Here With Me (Adair Family 1)

In seconds we were soaked to the skin. Lachlan helped get my gear in the back seat and then we turned to each other.

Water streamed in my eyes as I stared up at him, shocked by the abrupt and capricious Scottish weather. It reminded me a little of the man before me, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Lachlan grinned and hauled open the passenger door. I climbed in and he slammed it shut in my wake. Teeth chattering with the sudden, drenching cold, I watched the blur of him through the water bouncing off the windshield as he rounded the hood and yanked open the driver’s side to climb in.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” he announced, pulling the door shut behind him. “I’ll turn on the heat.”

“Push your seat back instead,” I ordered loudly.

He stopped mid-stretch, hand hovering over the middle dash of the car where the heating controls were. Lachlan quirked a brow.

I pressed a hand to his chest, gently shoving him back as I moved into him. “I know a better way to get warm.”

At his hesitancy, I froze. “Unless … you’re afraid of getting caught.”

In answer, he pressed a button at the side of his chair, the buzz of the electric mechanism filling the car as his seat moved back. I grinned and climbed over, straddling him. His shirt was so wet, his skin peeked through the white where it stuck to him. “What about your sterling reputation?”

Lachlan’s eyes flashed. “Fuck it.” He gripped my shirt hem and wrenched it upward as I raised my arms to help. The wet material hit the passenger seat with a slap that made me chuckle. A chuckle that died with a low moan as his hands moved up my damp waist to squeeze beneath my wet bra. I reached back to unclip it, uncaring we were in public. The rain concealed us, and honestly, the man just made me lose my mind.

“We seem to have a habit of getting caught in the rain,” I joked.

“And needing to fuck after it,” he said, but there was no teasing in his voice. Just lust. I noted his use of the word needing. Not want. Need.

I watched as he caressed my body with his gaze, hot on my hard nipples, then lingering on my scars. Something unreadable crossed his expression and then he stared into my eyes. “You’re so beautiful.”

His tender sincerity made me feel weirdly shy, and I was not shy. “Saying that while I look like a drowned rat, you must mean it.”

But Lachlan didn’t seem in the mood for joking. He drew me close, taking my right nipple in his mouth. I exhaled on his name as he sucked and laved. A whimper of need escaped me when he stopped. “Look at me.”

I did, arching my back, pushing into the hard need of him beneath me.

Our eyes held, and my desire tightened as he gently squeezed my breasts, his thumb caressing my nearest scar. “You’re the most truly alive person I’ve ever met.”

I sucked in a breath at the compliment. “Lachlan.”

A fierceness, something akin to anger, sparked in his blue eyes. “When you meet him, the man you want to settle down with … make sure he’s perfect.” His voice was hoarse as he confessed, “I don’t think I could live with anything else.”

Emotion clogged my throat. At what he said. And what he didn’t say.

Afraid of those feelings, I smirked, bent my head to his and murmured against his mouth, “To hell with perfect. Perfect is boring.” Then I kissed him. Hard. Hungry.

His big palm cradled the back of my head, holding me to him as he took over. Just as voracious, just as devouring.

And it was so much more than just a kiss.

27

Lachlan

“You know, if you’re going to brood, this is the wrong place to do it.”

The familiar feminine voice jerked Lachlan out of his musings. He spun in his green leather captain’s chair and smiled at Lucy leaning against the doorway to his stage office. “You’re back.”

She pushed off the doorjamb with a glamorous smile and sashayed across the room toward him. Her silk summer dress rippled with the movement, and he thought about how elegant she was in her high heels and how it wasn’t quite as sexy as Robyn’s athletic grace.

Damn.

He’d started doing that, and he wasn’t quite sure how to stop.

Comparing every woman to Robyn.

“I’m back.” Lucy sighed and settled her pert bottom on his desk in front of him. “And glad to be back.”

“Kept your room for you.”

“I noticed. Thank you.”

“How did the meetings go?”

“Okay, I guess. Nothing sparked my passion.”

“Maybe you should start screenwriting. Write something you want to star in.”

Her lips parted. “I, uh … I actually already have started writing. You think I can do it? That I’m capable?”

“I think you’re capable of anything you put your mind to.”