But she doesn’t even appear on his radar. While she’s giving him all the information on the wine, babbling on, her eyes flitting over his tattoos, the bulk of his arms and shoulders, he doesn’t even look at her once. He just takes a sip of the wine and nods.
The rest of us don’t get the same amount of attention, although the wine is quite good. Bram asks a million questions about everything we drink, but Jenn’s attention is always on Lachlan. At one point she actually touches his bicep and coos over it.
“I love your tattoos. My ex-boyfriend used to have a fleur-di-lis on his arm and a quote across his chest. I always thought they were very sexy on men.”
I’m so close to telling her to step off but Lachlan folds his hands in front of him and calmly looks up at her. “Just pour the wine, darling.”
Jenn immediately looks flustered, her pouty mouth dropping for a moment, but then she steps into professional mode, sparing herself from further humiliation. I feel like giving Lachlan a high-five but keep my small triumph to myself.
We’re a few wine glasses in and Bram has started filling out an order form to bring back a crate of his favorite when Lachlan leans into me and whispers, “Meet me outside in a few minutes.” He then gets up and strides out of the bar.
I turn around to face everyone else and they’re all looking at me expectantly.
“What?” I ask, finishing off my wine.
“What’s with him?” Linden asks.
“He’s your cousin. You know how he is.”
“Yeah,” he says, “but at this point, I think you may know him better.”
I look at Bram for backup but he just goes back to filling out the order form. “I’m afraid Linden is right, Kayla. You’re the expert now.”
“He is so sweet on you,” Nicola adds, her eyes all warm and gooey.
“So sweet on me?” I repeat. “First of all, we’re not in the fucking south, okay? Second of all, that man is not sweet on anything. Except maybe dogs.”
Well, and he was pretty sweet with my mother the other night.
Steph violently shakes her head. “No, no, no. Then you don’t see what we see. He wants you, Kayla.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, that’s a given at this point.”
“No,” she says, louder now, and Linden has to shush her. Good lord, they’re all getting drunker by the minute. “No, let me say this,” she says, pushing her hand against Linden’s face and smushing it. “Let me say this, okay? Let me say this.”
I stare at her and gesture with open palms. “Okay, drunky. Say it.”
She leans forward, eyes wide with urgency. “He wants you. Like…he’s in love with you.”
That proclamation emits a simultaneous groan from both Linden and Bram.
“Don’t get carried away,” Bram chides.
“You women think that any man who gets his dick in you is in love with you,” Linden says to her.
“Hey,” I say sharply, jabbing my finger at him. “Please don’t lump me into the ‘you women’ category. And I happen to know for a fact that none of us here think that, especially your little wife who was in love with you loooong before you got your stupid dick in her.”
Steph glares at Linden, and I continue. “And for fuck’s sake, we barely know each other. We’re fucking, so let us fuck and shut the hell up about it.” I look at Steph. “And please, the last thing I need is for anyone to get crazy, unrealistic notions inside my head. No one loves anyone. I don’t know Lachlan and he doesn’t know me, and we’re both fine with that. We have to be fine with that because he’s leaving in forty-eight hours for a land far, far away. So please, just let us have our time with each other until then. We don’t need any complications. We don’t need love, or even feelings, because what we do have is hot as hell and fleeting, and I’m going to suck up as much good fucking sex as I can with him. Got it?”
Bram, Nicola, Steph, and Linden are staring at me wide-eyed.
“Jeez,” Linden finally says, “I was just joking. Touchy, touchy.”
“Well I’m not joking,” I tell him, getting out of my seat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find him. When we come back, I hope to god none of you utter the L-word or any other word except for ‘goodbye,’ okay?”
I turn on my heel and march past the wine bar, half the patrons looking at me as I go, since my outburst was probably a little too loud. Still, that made me angry as hell. Why did people always have to try and complicate shit? Why couldn’t people just fuck and that be the end of it? I mean, my friends never even knew the names of any of the men I slept with after Kyle. Why does it have to be so freaking difficult with Lachlan?
Because you do have feelings for him, my inner voice whispers to me. Because you are falling for him.
“Argh,” I growl to myself, hands on my ears, turning around in circles in the cave’s foyer. “I don’t want Steph to be right.”
“Kayla?” I hear Lachlan’s voice.
I stop spinning and look up to see him on the other side of the heavy door, in the dim cave I looked into earlier, staring at me with his usual concern.
“Yeah,” I say, feigning normalness. “Hi.”
He frowns deeper then gestures with his head to come inside.
I step in through the doors and he carefully closes them behind me. I look around. The cold stone walls are curved with buttresses, making the room take the shape of half a wine barrel. I take a few steps forward and peer down the rest of the empty hall. It looks like the kind of place where you’d have a Game of Thrones wedding, complete with alcoves and elaborate candelabras.
“What were you saying out there?” he asks softly, coming up behind me and placing his hands around the small of my waist. His breath smells like wine. “You don’t want Steph to be right about what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him, closing my eyes and leaning my head against his chest. “Stupid girl nonsense.”
“Mmmm. Sorry I took off like that,” he murmurs against the top of my head. “There’s only so much I can handle.”
I’m not sure if he means the wine or the social situations, so I don’t say anything except, “I wanted to get out of there too.”
“Good,” he murmurs, his hand briefly sliding over my hip. I want him to slip it lower, in between my legs, and flip up the hem of my dress, but he takes my hand instead. “Come here.”
He leads me down the long, cavernous hall, my sandals echoing as we walk. At the end, there is a large ornate mirror and a hall leading to the left and right. To the left it’s blocked by a heavy door, and to the right there is a locked, floor-to-ceiling iron gate between the room and what looks like a hall to a maintenance area. A cart full of towels sits outside an open door, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone around.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be in this area,” I tell him. I turn around but the look in his eyes grows molten and I immediately know what’s going on. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and a lone shiver slides down my spine.
“I don’t think so either, love,” he says gruffly, taking a step forward until my back is pushed against the gate. “But there are no dogs here.”
I bite my lip and wrap my hand around his neck as he presses against me, the hardness in his jeans digging into my hip. He groans quietly, lips at my neck, pushing me further into the gate. The bars hurt my back, but it’s a good kind of hurt. All the pain you get from sex is a fair trade, especially when it’s coming from Lachlan McGregor.
He puts his hands on my thighs and slowly skims his palms up, the hem of my dress lifting with them. They leave trails of stardust and heat then pause at my hips. He lets out a heavy exhale against my neck.
“No panties,” he murmurs. “Why do I have to leave you again?”