Her Scotttish King: (Howls Romance) Loving World

by Taylor, Theodora

  Iain smiled broadly, flashing his very white teeth. “I’m glad you enjoyed our time together, but this kissing thing is a big deal to me. If you don’t mind, Millicent, I’d like to kiss you good and proper now.”

  Like most of his requests, this turned out not to be a request at all. Before she could answer yea or nay, he’d swung her into his lap and settled her legs on either side of his waist. One large hand cupped the back of her neck, massaging it once with his thumb, before pulling her down. Then his lips caught hers for a kiss that was only 50% as promised. It was good…really good…but not at all proper.

  It only took about five minutes of making out before some improper things started to happen. Milly’s robe fell open, and Iain’s hand found one of her small breasts, completely covering it while he consumed her lips.

  And though she was no longer under the influence of the strange sex thrall, she could smell her arousal.

  By all appearances, he was as turned on as her, assuming the rock hard erection against her stomach was any indication. But he continued to kiss her, taking her lips in a slow devour that soon began to feel like cruel torture.

  “Iain,” she sighed into his lips, back to pleading even though her arousal wasn’t nearly as all-consuming as it had been before. Her hips circled with a mind of their own against his heavy rod, which now lay flat on his belly trying to find relief.

  “Ach, Millicent, see what you do to me? All I wanted was a kiss from you, but I canna help myself. I must have it all when it comes to my wee mate.”

  Mate? Had Milly not been in the middle of foreplay, she would have paid more attention to Iain’s odd choice of words. After all, “mate” was a term she typically associated with BBC nature documentaries narrated by David Attenborough, not with long weekend flings with your boss.

  But she only barely registered Iain’s choice of words because without breaking their kiss, he lifted her hips and aligned himself with her sex so when he set her back down…

  She groaned long and hard against his lips. Getting repeatedly taken on her hands and knees had been terrific. But this long kiss turned into front-facing sex was just as good. And sweeter somehow, because he never stopped kissing her. Not even when she came…keening against his mouth. Not even when he held her against his body and put her on her back.

  No, he didn’t stop. He kept kissing Milly even as his powerful hips drove into her. Pinning her lower half to the couch as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her some more. Until finally, he released with a hard grunt against her mouth.

  This man… Milly was the one who finally broke the kiss, her mouth falling away from his so she could cry out with pleasure when a gentle but still mind-blowing orgasm rolled over her. This time, she was surprised to note, Iain didn’t knot inside her. Nor did she fall asleep, even when he pulled out, disappeared into the bedroom, and returned dressed in a hotel robe of his own.

  She listened as he ordered sandwiches from room service—the same type she typically had brought in whenever they had to stay late at the office.

  Which reminded her…

  “I wonder if we should call it a night after the sandwiches,” she said when he settled back down on the couch beside her. “I have to be up early, you know. I’ve got a 4:00 A.M. stand up with my boss.”

  “I tell you what,” he said, grabbing the remote off the coffee table. “Even though tomorrow’s technically a Tuesday, why don’t we designate it a lazy Sunday? Beg off work and spend one more day here.”

  Milly’s eyes widened because in the three years she’d been working for him, Iain Scotswolf hadn’t taken so much as a single vacation or sick day outside of his Highland retreats. “Are you serious?”

  “Aye, very serious,” he answered, with a sideways grin as he clicked on the T.V. “I’d like to spend more time with you in an upright position if you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” she answered, trying to sound casual because there was no reason for her to feel so shy with him—especially when you considered everything they’d done over the last four days.

  “There’s no need to feel shy with me,” he said, once again seeming to read her mind. “You’ve nothing to be embarrassed about. If anything, I’m the one who should be embarrassed given the complete lack of control I’ve displayed during our time together. Letting you go unkissed for so long because I was so verra hot to knot inside you.”

  His words and the memories they brought forth heated her skin. They also brought up a question.

  “Speaking of—what did you call that thing that happens when you’re inside me? A knot? I noticed it didn’t happen this last time on the couch.”

  A throaty chuckle. “Ah. That only happens on occasion. A verra special occasion. In our case, nearly four days of verra special occasion.”

  Milly inwardly shook her head. Why was it every time she asked him a question, his answers only made her more confused?

  “I’m sorry I haven’t given you more answers, chridhe,” he said, once again seeming to address her unspoken words. “But trust me, Millicent. I’ll give you all the answers you seek after your month is up.”

  With that unusual promise, Iain started flipping through the channels until he found one of the Lord of the Rings movies on ITV2. “This all right? Filmed in New Zealand.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she replied, wondering if he’d guessed like he guessed so many things this weekend, that this was one of her favorite movies.

  If he had, he didn’t say anything about it. Just settled an arm around her shoulder as they snuggled up to watch the film together. Like a real couple, she couldn’t help but think.

  This was nice, Milly thought, laying her head on his chest. And potentially addictive. No wonder Tara seemed perfect satisfied with her purely “hanging out” relationship with Brian. Milly got so caught up in watching the movie with Iain that she very nearly forgot why she’d missed out on the experiences most other women her age took for granted.

  But waking up to a call from the Edinburgh Cancer Care Centre the next morning brought it all back to her. She took the call, picking up the phone from where she’d left it to charge the night before, and keeping her voice low as she talked to the nurse.

  “Who was that?” Iain’s gruff voice asked behind her after she hung up.

  She looked over her shoulder and found him, now wide awake and sitting up in bed.

  “The nurse from my oncologist’s office,” she answered. “Dr. Keller wants to see me right away to talk about my latest blood work and, um…run some more tests.”

  She kept her explanation simple. Telling him the truth without telling him much at all. That more tests mean something was wrong. Which in turn meant she probably would have less time than originally forecasted.

  “Right,” he said, getting out of bed like a man on a mission. “You take a shower. I’ll go ‘round to the hotel shops downstairs to pick up some clothes for you.”

  She watched him pull on a t-shirt. He was doing that thing again. All business, no eye contact.

  Milly watched him leave, the door softly clicking closed behind him. Then she rubbed at the spot on the back of her neck. The one he’d massaged so often with his thumb over the last four days.

  But not today. The holiday had well and truly ended. And by the time he left out without saying good-bye, the past four days already seemed like a dream she’d had. An amazing dream, but one that was now over meaning it was time to return to her real life. `

  Milly did as he’d instructed. Took her shower. But she stopped suddenly when her reflection in the bathroom mirror caught her eye. Her hair…there was no other way to describe it but radiant.

  The unmanageable, frizzy nest was gone. In its place were luscious curls that fell just to her shoulders, gently framing her oval face. And her skin…forget Scottish beige. It was now a warm honey brown and appeared to be glowing with good health.

  Happy. The foreign word floated into her consciousness. She looked like a happy, healthy young
woman.

  But she wasn’t that. Like, at all.

  Her image in the mirror felt like a punch to the chest and left an ache that lingered even after she turned away. Milly wished as she’d never wished before that she hadn’t gotten that call this morning. That she could stay longer with Iain. Enjoy a day of simply hanging out and getting to know each other that Iain had proposed.

  But when had this disease ever given a damn about what she wanted?

  So yeah, Milly was pretty much resigned to how the rest of her day would go when she came out of the bathroom. And zero percent surprised when she saw a bag from Superdry on the bed, but no Iain.

  He’d probably left for the office. Now that she was Leukemia Girl again, he could go back to being Iain Scotswolf, king of the post-coital bounce. Why not?

  But then she walked into the living room…and he was there, standing by the front door in what looked like a pair of new jeans and a gray Henley he must have purchased at the same Superdry store where he picked up the new wrap dress she currently wore.

  “The valet is bringing round my car,” he told her. “Do you want to stop by your place to pick up your lucky yellow cardigan before we head to the doctor?”

  Milly shook her head. “It’s not lucky anymore, remember?”

  His expression sobered, “I reckon not.”

  “You…you don’t have to come with me,” she said into the awkward silence that followed. “I mean, feel free to just drop me off at the clinic, and I’ll catch the train into work.”

  “Not come with you…?” Iain reached out to her, enveloping her slender hand in his much larger one. “That’s not an option, Millicent.”

  “But...”

  “It’s not an option.”

  Chapter Eight

  Milly might have said she’d let Iain accompany her to her appointment, but it didn’t really feel like she had a choice. They sat together in the waiting room of the Edinburgh Cancer Care Centre, her hand folded into his, both hands resting together on his denim-clad thigh.

  The waiting room was tiny. She hadn’t noticed that before. But that’s how it felt now, especially here with Iain. His size and larger than life vitality seemed to fill up the small space to capacity.

  The thigh their hands weren’t resting on jiggled impatiently. But she didn’t bother to remind him he didn’t have to wait with her. She’d already done so—several times—and had only gotten scowls in return as if she’d somehow insulted him.

  But despite his apparent impatience with all the waiting, he’d only released her hand once since they walked through the main entrance doors: when one of the nurses came to take her back for a blood draw and urine sample. And when she returned to the small row of seats in the waiting room, he’d snatched her hand back in his as soon as she sat down beside him.

  “I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” she said, eyeing the front office staff who’d whisked her away for more tests only to leave the two of them waiting in the uncomfortable chairs for over an hour.

  “It’s fine. They want to compare these latest results to those of your previous tests,” he answered, voice tight. “They need to be sure before they have you meet with the doctor.”

  She peeked sideways at him. “It sounds like you have a pretty good idea what’s going on here.”

  He shifted in his seat, his grip on her hand becoming a little tighter. “I have some inkling.”

  A couple entered the room through the Cancer Centre’s patient treatment exit door then. The man with red hair and a somber expression on his face, and the woman wearing a knit cap and bald spaces where her hair and eyebrows should have been.

  She looked to be one or two decades older than Milly, but cancer had a way of aging a person until it was hard to know how old he or she really was. However, she carried a portable oxygen tank in a backpack, with a long clear tube running from it to a nasal cannula fitted to her nostrils with an elastic head band.

  She watched the woman carefully shuffle out on her husband’s arm. And as she passed by, Milly could swear she could smell the disease eating away at her like rot, along with the medicinal scent of the chemo she’d just been injected with to fight it. Smell it, but not mind it.

  Another item on the list of things to ask Dr. Keller about. Not only had her sense of smell become significantly more heightened since her diagnosis, but she’d also undergone some weird psychological changes.

  For example, she used to hate the smell of Marmite—a gross food paste that was a snack food favorite among many Scots, including Iain. But when they grabbed a quick breakfast in the clinic’s cafeteria, and Iain spread the dark goop on his toast, she’d been surprised to find she didn’t care one way or the other about its dank and yeasty smell.

  It was as if she could smell everything now, but intense smells that used to make her gag no longer struck her as unpleasant. They just were. And then there was her 20/20 vision. And the intense sex craze that had fallen over her for four days straight only to disappear just as suddenly and mysteriously as it had started. Milly’s cheeks heated, wondering how she planned to bring that one up…

  Iain looked over at her. “Milly, you know you don’t have to—” he began but was cut off when the waiting room door opened.

  “Millicent Odoom?” a voice called.

  Milly gently removed her hand from Iain’s and made her way towards the nurse. “That’s me,” she said, her voice sounding as nervous to her ears as she felt.

  “Hello, luv. Right this way,” the nurse said, beckoning her forward with a manila file folder. “Dr. Keller can see you now.”

  Iain had followed her across the small room and stood resolutely by her side as if he meant to accompany her to her appointment with Dr. Keller.

  “No, Iain,” she said, reaching out to pat his hand.

  “Millicent, I’m coming with you,” he stated in a tone that brooked no argument. He clasped her hand in his as if to further emphasize his point.

  But she didn’t back down. “No…this is something I need to do on my own. But I really appreciate you offering. I promise I’ll be back soon.”

  He blinked hard, nose flaring. But finally, he released her hand and said, “I’ll be waiting here when you get out, chri—Millicent.”

  She turned to follow the nurse only to stop again when Iain caught her arm and pulled her back towards him. He gently cupped her neck, thumb stroking hard as he kissed the hell out of her. He didn’t seem to give a damn about the staff watching him from the check-in window, or the nurse who waited patiently next to the treatment area double doors. “You can do this alone if you want to, chridhe, but from this point forward you will always have a choice. I’m here now.”

  His endearment and his sweet words brought tears to Milly’s eyes. Especially coming from someone she’d been certain gave less than two craps about her only a few days ago.

  “I always cared about you, Milly,” he said. “And that was the problem. Humans are so fragile. It makes it difficult to form connections. But I am sorry for how I handled your announcement when you came into my office. I was just… caught off guard and didn’t know how else to keep you here where you’d have my support to get through this.”

  Milly gazed up at him, feeling so unbelievably touched. Their history rewriting itself, forcing her to reevaluate everything she’d thought she knew about him. It seemed more and more evident that she’d been reading him wrong this entire time.

  “I love you.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.

  Because it was true. Because it felt stupid to hide her feelings from a man she’d spent all weekend with naked. Because she didn’t have much time left. What did she have to lose when her life was already on the line? There was no point guarding her heart like a wounded animal.

  So she said it again. “I love you, Iain. And this weekend was the best weekend of my life. I never get to be the healthy girl. But you changed that. I felt whole, sexy, and strong—like I could do anything. No matter what Dr. Keller
tells me in there, I’ll always have these last four days when I got to experience what it was like to be normal, to be someone who isn’t walking around under a Leukemia cloud. So…thank you. I’m so damn grateful for this time I had with you.”

  “Millicent, moi chridhe…” he said, voice rough with emotion as he pulled her in close again.

  But then the nurse waiting at the door gently cleared her throat, “Millicent, Dr. Keller is waiting.” Her expression was sympathetic, however her kind but firm tone made it clear that Milly needed to get a move on.

  Milly broke away from Iain, honestly afraid she wouldn’t be able to return to Dr. Keller’s office if she didn’t do it immediately. But leaving Iain’s arms felt like it should be accompanied by a ripping sound.

  It hurt, almost on a physical level. And even though she still had every intention of getting the updated diagnosis on her own, she threw a few looks over her shoulder as she left. Her heart panged at the sight of Iain, standing in the waiting room, arms folded over his chest as if it was taking everything he had to stay behind.

  Which was why Milly wasn’t all that surprised to find Iain standing in the exact same place she’d left him when she returned to the lobby a mere twenty minutes later. His position hadn’t changed. Nor had the expression on his face. Not one iota. He was the same Iain she’d left behind.

  But this was more than she could say for herself.

  Milly opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She was obviously in a state of shock.

  Iain scanned her closely and then seemed to make up his mind about something. “Right then. Saw a pub on the way here. We’ll go there for this conversation.” He curved an arm around her shoulders and gently guided her out the main exit towards the car park. “Think I’ll be needing a drink as well.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Apparently, I’m cancer free,” Milly told him as soon the waitress walked away with their drink orders. Herbal mint tea for her, a twelve-year Macallan for him. And that was only after he’d attempted to order a ten-year-old, cask-strength Laphroaig and a sixteen-year-old Royal Brackla and been told the Macallan was the best they had.