Chapter Fifteen

Molly

Molly couldn’t lie to herself any longer.

She also couldn’t convince herself any longer, no matter how hard she tried, that her relationship with Callum was a fun fantasy to be simply forgotten with the rise of the morning sun. That it was her chance for a good story, one to take home about fucking a hot royal with no strings attached.

No, the time for Molly to lie to herself and believe those lies went straight out the window the moment she had shared her mother’s death.

It was an unavoidable fact: she was falling for Callum.

Sighing with a happy smile, she rolled over and instead of her arm falling onto a warm, broad chest, it fell instead on cold sheets. Craning her neck, she searched the empty bedroom. The bathroom door was open but the light inside was off. Her stomach grumbled, and she hoped that Callum had left to bring hot breakfast up from the kitchen.

She slipped from under the sheets, and her bare feet hurried across the cold stone to her backpack. Time to grab her notebook and sketch. Callum’s face was fresh in her memory, illuminated in the moonlight. He’d fallen asleep and she’d lain there admiring his handsome, softened features until her own eyelids could no longer remain open. She was about to put every detail to paper, but a sudden buzz distracted her.

Buzz. What buzzed?

For a second, she had no idea. Then she literally smacked her forehead. Her phone. Her phone buzzed!

In this Scottish bliss with Callum, she’d ignored her one link to the world of reality back home—her phone, clinging to 4% battery. Molly squinted at the dimmed screen. Missed calls. Unopened emails from those at her new job. Ugh. Every word felt like a fierce pinch reminding her that this was real life. Of course life, real life, would catch up. The image of Callum’s face in the moonlight broke, and she didn’t have time to put the pieces back together.

We look forward to seeing you Wednesday morning, Miss Lane. Please report to HR at 8 a.m. for your badge picture and some necessary paperwork.

Please remember for Wednesday to bring two forms of identification with you. Driver’s license and passport should work fine.

Once you provide a voided check for the account of your choice on Wednesday we can set up Direct Deposit for you. It should only take one or two pay periods.

We so look forward to you joining the team and can’t wait to see you Wednesday.

Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday.

“Shit,” Molly muttered, tossing her phone like a hot coal into her backpack and burying her face in her hands.

She’d made herself believe Wednesday didn’t exist. She must have. Today was Friday, and she supposed she’d told herself tomorrow was Saturday and then Sunday and after that? What, another Sunday? Was Sunday to be followed by Sunday and after that Sunday yet another Sunday? She stomped her feet against the stones.

“How could I have been so stupid?” she moaned into her palms, rocking back and forth. “What the fuck was I thinking?”

She looked around the room in surprise, as if she hadn’t been sleeping and fucking and eating in it for the past few days. This was the bed of a duke. The sheets, the pillows, the scent of sweat, they were all his. The pants crumpled on the floor by her foot were the pants she had tugged off a duke.

Her boots were flung into the corner. Not even all the boots’ stickers could keep the left one’s sole from flopping when she walked. Those were hers. The notebook stuffed with memories of her mother, her father, her travels, her hopes and dreams, were hers. And that god-damn phone with its missed phone calls and ignored emails from her new Manhattan job, that was hers. That was her life.

Panic coursed through her fingers and all the way to her toes. She stood up and suddenly needed to move. Pacing the room, she dragged her fingers through her hair and tried to figure out what to do. She had to speak to Callum and tell him. But tell him what? She must leave, but couldn’t possibly leave? Tell him she wanted to stay?

“Does he even want that?” she wailed, realizing that was her greatest fear, that no, he didn’t.

While she’d invested more in Callum than just her body, he might not feel the same. What if for him she was just a fuck? Or, what if his family position chained down his heart and he’d never conceived of truly opening it up for her?

Flopping down on the bed in a huff, she covered her eyes with her arms and groaned aloud.

“I’m fucked. I’m just absolutely fucked.”

Just then the bedroom door opened, and Callum came in with a large box under one arm and a bag of takeout in the other. His eyes lit up when he saw Molly laid out across the bed in his oversized button-down shirt, one tit out and her cheeks flushed.

“Well, I do believe you are!”

He laughed, closing the door with his ass and dropping everything to climb onto the bed.

She was about to tell him that she needed to speak to him, but he leaned down to kiss her and the softness of his lips was so unbelievable, she got lost in his kiss.

“Good morning,” he whispered with a smile before sliding off the bed.

Sitting up and touching her own lips as if she could still feel his, she wondered what she was supposed to say to him. It all seemed so inconsequential in comparison to the wonderful tingle on her lips.

She shook her head and focused. Wednesday. She needed to tell him about Wednesday. She set her resolve as Callum returned to the bed with the bag of takeout.

But the moment he pulled out the plump donuts and to-go cups of black coffee, it all just slipped away. They faced each other, legs wrapped around each others’ hips, and fed each other bits of donut. A cherry-filled donut mussed Molly’s fingers and she sucked them clean, smiling as Callum leaned back to watch, biting his own lower lip.

Why would she ever want to think about Wednesday? His hands were on her knees now and that was all that mattered. His shirt slipped from one shoulder and his eyes were on her breast. He was laying her down beneath him and stroking her hair and looking into her eyes.

What did Wednesday matter when now was so delicious?

He reached for something above her head and then slid his silk tie across her exposed chest. Goosebumps erupted on her arms, and she felt herself grow wet from all the filthy things he could do to her blindfolded. She closed her eyes obediently as he held the tie in place and secured it behind her head. Hot kisses down her neck seared her skin, and she tilted her head to give him all the access he could want.

“Wait here,” he whispered.

Molly squirmed on the bed, both nervous and desperately excited for what was to come. Straining her ears, she tried to pick up any clue she could as she heard Callum move across the room and slide something along the floor. Something was set down and then there was a rustle, as if wrapping paper was being pushed aside. There was a sound she couldn’t place, a sort of swishing.

Then his strong hands slipped under her knees and behind her back and lifted her into the air. Unsettled, she reached out and clutched at his large biceps even though she had no doubt she was secure in his arms. Her mind whirled with all the possibilities of where he could be taking her and what he had in store for her.

“I’m going to set you down.”

Her toes felt the floor. She held onto Callum’s hand for support as she waited for what was to come.

“Goddamn you’re going to make me forget what I’m doing,” he said.

This brought a victorious grin to her face as she imagined him suffering with desire just as much as she was. She could sense him kneeling next to her.

“You look amazing like this,” he continued, fumbling with something next to her. “Naked with my tie around your eyes. Fuck, I’m already getting hard. You have no idea how much I want to bite your juicy ass right now.”

Molly laughed. “Why not bite it then? Have a taste of my forbidden fruit.”

She grinned and gave a quick shake of her ass. This earned her a slap on the swell of her right cheek, and she purred.

“Maybe just a nibble,” he muttered before Molly felt his teeth scrape along her inner thigh. Then he gave her wet pussy a slow drag with his tongue, making her knees go weak.

“Fuck you taste good,” he groaned. “But we’re playing a different game right now.”

He went silent, making her frown. She flinched when she felt something silky slide up her legs. Guiding each of her arms where he desired them to go, he continued whatever he was doing in silence. He gave a stifled moan as he laid the silk over her tits and grazed his fingers from her sternum to her stomach.

She heard, barely audible, a whispered, “Damn.”

His fingers were at the knot tied behind her head, and before he pulled it away, he added, “Don’t open your eyes until I tell you to.”

The tie fell away, and she felt him move behind her. He dragged his fingers through her hair and then tilted up her chin with a guiding finger. She felt his kiss on her shoulder, and his breath against her hair when he spoke. “Okay. Open your eyes.”

Molly opened her eyes and blinked in surprise when she saw her image reflected back from the full-length mirror in the corner of Callum’s room. She was wearing a dress—Callum’s gift to her.

“Do you like it?” he whispered in her ear.

“I—”

In the front, the dress plunged almost to her navel, and the silk covering her breasts twisted to form the straps over her shoulder. The skirt flowed beautifully from her waist in soft silky layers that flowed like water with just the slightest motion of her hips. The structure of the dress was stunning. The open chest worked perfectly with the loose tangle of blonde curls that skimmed her shoulders. He must’ve had it designed this way, with the intention of her wearing her hair just like this, wild from the harsh winds of Scotland, teased by his fingers, soft from lying on his chest.

But as beautiful and unique as it was, it wasn’t the design that left Molly quite speechless as Callum smiled at her in the full-length mirror. It was the colors printed onto the expensive silk.

“Summer Sundown,” she whispered, still not believing what was right before her eyes, as real as her own breathing in her chest.

Callum grinned. “William McTaggart.”

She turned around and looked up at him, trying not to let the tears pooled in her eyes drip down her cheeks and onto this masterpiece she wore. Across her body was the stunning reason she’d climbed over that burgundy rope in the first place. McTaggart’s painting, Summer Sundown, was the start of it all. Those sublime strokes of color were on her body, and she felt like a living painting.

“What is—I mean, how did you—wha—um—”

Words were not working for her. She laughed. She had no idea what to ask, what to say.

Callum raised his arm to twirl her around and she stumbled into his arms, still stunned.

“If one of those questions was ‘Why did I have a dress made for you?’ then the answer is there is a ball in Kelso tonight, and I want you to attend as my guest.”

“A ball…” she mumbled, dumbfounded.

Less than an hour ago, she’d intended to tell Callum she needed to return to New York City on Wednesday. Real life tugged on her, and she had to leave this impossible dream behind her. A dream that included standing here in a custom gown about to attend a ball with a duke.

“I don’t have, um…shoes.”

He nodded towards the opened box where a pair of heels lay in the bottom. His hand slid down to her bare back as she stared at the shoes. He slowly dipped her down, and she clutched his arm.

“If perhaps you were about to say ‘I can’t dance,’” he whispered, “I assure you that I can.”

He twirled her about the room as effortlessly as a ballerina in a jewelry box.

“But,” he went on, “if you were worried about what I might do to this pretty, pretty dress after the night has ended, just before I fuck you, well, I don’t have a single reassurance for you.”

The dark flash in Callum’s eyes as he trailed his finger down the plunging neckline awoke Molly from her trance.

This duke was no Prince Charming. He wasn’t the cartoon hero in a children’s movie who arrived on his white stallion to save the helpless princess. There was no glass shoe he’d slip onto her foot.

He swore like a sailor and looked at her like a hunter and touched her like a sculptor and listened to her like a priest and commanded her like a general and fucked her like a man on death row.

No, the Duke of Roxburghe was no Prince Charming.

He was real.

Everything about the past few days might be the thing of fairy tales or movies. But Callum was real. Imperfect and flawed and reckless and real.

In her dress, Molly stepped closer to Callum and hooked her own finger in the front of his pants.

“I suppose that’s just a risk I’ll have to take, Your Grace.”