Page 96 of Bonetide

Sound like a plan?

He walks out of the bedroom and I can’t help but stare at his firm, high ass—swimming does this man’s body a lot of good—then I hear him turn on the kettle. I hear the wood stove door creak open and a log go in, then water running, and the small clatter of the French press, and then the smell, the rich dark smell that’s been absent all morning, comes drifting through the bedroom door, and I close my eyes.

He’s making me coffee.

He fucked my brains out, and now he’s making me coffee.

I close my eyes and drift away with a delirious smile on my face.

Chapter

Nineteen

When I open my eyes again, Alasdair is in my bedroom doorway, and I realize it wasn’t all some crazy dream. I really did wake up here this morning because he took me in the middle of the night because he thought I would want coffee when I woke up.

And now he’s got his pants back on, with a mug in one hand—I can smell the coffee from here, and it’s like I’m instantly awake—and a plate in the other. The plate’s got bread on it with the soft sheep’s cheese from the village and a slice of the apple I bought a few days ago. He sets the plate on the nightstand and sets the chipped thistle mug beside it.

The coffee’s perfect. Just a bit of oat milk and sugar. Not enough to bury the flavor of the roast. I try and think when he’s seen me drink coffee, how he could know how to make it exactly the way I like it, but I’m drawing a blank.

“Eat, foxglove.”

“I will.”

“You’ll eat now.”

I raise a brow. “Jeez, you’re bossy.”

“Aye. And I’m just getting started,” he says in his brogue.

I eat. The bread’s gone slightly stale, but the cheese is good and the apple’s cold and tart and I’m hungrier than I thought. He watches me eat with the same rapt attention he had at the dining hall last night, and I’m no longer self-conscious about it. I suppose it’s hard to be self-conscious around someone when you’re continuously having their cock inside you.

When I’m done, he takes the plate away, and I hear him doing the dishes in the kitchen.

I glance at the line of salt around the window and wonder what Effie had been so worried about. I know now that she wasn’t keeping out Alasdair, wasn’t keeping out a man who fucks you hard, makes you coffee, and brings you food in bed. She wasn’t keeping out him, so…who was she keeping out?

And do I still have to be worried about them?

I want to ask Alasdair about it, but decide not to. He doesn’t seem to be annoyed in the slightest at my constant questions, but I also know they tend to not get me anywhere. Anyway, I’m too blissed out to rock the boat at this exact second.

After a while, I get out of bed again and dressed in my own clothes, walking into a sparkling clean kitchen where I find him milling around in his own world. He moves about the cottage with a cup of tea in hand, looking around as if he’s never been inside a building before. There’s a sense of awe on his features.

He appears to go from room to room with no agenda except to look. The sitting room first. He stops at the mantle and observes the things placed there; a candle, a ceramic dish filled with sea glass I collected from the beach, the framed pressed foxglove I made that has a touch of black at the edges where mold had gotten to it (foxgloves are a bitch to press). He picks up the frame and looks at it for a long beat then sets it down. He absently runs his fingertips along the back of the armchair before he moves on to the books on the shelf. He doesn’t pull any of them down. He just runs his eyes over the spines, slowly, taking in the reading material. He finally points to the book about lichen that he has at the castle and gives me an appreciative nod. Fucking nerds.

After that, he goes back to the kitchen and I trail behind him like a curious puppy. He opens the cupboard where Effie kept the herbs. He looks at the labeled jars of mugwort, yarrow, vervain—the things I haven’t dared throw out because I don’t know which of them is for cooking and which of them is for keeping me alive in some way I’d rather not ponder. He closes the cupboard.

He goes to the back door. He runs his palm flat down the wood of the frame.

Then he turns and looks at me with an inquisitive expression.

“What?” I ask, having parked myself at the table after getting myself another cup of coffee. I’m pretending I didn’t just have my ass cheeks pressed on this runner earlier.

“I’ve never been in here,” he comments.

“I know.”

“It’s strange, it’s somehow bigger that it seems from the outside. You know, once you’re inside.” He smiles a little. “It suits her.”

“Effie?”