Chapter 8
Eight
The sound of someone speaking rapid-fire Gaelic woke me up from a dead slumber.
I cracked my eyes open and found Iain standing behind my desk, talking with someone on his smartphone. His father, or brother maybe? Whoever it was, the conversation appeared to be tense.
Until he locked eyes with me and abruptly stopped speaking.
Whoever was on the other side of the phone kept going however, yelling something so loud I could hear his voice all the way from the couch.
Iain just stared at me. Then hung up the phone without a word of goodbye.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, sitting up on the couch. Only to realize I was still very, very naked.
I crossed my arms over my small breasts as heat stole up my body. Not the sexy kind from earlier in the evening, but the mortified kind I was way more used to before I made that mistake of swallowing down those three pills.
“You’re up. Good.” Iain bent down behind my desk and picked up the clothes I had shoved off my body when the pill-induced heat stole over me. “Come on then, get dressed. We’ve a hotel room waiting on us.”
He tossed the clothes at me. But I only barely managed to catch them, and I didn’t start putting them on right away.
My still-fuzzy mind was still trying to process what had happened before I fell asleep. That I’d had sex with my boss. And that he’d apparently booked us a hotel room.
“Come on, Millicent,” he said, his voice clipped with irritation. “Like you said, the cleaning staff will be ‘round any moment now’.”
The mention of the cleaning staff got me moving. I sprang to my feet and drew the pencil skirt up my slim hips, before pulling my blouse back on. I buttoned myself as fast as I could, but Iain’s intense gray gaze stayed on me. Annoyed and impatient.
“I’ll fetch the car,” he said, glancing down at his smartwatch. “Meet you downstairs at the back of the building.”
“Oh, I can—”
Iain rushed out before I could offer to walk down with him after I found my shoes.
As if he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
Several feelings swirled around my chest as I grabbed my shoes and made my way down to the back entrance. None of them were good.
He pulled up in his sleek black Jaguar XJ about a minute after I arrived, but when I tried to get into the front passenger seat, he said, “Do us a favor and climb in the back, will you?”
Okay …
I let myself into the back seat instead, and I suppose I 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 it didn’t feel like a quirk as he peeled out of the parking lot with me sitting in the back of his expensive car. It felt like he was trying to stay as far away from me as possible. At one stoplight, I even glimpsed him sticking a finger under both nostrils. Like he was trying to plug his nose.
Shame curdled my blood on the ride to what turned out to be The Balmoral, a luxury five-star Scottish landmark hotel, located at the east end of Prince Street.
And even more bad feelings washed over me when Iain tossed the keys to a valet, jumped out, and made his way into the lobby.
Leaving me to follow about ten steps behind.
“Hang back over there for me,” Iain said, just as I was about to catch up with him. He pointed to one of the hotel’s fluted columns—the one furthest away from the posh lobby’s front check-in desk.
Not knowing how else to respond to his command, I just did as he asked and spent the next few minutes folding and unfolding my arms. Trying and failing to look like I actually belonged here.
I’d never been to The Balmoral in person—only booked it for a few of Iain’s dates.
Me being here felt all wrong. Like I’d stepped through the TV screen of the show I was only supposed to be stage managing.
And I had the distinct sensation I was playing the role of a dog waiting for the return of its master.
Iain walked over to me a few minutes later, with a pretty blond hotel employee by his side.
When Iain stopped several feet away from where I stood, so did she, which made them look more like a pair than we did.
“C’mon then,” Iain said with a snap of his strong fingers. “Anna here is going to show us the way to the suite.”
Wow, a whole suite! Having only ever reserved simple executive rooms for Iain’s dates, I might have been honored. But the way he stood so far from me. Like I was some kind of …
A bunch of labels came into my 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 we’d done in the office—what I’d begged him to do to me—I 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 we weren’t together.
“Um, thank you, but …” I pushed four fingers worth of unchecked curls behind my ear. “I think I should just be getting home now.”
He paused. His gaze clashing with mine as his face hardened.
Anna’s eyes darted between Iain and me. “I can wait near the lifts if you need a little more time to … ah … decide.”
“Don’t bother yourself,” he replied. “I can find my own way. Just tell me how.”
Even though it now felt like worms were crawling beneath my skin, I 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 his would-be escort was out of earshot, I 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 give us a full refund.”
“What the hell are you on about, Millicent?” His expression remained hard, but his gray eyes viciously scanned my face for answers.
“I just …” I shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t want to do this with you. I want to go home.”
“Well, you cannae 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,” I said, as bravely as I could, considering the way he was glaring me up and down.
“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?”
I blinked and decided to go with the excuse that wouldn’t make me look like an idiot who’d caught clingy feelings for her boss after one round of office sex—even if that was exactly what I was. “I’m tired …?”
“Then you can take another nap,” his voice became glacial. “In the suite.”
I shook my head and started for the lobby doors. “Seriously, I’m just going to go home—”
“I don’t think you understand.” Iain closed the distance between us in an instant and backed me into the fluted column. “This is not an ‘I’m just going to go home’ situation.”
“Why not?” I asked, honestly confused. I’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,” I pointed out. “Now we can go home.”
“No, we can’t go home,” he answered as if I were utterly daft. “Neither of our flats has room service.”
“Wait, why is room service so important?”
“You’ll find out,” he answered, his voice low and ominous.
What will I find out? Curiosity lapped at the back of my mind like a naughty cat, but then I shook my head and insisted, “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 dinnae want to find out what will happen with me in that hotel room?” he repeated, his voice low and scathing. “Ye think you can just feck off home like you dinnae accept my claim?”
According to Iain’s bio, he’d been educated at St. Andrews, one of the finest universities Scotland had to offer. But there in the lobby, his native Highland brogue rang out as thick as his brother’s.
“Um … isn’t that usually what happens?” I 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 …”
I trailed off when he raised his hand and curled it around the back of my neck. It wasn’t a hard grab. In fact, the way his thumb stroked over the skin right below my hairline made it almost more sensual than a kiss—I could only assume.
I’d never been kissed. But I’d imagined what it would be like. And yes, his thumb on my neck somehow felt even more intimate than that imagined kiss.
“I dinnae want to save a feckin’ hotel bill, Millicent.” His voice sent shivers down my back. “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?” The question came out on a whisper.
He stroked a hand down the side of my arm, making my entire body tingle with just one caress. “Who ye belong to, chridhe. Now say aye.”
Who I belonged to? How dare he?
“I don’t belong to anyone but myself,” I told him between gritted teeth. “Now let me go!”
I sounded pretty forceful, if I did say so myself …
But then, that strange smell suddenly burst out from between my legs again. Filling up the space between us like an olfactory fire alarm. And causing an all-consuming sex fever to hit me with all the subtlety of a Scotrail train.
Oh no, oh no, it was happening again! The lust flamed like a fire inside of me, letting me know I was about to turn back into that sex-crazed wild thing without an ounce of the pride I’d need to leave him standing here in this lobby.
Ian grunted, his shoulders flexing and nose flaring as if he was taking a punch—one he’d been expecting.
“This is why …” he told me, his voice dipping to a low growl.
“This is why I was so incredibly keen to get you up to the room as soon as possible. I wasn’t ashamed of you, chridhe.
I was terrified you’d hit me with that needing heat again, and I’d end up having to pull over to knot you in the back of my car.
Or here in this lobby where everyone can see us. You ken me now, aye?”
Like, yeah, did I ever ken. I nodded, helpless as a baby.
“Still want to go home?” he asked in my ear, rubbing his big, heavy body into mine.
I groaned and rubbed right back. My mind was so glazed over with lust, I couldn’t even be disgusted by the idea of him taking me right here in the lobby of Edinburgh’s most famous hotel. As long as he took me, I didn’t care.
“Good,” Iain pulled back and grinned down at me, his face a work of shadow and dark intent underneath the lobby’s bright light. “Then say aye, Millicent.”
“Aye,” I whispered immediately. All my previous protests gone and forgotten.