page 107 of Scotch on the Rocks

I couldn’t contain my moan, even as I knew how pathetic I was for almost giving in. He’d humiliated me back there,then a few tempting words and he had me almost panting against my front door. “I hate you.”

“Oh yeah?” He reached around me, unlocking the door but holding me against him on the threshold. “Sometimes I think I hate you too.” His voice was gruffer than I’d ever heard it. “The power you hold over me, I don’t think you even realise how dangerously you could wield it.”

Fuck him. Fuck him and that gravelled tone.

Barging through the door, I sped down the hallway and into the living room, tossing my purse onto the sofa. Upon seeing us, Shakespeare paused her licking, hissed, then dove into the safety of my closet.

I felt him pause on the threshold, the ticking of my clock our only companion as the tension thickened. Refusing to be the one to speak first, I kept my back to him, staring through the large window. Total darkness stared back.

“If you want to scream at me, now’s your chance, sweetheart.”

It was the endearment that finally broke me. The way he chopped and changed as if I were two different people. I whirled. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why?”

“Because it gives mixed messages. One minute, I’m Juniper or sweetheart and I feel …” Ifeel.My laugh turned acrid. “Forget it.”

“Fuck that. We are years past forgetting it!” He cut across the room until he filled my vision. Sharp cheeks, heavy brows, that beautiful straight nose and bloodstained scruff. Bright blue eyes filled with more fury than he’d ever directed at me. “If for even a second you think I don’t want to know every single thought inside that head of yours, what the hell have we been doing here?”

“Exactly that! You call me sweetheart and say wildlyromantic things and then the second I’m not the perfect person you’ve built up in your head, I’m right back to being harpy, the ice queen you can’t stand.”

“You think I don’t know exactly who you are? That I haven’t always seen you, even when you didn’t want me to? I know you … And despite what your name suggests, I know you’ll never hold the easy warmth of summer.” His hands swept around my face, refusing to let me turn from him. “You … sweetheart … harpy, are the wild moors of this island. You’re like your damn demon cat, claws in my back and blood on my lips. But there isn’t a single day that I won’t welcome that sweet bite of pain.” Both of our chests rattling, he glanced between my eyes, smoothing back the hair that had tangled in his fingers.

“If any of that is true, why the hell did you pull that shit back there?”

“Because I was jealous!” he roared. “Because you were in his arms, in this dress, when it should have been mine. Because he couldn’t take his eyes off you. If you worethisdress to torture him, I don’t think it worked on the right brother. Did he even recognise it?”

“No, he didn’t,” was my blunt answer. And that wasn’t why I’d worn it, but I hadn’t counted on Callum recognising it.

He grunted again, as if the sound made up a complete sentence. “If I put my hand beneath that dress, would I find you wet, harpy?” I said nothing but my traitorous fingers curled into his shirt. “Yes,” he hummed for me. “I think I so. But would you be wet formeor Alistair?”

“Fuck you.” But the curse became embarrassingly invalidated by my thighs clenching.

His big hand gripped my waist. “Later. You didn’t answer me.”

“What was the question again?”

“About Alistair.” His head tilted, dark hair falling over his brow. “When I said he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

“That’s not a question.”

His eyes burned as he continued. “I heard the two of you fucking once, did you know that?”

What?

“You visited Edinburgh right before Christmas, a year or so after you started dating. He surprised you with dinner and a show to celebrate your anniversary, but the hotel reservation fell through, so you spent the night at my place.” I remembered,shit, I remembered. Callum’s stylish New Town flat. The creaky bed in his spare room. “You tried to be quiet … but you were a little drunk, stifling your moans while he went down on you on the other side of my wall.” He sounded tortured, fingers knotting into my hair, tipping my forehead against his. “That’s when I first learned the addictive noises you make. You sighed his name, over and over and over. I thought I’d go insane from the sound of it.”

His words … they shouldn’t have been so bloody hot. Every limb trembled by the time his mouth reached my ear, fingers curling around the hem of my dress. “Are you going to sigh my name, Juniper?”

How many times had he asked me that very question? And all this time he’d been trying to rewrite history.

My eyes flew open. No. No.

I wanted him so badly my body tingled with it, like a loose live wire. But not like this. Not in reaction to Alistair. I shoved at his chest, and he released me at once, fingers uncurling one digit at a time. “I have no interest in doing … whatever this is.”

A muscle in his neck jumped and he tugged at his tie. “Fine. Then tell me honestly, are you still in love with him?”

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