But then he stopped, going completely still, even though he was embedded inside her.
“Iain…” she whimpered, wondering why he wasn’t moving.
“I need a moment, chridhe. Giving you first claim…” He trailed off as if he didn’t have the words to finish that statement and settled for. “It’s beyond anything I ever could have imagined for us.”
She felt the exact same way. In all the ways she’d imagined losing her virginity, she never would have guessed it would be to her boss on top of the couch she sat across from every day. It felt like a fever dream. Maybe it was. Maybe none of this was happening.
But in any case, she began rolling her hips into him, needing him more than she cared about whether or not any of this was real.
“Millicent…” Her name was both a curse and a warning on his lips.
But the hand on the back of her neck went hard again, his forearm locking so she couldn’t move anything but her hips as he began to take her slowly from behind.
Whatever she’d been expecting from her first time. Whatever she’d dreamed of…this was better. Oh God, was it better...
A mere minute or two later, Milly cried out. Voice breaking, mind shattering. Her body torqued so wildly beneath Iain’s anchoring hand, it began to feel like he was holding her down for her own good. That if he wasn’t there, the waves of pleasure would carry her mind away, and she’d be lost forever.
But Iain held her in place, keeping his arm locked until she was through. Only then did he release the back of her neck.
But instead of continuing on to get his, he said, “There are some things I must share with you now, chridhe.”
“What?” she asked, still breathing hard but not missing the grave note in his voice.
“I know you desire for me to take you. But that is not how this works. You must accept my claim so we can go on.”
“Accept your claim,” she repeated, still breathless. “What happens if don’t?”
“Then I must pull out. Let you be. It would be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and we still might have to sedate you, but I could do it. I would do it if you asked that of me. It is your choice, chridhe. But only in the next few moments. I can only hold my beast for so long. Say aye now before I lose control.”
Say aye…
His words were strange to her. Nearly unintelligible. But she knew one thing loud and clear. She did not want him to pull out. Which was crazy because he wasn’t wearing a condom! But for some reason, the wild voice inside her wouldn’t allow her to consider asking him to put one on.
“Aye, don’t pull out,” she said, her voice little more than a pant at this point. “I want it. I want you to come inside me. So bad…”
He collapsed on top of her. His torso crashing down onto her back, as if her words had weakened him. But still, he didn’t move. “Christ, Millicent. I want to take you with everything I have, but I must have these words from you…”
He uttered a short phrase in what she dimly recognized as Scottish Gaelic. “It means ‘I accept thy claim’ in the old language,” he explained. “And we can’t continue on unless you say them to me exactly.”
She repeated the Gaelic phrase back to him in a breathless rush before she even knew she had the words memorized. Milly had no idea what she was agreeing to, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was him. Him coming inside of her. “Oh God, please Iain. Move…I can’t…I can’t…”
He reared up, but only to drive in deeper. Then his teeth sank into her shoulder. Hard and vicious—much like the wolf who’d bitten her two days ago.
The bite should have hurt her, or at the very least, shocked her out of this sex thrall she’d somehow fallen into. But all it did was turn her on that much more.
And when he became a wild beast on top of her, relentlessly thrusting deep, she received him with long moans.
“I’m close to completing my claim of ye, chridhe,” he warned, his Highland brogue thicker than she’d ever heard it. “What happens after I do might scare you—I’m going to swell inside you in a way you willna unnerstaun. But it is the way of my kind, and I swear to you it will feel good despite its strange nature.”
“I don’t’ care! I don’t care. Just keep…keep going,” she answered. “So close…”
She continued to urge him on with her soft cries, until with one last hard thrust of his hips, he released inside her, sending her right back over the edge a second time.
The second orgasm shattered her all over again, but it wasn’t strange. Just really, really good. Which made her wonder what he’d been talking about before with his weird warning—
Then it happened. An unexpected pressure where their sexes were joined. A swelling like he’d said, but like nothing she’d expected. It almost felt like a knot was forming at the top of his cock. An impossibly large knot.
Milly squirmed beneath him, her heart pounding with new fear.
“Stay calm, chridhe. It feels odd, but it won’t hurt you. I promise you. Trust me, Millicent.”
Trust me, Millicent.
God, how many times had he said that tonight? But she calmed. Taking him at his word that this…weird genetic idiosyncrasy of his wouldn’t hurt her.
She forced herself to stay still and let it happen. But then she soon found that she couldn’t do that. Or to be more specific, her sex couldn’t do that. Without any warning at all, it started squeezing around the knot like a fist. With such a hard clenching action, it actually tugged Iain’s strangely knotted staff deeper into her core.
Oh God, what was going on? It was almost like…the word “milking” floated into her mind. Yes, it was almost like she was milking his cock. Milking it so hard, she immediately came again, even though she’d barely come down from the second orgasm.
And just as she began to think how strange it was to come so soon after, another orgasm overtook her. And then another.
Her extreme clenching affected Iain, too. He shuddered above her, releasing more seed into her. And she was barely able to register that he’d started to come again when a fifth orgasm overtook her. They ended up coming together, both yelling out as the relentless pleasure washed over them.
She expected him to pull out when they finally came down from the last orgasm. But instead, he pulled her closer and twisted. With an elegant strength, he arranged their bodies on the couch, so they were spooned side-by-side, with his staff still embedded in her core.
“You’ll need to take a wee nap now,” he told her as if her falling asleep with his cock still buried inside her was the most natural thing to do.
An hour ago she never would have been able to imagine having sex with Iain, much less falling asleep on the couch with him embedded inside her. But now, like a spell cast, a deep need to sleep stole over her. Even as her sex clenched the strange knot with more strength than she would have guessed her seriously underutilized core had.
But…
“We can’t sleep out here,” she said, trying to fight off the incoming sleep train. “The nighttime cleaners will be here in a couple of hours.”
She should know. She’d run into them often enough whenever Iain decided they had to stay late to make sure some project was up to his standards.
“Don’t worry. We won’t. We’ll only lie here for a bit. Then I’ll make arrangements—” he broke off with a soft laughing curse, “Ach, you’re milking me hard, Millicent…”
“I can’t stop. I’m sorry,” she whispered, once more deeply embarrassed by what her body was doing without her permission. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think it might be the new drugs my doctor put me on for fatigue—”
“Nothing’s wrong with you, chridhe,” he replied, his tone admonishing. As if she’d said something insulting by pointing out her extremely unusual behavior. But then his voice softened again, “You’re such a wee woman. But you took my claim and gave it back to me, twofold. Nay…there’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing whatsoever. Trust me, Millicent.”
&n
bsp; Trust me, Millicent…those were the last words she heard before sleep pulled her under.
Chapter Six
Milly woke to the sound of Iain speaking another language. She opened her eyes and found him standing behind her desk, talking with someone on the phone. His father, or brother maybe? He spoke in Gaelic and appeared to be having a very tense conversation.
One that ended as soon as he locked eyes with her.
He spat out another thread of Gaelic, and then hung up the phone. In fact, he’d managed to stuff it into the man purse thingy he wore over his kilt by the time she sat up on the couch.
“You’re up. Good. Come on then, get dressed. We’ve a hotel room waiting on us.”
He picked up her clothes from where she’d shoved them off her body earlier, and threw them at her.
Milly just barely managed to catch them. And she didn’t immediately start putting them on as commanded because her still-fuzzy mind was too busy trying to process what was happening. That she’d had sex with her boss. And that he’d apparently booked them a hotel room.
“Come on, Millicent,” he said, sounding irritated and impatient. “Like you said, the cleaning staff will be ‘round any moment now.”
The mention of the cleaning staff got her moving. She sprang to her feet and drew the pencil skirt up her slim hips, before pulling her blouse back on. She buttoned herself as fast as she could, but she could feel Iain’s eyes on her. Hot and tetchy.
“I’ll fetch the car,” he said, glancing down at his smart watch. “Meet you downstairs at the back of the building.”
Before she could tell him she just needed to find her shoes and then could walk down with him, he rushed out. Leaving a very confused Milly in his wake.
It was almost like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. And she only grew more confused when she made it down to the back entrance. As she suspected, she beat the car down there, and he pulled up about a minute after she arrived. No big deal, but when she tried to get into the front passenger seat, he said, “Do us a favor and climb in the back, will you?”
She did, and she shouldn’t have minded. Iain might just be one of those drivers who didn’t like to have riders up in front with him. Maybe another quirk, like all his other quirks.
But this didn’t feel like a quirk to her. It felt like he was trying to stay as far from her as possible for some reason. Shame all but curdled her blood on the ride to what turned out to be The Balmoral, a luxury five-star landmark hotel, located at the east end of Prince Street.
The shame stayed with her in the lobby. Especially when he asked her to “hang back” near one of the hotel’s many fluted columns, while he went to the front desk counter to check them in.
Once more Milly did as asked, looking around the posh lobby of a hotel she only knew from having booked it for Iain’s dates. She’d never been there in person. But it felt all wrong. Like she’d stepped through the TV screen of the show she was only supposed to be stage managing on.
“Come on then,” he said a few minutes later, walking to where she stood, like a dog waiting for the return of its master. There was a hotel employee with him. A tall blond with a generally pleasant expression on her pretty face.
When Iain stopped, so did she. Right beside him. But he only got close enough to toss words at Milly. “C’mon then. Anna here is going to show us the way to the suite.”
Wow, a suite at the same landmark hotel where J.K. Rowling went to complete the final Harry Potter book…
Having reserved a simple executive room for Iain’s dates, she should have been impressed. And honored. But the way he stood so far from her. Like she was some kind of…
A bunch of labels came into her head then. Labels Tara would have said had been designed by men who didn’t like to think of women as human beings capable of both intelligence and sexuality.
But nonetheless, after what they’d done in the office—what she’d begged him to do to her—she felt like that kind of label. Standing with him, but apart from him. So far apart, that if someone walked in right now, he could easily pretend they weren’t together.
“Um, thank you, but…” She shoved four fingers worth of unchecked curls behind her ear. “I think I should just be getting home now.”
He paused. His gaze clashing with hers as the hard mask she’d become used to stole back over his face.
“I can wait near the lifts if you need a little more time to…ah…decide,” Anna said into all that silence, her eyes darting between Iain and Milly.
“Don’t bother yourself,” he replied. “I can find my own way.”
Even though it now felt like worms were crawling beneath Milly’s skin, she waited politely as Anna awkwardly gave Iain the room key and instructions on how to find the suite he’d booked.
But as soon as Anna was out of earshot, Milly said, “You don’t have to eat the cost of the suite. I’ll call them tomorrow, work it out. We have an account here, so they should—”
“What the hell are you on about, Millicent?” His expression remained hard, but his gray eyes viciously scanned her face for answers.
“I just…” she shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t want to do this with you. I want to go home.”
“Well, you canna go home,” he answered, his body tight with anger. “You’re meant to spend the night with me.”
“But I don’t want to spend the night with you,” she said, as bravely as she could, considering the way he was glaring down at her.
“You don’t want to spend the night with me,” he repeated as if each word was a foreign object in his mouth. “Why the hell not?”
She blinked, wondering why he had to make this so hard for her. He’d gotten what he wanted back at the office. Did it really matter if they did it again? “I’m tired…?”
“Then you can take another nap. In the suite.” His voice was glacial now and brooked no argument.
But argue she did, her pride finally coming back online. “Seriously, I’m just going to go home—”
One step forward was as far as she got before Iain advanced on her, his gaze intent on her face as he backed her into the fluted column.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said, his voice low and growly. “This is not a going home situation.”
“Why not?” she asked, honestly curious about why he was so insistent the night continue. She’d received texts to order his date’s car less than two hours after check in. Where was the loss of interest that always accompanied his conquests? “We did it. It’s done. Now we can go home.”
“No, we can’t go home,” he answered as if she were utterly daft. “Because neither of our flats has room service.”
“Wait, why is room service so important?”
He gave her another hot and impatient look. “You’ll find out,” he answered, voice ominous.
Curiosity lapped at the back of her mind, but then she shook her head. “I don’t want to find out. And anyway, I didn’t mean going back to either of our places. I meant going home separately.”
“Ye dinna want to find out what will happen with me in that hotel room?” he repeated, his voice low and scathing. According to Iain’s bio, he’d been educated one of the finest universities Scotland had to offer. But now his native Highland brogue rang out as thick as his brother’s. Menacing and dark as he said, “Ye think you can just feck off home like you dinna accept my claim?”
“Um…isn’t that usually what happens?” she asked. “You take some girl to a hotel, have sex with her once, then bounce? I mean, I’m just saving you a hotel bill…”
She trailed off when he raised his hand and curled it around the back of her neck. It wasn’t a hard grab, but the way his thumb stroked over the skin right below her hair line…. almost more sensual than a kiss, she thought—not that she’d ever been kissed. But she’d imagined what it would be like. And yes, his thumb on her neck somehow felt even more intimate than that imagined kiss.
“I dinna want to save a feckin’ ho
tel bill, Millicent,” he informed her quietly. “All I want right now is for ye to come up to the room with me, so I can claim you again and again until you ken…”
Ken…that meant “to understand.”
“Ken what?” she asked carefully.
His eyes stroked down her face, heating her cheeks with his direct gaze. “Who ye belong to now, chridhe. Now say aye.”
Who she belonged to? No one but herself, she thought…just as from out of nowhere, that strange heat smell burst out, filling up the space between them like an olfactory fire alarm.
She gasped out loud when the all-consuming sex fever hit her once again, as subtle as a freight train. But Iain merely grunted, shoulders flexing, nose flaring as if he’d just taken a punch he’d been expecting.
“Ye ken now, right? Why I was so incraedibly keen to get you up to the room as soon as possible. That I wasn’t hiding you but scared you’d look at me with that needing heat, and I’d end up having to pull over to fuck you again in the back of my car. Or in this lobby where everyone can see us. You ken that now, right?”
Like, yeah, did she ever ken. And, at this point her mind was so glazed over with lust, she had a feeling she was only a few moments away from not caring if he took her right here in the lobby of Edinburgh’s most famous hotel. As long as he took her, she didn’t care.
“Good. Then say aye, Millicent.”
“Aye,” she whispered immediately. All her previous protests gone and forgotten.
They barely made it to the room. And less than ten minutes after their lobby conversation, Milly was entirely disabused of the notion of going home. Not just because of the desperate sex they began having as soon as the door closed behind them, but also because she soon had nothing to wear.
He ripped open her blouse, sending buttons flying. And it seemed she didn’t get the zipper down on her pencil skirt fast enough. He took over, pulling the little piece of metal so hard, it resulted in more torn fabric.
Her Scotttish King: (Howls Romance) Loving World Page 21