“Arguing with you turns me on.” I snorted, not able to make sense of it.
Lachlan grinned as he braced himself over me. “Back at you, Braveheart.”
I raised my eyebrows, opened my mouth to query the endearment, but as he surged into me, all that came out was a cry of relief.
Yeah, this was what I needed. Wanted. Craved.
Craved.
Caressing my hands down his back to his ass, lust rippled in my belly at the feel of his powerful, muscular body beneath my fingertips. I wanted more. I didn’t want to be loved. After the night I’d had, I wanted to be screwed into oblivion.
Squeezing his ass, I arched into his thrusts, pulling him deeper into me.
It was fast, furious, sweat coating our skin as our bodies met with wild abandon. Lachlan came first, and the orgasm seemed to surprise him.
I barely gave him a chance to catch his breath before I used a grappling move to reverse our positions. Straddling him, his expression still ragged with his climax, I undulated on him. I lost myself, became this sensuous, uninhibited creature, displaying my body for him, touching myself until I knew he was ready again.
Then I rode him.
I rode him hard until he bucked beneath me in a hoarse yell of pleasure. Seeing him lose control took me over the edge, and I cried out his name like a plea.
Lachlan didn’t leave.
I’d expected after our animal passions were spent, he’d leave my bed and return to his own. Instead, he pulled me into his embrace as the clock on the bedside table told me it was nearing sunrise. I should have been exhausted. Only a while ago, I was. Now I felt wide awake again.
Letting him hold me, trying not to read anything into it, I noted his knuckles for the first time.
They were swollen.
His words from our earlier argument came back to me. Women he cared about were hurt by men today. My good cheek to this chest, I reached out to stroke a finger over his bruised knuckles. “What happened today?”
Lachlan heaved a sigh beneath me. Then he told me about Arrochar and Guy.
I tensed with outrage. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Unfortunately not.”
“Is she okay?”
“I left her sleeping at my place a few hours before I came back to the castle to check on things. She seems to be handling it well.” He rubbed a hand down my arm. “I asked her to think about training with you. Tonight proved unequivocally that you can teach her to defend herself.”
“I’d be happy to show her some moves.” I sat up to search his face. “Are you okay?”
“Shit day,” he admitted, concern open and clear for me to see in his expression. “But fuck, am I glad you can defend yourself.”
In other words … I was always more than a warm body to him.
“I said some things I shouldn’t have.”
“It’s done.”
“I’m sorry.” I stroked his chest.
“You were attacked because of me, Robyn. You’re not the one who needs to apologize.”
“I presumed some very not-nice things about you.” I began to move down his body.
He raised an eyebrow. “Where are you going?”
I smiled saucily at him. “Words are just words,” I whispered huskily. “An apology has more impact in action.”
As my lips closed around him, Lachlan arched his neck and hissed with pleasure. “Fuck, woman,” he panted as I continued to apologize with gusto. “On second thought,” he huffed, curling his fingers lightly in my hair, our hazy, desire filled eyes locked, “apologize away.”
When I was finished apologizing, Lachlan decided he owed me an apology too.
Coming down from orgasm, the beautiful Scot climbed back up my body and collapsed at my side. “Now I could sleep all day,” he muttered, snuggling in beside me.
I didn’t reply.
I was already drifting off, wonderfully satisfied, the horrendous events of the night forgotten in this mercurial man’s arms.
26
Robyn
The tender stroke of Lachlan’s fingertips up and down my arm made me feel drowsy and content.
Another night in his bed. Another night he pulled me back into it when I made a move to leave.
“You’re not what I expected,” I whispered.
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. I guess what I thought you were at first: an elitist, pretentious Hollywood star.”
He grinned at my brutal honesty. “Ex-Hollywood star.”
I returned his smile but continued, “Other than creating an elite product”—I gestured vaguely to the room, inferring the entire estate—“you understand this place, this lifestyle, isn’t what matters.”
The last three weeks had taught me this truth about Lachlan, more than the combustible weeks that led to the beginning of our affair. After my attack, once the police interviewed me and reinterviewed McCulloch and proved useless in procuring any evidence, or using the push dagger to find our man, things had gone quiet at Ardnoch again.
Stalker/attacker-wise.
As soon as she discerned I was okay, Lucy departed Scotland to meet with several producers and directors about potential future projects. But more members had descended on the castle. It was May, closing in on summer, when the estate was at its busiest. It was still strange to see famous people wandering around, working out in the gym, trailing caddies on the golf course, indulging in the spa, but I was getting a little used to it now. Besides, they weren’t all famous “faces.” There were a few writers and directors who I may have heard of in passing but couldn’t pick who they were out of a lineup.
It kept Lachlan busy while I produced photographs he’d commissioned for the castle. I was a little blown away that he’d asked, but he told me Arrochar had shown him my Instagram, and he genuinely loved what I could do. That meant a lot. During the hours I wasn’t adding to my portfolio, I still worked out with Eredine and added in one-on-one self-defense lessons with Arrochar in the early evenings.
There was an earthiness to Arrochar that Lachlan didn’t have. That wasn’t a bad thing. Not like I used to think. He just had this aura, this polish and self-assuredness that made even the most confident person feel a little intimidated by him. It didn’t help he wasn’t the easiest man to read, and he didn’t always give much away beyond base feelings or what was going on in the moment.
Lachlan rarely talked about his past, his parents, or life before the club. Arrochar, however, chatted to me about what it was like growing up with a bunch of boys after their mother’s death. Vivien Adair died from a blood clot after giving birth to Arrochar. Apparently, their father, Stuart, struggled after their mom’s death, and his sister, Imogen, helped raise the kids for a year before he got himself together, but she’d remained as a mother figure in their lives. They had no grandparents on their mother’s side, but their paternal grandparents handed over their right to Ardnoch Estate and disappeared to South Australia to live a warmer, simpler life.
Arro was four when their Aunt Imogen died in a hiking accident, sending their father into another deep depression. Their grandparents returned for their daughter’s funeral but left Ardnoch behind for good afterward. They hadn’t seen them since, though they did send a Christmas hamper every year.