Page 10 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)

“Oh no,” she said, waving the offer away. “I already ate.”

Adam sat down on the couch and began to slather some jam onto a piece of toast, keeping one eye on Eileen. Something about her, and about this whole situation, was starting to make him feel like a hare himself, crouched in the jaws of a trap and waiting to see if the trigger would go off.

“Can I ask you something?” Adam said, just talking to fill the dead air. When Eileen was chatty, she was charismatic beyond belief. When she was quiet, Adam was learning, she gave off an intensely pensive energy. He had never been good with uncomfortable silences.

“Of course.”

“Why do you go by lord, even though you’re, well, a lady?”

Eileen gave him a sharp grin.

“Lord suits me better, I think.”

“Fair enough,” Adam replied. His relationship with gender was neither intricate or fraught, but he knew that wasn’t the case for everyone.

“How’s that taste?” she asked. “Need more maple syrup for the porridge?”

“It’s perfect,” he said.

“Better than the cafeteria food at Michigan State, I’d wager,” she teased.

Adam was once again thrown off balance. That bell in the back of his head rang a little clearer, a little louder.

“I don’t think I told you I went to Michigan State, did I?”

“I took the liberty of doing a quick Instagram search last night,” she said, casting her eyes back towards the boxes as she took a seat on the other end of the couch. She seemed once again impatient, like he was the one being cagey. “I had trouble sleeping.”

“I think we all did,” Adam said, a voyeur’s guilt welling up inside him.

“Can I ask you a question now, since we’re getting to know each other?”

“Of course,” Adam said, taking a decisive bite of toast. He didn’t believe in doing things in half measures. Whatever Eileen asked, he would answer.

“What you saw last night…” Eileen said, gaze never wavering. “Have you ever seen something like that before?”

“The rain?” Adam asked, hoping to God she was just talking about the weather.

“No, that indiscreet moment between Finley and I you stumbled in on.”

Adam set down his spoon and pushed his porridge a few inches away, giving her a stricken look. Eileen merely smiled back, utterly serene.

“Not up close,” he said. He wasn’t sure if it was the answer she had been after, but at least it was honest. “And I didn’t mean to see anything. I was looking for Nicola. I’m sorry for the… invasion of privacy.”

“It was an honest mistake,” Eileen said magnanimously, like she was granting Adam a royal pardon. “No harm done and no hard feelings. You must be awfully embarrassed. I just didn’t want you to feel bad about it, or to think anything was wrong. Everything you saw was perfectly consensual.”

The safest thing to do would be to drop this subject now, when Adam had an out, but the only two things stronger than his own live-to-see-another-day instincts were his curiosity about anything he encountered that he didn’t yet understand and his inextinguishable early-twenties sex drive.

Also, Eileen wouldn’t have been talking about this if she didn’t want him to ask, and there was something curious and sexy about that too.

“Consensual?” he repeated, taking the bait she had so carefully laid out for him.

“I know it might look alarming, but I know what I’m doing and so does Finley. It’s like play to us.”

“Like a game,” Adam said, trying to follow.

He wasn’t an innocent; he knew what he had stumbled across was some kind of kink dynamic, presumably with Finley calling the shots and Eileen obeying.

Adam had encountered kink before, if accidentally, and he hadn’t really had a strong opinion on it one way or another.

He had met a boy in Brussels who wanted to be slapped during sex, and Adam had obliged, if clumsily.

His girlfriend during his study-abroad semester in Thailand had been interested in tying him up and using him like a toy, and Adam had given it the old college try.

And he had of course seen glossy BDSM scenes during his bored browsing of adult websites, but nothing had ever really lit his fire.

Nothing had flayed him open and seared him alive, making his pulse pound in his throat and sweat break out on his palms. Nothing made him feel the way last night had, in those few moments he had stood frozen at the cracked library door.

He had only come out here to hike around the land and keep his promise to his grandfather, perhaps take some pictures of the house and introduce himself to the owners if they were willing to chat.

In his wildest dreams, he had hoped for nothing more than a little closure.

But somehow, very quickly, he had been drawn into not only Eileen’s home but Eileen’s confidence, and now he was just as interested in whatever was going on between her and Finley as he was in his own family history.

He wasn’t sure how he had waded so far into the murky waters of Eileen Kirkfoyle without even realizing he was getting wet. It was like she was a siren, singing him in deeper.

“I like my games,” Eileen said. “I like to compete, and I like to win. Sometimes, I even like to lose. It’s very simple.”

Adam made a noncommittal noise. He wasn’t sure what to add, but he didn’t want her to stop, exactly.

Eileen was talking in riddles, and he still wasn’t completely sure why she was telling him this, but he couldn’t deny the tightness in his jeans.

He shifted in what he hoped was a subtle attempt to hide his hard-on.

“Although,” she went on with a sigh, “now I suppose I can’t go on pretending that Finley is simply my groundskeeper, can I? That was a fun game while it lasted.”

“What is he to you, then?”

“Everything,” Eileen said somberly, the word plucked from her like a daffodil yanked up by the roots.

“Ah,” Adam said, and looked studiously down at his hands. It was hard to hold her gaze when she was flirting with him – she was flirting with him, right? Or trying to intimidate him? Were they the same to her? – and harder still when she was suddenly serious.

“And what is Nicola to you?” she asked, tucking her legs up underneath her on the sofa. Her slippered feet were inches away from Adam’s thighs. “Honestly.”

“I told you. She’s just a friend.”

“You flew all the way to Scotland to dig up your ancestral history with someone who’s just a friend?”

“I did,” Adam shot back, hearing the injured tone of his voice as it gave him away. It was hard to deny Eileen anything when she asked for it outright, even the tenderest of truths. Even more concerningly, it was hard to want to deny her anything.

“Love is brutal,” Eileen said with a sage nod. “If there’s anyone who understands that, it’s me. You have my sympathies.”

Adam arched a brow, no longer able to dance around whatever subject it was they were actually discussing.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I feel like maybe you’re asking me for something, or trying to tell me something? If I’m reading that wrong, say so.”

“What if I told you your grandfather was right?” she said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial level.

Her clasped hands tightened in her lap with excitement.

This was not what he had expected. Hadn’t they been talking about sex, or love, or some blurry indistinct mingling of the two?

“What if I told you there really is something magical about Craigmar, this house, these lands? What if I told you there was something old out there, so old most people have forgotten the proper name for it?”

“Then I would want to see evidence,” Adam said, skeptic’s rationality never failing him even as the world turned on its axis, even as Eileen devoured him with burning eyes. “But I’d certainly hear you out.”

“And I’m happy to share, in time,” she said. She gestured towards the bar cart, heavy laden with Scotch and gin. “Shall we discuss this like civilized people, over a dram?”

“It’s not even noon,” Adam said, but a tiny smile betrayed him. He was charmed by her, no matter how upside-down she made him feel. Hell, that upside-down feeling might be what made her charming.

“Americans have cocktails at brunch, don’t they?” Eileen said, and rose to cross to the bar cart. She held up a bottle of Outer Hebrides gin, distilled with sugar kelp. “Care for something light?”

She swirled the bottle, making the contents slosh invitingly.

If it was a game Eileen wanted, he would play with her. But Adam had always been competitive, and he played to win.

“Over ice, please. Then we can talk.”