“And then you came here?”
Dylan nodded. “I didn’t plan on lying.” He knocked back the vodka. “I just wanted to be someone else for a while. To get away. Just…” He tailed off.
Lucien sighed heavily. He could understand that.
“Seems to me that you’ve pulled it off pretty well up to now,” he observed.
“I was a fool to think I could make it work.” Dylan’s tone was savage, castigating himself.
“Way I see it, nothing has changed.”
Dylan’s laugh held no trace of humour. “I don’t think Kara is going to see it that way. She deserves so much better than another liar in her life.”
“She told you, huh?”
Dylan nodded. “And trust me, I could not feel like a bigger shit than I do right now.”
“Look,” Lucien sighed. “I can’t tell you what to do, and I won’t lie to Kara and Sophie for you. But find your own way to tell her over the coming weeks. I won’t push you. And in any case, I don’t think that brother of yours is likely to come back any time soon.”
Dylan nodded slowly. He recognised the wisdom of Lucien’s words, and appreciated the trust he’d bestowed by allowing him to dictate the pace. His idyll had to end, but he could choose how and when. It was a bittersweet privilege.
“Don’t underestimate Kara,” Lucien said, leaning back on his chair. “She might just surprise you.”
“She already does. Every single day.”
Lucien nodded, cradling his glass in his hands. He knew a woman like that too, and he recognised in Dylan the signs of a man falling hard.
“About the wedding…”
Dylan looked up, his troubled expression clearing a little at the change of subject.
“We’re keeping it low key,” Lucien said. “Just a handful of people, and I… I kind of wondered if you’d be my best man.”
Dylan was unaccustomed to hearing Lucien sound anything but ultra confident, making the trace of nerves behind his question all the more noticeable.
“I’d love to, man,” he said, feeling the tension leave his body as he reached out and shook Lucien’s hand, clasping it with both of his own. “I’d really love to.”
The bond of friendship between the two men deepened as Dylan added more vodka to their glasses. Maybe there was hope, after all. Lucien would have been within his rights to ask him to leave, but he’d chosen instead to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder.
“Thank you,” Dylan said. “Your faith in me means a lot.”
Lucien lifted a nonchalant shoulder. “Just don’t expect me to hug,” he said, pushing his chair back as he stood. “I like you, but this isn’t Brokeback Mountain.”
As Lucien walked away, Dylan couldn’t repress an inner smile, a feeling of warmth, despite the disagreeable events of the evening, as he gazed into his shot glass. He hadn’t only found a remarkable woman in Ibiza. He’d made a true friend.
At the villa, Kara and Sophie sat on the terrace beneath the shade of an umbrella, little needed now the evening had drawn in, an open bottle of chilled white wine on the table in front of them.
“Here in Ibiza? In a few weeks time?” Kara repeated Sophie’s words. “I was looking forward to a trip to the land of sexy Vikings.”
“Sorry. Blame my Viking. He wants to get married here.”
Kara shrugged with exaggerated resignation. “I’m probably not in the market for a Viking anyway,” she admitted.
“You’ve changed your tune,” Sophie grinned, topping up their wine glasses. “I take it that the divine Mr. Day is the reason for your change of heart?”
“God, Soph,” Kara said, feeling the flush of pleasure on her cheeks at the mention of him. “He really is divine. He’s like… I don’t even know how to put it. He melts me.” Kara ignored Sophie’s knowing smile. “I mean it, I’ve never met anyone like him before. It’s like… he really gets me.”
“And does he?” Sophie said, raising her eyebrows questioningly. “ Does he really get you?”
“Holy fuck. Yes. God, yes!” Kara laughed. “Does he ever.”
“Good. You deserve someone to make you feel like that,” Sophie said. “God knows, you’ve kissed your share of frogs.”
“You really think he might be my prince?”
“Any man who can make you blush like that gets my vote. I like him a lot Kara. I really do.”
Kara lay back and closed her eyes, a serene smile on her face.
Maybe it was time for her luck to change. Dylan Day was the first man she’d ever met who seemed to genuinely want her for who she was, without any hidden agendas, without any skeletons in his cupboards, without any secret girlfriends waiting to jump out on her if she let herself get in too deep.
Maybe. Maybe it would be okay.
Kara really wanted it to be okay.
She realised that she believed it could be.
It would be. Really.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What shall we do with our night off, Sailor?” Kara twirled Dylan’s hair around her fingers, massaging his scalp as they lay baking on the deck of the Love Tug in the late afternoon sun.
Once a week, Sophie and Lucien gave them a precious night off together, and they did the same in return. Tonight was Kara and Dylan’s turn to play hooky, and she wanted to kick back and make the best of every moment. With each day that slid by beneath the warmth of the Ibizan sun, she became more aware of how little time they had until the end of summer. And she resolutely wasn’t thinking beyond that.
“Shall we take this little boat and sail off around the island?” she said.
Dylan rolled onto his side, his warm hand on her ribs as he looked down at her.
“Do you know how to sail this thing? Because lovely as it sounds, I don’t have the first idea.”
“Well that’s that plan scuppered,” Kara said. “Any more ideas?”
Dylan slid his hand down over her stomach, tracing his fingers along the edge of the triangle of her lime green bikini. “How ‘bout I help you get out of this and take you downstairs, show you who’s boss?”
Kara laughed. “Do you have handcuffs? Every good boss needs handcuffs.”
“No. You want me to get some?”
“I already have some, and I might just have to fetch them and show you who’s boss,” she grinned, catching his wrists and encircling them with her hands. He let her hold him down for a few seconds, his eyes lazily turned on. “I might bring my whip too,” she murmured, her chest against his as she slid her knee over his shorts-clad crotch.
“Will you wear black leather?” he asked, lifting his head to catch her kiss, letting his tongue flicker into her mouth.
“No." An amused glint lit her eyes. “You will.”
He laughed, rolling her over and pinioning her beneath him with ease.
“You crossed the line, English.” He restrained her wrists beside her head, his body deliciously heavy on hers. “You wear the leather, and I’ll take it off you.” He dipped his head and kissed her again, slow and easy this time, that world-class mouth of his stealing any argument that might have been in her. There were no two ways about it. She was wildly turned on by the idea of wearing leather for him and letting him take it off her.
“Soon then,” she said, when he let her come up for air. “But not today.” She stroked his back when he released her hands, enjoying his sun-warmed skin. “Take me somewhere new today. Take me on an adventure.” She ran her hands over his ass, and he rocked his hips into hers.
“You know that wherever we go, the plan involves fucking, yes?” he said, kissing his way along her jaw. It was an entirely unnecessary question.
“In the Mustang,” she whispered, grazing his earlobe with her teeth. “I want you to fuck me on the back seat.”
He lifted his head, and that lazy turned on look in his eyes had notched up to crazy turned on.
“Say that again.” The desire in his murmured voice turned her body inside out with lust. “Tell me again h
ow you want me to fuck you.”
Kara’s smile took over her whole face as she wrapped her leg around his thighs tighter to bring his cock harder against her.
“Fuck me, Dylan Day. Drive me somewhere quiet and make me come all over the back seat of the Mustang.” She dragged her nails down his back. “I want you to strip me naked and bend me over the bonnet.”
Dylan ground against her, making her lips part on a sigh of pleasure.
“Where I come from, it’s a hood.”
“Call it whatever you like, darlin’. Just bend me over it and screw me with your big, hard cock.”
“You have a filthy mouth, English…” Dylan reached between their bodies and pushed her bikini top up over her breast so that he could roll her already rock-hard nipple between his thumb and fingers. “Tell me some more.”
Kara opened her mouth, and he dropped his face to hers, all the heat from their conversation spilling into their hard, hungry kiss. She moaned, writhing beneath him, not caring if anyone could see them because her head only had room for him in it. “Dylan…” she breathed his name, her eyes closed. “Plan B. Let’s not go anywhere. Take me downstairs.” She bit gently on his lip. “Take me to bed.”
He groaned into her mouth. “Much as I’d love to,” - his hand covered her breast, warm and massaging - “I can’t get the idea of the Mustang out of my head now.”
Kara lifted her hips, cradling his erection between her legs. “I’m too far down the line, Sailor,” she pleaded. “Don’t make me wait.”
He smiled, rocking himself against her. “It’ll be worth it, I promise,” he whispered, holding her face. “Next time you come you’ll be sitting up on that folded down roof with my head between your legs.”
Kara moaned against him, and he slid a finger into her mouth. “Can you see it, baby?”
She swirled her tongue around his finger, her eyes closed. She could see it, hell, she could feel it, but the fantasy just wasn’t enough. He was driving her slowly out of her mind.
He stroked her hair back from her forehead with his other hand, moving his hips into hers again.
“I’m gonna open you, and look at you, and put my mouth on you.” He slid his finger in and then back out of her mouth again, running the tip over her damp lips before sliding it back inside. “I love the taste of you,” he said against her ear. “Sweet as honey.”
She was so close, moaning on every laboured breath, and he just wouldn’t give her enough. “Please…”
“Beautiful girl,” he said, and when she opened her eyes, his were serious and so full of raw emotion that he took her breath away.
“Get the keys, Sailor. We’re going out right now.”
In the car ten minutes later, Kara’s body still burned hot for him beneath the cut-offs and vest top she’d thrown on over her bikini. He drove the Mustang with the same laid-back confidence he did everything else in his life, and as she watched his tanned hands on the wheel, she was already imagining them on her body instead.
She frowned when he turned down a lane and eased the Mustang into a parking space amongst a few other cars.
“I was hoping for somewhere more private,” she said, taken aback, glancing around at the smattering of shops and restaurants.
“You’re going to be hungry by the time I’ve finished with you. Let’s get dinner to take out.”
Dylan swung her door open for her, holding his hand out, and she grinned despite herself. “You know me too well.”
“I sure know you well enough to know how cranky you get when you’re hungry.”
“Not as cranky as I’m going to get if you don’t give me my orgasm soon.”
“I have it right here,” he said, running his finger across his mouth, catching her around the waist with his other arm. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.” He bent his head and kissed her, brief yet off the scale sexy. “Can you taste it?”
She nodded, barely. She could. He tasted of sex and promises as yet unmet.
He took her hand and steered her into the nearest store, picking up a basket as they went in.
There was something endearingly domestic about shopping with him for their post-orgasmic supper, and it heightened Kara’s anticipation even more. He ran his hand down her back as she placed water into the basket, and she kissed his cheek when he leaned down for potato chips from a rack near the till. She chucked in a few beers next to the warm cheese- and ham-laden pastries he’d added, then a punnet of fresh strawberries too. Dylan chose marshmallows and a block of chocolate.
“For you. You’re gonna need sugar for energy,” he said, dropping the last couple of things in and smiling at the woman behind the counter as he set the basket down.
“Big talk,” Kara murmured, adding a half bottle of brandy to the pile of provisions and watching him chat idly with the cashier as she rang their food through, packing it for him even though she hadn’t packed for the customers ahead of them in the queue. He had a way about him that made people do things they wouldn’t normally do. Women, anyway. He did it to her, to pretty much any other woman who crossed his path, and she was pretty sure he didn’t even know he was doing it.
Come to think about it, it wasn’t just women that Dylan Day charmed. Men and babies too, if Lucien and Tilly were any kind of yardstick. Lucien seemed more relaxed in Dylan’s company than she’d ever seen him with another guy before, and Tilly had fallen for him on sight. He seemed to sprinkle his magic wherever he went, and Kara just wanted to stay close and mesmerised.
Plus she wanted that damn orgasm from him a hell of lot more than she wanted chocolate or strawberries or beer. She wanted it more than she wanted pretty much anything else, and then she knew full well that as soon as she’d had it she’d want another. Greedy as she might be, she wasn’t planning on being selfish: she also intended to give Dylan Day some unforgettable memories of his own in return. That prospect in itself was seriously sexy.
The sun was starting to set as Dylan killed the engine on the Mustang, this time somewhere without any other cars in sight.
“This better?” He turned to Kara, who was looking out over the beautiful scene laid before her. They’d wound their way through a pine forest to a tiny, deserted beach. Dylan had parked the car on the fringes of the sand, and right in front of them the huge sun tracked low in the sky, casting long, peachy bands of shadow across the sea towards them.
“Better than that. It’s perfect.”
“I thought you’d like it.” There was the tiniest suggestion of smugness in his voice.
Kara slanted her eyes at him, her eyebrows raised.
“You think you know me pretty well, huh?”
“I’m enjoying getting to know you better every day, English,” Dylan said softly. With a slight change of tone, he added, “So, shall we walk for a while?”
“Or I could just climb into the back?” Kara was finding it hard to think about anything else right now.
“You could. There’s something I want to do first though.” He got out, coming around to open her door.
Kara gave in gracefully, swinging herself out of the car. “This better be good.”
Dylan took her hand and led her towards the trees. “We need to gather firewood.”
“Firewood?”
He nodded. “I’m gonna build us a campfire.”
“Are we playing Scouts and stuff?”’ Kara said. “’Cause I have to tell you here and now, I was thrown out of the Girl Guides.”
Dylan laughed, bending to gather sticks. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Fraternising with the Scouts was frowned on, apparently.”
Dylan whistled low. “You’ve got me almost wishing I’d joined the Scouts, back then.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He sighed, and Kara felt his melancholy despite the fact that he wasn’t looking her way. “I guess we just weren’t a Scouting kind of family.”
She grinned when he turned towards her, anxious to restore his good humour.
; “Thank God for that. You don’t learn to kiss the way you do by being a good boy.”
She stood on tiptoe to meet his mouth, his arms full of wood.
“Time to go back to the car yet?” she murmured when he let her up for air a few minutes later.
He placed the logs in her arms. “Soon. Go dump this on the beach. I’ll be there in a sec.”
Kara frowned, resigned. “You’re not expecting me to sing Kum Ba Yah or anything, are you?”
“Sing what? No.” He dropped his voice. “I’m expecting you to let me make you come by firelight.”
She was suddenly hot all over and completely on board with the fire idea. The Mustang plan had been a great one, but sex by firelight was compelling enough for her to set it aside, for the moment at least.
“Okay. So, go gather wood, Sailor. Quickly.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
When Dylan strolled out of the treeline five minutes later, it was all he could do not to drop all the wood he’d gathered.
Kara was naked. Stark naked, standing waiting for him with her hands on her hips, her hair falling in waves around her shoulders. The setting sun dappled her skin, turning her ethereal.
He walked closer, bending to lower the wood onto the sand.
“I always had a thing for mermaids,” he said, reaching for the hem of his T-shirt and dragging it off over his head. “So very lovely,” he murmured appreciatively, walking around her. “I used to wonder how they had sex.” He ran his hand around her waist and pulled her back against his body, nestling himself against the softness of her backside, enjoying her soft intake of breath.
“Everyone knows our tails turn into legs on shore,” she said, leaning her head back onto his shoulder.
Dylan moved one hand up to cover Kara’s breast, and slid his other hand down to run the tip of his finger slowly into the crevice between her legs.
“You’re definitely all woman right now,” he said. Her nipple strained hard in his fingers as she stepped her feet wider apart on the sand to let him touch her more intimately.
Knight and Day (The Knight Erotic Trilogy, book 3 of 3) Page 12