Page 55 of Finding the One (River Rain #7)

He pulled me off him, rolled me to my back, and, starting just above the hair between my legs, he licked, sucked, nipped and kissed a line up my body, my throat, over my chin to my mouth where he kissed me deeply.

I so fucking loved this man.

And I was so fucking his good girl.

When he broke our kiss, he brushed our noses, then used his to slide along my jaw, before he asked in my ear, “Ye all right?”

“Do you mean my back?”

He lifted his head.

Before he could answer, I said, “Because you can’t mean me after you got me off while holding me up from the bed with only one arm and fucking me stupid. Because I’m totally okay with that.”

He smiled, there was only a little smugness, mostly it was just happy, and that made me happy, then he said, “Aye. I mean your back.”

“Hunky dory,” I told him.

“My Blake, wearing ponchos and saying shite like hunky dory.”

I pulled a face.

He smiled again.

I pulled a bigger face.

He started chuckling.

Ugh.

“Get off me, you big lug,” I demanded. “I need to go clean up.”

He didn’t get off me.

He kissed me again.

Only after he’d done a thorough job of that did he roll off and order, “Go clean up. If your back is okay, it’s time for round two.”

Really?

Nice.

With that promise, I didn’t waste time getting out of bed and going to the bathroom to clean up.

And then I didn’t waste time heading back for round two.

“We’re hashtag Blair.”

“What?” I asked, turning from the magazine I was reading on the plane from Dublin to Edinburgh to see Dair holding his phone my way.

“They gave us one of those mashup names. We’re hashtag team Blair.”

I took his phone from him and saw he was on TikTok.

It was silent, but on the screen was a talking head, and behind her was a picture of me on a horse, Dair standing next to it, holding the bridle.

I didn’t remember for certain, but I thought I was eight in that picture, which meant he was eleven.

We were at Treverton.

And we were smiling at the camera, probably because Kenna took that picture.

And when we’d gone over the photos we were okay to release, I’d given Dair all kinds of shit at the proof he knew full well I liked horses, so he was just being a bratty boy when he was giving me shit about their Clydesdales.

But on his phone, this picture segued to a snap of us outside a café on one of the few sunny days we’d had lately.

That café was in Clevedon, by the beach, and Hale was with us.

We were all laughing, but Dair and I were sitting close.

Making us closer, I was leaning into him, and he was taking my weight.

It was snapped by someone during our lunch.

And in the caption #TeamBlair could be seen.

I positioned myself in the seat so that Dair could see the phone.

I then touched the hashtag which brought us to a grid of a number of videos, some of which you could see the childhood pictures that had been released, others were pictures of us at Edinburgh Airport, King’s Cross station, the lunch with Hale, in cars going to and from Treverton, me, Alex and Marlo sitting at the rugby match Dair was calling and Mum’s funeral.

The most recent video on the grid being a picture of us touching lips before I’d folded into the car at the stadium not but hours ago.

Dair was holding the back door of the car open for me.

Boy, Bally didn’t mess around.

“Go to Signe’s page,” Dair ordered.

I went to search, typed her name in, and tapped one of the videos that clearly had Dair in it.

“Comments, lassie,” Dair directed.

I hit the dialogue bubble at the side and the comments came up.

The first one said, OMG. It’s been years. Let it go .

That one had thousands of likes and seventy-four replies. I tapped the reply line, and the first one under it said, Right? Just…GROSS!

The one after that, Blake is so many levels up from her, Signe can’t even see her. She knows it and it’s driving her crazy. But I’m happy for them. #teamblairforever!

A tiny giggle escaped me.

I closed that thread, and the next comment down on the video said, This is getting sad. Let the man be happy, FFS .

And the next, Get over it. The ship has sailed for Wallace to be your meal ticket .

Harsh.

But true.

The next one, Should this be reported? It’s getting into the zone of stalking . At least it feels that way .

The next, Can you spell pathetic? It starts with an S and ends with an i-g-n-e .

Again, harsh.

But, by my estimation, true.

There wasn’t anything better after that. In fact, for Signe, they just got worse. Even in two scrolls, there wasn’t a single positive comment.

Dair closed the screen and took the phone from me.

“Think she’ll give up on the whole star-crossed lover shite after that,” he said.

Oh, she was one thousand percent going to give it up. No woman could take that much abuse, even if she was addicted to attention.

Trust me, I knew.

I settled happily in my seat and was about to return to my magazine when Dair spoke.

“Life is fucking weird,” he said. “But it can’t be denied, it gives us the skills we need to survive.”

No, indeed.

That couldn’t be denied.

And I absolutely adored that he twisted the way I struggled through those years in order to put a positive spin on it.

Regardless, even with that spin, what he said was true, and that was best of all.

I smiled at him.

He kissed my smile.

Then he put his ear buds in and went to some sports thing on his phone.

I pulled my iPad out of my tote and handed it to him so he’d have a bigger screen.

“Thanks, love,” he murmured and sorted himself out.

I went back to my magazine.