AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And there was no point lying to herself about that any longer. Because she’d come all the way here, hadn’t she? For this. For the way he looked at her now that made her heart stutter. And everything else seem to stutter, too.
Because the Dylan she knew was beautiful, yes, but he wasn’t so...powerful. Not like this. Not as if the Sydney skyline behind him might wink out at any moment, or fade into insignificance, so bright and hot did he burn, just by standing there.
Her breath kept tangling in her throat, there was a kind of weight on her chest and the thing she most wanted to avoid thinking seemed to sneak into her anyway.
Maybe this was the real him. Maybe this was the real Dylan.
She couldn’t ask herself what that meant. If that was true, what that told her about the two of them. About their friendship. About everything.
“Because you don’t seem sure,” he said, and even his voice was different. There was a certainty there. A ferocity. And suddenly, it was all too easy to imagine him as the CEO, owner and creator of a billion-dollar company he’d started on the strength of a couple of credit cards and his charm. She’d found it so funny before, imagining her Dylan in charge of all that. Not now. “You look a bit like you’ve seen a ghost, if I’m honest.”
And there was something drumming in her blood. Jenny still couldn’t name it, but she recognized it as the same impulse that had gotten her out of her flat that night. That had led her, not on a walk from her Kensington neighborhood into Notting Hill to wander the Portobello Road, as she sometimes liked to do, but onto the Tube. And off to Heathrow.
It was what had brought her here, and the more she stared at this version of her best friend wearing the mask of some kind of sex warrior, the louder it got.
“I don’t think you’re a ghost,” she managed to say. “Though between you and me, I haven’t seen a lot of ghosts. I wouldn’t know how to tell.”
There was no trace of that smile of his. So friendly, so engaging. No hint of that bright laugh that put everyone at ease.
So she made it worse.
Jenny reached out across the inches between them that seemed, then, as vast as the harbor she’d spent so much of the day exploring, stretching this way and that, inland and then out to sea. She reached across the distance between them, found the opening of his coat, and slid her hand along his soft T-shirt into the hollow between his pectoral muscles.
She could feel the heat of him, as if she’d slapped her hand down on a stovetop.
And it occurred to her as she stood there, her palm spread against his hard, dense muscles, that she didn’t touch him much. They hugged each other hello and goodbye, but that was usually it. There was very little jostling of shoulders. No offhanded, friendly little touches, here and there. Sometimes, if he was being courteous, he might brush his fingers against the small of her back as he guided her somewhere.
But for all the years they’d known each other, all the intimacies they’d shared, there were never any intimacies involving touch.
And as she stared up at him, she was aware for the first time how she had to tip her head back to look at him. How big he was, so tall and with such wide shoulders. And that he was remarkably beautiful for a man who seemed so rugged at the same time.
Jenny didn’t bother to ask herself why.
She knew.
Because touching him like this was electric.
It surged through her to become a part of that drumming thing in her veins, a restless, insistent rhythm that flooded through her. It went right to her pussy.
She felt slippery. Red hot.
And all they were doing was standing close together, talking. With her hand on his chest, but not even flesh to flesh.
Dylan stood very still. Too still, maybe. And something in her fluttered at the thought, because suddenly she could have sworn that he was looking at her as if she was a meal. And one he intended to savor.
“Let me make sure we’re both very clear about what’s happening here,” he said, and there was something almost gravelly in his voice then. It only made that electric touch seemed to glow. Hot and hard. “We’ve been friends for a long time, Jenny. I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”
“I want you,” she said. Again.
“To fuck you.”
And she was sure she didn’t imagine the light in his green eyes then, or the way it made her...quiver.
“To fuck me properly,” she corrected him. “I want to leave giddy and staggering about, like all the rest. Can you promise me that?”
“I’m insulted you would ask.” But he didn’t look or sound insulted. He looked...more, maybe. More intense. More focused. More fierce. And much more dangerous. “Let’s discuss the housekeeping, shall we?”
“Housekeeping?” She frowned at him. “Does that mean you have... Grooming requirements?”
