He didn’t ask, but she didn’t mind at all, because that meant his hands were all over her, but extra slippery. And there was a wickedness in his gaze as he tended to her breasts with particular care, until she was rising up on her tiptoes, arching her back, pressing herself even more fully into his palms.
And by the time they were both squeaky clean, she was panting again, with this maddening need for him that only seemed to get worse.
He took her out of the shower, toweled her off and then he led her out into the bedroom again, where it was still night, but barely. And they were both a bit damp as they rolled together on that great bed of his, and Jenny moaned out loud with sheer delight at the feel of his full, naked body stretched out against hers. All the places they were the same, and far more places where they were different.
Dylan brushed her wet hair back, and he took her mouth, and still they rolled this way, then that, as he kissed her with the same raw power he’d done everything else. And she could feel him again, hard and ready.
He pulled back, and then went for his nightstand, but she’d had him in her mouth. She didn’t want to feel anything between them. She wanted the full experience.
“I’m on the pill,” she panted at him. “I told you already. And I fully trust your test results. We’re both gloriously adult, we’ve had a frank discussion and I really, really want to feel you inside me. Just you, Dylan.”
It seemed to take him a long, long time to look back at her. And when he did, she felt everything tremble. The way he looked at her made her quake.
He reached for her, and then pulled her over him, settling her into place astride him.
“Go on,” he said as she braced herself against his chest, and looked down at him with delight. “For that, you can play awhile.”
“I’m on top. Does that mean I get to be in charge?”
There was a flash of his grin, but it was a sharp, edgy thing. “I said you can play. Make yourself come, however you can. See how long it takes you.”
She was in the grip of that fever that never ended, so she didn’t waste time asking for clarification. She didn’t care. Dylan was sprawled out beneath her and she lifted herself up, canting her hips back so she could find the broad head of his cock with her pussy. Then she began to work him inside of her.
She was wet and slippery, and so hot he hissed a little as he slid into her.
And she had half a mind to tease them both, to draw it out.
But he felt too good. She wanted him too desperately. And his hands were looped around her waist, part of this but not helping her, as she settled herself down and took all of him.
And then she began to rock herself silly.
His cock was a wonder, so big it rubbed up hard against that spot inside of her that made her feel loopy. And every time she rocked herself against him, the hard wall of his abdomen rubbed against her clit.
And she was shaking and sobbing as she moved, faster and faster, using every part of her that she could to make it better. Worse. Whatever those words even meant when it was this good. This hot. This wildly intense.
And then she was coming again, in a great, shuddering, tight wriggle of sensation.
Jenny thought she heard him laughing, dark and low.
She slumped against him, tears streaming down her cheeks again. She was gasping for breath, aware of too many things even as the aftershocks ripped through her.
The way he cradled her head against his chest. The way his other hand tracked down the length of her spine, as if to remind her where she was.
But best of all, he remained hard as steel deep inside her.
When she lifted her head, his green eyes were glittering.
Dylan wrapped his arms around her, shifted slightly and then he took control.
He fucked her, hard.
The harder and wilder he went, the more she felt like liquid gold with the rush of it. She was lost again. She was part of him. Coming and coming, until she couldn’t tell the difference between coming and not coming, when there was only him. And the relentless way he drove inside of her.
On and on, until there was no difference between the way she sobbed and the way she shuddered. It was all Dylan.
And when he came again, he shouted out her name.
Then held her there, still sprawled on top of him. She tucked her face against his chest, and listened to his heart thunder beneath her ear.
Outside, dawn was breaking.
And Jenny knew that she’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted. What she’d asked for.
She’d been properly fucked, finally.
And more than that, she was well and truly fucked, in every other sense of the word.
Because somewhere during that last, abandoned sprint into the deepest joy she’d ever known, the truth had slammed into her along with yet another orgasm.
She’d been keeping this door shut tight as long as she’d known him. And there’d been a reason for that.
Because now that door between them was wide open, and it was far worse than she’d thought it would be.
She was in love with Dylan Kilburn. She suspected she always had been.
But he’d made it clear that he wasn’t going to fall in love with her.
And Jenny had no earthly idea how she was going to live with that once she left Australia, returned to her life and married Conrad, as planned.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE EXPECTED HER to leave, but she stayed.
She stayed, and they fell face forward into one of those dreams Dylan knew all too well. The dream where Jenny lived here, with him. She slept in his bed and left her things cluttering up his countertop in the bathroom. Bizarre female things that he found fascinating, given the size of her collection and how little she used them. She started to hum again, tuneless little ditties beneath her breath as she moved around the place, and the big, heartbreakingly bright smile she gave him when he joined in made them both laugh.
Dylan knew it couldn’t last, that it wasn’t real. That was why he didn’t do anything truly foolish, like tell his office he would be unavailable for the foreseeable future. And while he thought that his daily forays into reality would make this stolen time with her better, it didn’t.
Because if he’d holed up with Jenny on a deserted island somewhere, it would have been a holiday for both of them. And he knew full well that holidays couldn’t last. They never did.
Instead, he just...had Jenny. In his life. The way he’d always wanted her.
Sometimes she met him out in the city, and he took her to his favorite restaurants. New flash bars and local dives. His club, when he couldn’t make it home without having her. Other nights, he met her back at his and cooked for her, if he had a mind to. Or sometimes, he came in to find her throwing a dinner together for the two of them.
It all made his heart do strange and terrible things inside his chest.
Having Jenny in his bed made it far too easy to imagine what it would be like if this was real. Jenny, there in the mornings. All that texting they did, but with Jenny actually there to pop in for lunch. Or to walk the coastal path with him. Jenny to reach over and hold his hand while they talked, as if that was the most natural thing in the world.
And in between all those sweet, domestic moments he’d never wanted, and yet found he hungered for, he got his hands on her. His hands, his mouth, his cock. And he got to live out every last fantasy he’d ever had involving this woman. From cranky morning sex to long, slow, torture for them both. He got to experiment with tying her up to his bed, bending her over the furniture, and watching how melty and sweet she got when he ordered her about.
He kept waiting for a hitch. For something to change, and ruin this thing they had going on. He expected that sooner or later, the fire would dim a bit.
But it only got stronger. The more he had her, inventive and
mad, or intense and quiet, the more he wanted her.
He didn’t see how he would ever be over it. The clutch of her pussy on his cock, the eagerness of her mouth. And that virgin ass he’d claimed as his, and his alone.
One night, he came home after a particularly long day filled with irritating meetings and the kind of bad mood that even the thought of his Jenny couldn’t alleviate. That was what he thought, anyway, as he came in and saw her curled up in the chair in his bedroom, a book in her lap and her gaze on the sea outside.
And she made his heart flip around inside his chest, but today that made his temper kick in.
Because the longer she stayed, the easier it was to forget that this was only temporary. Dylan couldn’t let himself get used to the lift he got when he walked in his house to find her there, because soon enough there would be nothing there but memories. For all the talk they’d had about proper fucking, he knew full well who it was who was getting well and truly fucked here.
“You don’t look happy,” she observed, quietly.
“I don’t want to talk,” he told her, his voice a low growl. “I want to fuck.”
Jenny stared at him a moment, but she didn’t snap back at him. Instead, she stood. And as he watched, peeled off the long-sleeved shirt and flowy pants she wore. Then, still holding his gaze, she walked over to the bed with all her natural elegance, and sat there on the foot of it.
Like the bloody queen.
That only made him angrier. Dylan stalked toward her, that raging thing in him a drumbeat against his ribs. When he got to the foot of the bed, he reached out and hauled her toward him. He tipped her back so that her legs were in the air, her head was back on the bed and he could pull her hips to the edge.
He reached down, yanked the zipper of his jeans open, and his cock was already hard. Ready. Because his cock was always hard and ready when Jenny was around. That was the problem.
And she was already wet for him. Because she was always wet for him, and that was one more thing that wouldn’t matter when she left him.
Dylan slammed into her with no foreplay and no kind words, just her hips high and her legs splayed open.
She screamed with that same bright joy that lanced through him, arching up off the bed. He gripped her hips and hammered into her, because she was coming already. She was coming over and over, her pussy milking him, hot and tight.
And when she opened her eyes, her gaze was steady. Adoring.
Dylan reminded himself that was a lie, too. Or it wouldn’t last anyway, so it amounted to the same thing.
He pulled out and flipped her over, so she was bent there over the bed. And he didn’t have to look at those beautiful brown eyes so filled with emotion and pretend he didn’t know what he saw there.
Dylan slammed back into her from behind. He watched her dig her fists into the bedclothes as he pounded into her, their bodies making a delirious sort of slapping sound every time he sank himself to the root.
And he could feel it every time she constricted around him, shuddering and shuddering. He went harder. Deeper.
And when he came, he yelled her name the way he always did. He let himself fall down over her back, fully clothed except for his cock. And because she couldn’t see him, or what might be written all over his face, he buried his head in her neck.
Dylan tried to breathe. He’d spent all these years fucking other women and pretending they were her. He’d made a hobby out of it. But now he knew better.
Now he knew.
And he didn’t see how he was going to go fooling his cock into thinking that anyone else was her. That anything else was this.
His breath sawed in and out of him. Everything hurt, and not from exertion. Jenny’s lips were parted as she did her own bit of panting, and her eyelashes were dark against her cheeks. He would remember this, too. It would haunt him.
Her lashes fluttered as she opened her eyes, and then she smiled over her shoulder, intimate and soft. Dylan pulled out and turned her over, lifting her up so he could get his mouth on hers.
And he kissed her, haunted already while she was still right here, until they were both a little dizzy. Then they both lay there, breathless again, as the ocean crashed around outside and absolutely nothing changed between them.
Because it never would. Why couldn’t he hold on to that the way he should?
“You’re going to have to go soon,” he said, because not saying it was no longer doing the trick. “Have you sorted out your plane ticket yet?”
He turned his head to look at her, stretched out beside him, and there was something stark and awful on her face. But she looked away before he could look too closely. And Dylan didn’t like the fact that she was hiding something from him, or that she was feeling something she didn’t want to share.
He wouldn’t wish the hurt in him on anyone, especially not Jenny.
But he couldn’t say he hated the idea, either.
If she hurt a little more, maybe she’d hurt him less.
And maybe you’re a bleeding idiot, a caustic voice in him snarled.
“I keep meaning to do that,” she said softly. To the ceiling.
Dylan sighed. “You can’t hide forever, Jenny.”
“On the contrary.” And when she looked back at him, there was something wise and weary in her pretty eyes. It made the ache in him deepen. “It turns out you can hide forever. All you have to do is pretend to be blind.”
“People are blind for a whole host of reasons,” he countered. He wanted to pull her close. Or jackknife up, then storm about the room, pacing out this mess in him. But more than that, he wanted to pretend. He wanted to keep on pretending, because that was how this worked. That was how this had always worked. “And those reasons aren’t going to go away simply because a person takes a long holiday and engages in a little unexpected intimacy with an old friend.”
“It’s not unexpected to you,” she said quietly. “You told me it would happen.”
And there was a part of Dylan that wanted this so badly that he thought he might break out in blisters from the wanting.
But he wasn’t made of steel. And he knew what that look in her eyes meant. He was sure it was in his, too—the only grace in that being that it had always been in his eyes and all over his face. She wouldn’t see any shift because there hadn’t been one.
You’ll have to be fine with this as is, he told himself stoutly. Bloody martyr that he’d always been. You always thought that given the chance, she’d be head over heels in love with you. And so she is.
But he couldn’t celebrate his rightness, because it didn’t matter. It changed nothing. She was Lady Jenny Markham. And he might have put a shine on things since he’d left university, but he was still nothing more than one of those Kilburns. He’d made a silk purse out of the proverbial pig’s ear, but that didn’t change what he was. Who he was.
Money would never change where he’d come from.
And a few weeks in sunny Australia, taking in the Tasman Sea, didn’t change everything he knew to be true about Lady Jenny. Or, more important, Lord Fuckface himself.
Jenny might not want her arranged marriage any longer, when this was said and done. But when she got away from Dylan and flew back to England, reality would trickle in. She would remember who she was. Who she’d always been. And the complexities of the life she’d planned out long before she’d decided to come down under and see what she was missing.
Dylan knew that all he had to do was give her the faintest signal, and she would tell him every last thing he’d waited his whole life to hear. That she loved him. That finally, finally, she loved him.
And there was a part of him that wanted that almost more than he could bear.
He reached over and smoothed her hair back from her face. He saw her eyes get glassy, and he felt that same emotion land on his chest like a block of concrete.
Because she hadn’t treated him like all those other boys back when. Because he was the one she called her friend.
Dylan had always held that as a sacred trust.
Because he’d never been one of the wankers. He’d truly been her friend—that part hadn’t been pretending. And that meant that now, he had to be a better friend to her than she was to herself. If he bailed on her when it mattered most, he’d be no better than every last one of those tossers who’d tried to use her for their own ends.
Dylan would bloody well love her enough to let her go.
He was sure he’d seen that shit embroidered on a tea towel somewhere.
She was still gazing at him, everything he’d ever wanted right there in her eyes—but he knew it wasn’t what she wanted. He never had been.
“I told you what would happen,” he agreed, and made himself sound kind. “It’s a byproduct of proper fucking, remember? I did warn you.”
Her eyes were glassier, then. And he knew he’d hurt her, he hated that he’d hurt her, but it couldn’t be helped.
“A byproduct,” she repeated, her voice thick. She cleared her throat. “How long does it take for it to go away?”
His hand was still on her face, and he couldn’t bring himself to let go. “Not long.”
“But what if—”
“There are some people in this life who’ve always known exactly what role they had to play,” he said, gruffly. “And how to play it. You’re one of them, Jenny. You’ve never wavered from the path you’re on. As you’d normally be the first to tell me.”
“This feels very far away from that path.”
Dylan wanted to break things. He frowned at her instead. “If you don’t want to marry Conrad, don’t. But you and I both know that you should never make decisions that will impact the rest of your life when you’re taking a vacation from that life. Go home, Jenny. Figure out what you want there, not here.”
“What happens if I go back to my life, marinate in it for the appropriate amount of time and still find that it doesn’t fit?”
Take Me Page 12