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“If I did, I’d expect you to comply with them,” he said, and there was some kind of amusement in his gaze then, but it still wasn’t the Dylan she knew. It wasn’t that laughter. It was something else, something male and demanding, and she had never felt so feminine, before.
It was as if she suddenly understood the point of fancy dresses that cinched in at the waist and made a girl breathless, or high heels that made her unsteady, because she was neither tonight and felt both of those things. And it was glorious. She felt shivery and silly. Her breasts ached and her pussy was slick, and she wanted nothing more than to rub all that against him and see what he might do with it. With her.
“Is that part of the Dylan Kilburn promise?” she found herself asking. “Compliance?”
Again, there was that gleam in his green eyes, that hard amusement that made her sway a bit on her feet. His mouth was a stern line, but that only made it better. He reached over and took the thick tendril of her hair in his hand, then tugged it. Not entirely gently.
And everything inside her...bloomed.
Dylan’s mouth didn’t move from that hard line, but she still thought she could see his smile there.
“We’ll get to compliance,” he told her. Promised her. “But first, there’s this. Us. You’ve never had someone turn you out, so you have no idea how you’ll feel in the aftermath.”
“I thought the point is giddiness. Isn’t it?”
“That’s part of it. Sometimes. But the girls you’re thinking about didn’t call me their best friend. The only thing I promised them was orgasms. They didn’t know me.”
“Do I know you?” She was kidding. Or she thought she was kidding when she started speaking. And then, somehow, wasn’t. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this side of you before.”
“Because you haven’t.” He studied her face as she took that in, blinking because he sounded so uncompromising. “You need to be absolutely certain you want to open this door, Jenny. Because once it’s open, I don’t think you can close it again.”
“Why does that sound like a threat?”
He tugged on her hair again, and it was such a strange sensation. Sharp at the start, but then like a flush as it moved through her. She didn’t understand how the slightest stinging sensation on her scalp could make her nipples pinch and then travel down to make her entirely too aware of her clit.
“You’ve gone to great lengths to set your life up precisely as you like it,” Dylan said, quiet and intense. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never wavered from this path of yours. You say you promised your father, but I think we both know you could have fought him if you had a mind to. You don’t. This is what you want. A cold fish husband who won’t ask anything of you but your bloodline. Decorous, polite society sex, genteel and very seldom, until the heirs are properly sorted out. And then you get what you really want. No more demands, nothing but an empty freedom to do what you already do. Charity work. Tending to your father. Closing yourself up tight.”
Her breath suddenly seemed harsh and loud there, down below the great opera house, and echoed in her like it was quiet. When it wasn’t. When there were so many people about she should have found it hard to hear him.
But she heard him all too well. “I prefer to think I’m in a position to do good,” she managed to say, over the mess his words left inside her. “And I plan to. I already told you, Conrad isn’t a bad man.”
“Conrad is the least offensive man your father could find,” Dylan replied, and she might have been outraged if there had been any heat in it. But it was a statement of fact. “At least he’s not geriatric. But you never had the slightest intention of choosing your own husband. You want the arrangement. You want to stay untested. Unchallenged. Because that’s the thing about intimacy, Jen. It’s messy.”
“I came to Australia because you’re the expert on sex,” she managed to say. “Not intimacy. I’ve never known you to keep the same woman around for more than a weekend. And that’s a very rare weekend indeed.”
“Sexisintimacy,” Dylan shot back at her, his hard tone brooking no argument. “Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t any good at it. But you need to decide if you can handle that. Because the Jenny I know has made it clear, in word and deed since the day I met her, that she wants no part of it.”
“I want a taste,” she heard herself say.
And she wanted to step back and put some head-clearing distance between them. Knock his hand away from her hair. But she rather thought he expected her to do all of those things, and more—that it would prove his point. So she did the opposite. She moved closer, and brought her other hand to his chest. Then angled herself against him, as if they were already in an embrace.
“A taste of me might be more than you bargained for,” he said, as if he could tell that she’d just gone ahead and lit herself on fire. “It will be. And then what?”
“What do you mean? Are your morning afters normally fraught with peril? Because they look very civilized. No broken crockery or rending of garments as long as I’ve known you.”
“For starters, my morning afters don’t normally occur with women who are staying with me. So there’s that to consider. But even if I gave you the weekend option, or even a week, just to make sure you were well and truly fucked properly in every possible way, do you really want that?” Dylan’s gaze was as hard as his chest felt beneath her hands, and twice as hot. “Because it seems to me that it would be one thing to go into your chilly little marriage with no knowledge of what you’re missing. But torture if you do know.”
She wasn’t sure moving closer to him had been her best idea, because he felt so good. Too good. And this close, she could smell him, and that was like a wave of sensation all its own. Something deep and spicy that made her think of forests back home. And something else that reminded her of the abundant sunshine here, even in winter. And holding it all together, him. Dylan.
All the versions of him.
“It will be my torture, not yours,” she said.
“Do you think I won’t care about that?” He took her elbows in his big hands, and held her away from him, almost splayed against his chest. Almost. “Because as we talk about opening doors that can’t be closed, sex does have a way of changing friendship. You must know that. I remember several right tossers trying their hands at befriending you, all for a chance to get in there.”
“They weren’t really friends.” She shrugged. “There was nothing to change. Or to lose.”
“We’ve been friends for years, Jenny. Think about that. If I give you what you want, and it’s everything you imagine it to be, what do you think will happen then?”
