Lord of the Isles: International Billionaires VIII: The Scots by Caro LaFever

more.
    “I want ye to leave.” He attempted a glare. “I need ye to leave.”
    The truth of his last statement slammed into him, making him dazed. He needed her to leave before it was too late. Before she forced him to life and forced him to look at what he couldn’t stand to confront.
    “Iain.” For the first time, she said his name. Her flat drawl elongated the vowels in an unfamiliar way, making his blood beat with another need.
    A need for her.
    “Iain. Look at me.”
    He realized his gaze had latched onto her throat. Her lovely throat where a pulse of life beat under her glossy skin.
    He wanted to bite her. Take her.
    His cock jerked in his jeans.
    Damn her.
    “Iain.” The thread of impatience in her voice pulled his reluctant focus back to her face.
    “What?” he croaked.
    “Your eyes.” She cocked her head, her curls flopping, her own eyes keen. “They’re clear.”
    He didn’t want clear vision. He didn’t want to see what he’d become and what was before him. “I need a drink.”
    “No, you don’t.” She patted his chest like she was comforting a favorite dog.
    Her confident assertion drove through him like a spike of fiery lightning. Didn’t she understand how close he was to losing his mind? Didn’t she understand how close he was to taking her? He grabbed her offending hand in a hard grip, yanking it away from him.
    “Ouch.” She gave him an offended scowl. “You’re hurting me.”
    “Tit for tat.”
    His low, taut words must have finally broken through her obliviousness to his state of mind. Her expression turned cautious. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m here to help you.”
    “Help?” He gave her a raspy laugh. “Help me by breaking into my home. Help me by destroying my property.”
    “Destroying?” Her blonde brows arched. “What do you mean?”
    “My whiskey.”
    “That whiskey was destroying you .” She tugged on her hand. “I think you should let me go.”
    “Ye think?” He couldn’t drop her soft, small hand. Couldn’t find it in him to stop the contact. In fact, he wanted more, more contact and touch and feel. His body shuddered with the need. And this woman had put herself right in the center of it. She deserved what she got. “Do ye ever think before ye act?”
    Her sea-green eyes went flat, as flat as her drawl. Her pretty lips tightened and the hand he held in his own fisted. “Where have I heard that before?”
    She’d heard it from him. The long-ignored memory raced into his brain with a pounding thud. Long ago, years and years, yet the words came to him as clear and clean as if he’d just spoken them to an eager ten-year-old child.
    You’re a stupid girl, aren’t ye ?
    Her eyes had been so beautiful, so green, so blue, so true. And so filled with sudden tears.
    Did I ask ye to follow me ?
    Her peachy skin had gone pale.
    Do ye ever think before ye act ?
    She’d turned then and fled, her blonde ponytail flying in the Scottish breeze. Down the old stone steps, across the white sandy beach, out of his sight.
    His blurred sight.

Chapter 7
    H is eyes were so utterly blue.
    A blinding blast of sky and sea. And now, with the whites of his eyes clear, the blue seemed to blaze like a liquid lash of brilliance. If she hadn’t stared into these eyes as a child, she would have sworn he cheated with contact lenses.
    But no. These eyes had burned into her memory and had never left, even after almost twenty years.
    He still held her hand in his hard grip, almost a cruel grip. The tightness of his mouth and the anger in his gaze told her he hated her and wanted her gone. There was something more in these sky-blue eyes, though. Lilly was almost sure. There was need there, want, yearning. As a ten-year-old girl, had she missed this something more? Had she been too young to see behind the sudden attack into a hurting boy’s need?
    Maybe she had. Perhaps that was why fate had drawn her back to this place and this male. Because she was sure of one thing.
    He