Prologue
Milly
Two Years Ago
“Honey, I’m home,” I sing-song, walking through my front door at half past eight. Late enough for the cover of darkness, but not too late for an hour or two of quality naked time.
My heart flutters—literally flutters, who am I?—as I’m hit by a bomb of coziness that makes the basic bitch in me tingle. Nate obviously made it over after work.
There’s a crackling fire in the nearby living room.
I smell dinner in the oven, and just a whiff of the whisky in the glasses on a nearby table.
Last but not least, there’s a hot ginger waiting for me in the big leather chair beside the Christmas tree.
He stands, unfolding the delicious bulk of his body to its full six foot, three inches, and this time it’s my pussy that does the fluttering.
“I’ve got your slippers”—he holds up my furry UGGs in one hand and my vape pen in the other—“and your pipe.”
I laugh.
Nate’s greetings are short, rude, and usually delivered in a grunt.
I love them, as evidenced by the way my nipples tighten beneath my silk blouse.
Smiling so hard I want to smack myself, I drop my bag and launch myself into his arms. I may refuse to give my relationship with Nate a label, but I did give him a key to my house a few months back. He loves cooking in my state-of-the-art kitchen, and I love coming home to a guy who’s great fucking company.
If my older brother Beau ever discovered I gave a key to a Kingsley, he’d lose his mind. Lucky for me, Beau’s been distracted lately, thanks to the fact that he and his best friend, Annabel, hooked up recently after a decade of being “just friends.”
Nate slips his big hands into the creases between my ass and the backs of my thighs and, squeezing, effortlessly lifts me off the ground. Wrapping my legs around his waist, I bury my face in his neck and inhale the scent of him, simple soap with a hint of whiskey-tinted spice. I’ve always thought he smells like the minutes just before a snowstorm hits—winter air tinged with electricity, anticipation, the earthiness of approaching dusk.
My nose catches on the dark amber scruff that covers his sharp jawline. My body ignites as delicious heaviness blooms between my legs.
Nate and I fucked for the first time six months ago, and I still show up every night starving for his touch.
“Hey,” I murmur, sucking on his throat as I run my fingers through his long, unruly hair.
I know he loves it when I put my lips and teeth on his neck, just like I love the way he’ll often hold my face in his hands when he kisses me. His grip on my body tightens. He melts his hips into the cradle of my pelvis, and my limbs liquefy with need at the urgent, familiar press of his erection against my center.
“Hey, baby.”
I pull back at the scraped-bare sound of his voice. Nate’s always growly, his words delivered in a half-octave above gravel. But something is different about that gravel tonight. It’s a little hoarse, like he can barely get words out around a tightness in his throat.
“You okay?”
He grunts.
My stomach dips at the look in his eyes. They’re sharp and hot and hungry, the way they usually are when I get home.
Tonight, though, they’ve also got this depth. A darkness I don’t recognize.
He angles his neck—I love when he does that—and leans in for a kiss.
“Nuh-uh.” I take his face in my hands. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
He looks at me for a long beat, searching my gaze. My heart begins to pound.
“Whisky first,” he says and gently sets me down.
I’m wracked by a shiver at the loss of his body heat. He bends down to set my slippers at my feet. Grateful for the distraction, I toe out of my booties and put on the shearling-lined slippers.
I follow Nate into the living room, devouring the broad V of his back with my gaze. The way his shoulder blades and back muscles fill out his sweater makes my brain short-circuit. And the tattoo of the Tolkien quote that peeks out above his collar? Ink typically doesn’t do it for me, but on Nate—whew, be still my heart.
The pair of old-fashioned crystal glasses on the coffee table are filled with exactly two fingers each of brown liquor. Beside them, a paperback is splayed open, cover side up, its spine softened from years’ worth of creases.
Yeats. A collection of his poems.
The desire thrumming through my veins dims. Nate only reads Yeats when he’s in a mood. A fight with his dad? Another problem with his family’s temperamental copper still? Maybe his brother, Silas, is in trouble again.
“Let me guess.” I nod at the book. “‘A Drinking Song’?”
Nate shakes his head. “That’s your favorite poem.”
“‘Had I The Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths’ then?”
“Yeats at his best.”
“At his most romantic too.”
What I don’t say? That poem is also as melancholy as it gets.
Nate sets down my vape pen and lifts the glasses, handing one to me. This moment—the one when our fingers brush and our eyes lock—might be my favorite time of day.
I give the whisky a sniff, blinking at the peaty-sweet scent of it. “Smells expensive.”
Nate’s given me a crash course in whisky over the past few months. He’s a good teacher, and I feel like I’m finally learning the difference between a decent whisky and a really good one.
“Glenfiddich, forty year.”
I blink again. “Ridiculously expensive. You’d better tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to think you’re breaking up with me.”
He taps his glass to mine. “We’d have to be dating to break up.”
“I don’t date,” I say, lips twitching even as the thought darts through my head: time to change that, chickenshit.
I continue to sniff my whisky, tucking my nose into the glass just how Nate taught me. My master-distiller-in-training is a total whisky nerd, as evidenced by the way that darkness in his eyes lifts for a split second as he watches me go through the now-familiar motions of sniff, swirl, sip.
Fire explodes on my tongue, followed by something exquisitely, achingly lovely.
“Caramel,” I say, vision going hazy as I focus on the flavors, blood already beginning to heat from the alcohol. “Cinnamon. Sea salt. Burnt rose petals.”
“Craft.” One side of Nate’s mouth quirks in his version of a smile. “Good.” It’s a question even though it doesn’t sound like one.
“Very.”
“The woman who makes this is a fucking rock star. Her mastery is the tits.” His eyes lock on mine again. “Just like yours.”
“Are you talking about my mastery? Or my tits?”
“Both.” He sips. “I’m roasting a pork tenderloin with apples and shallots to go with it—the whisky.”
“Smells delicious, Nate.” On cue, my stomach rumbles. “You’re lucky I’m a foodie.”
“You’re lucky I’m a foodie.”
“I am. I really, really am. The stick-to-your-ribs stuff you make—it’s heaven. Especially when I get to eat it in my sweatpants.”
I mean that. I come from a family of cooks and live less than a mile from one of the South’s most celebrated culinary institutions, The Barn Door Restaurant. Even so, I never eat better than I do when I’m with Nate.