“Halcyon? You’re the head of the Halcyon clan?” She gave herself a mental kick. How stupid had it been for her not to read the information Addie had dug up on him?
Jim picked her up and sat her on the island counter, his arms resting on either side of her hips as he moved in close, smile growing broader. “Well, of all the mistakes I’ve made over the years, you are one of the best.”
“You’re my fiancé?”
“I am, and you’re mine, Lillie. Mine forever, and I’m keeping you.” He paused, pulling the notes she’d painstakingly written from his pocket. He shook the mass of them in the air. “Oh, and this other bastard you’re in love with? Fuck him. He’s not here to protect his own, so he’s out of the picture.”
The shock of discovering she’d been fooling around with the man she’d been sent to marry was reduced by amusement that he was already making jokes about it. Lillie cupped his face. “Silly boy.”
Jim leaned forward, his expression heating up. “Not a boy, but a full-grown bear. You ready for me?”
“Do I have a choice?” Lillie teased.
“No.” He shook his head, gaze boldly undressing her before his hands followed through, slowly stripping her as he continued to grill her. “I do have one final question—or two. How did you get to Vegas? That phone message I got from the Board was sent a week ago. You should have been flown straight from Glasgow to Whitehorse.”
Her cheeks brightened. “I’m a hack.”
He didn’t get it, the blinking confusion in his dark brown eyes all too clear.
She sighed. “I like to play with computers, and cracking people’s security systems is a hobby. I don’t do anything bad once I’m in—it’s just for the challenge—but that’s why my family informed the Board I was ready for marriage. They were tired of keeping an eye on me, and I ‘disrupt the peaceful serenity of the household’.”
“Oh, lovely,” he said, amusement clearly rising. “I hope they don’t expect me to keep you under control?”
“I think that was their plan, but you’re far too nice to stop me from having fun, right?”
She batted her lashes, and Jim burst out laughing. “You are trouble. Finish your story. How did you get to Vegas?”
“When I discovered the plane was coming to get me, I broke into your system, and found out which airports it had been to in the past while. I figured a change of flight to a recent destination wouldn’t raise any suspicions.”
He nodded, gliding his thumbs along her collar bone. “Tricky. I used the plane to get to Vegas the day before you arrived.”
“I felt terrible when I heard your staff had done back-to-back Transatlantic crossings.” She shivered as his exploration trailed down over the top of her nipples, circling once, then heading south. “I think you need to give them bonuses.”
All his attention was on his right hand as he pressed his palm to her belly, fingertips now aimed downward. “You don’t have an accent…”
The question was there, unasked.
“Aye, an accent ’tis a fine thing, to be true, but there be no reason to talk like a Scots when you been up to finishing school in both London and New York.” Lillie warmed inside as his face lit up at her deliberately thick brogue.
“You need to talk dirty to me sometime with the accent,” Jim suggested, brushing his cheek against her shoulder. The scruff on his chin teasing her senses. “I want to hear you say ‘put your cock in mah poussy and fock me harrrrrd’ with that lovely lilt.”
She covered her mouth, hiding her gasp as he opened her folds with his fingertips. “Perchance, I may oblige.”
One stroke after another followed until he had her squirming. He slipped two fingers into her core, his thumb magically finding her clit and pushing it like an emergency stop button.
It was too late. Sirens were already going off in her head.
“But right now,” Jim murmured, “it’s not the dirty words I want. I want to hear you say the other words. You wrote them down, but I want to know you meant them for me.”
Lillie pressed her hands to his arms, the fine linen of his suit jacket smooth and warm under her hands. His thick biceps bulging the fabric.
He looked into her eyes. “I love you, Lillie. Maybe this is too fast, and yet I’ve been waiting for you my entire life. I love you, and want you to move in with me, wherever we choose. I want you to be my wife. My lover. My friend.”
The entire time he spoke, his fingers didn’t stop moving. Lillie clung to his arms, needing an anchor to keep her from floating off the countertop.
“Everything else we’ll figure out later, but this part we’ve already got. And it doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I’m never going to get tired of how it sounds.” He stopped, his fingers deep inside her. As if he couldn’t leave her—as if he needed to have her with him.