Chapter 60 Lachlan
Lachlan
For most of his adult life, Lachlan had been in a sort of half-on state, making it day-to-day, prolonging the inevitable.
Now, Lachlan Scott was finally alive.
He moved slowly, easing Deli back into their connection. Lachlan felt at home in his body, Deli didn’t. Lachlan trusted his body, Deli didn’t. There were a lot of voices fighting for space in her head, all with opinions about what made her wrong.
Lachlan didn’t need to use his voice to tell Deli the truth.
He teased her lips apart with his and let a low moan rumble from his chest until she pressed herself into him.
Lachlan had kissed his share in the past, he’d had his passion—but he’d never kissed someone who made him feel like his life had just begun.
Now he kissed Deli like it was the first kiss to ever be, attuned to her like they had all the time in the world.
Her hesitancy gave way to hunger. He grinned and cradled her head with the hand that wasn’t running up her back. The damp ends of her hair tickled his skin.
God she was soft. Her hair, her lips, her body.
His blood pumped urgently through him and turned him hungrier with each heartbeat.
He kissed her harder, and she moaned softly into his mouth.
Even just that, the sound of her pleasure at a simple kiss, made Lachlan want to bury himself inside her—but he quieted the swelling fire that wanted to consume. He needed this to last.
He would show her she was worthy of worship.
Deli unbuttoned the top of his old flannel—which had never looked as good as it did on her—and it slid off her shoulder.
Lachlan broke away from her mouth and drew back to hold her gaze while he brushed her dark hair away from her skin.
He couldn’t believe she was really with him. He couldn’t believe she was real.
He longed to show her his gratitude. As he pressed his lips against the soft corner of her jaw and her throat, he imagined how her eyes would look—pupils blown wide, trying to focus on him again after they’d rolled back in her head. He kissed lower with just enough pressure to pull another moan.
“Lachlan . . .”
“Delilah,” he breathed into her neck.
He’d always loved the sound of his name when she spoke it, the way her accent stretched the vowels in new ways. But hearing his name in the voice he was coaxing from her now was like hearing it for the very first time.
Lachlan tingled under her touch as she trailed her fingers down his back. It was like Deli could spark electricity when she wanted to—like she could sear lightning into him. She tugged up the hem of his jumper.
“Are you gonna help me, or what?”
He smirked. “I thought you’d want to ‘do it yourself.’”
Deli looked him up and down, setting him ablaze in the wake of her wild green eyes.
“Tonight?” she said. “I don’t want to do anything myself.”
That was all he needed to hear.
Lachlan pulled his jumper over his head and crushed his mouth against hers again, trailing his hands down her lower back and under her body.
She wrapped her legs around his waist to squeeze him against her.
In the thick air of the pub, so warm compared to the rain-soaked night outside, he could smell the different layers of her—the perfume on her neck, the soft coconut of her hair, and the heady, heavy scent of her body coming alive under his touch.
He was thrumming with pent-up wanting. Lachlan left her mouth to kiss down her throat, skimming the sensitive skin with his teeth and tongue as he slid the flannel off both of her shoulders.
“Hey . . .” Deli kept her legs around his waist but pushed him back.
He blinked hard, dragging himself back to reality. “Is this alright? Is this too much?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. The flannel hung on by the last center button, threatening to fall entirely away. The lace edge of a black bra peeked out of the tatty fabric, and her bare skin glowed like moonlight under the red tracks he’d left with his mouth.
“You’re less naked than me.” She slipped a bra strap off her shoulder and let it fall—an ember threatening to spark. “Doesn’t seem fair.”
Lachlan exhaled in a half chuckle, half growl—relieved and desperate to keep her from putting her clothes back on.
“As you wish.” He tugged off his white T-shirt.
“Now let me look at you.” She unwrapped her legs and pushed him backward a step.
In the same little pub where he’d spent most of his life, listening to the familiar fire and rain, Lachlan stood with his arms spread wide, feeling brand fucking new.
“God, you’re hot,” Deli said. “You’re, like, really, really hot.”
His chest heaved with his breath. It was taking all his focus to hold back the animal part of him that longed for the hunt—for the feast.
Deli swept her eyes once more, painfully slow, over his entire body. When she finally met his gaze, she was a goddess atop a mountain, waiting on a desperate sinner to atone on his knees.
And he was desperate.
Eyes locked, Deli smiled, and Lachlan felt the anticipation coax his heartbeat to rise. He held his breath for one second. Two. Then she nodded.
Lachlan had her off the bar and in his arms in a second.
She crossed her ankles around his waist as he supported her from underneath.
He buried his mouth in the soft skin of her chest, and he couldn’t stop the low moan that escaped him as his lips found her breast, his hands felt her body.
Deli knotted her hands in his hair and pressed him more firmly against her, whispering “Oh my god,” as he walked her toward the place he’d lay her down.
As he lowered her onto a table, the vase holding a sprig of the honeysuckle vine that had sprouted out back wobbled and tipped with their impact.
“Oh no!” Deli reached behind her to find the rolling glass before it fell to the floor. “This little guy almost met his end.”
Lachlan looked at the glass in her hands, so cold and brittle compared to the girl sitting on his table with perfect lips and red splotches growing up her neck. He grinned and snatched the vase from her grip. Then he threw it across the bar.
“Fuck it.”
“Lachlan Scott! Who’s gonna pay for that?”
“Never mind that. I know the owner. Lovely guy.” He leaned down and nipped at her lip, bit it just hard enough to pull her toward him, and released. “Besides, I’d do a lot worse for a lot less if you asked me, Deli.”
Deli touched the lip he’d just bitten and sucked it between her teeth before it bounced back into place. She looked at him from under a sweep of dark lashes—all heat and swelling lushness. God, he thought. Thank god.
“Fuck it,” Deli echoed, and she blew out the tealight and tossed the votive over her shoulder. By the time it shattered, Lachlan had hooked a hand under each of her knees and pulled her forward so she was sitting on the very edge of the table.
“Tonight,” he whispered as he placed a hand on either side of her, splayed against the polished hardwood, “I want you to know exactly what it feels like”—he kissed her and pressed her backward until she had to catch herself on her elbows—“to have someone take care of you.”
“Hoookay,” she rasped into his mouth as Lachlan pressed her onto her back and held his body above her.
“You said you didn’t want to do anything tonight.” He kissed her lips, her neck, her collarbone. “And I’m good at following directions.”
“I remember.” She gasped as he slid a hand under her shirt. “So, you’ll do the doing?”
Lachlan grinned, letting the exquisite, fluttery feeling of her humor collide with the wanting. “I’ll do the doing.”
He slowly shrugged the flannel off her body and dropped it onto the floor. He felt her stiffen. Her eyes were squeezed shut.
“Sorry,” she said, suddenly crossing her arms over her body.
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Do you want to stop?”
“No, no, I don’t think so.” Deli made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “I just need a second to adjust.”
There she was—in his pub, on the table he’d built with his own hands, nearly topless and flushed with the heat he’d kissed into her skin.
She was as beautiful as she’d always been, but now she was colored with desire.
Her lips were even fuller. Her eyes were even clearer, like the crystal waters of a forest lake dappled with white light.
Lachlan couldn’t imagine moving through life believing that he was less worthy of good things, of pleasure, of love, because his body didn’t look the way complete strangers’ bodies looked.
He couldn’t imagine telling his daughter she needed to starve or carve away at her skin and bone.
He couldn’t imagine ever telling a woman he loved that the body she had, the one body she had to carry her through life, was lacking, and reason enough to not love her anymore.
Lachlan hoped she’d hear him, even if he never touched her again. “Deli? You, too, you know.” She looked at him, at war in herself somewhere, and he’d never meant anything more. “You’re allowed to be free.”
In the beat of silence, he soaked in the feeling of her—the relief of standing under all her light. Then she kissed him. A bolt of heat rolled through him in a wave, and he was at its mercy. Her mercy.
She ran her nails down his back, raising gooseflesh where she touched.
Lachlan slowly traced a line from her waist to the clasp of her bra.
He whispered into her ear. “Yes?”
He could hear the smile in her response. “Yes.”
It fell away as Lachlan laid her back down and kissed her collarbone to her sternum, and then each breast—taking her into his mouth, cupping the other in his hand. Deli moaned his name and tangled her fingers into his hair, tugging and intoxicating.
Lachlan stood and lifted her legs so that her ankles were hovering over his shoulders.
He gripped her by her thighs and pulled her, hard and without warning, until she was flush against him.
She let out a surprised breath that turned to a quiet pining sound as he began to move against her.
His body was humming with energy, begging.
He slipped a finger under the elastic of her lace-trimmed pants.
“May I?”
She covered her eyes with her hands and laughed. “Oh god, fine!”
He lifted her body off the table just enough to slip them out from under her. Lachlan watched her eyes and kissed the inside of an ankle, down her leg as he hooked them over his shoulders and lowered himself to his knees.
He licked her inner thigh and closed his lips over the place, growling deep in his throat.
Deli raised her head off the table.
“Tell me to stop and I’ll stop, no questions asked,” Lachlan said.
“But I want to.” Her chest was rising and falling quickly, skin like snowdrift and petals.
He loved seeing her like this—giving in to her body and pleasure.
“Deli, I want to do this until your eyes roll back in your head. Until you forget everything—everything that takes up space in your mind—but my name.”
Deli looked at him for a beat, then dropped back to the table with a grin. “Then do it.”
“Fuck yes,” he growled, and he sank into her warmth.
She shuddered and moved under his touch.
He slid his hand up her body until he found her fingers and wove them with his own.
The way she writhed, the sounds she was making—listening to Deli moan his name and feeling her under his mouth was better than any sex he could remember.
She gasped at his tongue dipping inside her, ground against one of his fingers, then two.
He wanted to remember the taste of her—coming alive as she deserved, feeling how he wanted her as he knelt between her legs—for the rest of his life.
His hand and mouth worked together to call every part of her into her body beneath him—to wind her so tightly that when he released her, it would be shattering. Unstoppable. Unforgettable.
“Lachlan, oh my god, don’t stop—”
Deli’s back bowed and her thighs tightened around his head.
He groaned into her as her pleasure built and broke over—legs shaking, hips rolling with her fist knotted in his hair.
Lachlan was still licking and kissing her when her convulsions finally slowed, like they would never have another place to be.
He didn’t want more from her. Her breath coming fast, her heat beneath him—that was more than enough.
Listening to her panting, he decided there was nothing he’d rather do than make Deli feel good.
Lachlan Scott was best when he was a man in love.
“Lachlan?”
Her voice called him from his haze. She sat up, her legs still hooked over his shoulders. He marveled from his knees.
“Yes? I’m right here. What do you need? Water?” He nodded toward the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar with a smirk. “A drink?”
“I need you,” she began, tilting his face up by the chin. He could fall into her eyes and never have his fill of the way she was looking at him now. “To fu—”
“Guess who?”
They whipped their heads toward the pounding on the door just as the lights blared back to life with a hum. Deli shielded her eyes with a hand.
“Lachlan, I know you’re in there!”
No, he thought. He recognized the voice. It can’t be . . .