Chapter 90 Deli
Deli
Deli led Lachlan inside.
“Oh god!” She knelt to pick up his photos where they lay cast over the ground. “I’m so sorry, my mom—”
The photo she held struck her silent.
Lachlan’s hand ran through her hair while a bunch of heather hung by her side and their mouths hovered inches apart. The mountains soared behind them under a swollen sky, her hair and the hem of the kilt tugged by the same wind. It was captured so well Deli almost expected to see them move.
She remembered the words he’d said to her mother—her mother, who’d actually sent the photos of her and William. She remembered the way he’d stood up for her in front of everyone.
“I’m sorry, Lachlan. For everything.”
He held up a hand. “There’s nothing to forgive, Deli.”
“There is, and I am. I thought the worst of you because I couldn’t confront the worst in me, and that had nothing to do with you. You didn’t deserve that.”
“It’s not your fault. I know why you did.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Deli thought of the ways all the people before Lachlan had made her feel like she was something to be a little bit ashamed of, and how quickly she’d assumed Lachlan was telling her the same.
“Even so, it wasn’t right to pass unfairness that happened to me on to you. And I am sorry.”
He tilted his head with a small smile. “It’s okay.”
Deli suppressed a chuckle at the softhearted boy trying to accept an apology. “You know that I trust you, right, Lachlan? You know I don’t worry about you hurting me?”
He studied the ground. “I shouldn’t have said those things just now. I don’t want to pressure you, or for you to do something just because I told you I loved you. I’m sorry. You don’t need to do anything or say anything, okay?”
Deli stared at the man—at a total loss for how to say what she wanted to and make him hear it. Then she grabbed her shears and went into the garden. Just as she’d hoped, she found everything she needed, no matter how unlikely.
When she wedged her way back through the door with an armful of flowers, Lachlan was rising from a freshly lit fire.
“Sit,” she said before he could run to her aid. He didn’t move. “Sit . . . please?”
He eyed her suspiciously, but he pulled a kitchen chair out at an angle and sat with one knee dipping under the table’s edge. Sir Beans McGee jumped into his lap.
“Okay, just don’t say anything until I say you can. Capisce?”
Lachlan nodded, and Deli began to drop flowers on the table, one by one, to say what she needed to say.
“Hey, you, with the beautiful eyes, your unhappiness kills me, so let me give you this love letter. There are no words to express my gratitude and good luck since you’ve come into my life.
You bring me play, you make me laugh, and you make me think.
You are tender and loving, and I feel you being kind every day.
Honestly, I think it might be fate, from the day you held my hand and strolled with me on the cliffside, you have warmed my heart.
But it is so much more than that. Lachlan, when I’m with you, the sun shines, and you are the only one who makes me feel like I’m full of possibility.
I burn when I’m with you. I think you are perfect.
And I know that change is scary, but I hope you’ll take a chance with me.
Have pity on my passionate heart, and at least smile for me?
” She paused to frown with her bottom lip out until he grinned.
“Or better yet, will you believe me when I tell you, Lachlan . . . I am falling in love with you?”
Deli stood with empty arms over her heaping love letter made of petals and leaves. Lachlan studied it silently, his attention jumping from bloom to bloom, still hesitant.
Deli trailed her fingers along the edge of the table and slowly approached him where he sat in the kitchen chair until she was standing between his legs. Beans gave a small meow of annoyance as Lachlan’s hand stilled in his fur.
She ran her fingers into his hair. “If you can’t believe me . . .” She stroked his cheek with her thumb. “Will you let me show you?”
Deli dropped her hand to his knee and ran it up the length of his thigh. “How much I want you, Lachlan?” She drew close enough to whisper against his ear.
“Will you let me prove to you? That I want this? Us?” She brushed the tip of her nose against his as she moved to whisper his plea back to him in the other. “Let me?”
Deli pulled back to take in his beautiful, impossible eyes. “You can answer now. That is, if you’ll still have me?”
“Aye.” The guilt in his voice was gone. “I’ll have you.”
Relief and wanting rushed her. She waited, cherishing the way he looked at her.
“Lachlan?”
“Yes?”
“The cat is in my spot.”
Beans landed three feet away with a reproachful sound.
And Deli was on fire.
She hooked her legs over his to straddle him as he wrapped his arms around her.
His hands pressed into her back, and he kissed her.
He kissed her like the night was endless, like the stars scattered across the sky the night he’d carried her into this house.
She rocked her hips against him as he buried his face into her chest, kissing up to her collarbone, to the hollow between them.
She gasped when she felt the warmth of his hands under her shirt, his lips on her neck, as he pulled it over her head.
He traced the line of her neck to her chest and held there. She unclipped her bra.
God, it felt good to be wanted.
Deli knotted her fingers in his hair and pulled his face toward her, and it was all the permission he needed.
Lachlan pushed her backward so his mouth could find her belly, and he made a sound of pure pleasure as his lips met the softness of her body.
He ran his hand up her side to her breast, and she gasped when his thumb brushed her nipple.
He smiled against her skin and kissed higher until he hovered below her other breast and stilled. She waited, chest heaving.
“Say my name.” His voice was so heavy with wanting, with an animal drive, she could nearly taste it. Cinnamon, iron, and woodsmoke. His eyes burned up at her.
Her grin was wicked. “Make me.”
He licked his way to her nipple and closed it in his mouth as he gripped her other breast, and her back arched to press herself harder against him.
“Oh my god.” She sucked in breath. Her hips rolled against his lap. “Lachlan . . .”
He moaned in pleasure into her skin and broke away, then trailed his hand down her front and slipped it under the waistband of her leggings while he watched her face. Watched her lip quiver as his touch moved closer. Lower. Intent.
“Say it again.”
Deli’s mouth opened farther as his finger found its mark, sending a spasm through her body as she panted. Lachlan nodded slowly, eyes on hers, and he added another fingertip to move in slow circles. He reached farther down and traced the place she desperately wanted him to go.
“I said, say it again,” he demanded.
“Lach—”
He sank his fingers into her as her head fell back.
“—lan!”
“Yes,” he growled.
The word rumbled from his chest and into hers as he drew her body back to him and sucked at her neck, just over her pounding pulse. He knotted a hand in her hair while the other worked inside her. She ground herself against him, begging for release as he moved faster—pressed harder.
She moaned as the heat gathered, hotter and needing. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
Deli felt herself getting tighter around him as he brought her closer. Closer. Closer.
Then he stopped, and she tried to move against him herself until Lachlan pulled her head back with the fist in her hair—not rough, but not softly, either.
She ached for him like she’d never known as his eyes moved to her mouth and then back.
His chest rose and fell in ravenous breaths.
She could feel him underneath her—feel how hard he’d become through his kilt.
“Delilah?” Lachlan said as he twitched a finger against her and watched her shudder.
“Yes,” Deli panted, pinned in place by Lachlan’s intention. It felt so good—being with someone who didn’t need her to be in control all the time.
The look in his eyes was dangerous. Devastating. Delicious.
His voice alone made her body beg for him.
“Say my name.”
She obeyed. What started as Lachlan turned into the sound of a wave of pleasure breaking from the place he touched her. Deli writhed in Lachlan’s lap. Each breath was a moan, his name every time, until her head rolled back around and he caught her jaw.
Lachlan slipped his hand out of her. He held her still as he brought two fingers to her lips and waited.
Deli grasped his wrist, and as she slowly guided his fingers into her mouth, she ran her other hand up his inner thigh.
The tartan fabric bunched as she found the base of his shaft as she brought his fingers deeper.
His abs contracted as she skimmed the length of him while she closed her lips around his fingers at the knuckle. He inhaled and held his breath.
She began to suck and closed her hand around him at the same time.
“Fuck, Deli,” he moaned in a desperate breath. She moaned, too, sliding her hand up and down in time with her head—savoring her taste as she watched his mouth open wider, watched his eyes grow larger.
He caught her hand and pulled his fingers free. Then he slipped them into his own mouth, dragged them back out, and kissed her like he’d never get to kiss her again.
Their lips didn’t part as he carried her to the center of the room and knelt to one knee on the rug.
There, before the fire, they tore their clothes off and flung them away until they were skin to skin.
He held himself above her and looked into her eyes with so much raw feeling it made her lightheaded.
Deli wondered if she’d loved him every day since they’d met somehow—the way your bones know the ground of home.
She guided him between her legs with one hand and touched his face in the other, marveling at the freckles dusted like ash across his skin.
“Lachlan?”
“Deli?” he whispered.
She tried to think of how to say it all at once.
“All my favorite days as me have been since I met you.” She kissed him and nodded. “I trust you more than anyone.”
He kissed her so tenderly she blushed anew, then he pushed into her, slowly at first, then all at once, and Deli suspected that every part of him was perfect for her.
Lachlan moved, and it was magic—stretching and hitting spot after spot that spun her into ecstasy.
Even while she was more vulnerable than she’d ever been, Deli was safe.
“Oh god, Deli,” he groaned into her ear as she clenched around him. Their pace grew more urgent, and he pulled himself up to look at her.
She was hungry for him. She gave a wicked smile. “Lachlan, I want all of you. Don’t you dare stop.”
What a thing it was, to be finally out of her mind. She let whatever restraint remained fall away as she raked her nails down his back—pulled his hand to her breast. His body convulsed in time with hers as he cradled her head—mouth hot and panting her name against the spot behind her ear.
Deli MacDonald didn’t claim to know too much. She didn’t know if she’d made the right choices, or if she’d made the right mistakes, or if she was just a random character in the greater story of life.
But there was one thing she knew for sure.
“Hey, wanna hear something wonderful?” she whispered.
Lachlan smoothed her hair away from her eyes, pressed a kiss to her temple. “Yes?”
“I think I’m where I’m supposed to be.”