And he hated the anguish he could hear in her voice. The little crack in it, the darkness in her gaze.
“You have a life already. It fits you perfectly. You’re the one who told me you needed to arrange a life around your head. Not your heart. And certainly not what’s between your legs.”
“Sometimes I think what’s between my legs is the most honest part of me.”
“Coming feels like honesty,” he agreed, gritting the words out. “But in the end, you can make yourself come with a vibrator. With your own fingers. And if it’s just wanking in the end, you don’t want to make it into something more.”
“Dylan.” His name was like a sob. “You have to know that I—”
But he moved his fingers to cover her mouth, because there was only so much of this he could take, and he’d passed that mark some time ago.
“I want you to imagine explaining this to your father,” he said, his voice stern. And he tried to keep all that fury and hopelessness locked tight inside him. “The honesty of your pussy, for example. Will you sit down in his sodding great hall and tell him that? To explain why you’ve suddenly changed the whole of your life?”
“No,” she whispered. “I certainly will not. And thank you for the...clarification.”
That last word was a blow, aimed straight for the gut, but he made himself stay where he was. Jenny rolled up, then sat there for a moment with her back to him.
Then she got up and walked away.
Dylan let her go.
Because it was high time he started practicing for the real thing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JENNY DIDN’T BOOK her ticket home the next day, as Dylan had been certain she would.
Another week rolled by, still glorious in all the same ways, but there was an edge to it now. Something dark in the midst of all that glory. And Dylan found he missed the sheer joy of his fantasy come true, but he told himself this way was better. Because this was the truth.
There was an end coming. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. Better, maybe.
But on some nights it was all too easy to forget.
Tonight, Jenny met him at his office. She smiled politely at his secretary, looking entirely too elegant and pulled together to be the same woman who, a few nights back, had met him in this very same office, and come away with rug burn on her knees.
She’d laughed that heart-stopping laugh of hers, still there on her hands and knees, and called her marks badges of honor.
Tonight it was cold and rainy. Jenny shivered in the coat she wore as they made their way down the street toward the restaurant Dylan had picked.
“I keep forgetting it’s winter here,” she said.
“Winter has a way of reminding you it’s around,” he replied. “Like it or not.”
And he was trying so hard to remember different things, now. While she told him stories from her work at her charity, he watched her hands. And that ring she’d never removed in all the time she’d been here. Despite the things they’d done. The ring that told the truth about her intentions no matter how confused she imagined she was.
It’s only a matter of time, he reminded himself. She’ll be gone before you know it.
Still, when their dinner was finished, he had every intention of taking her home, getting her naked and indulging them both. Letting their bodies say all the things he wouldn’t let them say in words.
But his mobile chimed in his pocket on the street outside the restaurant, and he swore when he saw the message. “I’m going to have to go back to the office.”
“That’s all right,” Jenny said. With another one of those smiles that killed him. “I’ll wait for you.”
And once again, Dylan was torn. Because he had to make an unpleasant call—and possibly deal with a whole host of other calls after it—and the part of him that had been ruined for this woman pretty much at first sight loved the idea of her waiting for him. Sitting on the couch in his office like another page out of some sweet, domestic book he would’ve laughed at, had he ever read such a thing. That she wanted to spend time with him even when it wasn’t all about her made his heart seem to thud a little harder.
But on the other hand, it was one more thing he would have to forget when she was gone.
And he was weak, because he took her with him back to the office. And debated making the call he needed to after all, because she was so happy to wave him off and turn her attention to what she told him was a massive library on her mobile. He thought of other women he’d spent time with, and how little they would have understood him cutting a night short. And Dylan really didn’t need more reasons to think that Jenny was perfect.
He already bloody knew.
When he checked in on her later, between disasters, she’d fallen asleep. She was curled up on his couch, her pretty shoes kicked aside. He pulled her coat over her like a blanket. Then he kissed her on her temple.
And he wished he was less her friend and more the ruthless bastard he was in every other area of his life. He could take that ring off her finger and smash it. He could spirit her off somewhere and maroon her there, until the next thing she begged for was his ring. He could marry her, get a few kids on her and indulge this fantasy of his in every possible way.
A bastard like that wouldn’t care how she’d feel some years down the road, when the enormity of how hugely she’d disappointed her father would kick in. He’d weather it, not giving a shit, because he’d have her. Having her would be the only thing that mattered—not how she felt about it.
And not how the world would view it. They would tut and smirk and no doubt get far nastier, if it suited them. No one would ever accept that their beloved Lady Jenny should fall so far, and end up linked forever to a bit of Irish trash.
He couldn’t help but wish he cared more about the end result and less about how he’d get them there. It would make everything so much easier.
But Dylan had learned a long time ago that there was no profit in wishing. The only thing that mattered in this world was what a man did.
So he kissed her, then he left her and went back to tend this empire he’d built. Because his business was the only thing that was real. And it was the only thing he would have left when she came to her senses.
He didn’t finish until the early morning.
He went into his office again, and woke her this time. As much because he thought he should take her home as for the simple pleasure of watching her blink at him, then smile the way she always did. As if waking up to see him before her was a gift.
God help him, but he was going to miss that.
“Well?” Her voice was foggy as she pushed herself up to sitting position. “Have you staved off disaster?”
“After a fashion.”
“I believe in you,” she said, still smiling.
Dylan couldn’t keep himself from leaning forward and capturing her mouth. And as usual, he didn’t know how to kiss her...appropriately.
Because a simple taste of her was never enough.
It got raw, fast. He found his hands in her hair, and he was angling his mouth over hers for better depth. And he didn’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t pulled back, her eyes dilated and her breath all but gone.
“Are we alone here?” she asked.
Dylan muttered a few choice swearwords. Because they weren’t. “No. Half my staff could walk in at any moment.”
Jenny smiled again, and maybe he was only imagining that it was more muted than before. Something like sad. She reached over and ran her thumb over his mouth, for a change.
“I’m up for anything,” she told him. “It surprises me how true that is, in fact. But I think I’d rather not expose myself to your entire company.”
Dylan had a better idea. He stood, pulling her up with him. He grabbed her coat, tossed it to her and then took her hand in
his.
“Where are we going?” she asked, laughing, after he hustled her into the lift, and then, when it took them all the way down to ground level, hurried her out the door into the cold early morning street. “Am I going to take a car home?”
And he loved that she called his house home. Just like he loved that her being there made it feel more like a home than it ever had before. Because that was Jenny, really. Always his homecoming, no matter where she was or why. And no matter how soon she might leave him again.
He intended to celebrate that in the most carnal way possible today, and as quickly as possible.
“You’re not taking a car home,” he said. Shortly.
“You thought a kiss like that was a good precursor for a brisk walk?” But she was laughing as he hurried her down the street, away from his office building.
“Pick up the pace,” he advised her, steering them toward the Rocks.
And he could see she understood where they were going the minute they turned into the laneways. She laughed. And she was still laughing when he took her in through that same red door. And when he nodded and murmured something to the man at the desk.
But Dylan couldn’t wait to find an open room. He needed a taste to tide him over while he dealt with such practicalities.
He swept her into the first alcove they passed, hoping that the early hour meant that no one really saw the way he was kissing her. And maybe also not caring too much if they did.
He pressed her back against the wall, and she wound herself around him instantly. His hand moved of its own accord to get a good grip on the plump curve of her ass, and he loved the greedy little noise she made in return. Lust and encouragement. Need.
It was never enough.
It was never, ever enough, no matter how he kissed her, no matter how tightly she pressed herself against him.
And she was still laughing whenever he pulled away to catch his breath, but he wasn’t laughing at all. Dylan had forgotten entirely that he was meant to be her friend first, because she tasted like fire and rain at once. Because she inflamed him and she soothed him, all at the same time, and it only made him want her more. And he had loved her so long now that each new layer was less a revelation and more a confirmation.
She was the love of his life. She always had been.
She always will be, something in him said, like a dark prophecy.
And at some point he realized that someone was standing there, much too close to their not-so-private alcove. He assumed it was a staff member, come to gently suggest they find a private room, so he pulled away from Jenny. Little as he wanted to stop kissing her.
He automatically twisted to block her, because the staff here might have been paid handsomely to maintain their discretion, but he didn’t particularly like anyone looking at his woman.
His friend, he corrected himself acidly.
But when he looked at the man standing there, it was instantly clear that he was no staff member.
He stood tall and faintly disapproving, and he reeked of power and consequence. Though what he wore was not in and of itself particularly telling, it was the way he wore it. Dark trousers. A dark shirt. And the coldest gray eyes Dylan had ever seen.
Something clicked in him. This man was familiar.
Next to him, half behind him, Dylan heard Jenny pull in a sharp breath.
In distress.
And he knew. If he thought about it, he could even see the family resemblance to Erika.
He fucking knew.
And in that rush of recognition, he had to face the unpalatable fact that it was a lot easier to think about what a great friend he was in the abstract. Because it felt a whole lot more like dying now that it was happening. Now that he had the opportunity to prove it.
The man before him kept his gaze trained on Dylan for a long, frigid moment. Then he shifted it over Dylan’s shoulder, and Dylan could feel Jenny’s whole body jolt.
And he wanted to come out swinging. He wanted to teach the rich fuck standing before him exactly why he shouldn’t tangle with a man who’d been an Irish brawler before he’d ponced off to Oxford with the rest of them.
But that was the sort of thing a man who was in love with Jenny would do.
Dylan’s job was to be Jenny’s friend. Her best friend. That was the promise he’d made.
When that glacial gray gaze tracked back to him, Dylan didn’t react the way he wanted to. He made himself stand still.
He forced himself to do nothing at all.
“You must be the famous Dylan Kilburn,” the other man said, his voice precise. And frigid. “I believe you were at Oxford with my sister.”
“Guilty as charged, mate,” Dylan managed to say. And while he didn’t strike the easy, friendly note he was going for, he also didn’t sound entirely like he was chewing on broken glass, so he chalked it up as a win.
“I’m Conrad Vanderburg,” the other man said, as if Dylan might not have figured that out already. “And it appears you’ve already met my fiancée.”
“Conrad...” Jenny began, pushing out from behind Dylan’s shoulder.
And everything in him demanded that he pull her back. That he handle this. That he do whatever he needed to do—beat his chest, roar. Come over like the raging Neanderthal creature he’d always been, just there beneath his skin.
He ached with the need to beat Conrad back, using whatever means necessary to get him away from Jenny.
But no matter what happened here, he knew where this would end. Where it was always going to end.
“If you don’t mind,” Conrad said, with such scrupulous politeness that it made Jenny flinch and Dylan want to break things—more things—“I’d like to have a word with my future wife.”
Jenny took a deep breath, and Dylan could see what she was about to do written all over her face.
And he was the best friend she would ever have. He loved her more than he would ever love anything in this life or the next. Dylan knew that, because, instead of standing there between Jenny and her future, he stepped aside.
Literally.
“Of course,” he said.
He nodded at Conrad as if they were exchanging business cards. He forced himself to look at Jenny, and it was worse than he’d expected. She was staring at him, shock and betrayal on her face, because she already knew what he was doing. That was the trouble with all this friendship shit. There was no goddamn mystery, and that was one more thing he was going to make certain to beat out of himself as he got home.
He nodded at her, too. “Take care, Jenny.”
Dylan thought he heard her say his name, but he made himself walk away. He imagined them retreating back into texts as the weeks went by. There would be fewer and fewer of those as time went on, he imagined. It would be easier to forget. To pretend. To head back to England and plan her wedding, the way she should have been doing all along. She would invite him, no doubt, and he would go and smile and toast her happiness, because that was what friends did. And in a handful of years it would be like none of this had ever happened. He would be nothing more to her than an old school friend she saw rarely, if at all.
He figured he was already more or less a memory by the time he pushed through the doors, back out into a bright, cold Sydney morning.
And there was nothing he could do about his heart. He’d lost that too long ago now to imagine he’d ever get it back.
But he was a proud Irish man, a saint and a scholar through and through, and well did he know the cure for a spot of heartache. If not for what ailed him, then for what he was going to have to live through now that it was done.
It was finally done.
And Dylan might not find what he was looking for in the bottom of a bottle, but he planned to do a whole lot of asking anyway.
Until what hurt was his head—not that gaping, empty hole where his h
eart hadn’t been since Jenny had claimed it with a happy laugh when they were both eighteen.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CONRAD ORDERED TEA.
On the list of things that were epically wrong with this moment, this engagement of hers and her entire life, Jenny had to place that at the very top.
The world was ending and Conrad ordered tea. As if he was a proper Englishman when she was the one with the British title and the bloodline to match.
And the word proper kicked around inside of her, spiked and mean, until she felt more or less bloodied, inside and out.
The tea service arrived, and Jenny had been entirely too well taught to sit back listlessly. Or to slump over and wail, the way she had half a mind to do. So she busied herself pouring out steaming cups, asking muted questions about sugar and cream and then sitting there in the little study Conrad had led her to, staring across a fine antique table at this man there was no possible way she could marry.
He gazed back at her with absolutely no expression on his face.
Clinically speaking, he was a handsome man. Jenny knew that, even if she didn’t feel the way a prospective wife likely should. Erika had spent the whole of their friendship moaning about how cold her brother was, how cruel, but Jenny had never seen any of that herself. He was simply...expressionless, always.
But what she hadn’t understood until now was that he had never truly focused all of his attention on her before.
It was...intense. Something very nearly alarming.
The full force of his attention made her want to squirm. But she didn’t.
“This is very awkward,” she said instead, because it seemed better to say it than to continue to sit there in silence.
Conrad only gazed back at her, as unreadable as before.
“I certainly never anticipated that you would see...that.” Jenny knew she should start apologizing, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Because she wasn’t sorry. If anything, she was sorry that Conrad had interrupted them. “I realize that we never spoke directly about fidelity, but it can’t have been pleasant to look up and see...” She blew out a breath and stared down at her tea, not remotely tempted to take a sip. “I take it you’re a member of this club?”
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