Page 5 of Fake It For Him

“Fair enough. I didn’t know it was a competition, though.”

“Everything is a competition.”

I laughed at the way he pumped his eyebrows when he said it, but then my breath caught when he leaned toward me again, bringing his mouth almost all the way up to my ear before he finally spoke. “So, how long are you going to make me wait before you invite me up to your room?”

This time, I was the one who nearly spat out the sip I’d just taken, my heart suddenly going crazy in my chest. I’d thought I was bold for questioning him about the fight, but clearly, he was bolder. I turned my head toward his, hyper aware that there were only inches between our faces now.

As I looked into those dark eyes and I caught a glimpse of the tip of his tongue coming out to wet his lips, I decided to throw caution to the wind. I’d already lost track of my friends and there was no way I was heading back out now to meet them anyway, and more than that, this guy was seriously hot and I’d been abstaining for way too long.

The fact that he was turning me on with every move he made and every word he spoke was testament to that. Plus, he was a stranger who I’d met all the way across the ocean and he didn’t even know my name. It was the epitome of all one-night stands. He was leaving early in the morning and I’d never see him again.

In other words, he was the perfect person with whom to break my dry spell. A guy there could be no possible complications with and who had no way of finding out what I’d left behind and why. Between that and my rapidly awakening libido, there was no reason to turn him down.

Moving slowly, I set my mug down next to his and smiled as I scooted forward on the sofa. “Let’s go, Battered and Bruised.”

The guy’s eyes went wide, and he laughed as he took my hand and gripped it tight. “Battered and Bruised? I prefer Alpha and Hot. Or Sexy and Dominant.”

A shiver shot down my spine, my stomach tightening in anticipation as I led him to the stairwell. “Well, you should’ve thought of that before you decided to wander around battered and bruised. I might give you a chance to redeem yourself once we get up there, though.”

“Is that right?” As we cleared the door into the stairwell, he used his grip on my hand to spin me around. At the same time, he walked us back so that when I completed the turn, I landed between him and the wall.

My breathing hitched. My head dropped back so I could look up at him directly. He leaned into me, his hot breath ghosting across my neck as he spoke against my ear. “I don’t need a chance. I’m going to redeem myself anyway, and once I’ve shown you all kinds of things you’ve never done before and made you come more times than you can count, you’ll know that I’m not so battered and bruised after all.”

Well damn. It’s definitely tough to argue with that.

3

CALAN

Present Day

I looked out at the distillery my father had opened when he moved to the USA from Scotland as a young twenty-something. The rectangular white building with the dark gray slate roof had been a regular feature in my life growing up.

In fact, this building was the first thing I used to see from my bedroom window every morning when I got up. From the parking lot next to the distillery, I dragged my gaze across the small, man-made lake where my brother and I used to spend most of our time in the summers fishing and swimming. On the other side, a couple of hundred yards away, was my family compound, the twenty thousand square foot monstrosity of a home I’d grown up in.

The lake was nearly frozen over even this early in November, and the ground was crunchy with frost under my boots. Behind the distillery, the leaves of the trees in the forest bordering our property had turned copper and red, and a lot of the branches were already bare.

Winter was closing in fast now, and I cupped my hands around my mouth, blowing hot breath onto my frozen fingers. I should’ve brought gloves, but I hadn’t been out here in so long that I’d forgotten just how the cold around here could slice to your very bones.

I shivered and stared at the glass doors leading into the visitor’s center of the distillery and the offices beyond. It’d been years since I’d last visited this place, and I wasn’t sure why I was here now.

My father had summoned me for important business, but he’d also told me to come to the distillery and not the house. I twisted around to look across the lake at the compound, wondering why he hadn’t wanted me going there.

On the other hand, the last time I’d been home had been for Christmas last year, and that hadn’t gone particularly well. I sighed. Being the black sheep of the family was troublesome sometimes, and after all that nasty business with Finn’s ex in Scotland four years ago, it’d been more troublesome than ever.

So troublesome that I hadn’t been to the distillery since, even though I still supplied only our whiskey at all my bars and clubs, and so troublesome that I hadn’t spoken to Finn since then, either. He worked here at the distillery.

In the aftermath of everything that had happened in Edinburgh, Dad had told me to stay away for a while. Not to rub it in or to get in his face.

Life had happened, and four years later, I was still staying away. I took one last look at the compound, taking in the collection of buildings in a U-shape around the main house where I used to live. I doubted I’d be seeing this place again next month for Christmas, so I took a moment to really look at it, feeling a strange pang of nostalgia as I did.

I wasn’t usually one to indulge in things that served only to waste time—like nostalgia—but I couldn’t help it right then. Seeing the terracotta roofs and the white painted façade, the columns and the smattering of buildings around the house, a sense of sadness washed over me.

Finn and I used to race around all those buildings, chasing each other on our bicycles or playing hide and seek. As spacious as they were, they’d also often been empty. They were for guests and house staff, but there was also an in-law suite for my grandparents when they’d still been alive and well, visiting from Scotland. The last building was a massive garage, big enough for fifteen cars that held my father’s prized collection.

Once upon a time, he’d promised that Finn and I could each choose one of those cars as a gift on our fortieth birthdays. I was still four years away from that, but at this point, I didn’t have high hopes that it was actually going to happen.

I guess it’s a good thing that I’ve got my own money that can buy my own damn cars. I blew out a heavy breath, deliberately turning my back on the compound and sliding my hands into my pockets as I strode into the distillery.