by Imani King
"Mmmm. Jennifer." He kissed me before he pulled out, making sure he'd taken all the pleasure he could get from my body, and then lay down beside me on the grass as his warm essence ran down one of my thighs.
We didn't talk for a few minutes but it wasn't awkward. Eventually it was Darach who spoke first:
"You know we now have to find our clothes and get dressed in the pitch dark, don't you? And I bet we're both absolutely covered in grass."
I laughed. We'd have to be careful going back into Castle McLanald - or hope that the Clydes were in bed - because there probably wasn't going to be any explanation for the two of us looking like we'd just made love in a field - other than the truth, that is.
Chapter 10
The next few weeks were just about the happiest of my life. I'd assumed that the Laird would want to keep our relationship - or whatever it was at the time - under wraps, but it soon became obvious he didn't care who knew. In fact he seemed proud to show me off, making a point of asking Mrs. Clyde to have my things moved to his room at breakfast the next day in my presence. When he went to take care of some business and I was left alone with Mrs. Clyde she gave me a big smile along with my cup of tea.
"I hope you don't think I was meddling, Jenny, when I warned you about the Laird before. It's not the Laird it's his situation - it's Cameron's situation and all the stress of it."
I trusted Mrs. Clyde and I knew she hadn't meant to put any negative ideas in my head about Darach.
"I haven't seen him smiling like this for a long time - you're good for him, you are."
I consciously decided to give myself those few weeks. We both knew, Darach and I, that I was leaving at the end of the summer. For different reasons, both of us had been living lives where happiness had been a rare thing, so there was an unspoken agreement between us that we would allow ourselves the simple pleasure of each other's company without bringing up future departures (or current, divorce-stalling wives). Cameron seemed to pick up on our moods, too. Darach said she was more carefree than he'd ever seen her. Of course we were careful not to let her see us sharing a bed but she picked up on our body language anyway. When it finally warmed up enough to swim in the loch (and let me tell you, "warmed up enough" is, as I learned, a relative term) we headed out there the morning after Cameron flew back from London with a basket full of sandwiches and tea and she turned to us sharply at one point, eying me and her father in turn before asking us a direct question:
"Are you two in love?"
Darach chuckled and bent down to his daughter:
"Now why would you ask that question, you little imp?"
Cameron wasn't having any of her father's attempts to dodge the issue, though.
"It looks like you're in love. Are you in love with Miss Robinson, Daddy?"
He looked up at me, smiling and shrugging his shoulders in a 'what can I do?' gesture.
"I am very fond of Miss Robinson, Cameron, it's true. And I think she's a little fond of me, too. But I can't really tell you anything more than that. Besides, it's rude to ask personal questions and we're almost at the loch. Do you want to go down the waterfall?"
I watched Cameron's face as she decided it wasn't worth pushing the issue and re-focused her attention elsewhere, running off in the direction of the waterfall.
I tried, after much coaxing, to swim in the loch but it was way too cold. Cameron and Darach both laughed at me as I stood ankle-deep in the water and already out of breath at its frigid temperature.
"You swim in this?!" I asked, wondering if they were playing some kind of trick on me. But they did swim in it - both of them proceeded to dive in beside me, sending me screeching back to dry land and a warm towel. When they finally got too chilled to continue I wrapped Cameron in a towel and she fell asleep on the sand. Darach was only wearing a pair of shorts - a thin, soaking wet pair of shorts. He saw me looking and threw me a cocky grin which immediately transformed into a grimace of pleasure when I reached out and stroked him through the wet fabric, pulling my hand away before he could grab it and keep it there.
He was hard at once and seeing it - in full daylight this time - had more of an effect on me than I thought it would. He also didn't make any attempt to re-adjust his shorts when the tip of his cock pushed its way past the waistband. Darach didn't seem to be under any illusions as to the size of his endowment.
"It's a Scottish trait," he whispered, trying hard not to chuckle and wake Cameron up, "We're blessed."
I quietly got up and moved around so I was lying on Darach's other side and Cameron was no longer between us. She was fast asleep and I knew I probably should have been more responsible but Darach was hard and I was apparently developing a specific kind of syndrome that involved not being able to think about or pay attention to anything else when he was in that state. He caught my eye when I reached down into his shorts and wrapped my hand around him and I watched his expression go from amused to open-mouthed arousal in seconds at my touch.
"Jennifer..." he whispered, rocking his hips forward involuntarily, pushing himself further into my hand and closing his eyes as I stroked him slowly.
"Can you be quiet?" I asked when his eyes started to glaze over and his breath got fast. He didn't answer and I slowed down until he regained enough composure to answer me.
"Yeah, Jenny. Don't stop."
I pushed my hand a little further down this time, running my fingertips over his balls and caressing them gently.
"Can you feel how full those are?" Darach asked, blue eyes sparkling with desire, "That's your fault, Jenny. You have to deal with that."
"Mmm...good." I leaned in close to him and let him slip his tongue between my lips and kiss me. Then I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock and stroked up again, all the way to the tip, which was shiny with pre-cum.
"Jenny..." Darach's tone was heavy now and he pushed one of his hands down under my t-shirt and into my bikini top, pinching one of my nipples lightly and rolling it between his fingers. It was too much, I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep quiet. I stood up quickly, before he could stop me, and headed off into the trees behind the narrow strip of beach beside the loch. Darach followed me, grabbing my hand and putting it right back where he wanted it as soon as we were out of sight.
"I think," I whispered, leaning in and kissing his bare chest, "this might be my new favorite thing."
"Yeah?" he breathed, thrusting his hips forward and exhaling heavily as I sped up, "What's that?"
I smiled at him a little coyly and answered: "Making you come."
"Oh Jenny. You're going to make me come very soon, oh Christ..."
When he was right on the very edge I knelt down in front of him suddenly and opened my mouth, stroking him right over it.
"Fuck. Jennifer, oh fuck."
I caught his eye and shushed him, gesturing towards the beach. Then I brought the head of his cock down to my lips and kissed it, running the tip of my tongue over it while he watched, his breath strangled as he tried to keep quiet.
"I want you to come, Darach. I want you to come on my tongue, OK? Please?"
I didn't even finish the sentence before the first hot, salty spurt of cum hit my lips. I stayed where I was, completely transfixed by how sexy I felt on my knees in front of the Laird, eagerly opening my mouth for him, moving my hand away so he could finish himself off, just smiling up at him and enjoying every second as he ran the tip of his cock through the cum that was now all over my lips and running down my chin.
"Jesus Christ, Jennifer. Are you a serial killer or something?"
"What?!" I asked, standing up again, giggling at the incongruous question. "Am I a serial killer? You need to work on your pillow talk, Laird McLanald."
"Well you've got to have something wrong with you. You're great with kids, you're beautiful, you're sexy as hell, you're smart, you're funny. What's the catch?"
I watched him as he tried with moderate success to fit his still semi-engorged cock back into his shorts. Beautiful. He calle
d me beautiful. The only other person who had ever called me beautiful was my grandmother. I froze a little at the thought of her and tried to keep joking around with Darach:
"You got me, I'm a serial killer. And I only kill Scottish men with huge dicks."
He'd seen the look on my face, though.
"What, Jenny? Is something wrong?"
But the afternoon was too lovely and Darach was too sexy and perfect and I didn't want to ruin it by questioning it so I waved it off.
"What? No, everything's fine. Especially you."
He gave me a hard smack on the ass as we walked back to the spot on the beach where Cameron was still sleeping - "I'll take care of you tonight, Jennifer Robinson."
Spending time with the Laird - and with Cameron - during that early summer was strange. It was strange mostly because it didn't feel strange, it felt ideal in so many ways I hadn't expected. One of my friends back home was dating a man with two children and I'd caught myself thinking about it a few times, certain it would never be right for me. But Cameron wasn't a hindrance and I didn't resent her her father's attentions. For his part Darach just seemed happy to see Cameron so confident and secure with me. Those lazy Scottish afternoons lulled all three of us into thinking that because we felt like a family, we were a family.
But we weren't. I caught myself fantasizing a few times, pretending Diane wasn't in the picture and I was more than just the nanny and the summer fling but it was too painful to let those daydreams spin out too far. When Darach told me he had to fly to Switzerland for business I half-expected it to be good-bye, but he followed it up by telling me it was only for two weeks.
"What did you think, Jennifer? That I was just going to fly off to Europe and never see you again?"
Well, yeah, I kinda did think that.
I was very conscious of not wanting to pressure Darach, though, and not just for the old-fashioned reasons my grandmother had told me about never letting a man see you cling. He had too much stress in his life already - I wanted our time together to be happy for both of us, a respite from misery, not a cause of it.
Chapter 11
Darach left in the helicopter on a foggy Sunday morning. I tried to hide my emotions at his departure but he could see I was upset.
"Jennifer. Chin up. You're beautiful. I can't wait to see you again and it's only two weeks."
He gave me one of his slow kisses and then got into the copter, waving and smiling at me as it took off. I managed to smile back, only allowing myself a small teary-eyed moment when he was out of sight. When I went back inside for some breakfast Mrs. Clyde gave me a hug. She was a kind woman, of that there was no doubt, but she wasn't given to hugging and it surprised me a little.
"Och, don't worry Jenny. He'll be back soon. He's always flying off to Switzerland or Dubai or Sydney, it's normal. Chin up."
It was the same phrase - chin up - that Darach had used.
"He likes you, Jenny. I can see it when he's with you. You've got nothing to worry about, lassie."
By that point, in spite of what I'd been telling myself over and over again about it being the summer only, about seizing days and living in the moment and all of that Oprah stuff, I had already fallen for Darach completely. I tried not to think about it, but it was always there in the back of my mind.
Any moroseness over Darach's absence took a back seat that night, though, when Cameron came back from London and her weekly visit to the dreaded Diane. I met her on the helipad and as soon as I felt the stiffness in her small body when I went to give her a hug I knew something was wrong. She'd never been that way with me before and it made me wonder if her mother had said something to scare her. Cameron was four years old, she wasn't old enough to be wily yet and I was fairly certain she'd mentioned me to her mother. Given what I knew of Diane, it seemed fair to assume she'd said something back.
I didn't ask Cameron anything specific, though - I wanted to give her time to ask me herself if she had any questions or wanted to mention something that may have been bothering her. Looking back, it may not have been the best idea. When we walked back into Castle McLanald I noticed one of the part-time groundsmen coming down the main staircase. That was a little odd. The only rooms up there were Darach's and a series of guest bedrooms that only needed dusting and vacuuming every week or so - something the maids took care of. Our eyes met briefly but he just gave me a curt nod and kept going.
"Cameron! How was London, my wee lassie?" Mrs. Clyde greeted Cameron with enthusiasm as she always did but she was met with the same flat response I'd experienced on the helipad.
"Are you hungry? How about some toast and Marmite - it's your favorite!"
We both watched Cameron nod silently and exchanged a look of concern over her head as she sat down at the table. She ate her toast quietly and said she wanted to go to her bedroom, which was not a normal request from a child who had a keen loathing of bedtime.
"Cameron, are you alright little one?"
Mrs. Clyde was bending down to the child and holding the back of her hand flat against her forehead.
"Please," Cameron finally spoke up in a small, quavering voice. "I want to go to bed Miss Robinson."
So I took her up to her room and gave her a bath, something she usually loved. That night she just lay passively in the water waiting for me to wash her hair and then headed straight for the bed as soon as her pajamas were on. What the hell? I was about to go downstairs and ask Mrs. Clyde to call Diane and ask if Cameron had been OK over the weekend but there was a sudden sharp retching noise and I jerked my head around just in time to see Cameron racing back to the bathroom with her hand over her mouth. I ran after her, pulling her hair back and holding it out of the way as she threw up violently in the toilet. When she was finished I wet a facecloth and wiped her mouth with it and offered her a glass of water to wash her mouth out.
"Cameron? What's wrong? Did something happen in London?" I asked, trying to keep my voice calm even as anger started to rise up in the pit of my stomach. Because of course something happened in London. Four-year-olds don't randomly transform into fearful zombies after a happy - or, what should be happy - weekend with family.
For a second I could see Cameron wrestling with herself. She leaned into me and seemed just about ready to let me pick her up and carry her back to bed but she pulled away at the last minute. I leaned down to give her a kiss on the forehead but she still wouldn't meet my eyes.
"Cameron you know where the button is," I told her - she had a little contraption with a button on it that she could press that would send an alert to my phone if she woke up during the night frightened or sick - "if you're scared or you don't feel well you can just press it and I'll come and check on you, OK?"
"OK, Miss Robinson."
Cameron stayed firmly in her shell for the next couple of days, barely eating a thing and mostly refusing to interact with anyone, including me, beyond one-word answers to direct questions. I left a couple of messages on Darach's phone letting him know what was going on and suggesting either I or Mrs. Clyde take the girl to a doctor and maybe, hopefully, get a referral to a child psychologist. He gave me the go-ahead and I booked her an appointment with her regular doctor at the end of the week.
She cracked the day before the appointment, though. At 6 a.m. the little chime on my phone went off indicating that Cameron had pressed the button. I rushed to her room and found her sobbing and retching in bed. The only reason she hadn't thrown up all over herself was because there was nothing in her belly after she'd refused dinner the night before.
"OK, Cameron," I sat down beside her and put my arm around her shoulder, unsure what level of comfort she was ready to accept, "OK. It's OK. Did you have a nightmare?"
Instead of answering she looked up at me with her big, round eyes and whispered her own question:
"Is Daddy going to die, Miss Robinson?"
It took me a moment to let her words sink in and even then I couldn't quite keep the shock out of my voice. But a dam had broken
inside Cameron and it all came spilling out.
"Mummy said Daddy is going to die. Mummy said you are going to die and that I'll have to go and live in London with her."
I looked down at my phone, still in my hand, and had an idea. I used to record my lecture classes and the recording app was still installed. I opened it without telling Cameron what I was doing and set it on the bedside table in front of her so it would catch everything she said. And she said a lot.
When she finished telling me everything I was as close to speechless as I've ever been. No one - not Mrs. Clyde, not Darach - had been exaggerating about Diane. I could see the weight lifting off Cameron's narrow shoulders as she told me everything - her mother had been telling her, apparently for months, that Darach was going to die because he was "bad." I had been added to the list of bad people as soon as Diane found out about my presence at Castle McLanald. Before I did anything else, I had to make sure Cameron understood the truth.
"Do you think your Daddy is bad, Cameron?"
"No."
"Do you think I am bad?
"No. But Mummy said-"
Gently, I cut her off:
"Cameron, your Mummy is not well. She has something wrong with her head and it makes her say terrible things to you - things that aren't true at all. Daddy is fine - he's in Switzerland eating chocolate and missing you! And I am fine - look at me, don't I seem fine to you? No one is going to die, Cameron."
Cameron took a few shaky breaths and started to sob with relief, climbing onto my lap and putting her head against my neck.
"Why didn't you say anything, little one?" I asked, barely keeping the emotion out of my voice, "When something is scaring you you can always tell your Daddy about it - or Mrs. Clyde, or me."
"Mummy said I couldn't tell anyone. Mummy said if I told anyone then I would die."
That was too much. I snatched the phone off the table and rushed downstairs with Cameron in my arms, looking for Mrs. Clyde, who was uncharacteristically nowhere to be found. Neither was Mr. Clyde. Shaking with rage, I dialed Darach's number and got his voicemail.
