by Melissa Blue
Much to his surprise, he laughed. “Aye, lass. I just might.”
She paused, her face reflective. “We should have had this talk awhile back.”
“What talk?”
“The talk where I say, ‘I’m clean of any diseases, I don’t plan to have sex with anyone else and I’m on the pill. And still we should always use condoms.’ You know, that talk.”
He considered her words and glanced down at his come on her inner thigh. “Ditto, except I’m not on the pill.” He used the edge of the cover to clean her up as best he could. Embarrassment heated his face. He couldn’t be that far gone with her. “If it means anything, I honestly intended to sit with you as we looked at the Loch Ness and didn’t prepare for anything else.”
She sighed and raised her hands above her head in a feline-like stretch. “This is us. Sex was a possibility.”
He laughed and then kissed her neck. “Aye, I should have known better.” She smelled of sweat, sex and vanilla. He was that far gone. “We’ll do better next time.”
“Next time?” she asked but lifted her head to give him better access to her neck.
“This is us,” he whispered and pressed his already half-erect cock against her pussy.
Knowing enough about Victoria, he moved his mouth to hers to muffle the smart remark. She laughed and he gripped his now fully hard cock and pushed deep into her. He moved his hips slow.
“Aye. Next time. For now, tell me what you want me to come on next.”
She whispered where, and it took everything for him to not come right then and there.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The foreplay began in the castle. Victoria could see that now as she blinked at her cottage’s ceiling. All those hours ago, she’d knelt next to a table, jotting down notes, re-checking her research and making sure she’d included the right repairs.
Callan had waltzed into the tower, his black coat so striking against his alabaster skin and his eyes a deep, dark blue. Not a word was spoken as they held each other’s gaze, but she could almost see the images flitting through his imagination. Her on her knees. Her naked. His cock buried deep in her mouth. Her swallowing him until come slid down her throat.
It wasn’t her kneeling position, necessarily. She’d worn her glasses and likely appeared innocent—just the right amount that Callan couldn’t resist defiling her in some way, even if it was only his imagination.
So it was no wonder they were a tangle of limbs on her cottage’s floor right by the doorway. “Feel better now?” she asked him.
His hair was a mess. His own fault. He’d taken her legs, pushed them back and licked her like she’d be his last meal, his first taste of heaven. His face was still flushed, but his smile was crooked, cocky.
He grabbed her and rolled her beneath him. “Thirty minutes and I’ll have to get back to work. Ask me then.”
She scraped her nails down his chest. Red marks showed through the silky hair. He groaned and pressed his cock against her pussy. She barely fought the need to answer him with a moan. No doubt they’d hit the sex-all-the-time part of their affair and, goodness, she couldn’t get enough of him. And ever since she’d looked up a list of “official” kinks, her appetites had gone a bit wild. An appetite he happily fed.
Victoria wrapped her legs around his waist and pushed his shoulder until he rolled them over again. She stretched over him and wiggled her ass against his half-erect cock. “Is this called vanilla sex?”
He cupped her breasts. Her stomach jumped. They were still sensitive from his whisker burns, his tongue and teeth. He licked the cleft between her breasts. “Yes, even if we do what I have in mind. I bet you’ve never…” He slid his hand up her sternum and smiled wickedly.
Before he could finish that sentence, one that would surely heat her cheeks and pique her curiosity, her phone rang. She started to ignore the call since she didn’t recognize the ringtone. He’d bit into his bottom lip and had the look that curled her toes a little because he looked hungry, for her, again.
She had to lean forward to get to her purse. Callan took advantage of the position by sucking her nipple into his mouth. She swallowed the whimper and answered the phone without looking at the caller ID.
“Victoria?” A smooth, deep Scottish baritone filled her ear.
Oh, my God. She jumped from Callan’s lap and scooted to the wall. “Ian. Hi. How are you doing?”
Callan grasped her ankle and pulled her back under him. The smile wasn’t any less wicked. She clapped a hand over his mouth. Her heart thundered in her ears. Ian had to hear her raspy breathing. He had to wonder why.
“You caught me just walking through the door,” she said. “What do you need?”
There was the longest pause in history on the other end of the line. “You’re rambling. I understand you’re under a lot of pressure, but there’s no need to be nervous. I was calling for an update.”
Two and a half weeks in and things progressed at the normal feels-like-slow-as-hell pace. She met Callan’s gaze. Okay. More like this-will-bite-me-in-the-ass pace. She was talking to her boss while doing something that would get her axed.
Shit. Dammit. Shit. Victoria tried to do a backward crawl out of Callan’s embrace, but he had gripped her hips. “Things are going. I’ve received a verbal agreement from MacDougal on the other pieces, but I’m going to need the revised contract with him for the insurance paperwork.”
“And Jacob?”
The question felt weighted. But it could just be her own guilt settling in. “What do you mean?” she threw back at him and sounded suspicious.
Okay. She was wrong. This was the longest pause in history. “What has he done?”
Callan shifted, placing his head in the palm of his hand. The new position placed him very, very close to her neck. The heat of his breath tickled her lobe too. “You know your cousin. I’m sure you can imagine his behavior.”
Callan snorted, and she clapped her hand back over his mouth. His tongue feathered over her palm. She was going to lose her job and she wouldn’t care because his tongue was a soft, erotic tease. It was a promise of more wanton things once she’d ended the call. If Victoria closed her eyes, she could feel his tongue lavishing her pussy lips with long, wet kisses. Him tugging and sucking her outer and inner lips before focusing all that wicked intent on her clit.
She was doing it again. Victoria had to close her eyes to that silent accusation. Callan tensed above her. Maybe it wasn’t even love that made her reckless. Good dick was all she needed to forget so easily the ashes she was trying to claw her way out of.
“I’ll give him a call,” Ian said.
“No. I can handle it. He’s…” She opened her eyes and inspected Callan. “Nice when he wants to be. Respectful, too. I’ve seen some of his work, which I can say is impeccable—and to be frank, it’s him or no one.”
Another Scottish burr filled the background on Ian’s end. Sounded like one sentence filled with curses. Must have been Tristan. Dammit.
Ian coughed to hide the laugh. “Aye. Sounds like Jacob.”
She froze. “I’m on speaker?” Had they heard Callan’s snort? Would they know and not care? Her heart galloped.
“Call me if anything comes up. I’m going to give Jacob a call to keep him in line. You don’t need the distraction of dealing with a prima donna. We both have a lot riding on this.”
Lucky, really, she hadn’t eaten lunch. It would have rolled in her stomach and threatened to make a comeback. “Understood.”
The call ended soon after a few more details were ironed out. She’d closed her eyes again. Callan had stopped moving awhile ago, but he was still nestled in between her legs. He was the one person that stood in her way. No. That wasn’t fair. She was the one standing in her own damn way.
But the damage was done. Stopping now wouldn’t make the situation any better. She’d listened to the part of her that was horny and stupid. Had convinced herself this wouldn’t blow back in her face.
Maybe her
boss wasn’t so strict on his fraternization rule. He was halfway around the world for goodness sake. Simple, really. Ian could never, ever know. No matter how Callan made her heart leap, they could be nothing more than secret lovers. Something she had no doubt he’d be more than fine with. Hell, he’d probably look at her sideways for suggesting that anything else could happen. That was fine, for the best.
Callan sighed and shifted. Sweat had dried on their skin and left them sticky. “I’m taking your silence to mean you want me to leave.”
She stuffed all the worry to the back of her mind and opened her eyes. Her stomach twisted. He stared at her with the same darkness she sometimes felt in his kiss. Not the normal, mind-numbing ones, but the ones that ripped at her and made her doubt her own sanity. When he kissed her like that she couldn’t decipher reality, her sense of self. All she felt was him, breathed him in and drowned in his dark emotional turmoil.
Self-preservation. Remember it. She turned and climbed out of his embrace. “No. You can stay, but I’m starving.”
She refused to turn back and see if he still held the same expression. She’d do something dumb like cradle his face and tell him everything was okay. He didn’t have to hurt anymore. Let your wife go and fucking live. Those were things someone with an investment uttered.
By the time she’d thrown on a long shirt and stretchy shorts, he’d settled into her borrowed kitchen. He’d laid out the steaks she’d thawed in the fridge and had found potatoes and a few other ingredients that spelled out a fancy dinner.
“I see you picked up a Chardonnay this time,” he said. “My hope is that one of these days you’ll buy real liquor.”
It took her a second to acclimate to the change in subject. They often switched from the kind intensity that made her hair stand on end, and within the next second, they would have a light and unfettered moment between them. “That’ll happen around the same time Douglass stops being a cad.”
He made a sound that was more of a snort than a laugh. “Sit down.”
Instead, she went to the fridge. After she poured herself a glass, she settled against the counter to watch him. He’d thrown on his boxer-briefs and socks. She’d just had her mouth on a good amount of his skin and still had a hunger with his name on it.
His muscles flexed and relaxed as he prepped the food. Maybe it wasn’t even his physicality that turned her on, but the way he took up all the room around him, claiming it without question or doubt. That aspect of him turned her on and irritated her to no end.
She cupped her glass and just watched him. An unfamiliar ringtone filled the quiet. He paused for a fraction and rolled his shoulders.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“My bastard of a cousin. I’m sure he wants to remind me that you’re his employee. Any behavior on my part reflects badly on the business. It’s new and he can’t afford lawsuits.”
He grabbed a handful of mushrooms, walked past her to the sink and turned on the faucet with his elbow to wash them. Callan chopped them with the same kind of expertise and focus he had during sex. Not surprising because this was seduction of a different kind.
She sipped her wine and tried to be unaffected. “You never really said why you hate your cousins.”
“Not hate, but I have the occasional apathy.”
“The way Douglass talks, you guys are more like brothers.”
“My actual brothers…We’re not that close. When my mother died, none of us were the same anymore. So, aye, they feel more like cousins. You see them every now and again. You have a blood relation in common. Ian and Tristan…they depend on me. We talk. We’re close. Ian left for America and never really wanted to come back. Tristan stayed here for a while because it was home. He left when Ian got married. Now Tristan will marry soon enough and then America will be his home too.”
“And you?”
His jawline went taut. “I have people here I couldn’t leave. Douglass will only get older. Can you imagine him in America?”
Victoria laughed. “He’d be outlawed within six months.”
He opened the fridge, took her bottle of wine and poured it into a sauce pan. She made a face. “That bottle cost me forty bucks.”
“And it’s not even real liquor.” He threw her a smile. “I’m ashamed of you.”
“Jackass,” she murmured before taking another sip and tried not to think: There were other people he couldn’t leave.
God, she felt like the other woman sometimes. It didn’t help that she wanted to know the man he was before. She could almost see him lighthearted with darkened edges because of his mother’s death. That man she wouldn’t be able to help but love.
And this one?
Her heart ached because Callan had lost his mother at a young age. She couldn’t imagine her world without her mother—her parents. They’d been her touchstone whenever she got lost. He never even talked about his father, but if blood told the full tale, Callan’s father was probably worse than Douglass. It was nothing short of a miracle Callan had ever married at all. And his wife—his dead wife…
Stop. Stop. Victoria shook her head.
He’d gone still, his gaze taking in her face. “What is it, lass?”
She clutched her glass. “What are you making? As in, what’s the end result? I just know mushrooms and steak are involved.”
“Tatties, too.”
Frowning, she asked. “Tatties?”
“Potatoes,” he enunciated.
If she stood here with him for the entire process, no telling where her mind would go. Unfortunately, none of the roads involved sex. “I’ll leave you to be Betty Crocker. I need my laptop to fill out some forms. I finished, maybe, a fourth of the research. The rest I can’t complete until you’re done.”
“Perfection takes time.”
“Three months,” she reminded him.
“Awright. Go. You look anxious anyway.”
It could have been an hour or thirty minutes, but eventually he came out of the kitchen with two plates. She’d settled on the living room floor and worked on the coffee table. Papers surrounded her like a fortress. She’d stolen a pillow from the couch because, despite the plush carpet, it had begun to dig into her bare legs.
Without a word, he pushed aside her laptop and the papers and replaced it with her plate. The steak was well done and smothered in mushrooms. A white sauce covered both the potatoes and a portion of the meat. Her house had warmed from the kitchen but she wished she’d ignored that and started a fire in the hearth anyway.
“Excuse me while I fall head first into this plate,” she said. The cottage had smelled delicious for a while and now she could see why.
“You don’t have flour or fast-rising yeast. Otherwise I’d have made bread.”
She stopped herself just short of making a joke about marrying him. “Thank you,” Victoria said instead.
They ate, and while she concentrated solely on her plate, he picked through her work. He ripped a blank sheet out of her notebook, picked up her pen and then began to make notes. Her eyes narrowed as the urge to rip off both of his hands beat at her temples.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He didn’t even flinch at the sharp edge to her tone. “Correcting you.”
She huffed and grabbed back her papers. He kept eating with the kind of comfort that worried her. Someone didn’t relax like that unless they knew they were right. Line by line she went over what he’d written. She forgot her plate and pulled her laptop closer to check her answers against his. It took a bit more digging, long enough that he finished and laid back against the couch’s edge. When she looked up, his brow raised.