“Now I’ve seen all these different sides of you,” Jenny continued. “And I love them all. And I am staying in Australia, and I don’t give a toss if that doesn’t work for you, because this time your little speech didn’t work. I’m not going to wander off with a smile on my face like all those other girls. I’m going to stay right here. I’m going to do whatever it takes to prove to you that you can fall in love with me, you really can—”
Her voice began to crack, her eyes had gone glossy, and Dylan couldn’t bear it a moment longer. The idea that she believed he couldn’t love her felt like it might rip him apart.
“Stop,” he ordered her.
In that voice he usually used when she was naked.
And then he smiled, because she gulped back whatever it was she was about to say.
Because she was perfect. And she was here. And when he took a breath, trying to get his heart rate to settle down, he noticed that she was no longer wearing that obnoxious rock on her left hand.
“Where’s your ring?” he asked.
“I gave it back to Conrad,” Jenny told him. She lifted her chin defiantly. “Then I rang my father and told him that I wasn’t going to be marrying with my head, thank you. That after all this time, I finally realized that my heart had been stolen away a long time ago.” Her chest heaved, as if there were sobs in there fighting to get out. “Because it was. Because I love you, Dylan. And I don’t understand why you think you can’t love me back, but I’m hoping I can convince you to try.”
“Jenny,” he said, because it was all he could say. Because her name had always been his favorite song.
He reached out and tugged her close, so he could look deep into her eyes. And get his hands on her, where they belonged.
“Just try,” she was saying urgently. “I promise, if you still can’t love me after a reasonable amount of time—let’s say six months—I’ll accept it.” When he didn’t speak, because he thought his chest was broken in half, she kept going. “Three months. Okay, a month. Just give me a chance.”
And then she fell silent, as if something on his face took her words away.
But that was just grand, because he finally found his voice.
“I told you I couldn’t fall in love with you,” Dylan said quietly.
He smoothed her hair back from her face and he still couldn’t believe that this was happening. That they were standing here, with the Australian sun beating down on them, a world away and all these years later—and it was still the same. It was still so strong.
Stronger, now, than he’d ever believed possible. “Jenny, I’ve been in love with you all along. I loved you at first sight. And I’ve loved you since. And I knew that I could never have you, so I had you in the only way I could. Every woman I’ve ever touched was you. Every woman I’ve ever seen was you. And yet none of them were truly you, and I’d resigned myself to it. I’ve been loving you from afar forever.”
“But...but...” And she was sobbing then, or maybe she was laughing at the same time, and her eyes were so wide with wonder it was like he fell off the edge of the world and lost himself there. “You walked away. You left me with Conrad. You would have come to my wedding!”
“With a smile on my face,” Dylan agreed. “I vowed a long time ago that I would be what you needed, always. It was the only way I got to love you.”
“Dylan...” she whispered, and it was like a thousand earthquakes ripped them both open, but only light poured forth.
Then she was in his arms, and she was touching his face.
He was kissing her, or she was kissing him.
And it wasn’t about sex. It wasn’t about friendship. It was both of those things, wrapped up tight, tangled up as only they could make it, and made new.
Made theirs.
They kept saying it. I love you.
Over and over again, as if they were remaking the world every time they said the words. Making all the dark years behind them light, because they’d ended up here.
Out in the light, bathed in love, at last.
That was how Dylan and his perfect Lady Jenny became one.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE DIDN’T GET any less bossy, Jenny reflected a year later, sitting out on that same deck.
In fact, the more time they spent together, the more deliciously commanding Dylan became.
It was winter again, but she still liked to sit outside. She liked to wait for Dylan to finish his early morning run and join her for a coffee before they drove into Sydney’s Central Business District together.
She liked the rhythms of this life of theirs. It was more joy than pain, more laughter than tears, and both of them were fully engaged. Committed.
Connected, she thought now.
Jenny had never left Sydney. She’d taken a month or so, what she and Dylan like to call their trial honeymoon, and had simply indulged herself in him. Lost herself in him. With no worries about disappointing her father, this time. And better yet, no fiancé.
Just Dylan. And his wicked imagination. And all the bossiness he could dream up and she could take.
Finally.
Are you ever coming back? Erika had texted a few days after that scene with Conrad. Jenny had doubted very much she knew what had happened. Or are you emigrating?
Jenny had found herself gnawing on her knuckle, so she’d picked up her mobile and called her best friend.
“The short version is that I broke up with your brother and am with Dylan now,” Jenny said when Erika answered. “And I guess that’s also the long version.”
And she didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t Erika’s whoop of laughter.
“I knew it!” she crowed.
“I thought you’d be more upset about the Conrad angle,” Jenny said after Erika’s laughter wound down.
“I probably would be if you’d been marrying each other for the right reasons,” her friend said after a moment. “But you never loved him. And Conrad doesn’t love anything. And you and Dylan should have gotten together years ago.”
Jenny couldn’t help but agree. Living with Dylan was easy. So easy, in fact, that they’d had more than a few conversations about whether or not it was too easy, and therefore destined to blow up in their faces. Yet as weeks turned to months, and months into seasons, it seemed less and less likely.
They’d been friends for years. And they’d been in love with each other all of that time. They knew each other’s weaknesses already, and then some, which helped. But better still, they were both so happy. Finally. Shifting their relationship into what it should have been all along felt like a gift.
The only friction they had they tended to work out in bed. Or with sex, anyway, bed not required.
Dylan didn’t have to hide all the different parts of himself any longer.
And Jenny didn’t have to pretend that she was endlessly serene.
Sometimes they shouted at each other because they could. Because passion could lead to temper, and neither one of them was perfect. But they always found a way back to laughter. And love.
And the simple beauty of his cock deep inside her, until neither one of them had the energy to fight.
She looked up and smiled when Dylan roamed out onto the deck a little while later. He sat down with her, picking her up and settling her in his lap the way he liked to do. Jenny sighed as his arms came around her. Then smiled as she felt his cock stir beneath her, because a year had passed and if anything, they wanted each other more.
She found new charities here in Australia, and new ways to give back. She and Dylan started their own scholarship program, the better to help kids like the one he’d been, hoping to break the family cycle.
She brought Dylan back to England to meet her father. Or meet him again, and this time, not as a grotty little student upstart, as he liked to call himself, with a chip on his shoulder
the size of Ireland. He didn’t even call her father Lord Fuckface—to his face.
And her father found a way to fear less, and love more, though he wasn’t one to say such things. Not often.
“I expect I’ll have to marry you,” Dylan said now, playing with her hair.
“I rather like that you haven’t made an honest woman of me. I can pretend I’m nothing more than a kept woman. Subject to your every whim if I want to keep my place.”
Dylan laughed, but then he was reaching between them, and adjusting her. Lifting up the soft cotton shift she’d worn to sleep in, releasing himself from his running shorts and sliding his cock between her folds.
It always took a little work. There was always that initial stretching, and her body’s adjustment to his length and width.
And it was always worth it when he thrust home. Both of them sighed a bit at the fit. The fullness. The feel of him, huge and so hard where she was tight.
Perfect, Jenny thought. Together, we’re perfect.
“Careful, Jenny,” Dylan said, his stern voice in her ear. “You wouldn’t want the neighbors to see you acting so dirty in the middle of a bright morning, now would you?”
She shuddered, in that mix of delight and delicious fear that pushed her to the edge of a climax, even though she knew that the deck was more private than it seemed. Or the neighbors would have called the police a long time ago.
“Go on now,” he ordered her, as bossy and delicious as ever. “I want you to move, slowly. Very slowly, no matter how good it feels.”
Jenny did what he told her, because he was always right when it came to the things they could do when he was buried inside of her. The hotter and deeper, the better.
“What if we’d never—” she began, her eyes dizzy with all that Australian sunshine, and her pussy full of Dylan’s enormous, demanding cock.
And better still, her heart so full of love she was surprised it didn’t burst.
“We were always ending up here, love,” Dylan told her. In that confident, assured way of his, as if he’d always known. “Sooner or later, we were always going to end up right here.”
And as she lifted herself, and lowered herself again, so slowly it nearly made her scream, he moved. He picked up her hand, and it took her a moment to realize what he was doing.
Then she understood, and she couldn’t tell if she was laughing, or sobbing, because that was the way of it. He made her feel too much for it to be contained into any one thing. It was all the things, always.
And now he’d slid a diamond onto her hand.
And this ring made her heart ache. It was simple, with a beautiful, understated elegance and a deep, sweet shine. It was endless and clear, and it felt like this.
Like him.
Like them, forever.
“Marry me,” he said, as she rocked herself on his hard cock, making them both whole. Keeping them connected the way they liked best. “You’ve been my best friend. And my lover. I want you to be my wife. The mother of my children. My everything.”
“Dylan,” she managed to gasp out as sensation clambered inside of her, her clit throbbed with need and her heart felt a part of that same sobbing thing that wrecked her and remade her with every deep thrust. “Oh, Dylan, I love you. I’ll marry you. I’ll be anything you want me to be. Forever and ever.”
And he took control then, hammering into her, and then taking the hand he’d just put his ring on, and guiding it to her own clit.
And there he pressed her own fingers against the place where they were joined, so they both exploded into bliss.
Together.
The way they always had been.
And always were, forever after.
* * *
If you liked Take Me, look out for Teach Me,
the first in Caitlin Crews’s
Filthy Rich Billionaires trilogy!
Why not also try:
Bad Business by JC Harroway
Under His Obsession by Cathryn Fox
Dirty Work by Regina Kyle
Available now from Harlequin DARE!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Bad Business by JC Harroway.
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Bad Business
by JC Harroway
CHAPTER ONE
Grace
THERE’S A MEDICAL term for sudden, uncontrolled, simultaneous laughter and crying. But Friday night cocktails with besties is no time for sobbing over the life-changing decision I made a month ago.
I grab the jug of margarita and top up the three glasses on the table. Seeking a numbness from the doubts making my eyes burn and my voice squeaky, I raise my refilled glass, encouraging my friends Brooke and Neve to follow suit in the perfect distraction technique.
‘To being single,’ I say, trying not to think about the traditional wedding toasts that should have happened this weekend if I hadn’t pulled the plug on my own nuptials.
‘Yes, to sad singletons everywhere,’ says Neve, quoting one of her favourite rom-com movies and taking a hefty swallow of the delicious drink. I too take a gulp that steals my breath, the burn of tequila drowning the rush of shame I feel about being single again by an act of deliberate self-sabotage.
‘At least we’re not desperate singletons,’ adds Brooke, glancing around the bar and catching numerous eyes, male and female. She would protest that it’s the fame thing, the unwanted lot of an international model and renowned London socialite, but in reality the gorgeous Lady Brooke Madden oozes that X-factor, drawing people in like kittens to catnip.
Neve groans, adjusting her new, trendy glasses, which are askew. ‘Speak for yourself. I’m desperately desperate. It’s all right for you.’ She ruffles Brooke’s blonde waif hairstyle affectionately. ‘You’re never short of offers.’
‘Offers of sex have nothing to do with relationships.’ Brooke bats away our friend’s hand and lays a smooch on her cheek to soften the sting, leaving behind a perfect, blood-red lipstick kiss. ‘I have at least four dick pics in my DMs. Besides, most of my offers want to shag a model so they can Tweet about it or steal my underwear and sell it on the dark web.’
&nb
sp; Serious accountant Neve’s eyes round before she collapses into a fit of margarita-induced giggles, which rapidly infect Brooke and me.
‘And,’ I say to Neve, ‘you’d have your own share of dick pics if you stopped mooning over Oliver for five minutes.’ I wince when my brain registers the words uttered.
‘Argh! What am I doing?’ I prop my elbows on the sticky table top, grainy with salt, and bury my hot face in my hands. ‘I’m the last person who should give relationship advice. I throw away perfectly good fiancés like confetti.’
The familiar swirl of guilt grips my insides, churning up the margarita. I peer at my friends, seeking reassurance in their concerned expressions that I haven’t made the biggest mistake of my life by cancelling my wedding at the eleventh hour.
‘If it was perfectly good, you’d be shagging him in the honeymoon suite right about now, and Neve and I would be making one-night-stand mistakes with two of the dishiest ushers,’ says Brooke, making an obscene hand gesture that under normal circumstances would make me laugh, but today I’m immune, panic rising up to choke me.
I groan, wishing for the numbing effect of the cocktails, which still have a lot of work to do. ‘All those years spent in a relationship I threw away because it “just didn’t feel right”.’
I close my eyes.
Slam them open again.
I can’t bear to see the hurt on Greg’s face, which is etched on my mind, or my parents’ disappointment as they handed me the list of deposits they lost to the caterers, the florist, the venue... I breathe through the pinch under my ribs, thinking of the pain and expense avoided if I’d been brave enough to break off my engagement sooner.
‘It was more than not feeling right. Don’t forget Greg was pretty lukewarm about getting married in the first place,’ says Neve. ‘You thought he’d only asked you because you’d been together so long and you were engaged for three years.’
‘And you’d postponed the wedding twice,’ adds Brooke. ‘Yes, doctors are busy people, but it was starting to look like neither of you wanted to go through with it.’
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