Gift-Wrapped in a Kilt (Hot Scots #4)

Chapter Fourteen

Jamie spent the better part of the next two days wandering through the castle, avoiding Emery and Rory as much as possible while she brooded about the situation with Gavin. Their rammy had left her with a rock in her gut and a spike of ice in her heart. He blamed her brothers. They want me gone , he'd said. It was not true. Lachlan, Rory, and Aidan would never interfere in her life in that way. They protected her, but they would never go so far.

Gavin's words echoed in her mind. Your brothers are the most amazing guys ever to walk the earth. They've got no faults, no prejudices, just layers and layers of awesomeness. He believed she saw them that way, but she recognized they had faults.

Did she overlook their flaws? Did she, as Gavin claimed, think of them as her perfect heroes?

No, she didn't. She couldn't. She was an adult, not a helpless girl, and mature women took charge of their own fates.

It was time she did that.

Her plan came to her while she reflected on the view beyond the tall windows in the first-floor hallway. The grass had begun to wither. Thanksgiving would arrive in three weeks, bringing with it the festivities her American sisters had arranged. Gavin would be there. Calli would invite him, for sure, but Emery would want him there too. The woman had become fixated on repairing Jamie's love life.

She loved Emery for it, but still…

If she let the Gavin situation stew for three weeks, she'd turn into a bampot. Emery had suggested she make Gavin crave her so desperately he'd do anything she wanted. Jamie's addendum to the plan had been to declare she wanted sex only, no emotional nonsense. She'd enacted that plan on Halloween, but she needed to take it further. What if she made Gavin want her so badly he lost his ability to think and couldn't restrain his lust? What if she drove him so wild with desire he'd rue the day he announced her brothers were the problem?

Afterward, she would walk out on him. No conversation. Out the door and away.

Could she follow through on her casual-sex scheme? The idea of using her body for revenge, of toying with him that way, made her stomach hurt. And yet…

The thought of seducing Gavin made her body ache in the most wonderful way.

What then? asked an annoying voice in her head. You make him barmy with lust, walk away, and then what? Och, she had no idea. She might've been hoping he'd realize his mistake, run after her, and fall to his knees to beg her forgiveness. Or she might've fantasized about him making a grand romantic gesture like Rory had done when he belted out a Frank Sinatra song in the middle of the village square in Loch Fairbairn, then stripped off his shirt and almost stripped off his pants, all to prove to Emery how much he loved her.

Gavin would never do anything like that. Military men didn't make fools of themselves for women.

Back to the plan, then. Make him crazed for her.

And then… She'd figure out the answer later.

*****

Two days later, Gavin lay on the bed in his room at Iain's house. Gavin had cooked dinner for the two of them by way of thanks for Iain's hospitality. The Scot's digs turned out to be a nice, if older, house of modest size on the outskirts of Loch Fairbairn. Gavin thumped the heel of his hand on the cushy mattress. He had no complaints about the boarding arrangements his sister and her cohorts had made for him. Plus, Iain was a cool guy to have for a roommate. Gavin liked hearing about Iain's good old days as an archaeologist.

A knocking emanated from the front of the house, muffled by the distance to Gavin's room and the big wooden door he'd shut for some privacy. Someone had arrived at the house. Since Iain was in the living room, Gavin didn't feel the need to get up and see who their visitor was. Probably one of Iain's conquests. Gavin had heard the rumors in town, the whispers about how Iain had seduced all of the single women in the village and some of the married ones too. Gavin couldn't reconcile the man he'd gotten to know with the version everyone else seemed to see. Then again, rumors could be vicious and completely wrong.

None of the MacTaggarts treated Iain like he was a ruthless cad.

How many women had the guy slept with? Come to think of it, how old was Iain?

Gavin pondered those questions until someone rapped on the door to his room. Hands clasped under his head on the pillow, he lifted his head to squint at the door. "Who is it?"

"Jamie."

He sprang off the bed and bolted for the door. With his hand on the knob, he paused to calm down. Yeah, okay, he was excited to see her. Excited she wanted to see him. But if he ripped open the door and grinned like an idiot, he'd seem like, well, an idiot. Instead, he drew in a breath and exhaled it slowly, assumed a casually interested expression, and opened the door.

Jamie's nibble-worthy mouth curved into a saucy smile.

His attention stalled on her outfit, if it could be called that. She wore a raincoat that stopped an inch shy of her knees. With the top two buttons undone, the coat revealed enough skin to suggest she had not much of anything on underneath. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in loose waves, and red lipstick accentuated her mouth. High heels elevated her high enough she didn't need to crane her neck to look at him.

His mouth opened, but no words came out. He glanced at the lapels of her raincoat, and the way the coat exposed her breastbone straight down into the space between her breasts.

"Are you —" He lost his voice, flapping his head with his mouth gaping. "Tell me you've got clothes on under that coat."

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, releasing it gradually while she shook her head.

Though his dick stirred to life, he tried to maintain a casual demeanor. "You're actually naked under that thing?"

"Mm-hm."

He heard a noise from the other end of the hallway, and with the suddenness of a bomb blast, he realized Iain had seen Jamie in this getup.

"Iain saw you?" he said, powerless to keep the shock out of his voice. Shock with a little bit of excitement thrown in. Naked Jamie with nothing but a coat on.

"Don't worry," she said, laying her delicate hands on his chest. "He's my cousin, and besides, Iain is a gentleman."

"But he knows you came in here to, uh…" Gavin struggled for words but couldn't find any to describe what she seemed intent on doing. "What exactly did you come here for? A couple days ago, you were boiling mad."

"Sex only, that's the arrangement." She skated her hands up his chest, and even his shirt couldn't lessen the effect her touch had on him. "We can have fun even when I'm angry with you. No talking. A good, hard shag and nothing else."

Naked Jamie. A shag. His dick shot hard because it loved the idea, but his brain got hung up on the meaning of this.

She stood in the doorway, clothed in only a raincoat.

Gavin seized her arm and hauled her into the bedroom, kicking the door shut. "You show up here looking for a good time, like nothing happened the other day. This is crazy. You can't expect me to be up for this after the fight we —"

Jamie whisked her hands down to his waistband, fingering the button of his jeans. Her other hand drifted lower, exploring the length of his erection in smooth swipes of her palm.

He hissed in a breath. Damn, but the light, teasing touch of her fingers was making all the blood evacuate his brain and head straight for his groin. He couldn't move to stop her, wasn't at all sure he wanted her to stop.

They could not have sex like this. The fight the other day. Her pronouncement of "sex only." Those things made it a bad, bad, bad idea all by themselves. Add in the fact they were in Iain's house with Iain twenty feet away in the living room…

Gavin didn't get the chance to examine those reasons. Jamie ripped open the raincoat, the snaps popping apart, and dropped the coat on the floor. She kicked off her shoes.

Naked. Jamie. Creamy skin. Dusky-pink nipples. His gaze wandered lower to the golden-brown hair at the juncture of her thighs.

He gulped. Hard.

She plastered her body to his, all that soft skin warming him through his clothes. "You want me. I want you. It doesn't have to be complicated."

"Yes, it does." With more willpower than he'd known he had, he backed away from her. "We're not strangers having a one-nighter. This is complicated, Jamie, because we know each other backwards and forwards. I know you have a weird and kind of adorable obsession with bicycles. I know you love to be all girlie, but you also love to get your hands dirty helping Tavish take care of the garden."

The Scottish vixen sashayed up to him, those lush hips swaying, and took hold of the button on his jeans. "Getting dirty is exactly what I want tonight."

Oh shit . How was he supposed to keep resisting her?

He had to resist, period. Letting her coax him into a round of hot sex under these circumstances would be the wrong thing to do.

She wetted her lips with a long, slow glide of her pink tongue.

Wrong sounded awfully good right now.

No, no, no, you idiot .

He raised a hand. "Let's talk about this —"

"Mm-mm." She fanned her palms over his chest and pushed, reeling him backward onto the bed. "No more talking."

Okay, he could've fought a little harder when she pushed him. Her behavior, so unlike anything she'd done before, had caught him off guard. Sure, that was why he'd let her knock him back onto the mattress. It had nothing to do with his throbbing dick or the way her breasts bounced when she shoved him.

He raised onto his elbows, his feet still on the floor. "Jamie —"

"Shh." The vixen knelt between his legs and unhooked the button on his jeans. "Lie back and relax."

Was she nuts? Relax, with her naked and wedged between his legs inches from his hard-on.

He needed to stop this.

Yeah, he'd do that… in a few more seconds.

She unzipped his jeans, slipped her hand inside his boxers, and closed those soft fingers around his dick. Her pupils had gone large and dark. Her lips parted as she withdrew his length from his pants. She drew in a shaky breath, her tits heaving, and all the while her hand stayed firmly around him.

What was going on here? She'd sauntered into the bedroom and pushed him onto the bed, that's what. She seemed intent on —

Jamie laved her tongue over the head of his cock.

He jerked and gasped.

What kind of man lay here in a lump while his girlfriend did naughty things to him?

The really, really lucky kind.

Oh dammit, he couldn't let it go down this way. He tried to sit up, but she closed her lips around him and took his length deep into her mouth, and then he couldn't think. His breaths came shallow and fast, but he managed to croak, "Jamie, wait, let's talk."

She encompassed his girth with her delicate hand and began licking the head.

He was lost.

The irresistible vixen worked him with her hands and her mouth, cupped his sack with one hand while she licked a path up his length, massaged his inner thighs while she suckled him like she couldn't get enough of the taste. Pressure built in his cock, the need to lose it approaching critical, and he knew he had to make her back away. He had no doubt she'd never done this before — though, damn, she was a quick study — and he didn't want her to feel she had to finish him off like this.

"Jamie," he said, his voice raspy and choked, "you should stop before I —"

She removed her mouth only long enough to say, "Not stopping."

Then she swallowed him again, and all his thoughts vaporized.

His body went taut, the breath stolen from his lungs. He fisted his hands in the covers, gasping for air he couldn't take in. A hoarse, strangled cry exploded out of him at the instant he came.

She didn't stop, not until he'd spent himself completely.

Breathing hard, shocked by what his angelic Jamie had done, he gaped at the woman still kneeling between his thighs. "Wow. Jamie. That was… unbelievable."

Her smile was shy, like she couldn't believe what she'd done either.

Gavin levered up into a sitting position and caressed her hair with one hand, admiring the incredible woman before him. "Just when I think I know everything about you, I find out you're a vixen in disguise."

She covered his mouth with her hand. "Haud yer wheesht, or I'm away."

The cute Scottish way of saying she'd split if he didn't shut up.

Her shyness had evaporated, replaced with a bossiness he would've loved — if he hadn't known she was taking command not to be sexy, but to keep him from talking. To keep from getting truly intimate. To maintain a distance between them.

Hell with that.

What had Emery told him the other day? Something Jamie had told her.

She said when you two met, you were strong, confident, and drop-dead sexy.

Jamie wouldn't have said that unless she liked him that way. Emery had sort of implied that's what it meant. Gavin understood Jamie better than anyone, even her brothers, and he trusted his instincts about her. He'd acted like a wuss for too long. He'd let her steamroll him into — well, into a really hot blow job, but still — he'd let her steer the encounter into what she thought was a casual fling.

Enough of that . Time to grab the reins and show her the man she'd fallen for eighteen months ago, the man she'd slept with days after they met.

"That's right," she said in a sexy voice that made his balls ache, "keep being quiet. Means I won't have to leave."

He dived a hand into her hair to cradle her nape. "We're doing this my way now."

"No." She rose in front of him, her beautiful, nude body inches from his face. Chin lifted, she gazed down at him with a haughty expression he recognized as artifice. "My way or no way."

"Uh-uh." He settled his hands on her hips, tilting his head back to admire the view from between those luscious breasts and catch her gaze with his own. "You had your fun. But if you think this can ever be a good time and nothing else, I'll prove how wrong you are."

She rolled her shoulders back. "You've made your choice, then."

The woman he worshiped spun around, clearly intending to head for the door.

He locked his arms around her midsection and hauled her backward and down until she perched on his lap, caged by his embrace, her arms pinned to her sides. Her hair tickled his face. Though she wriggled and made indignant noises, he had the advantage of strength. She stopped fighting and huffed.

Gavin lowered his lips to her throat and chuckled. "You're so cute when you're frustrated."

"You're holding me hostage."

"That's right." He nipped her throat, licked his way up to her ear, and nibbled on the lobe, relishing the way she moaned and melted into him. "Good girl."

"Ahmno a dog." She stomped her foot down on his, but his sneakers cushioned the blow from her bare foot. "Let me go, you big oaf."

He laughed, loudly this time. "Damn, I love it when you're spunky. But I'm not letting go until we've had a talk."

"No talking. I want sex only."

"Bullshit." He nuzzled her cheek. "I'm in control now, and you like it."