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’ hotel 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.

With the skill of a natural born puppet master, Iain soon had her naked and on her hands and knees upon the suite’s front entrance mat. And then the time for protests over clothes that would be completely useless a month from now anyway came to an end.

His hand once more found the back of her neck, and he shoved himself into her from behind. And, oh God, forget the Top Shop clothes. All she wanted was him.

But Iain still seemed to have the downstairs argument on his mind. His arm unlocked, and he covered her back to command, “Repeat the words, chridhe.” His Scottish brogue, impossibly thick in her ear as he lowered what she’d come to think of as his commanding hand beneath her body.

His strokes had a hard quality to them now. Sharp and succinct like he was punishing her. Yet, he cupped her sex gently, the ball of his hand rubbing light circles on top of her clit as he commanded, “Repeat the words to me now!”

She moaned, already orgasming on his hand. So far gone, she couldn’t even pretend not to know which words he meant. And she discovered she still had the words memorized when the Gaelic fell out of her mouth on a long moan.

As if rewarding her for getting the answer right, he yelled out and bit into her neck, his hips pushing so hard into the back of her, she would have fallen over if both his arms hadn’t dropped down in front of her. Like a weird sex cage that left her with no choice but to stay seated on his dick as he released another flood of condom-free sperm into her sex.

Not that it mattered. Cancer, she remembered vaguely. She had it. It would kill her and thanks to chemo, her insides were so decimated that doctors had already told her it would take an act of God on top of some super form of IVF that hadn’t been invented yet for her to get pregnant.

“Dinna think about the cancer tonight,” he suddenly commanded. “You’re with me. Safe. Trust me, Millicent.”

Trust me, Millicent.

Somehow she did. Somehow it was easy to come right back to the here and now and what Iain was doing to her on this hotel room’s carpet. Not just crossing an item off her end of life bucket list, but completely obliterating it.

On a weird instinct, she turned her head and bit down on one of the forearms caging her in. Iain yelled out—but not in pain. “Christ, Millicent!” he said, right before his body seized and he spilled inside her on a long groan.

A delicious feeling of power washed over her when he collapsed against her back a few moments later. Spent and empty. But that feeling a superiority only last a second or two. Because then he knotted inside her, and it was her turn to go crazy.

Milly soon came to understand why Iain was so insistent they stay in a hotel with room service. Iain shook her awake the next morning so they could enjoy a breakfast that included a basket of breakfast pastries, yogurt, freshly squeezed orange juice, and…her eyes lit up.

“Porridge oats! I love porridge oats,” she said, grabbing a spoon.

“I ken. I’ve seen you eating Scott’s Easy Pots at your desk more times than I can remember. That’s why I ordered them for you. Can’t stand ‘em myself.”

Milly sprinkled salt on top, Scottish style, and then poured some cream over the salt before tucking in. But as she indulged her porridge craving, she took the opportunity to peep up at Iain. Not only because she’d never met a Scot who didn’t like porridge. But also because she was surprised he’d noticed such a small detail about her.

As it turned out, studying him was a big mistake. Because that strange odor once more filled the suite and a wave of ferocious lust overtook her.

Iain’s nose flared. Then he reached out and took the bowl out of her hands and the spoon out of her mouth. He very deliberately placed both items on the tray before setting the whole thing aside.

And that was how she ended up spending the rest of the morning on her hands and knees, her porridge going cold before she had the chance to finish eating it.

After that, Milly learned to eat faster. And although she wouldn’t say she got used to the waves of extreme lust that continued to overtake her during the next few days, she at least became more familiar with the sensations and less caught off guard.

To her surprise, Iain didn’t at all seem to mind her constant need to have sex with him. She wondered if this was normal…if women always went this crazy for him in the bedroom, because he seemed to be unusually prepared for it. Milly kept falling asleep with him embedded inside her, but she’d often wake to room service meals—mostly sandwiches, smoked salmon, and salads that could be eaten cold—waiting for her near the bed.

Twice on Friday, Iain scooped her up and carried her to the suite’s white marble tub, where he ran her a bath, and afterward used a towel to dry her off. The first time it happened, Milly protested that she could manage on her own. But he ignored her. And when he helped her out of the tub and set her on her feet to dry her off, she quickly discovered just how wrong she’d been.

Despite all the sleep she’d gotten, her whole body felt weak with soreness and fatigue. It was a huge effort for her to stand while he dried her off with a plush white towel. And her heart warmed with gratitude when he scooped her up again and carried her back to bed because she honestly didn’t know if she was still capable of walking.

However as soon as he laid her down, the smell erupted again and it was off to the races. Milly kept expecting it to stop, for her exhausted body to stop constantly wanting him. But Saturday came and went, along with Sunday. And the spring bank holiday everyone at AlgoFortune had been looking so forward to? Milly spent most of it with the side of her face planted in a pillow, either getting plundered from behind or sleeping.

By late Monday morning, she’d become used to vacillating wildly between extreme lust and sex-induced exhaustion.

“Is it always like this for you?” she asked Iain as they lay beside each other in bed, after yet another crazed sex session.

He let out a grumbly laugh, his knotted staff pulsing inside of her. “Nay, chridhe. Of course not. Deep down, you ken that.”

Maybe. But that didn’t mean she understood it. Any of it.

“Iain?” she asked.

“Aye?”

“What does chridhe mean, exactly?”

“Heart,” he answered, his voice flat as if he were answering a question about the weather. “Moi chridhe is ‘my heart.’”

“Iain?”

“Hmm?”

“Could you maybe stop calling me that?”

All the practical reasons why this new nickname wasn’t a good idea flooded her head.

1. It was too romantic a moniker to give her considering this was really nothing more than a glorified bucket list sex romp.

2. Tomorrow they’d go back to being employee and boss; two colleagues who could only sort of stand each other.

3. Getting involved with someone when you only had a few months left to live seemed like a really bad idea.

Iain stilled behind her, stiffening like she’d spoken all those reasons out loud. Then he said, “Nay, chridhe, I won’t stop calling you that.”

“Iain,” she said, suddenly wanting to put some physical distance between the two of them. Their wild sex had somehow taken a way too intimate turn.

“My da warned me about girls like you.”

“Girls like me?”

“Aye. Growing up I was always so keen to come to the city. Glasgow or Edinburgh, I dinna care. Faoltiarn is an auld place. We speak the auld language, and no matter what passes in the outside world, we keep to the auld ways. From the time I was a wee lad, I had a deep yearning to live somewhere else. In a city where I wasn’t known by name to every single person who crossed my path. When I was accepted into the University here in Edinburgh, I thought it were a dream come true. But I needed my da’s blessing to leave. You see, back then he was a verra powerful man in our village. And according to the auld ways, if any of us wished to leave for more than a week or two, we had to have his permission. It was a few months after my mum left him when I came to ask his blessing, so it wasn’t a certain thing at all for me.”

Whoa, she thought, trying to imagine what it would be like to not only have a mother who’d just abandoned your whole family, but to then have to ask the husband she’d left behind for permission to leave. “Did you get it? His blessing?”

“Aye, after fifteen days of thought, he gave it. But before I left he warned me that in time I’d see the auld ways were not so bad. They’ve kept our village safe through good times and bad. He’d gone off to university in Venice and returned to Faoltiarn with an Italian wife. He’d warned me that girls from the city weren’t like the village girls. He said they guard their hearts like wounded animals and are afraid of men like me. Is that how you feel, Milly? Afraid? Are you trying to protect your heart?”

She stilled, hating how close he’d come to the truth. “Look. In my admittedly limited experience, when people get close to you, they either leave or die. So yeah, I guess I’m a little protective of myself. And considering I now have a clear expiration date, I’m really not looking to get hurt.”

“I’m not looking to hurt you, chridhe,” he said quietly. “The faster you start believing that, the easier this will go for us.”

“Not looking to hurt me?” she repeated softly. “So you’re saying I can hand in my two weeks’ notice without you suing me?”

Again, he stiffened.

Milly nodded. “That’s what I thought. Don’t call me that anymore.”

Iain didn’t respond, just continued to hold her while her sex contracted around him, maintaining their physical bond, even as she mentally began to push him away.

And maybe that’s why instead of falling asleep, she said, “My father…the one I’m going to see in New Zealand…he’s dead. Drunk driving accident, and he was the drunk driver. So yeah,” she let out a sad sigh, “…totally his fault. The only reason I know any of this is because I got a Google alert about it a few weeks after it happened. He never tried to reach out to me. He knew he had a daughter and he never sent me a text, an email…nothing. I guess you could say I’m treating Milford Track like his grave since that’s where he and my mom met.”

Iain cleared his throat. “You’ve had a hard life. I wish like hell there was something I could do to change that.”

“Yeah, me too,” Milly said with a soft laugh. “But my point is, your life—Iain’s life—doesn’t have to be so hard. Your parents are alive. Both of them. Look…I know you’re angry at your mom for leaving, but the fact is she’s been trying to reach out to you. Stop pushing her away. And maybe start taking her calls.”

There was a long, heavy silence during which Milly sensed Iain was processing her words. He didn’t seem angry with her for giving him her opinion on a very personal matter. Or even offended. He was just…considering. At that moment, she realized she felt very sure of his emotional state.

More certain of his than of her own.

She rubbed her thumb over his forearm in small circles as in the silence. Until she eventually drifted off to sleep, wondering exactly what this was between them. And why it felt so right, even though she knew it was all wrong.