“You know me.” He forced the easy grin that would make most of the people who knew him do a double take. Because Dylan Kilburn was edgy, not easy. But Jenny didn’t know that Dylan. “As long as they leave happy.”
“She seemed very happy.” Jenny nodded in the vague direction of the street. “The one downstairs.”
“Mission accomplished, then.”
“What exactly is it that you do?” she asked, and her gaze was direct. “To her. To them. In general.”
He kept the grin going. “Do you want me to draw you a manual?”
“In all the years I’ve known you,” she said, as if she was carefully sounding out her words, “no matter how many women you sleep with or if they overlap, they always leave delighted. And thanking you. Why?”
“That’s a bit hurtful.” He lifted a brow. “Surely even you can appreciate what a piece of eye candy I am, Jenny.”
A shameless attempt to get her to ogle him, he was well aware. But Jenny didn’t take the bait. She kept her gaze on his, which was both disappointing and arousing, a sensation he was all too used to.
“There are a lot of good-looking men, Dylan. But with you it’s something different.”
“Irish charm?”
“There are a lot of Irish charmers, too. Hence the name.”
Dylan had been studying Jenny for years. Today she had shadows beneath her eyes, which he blamed on the long flight. She looked tired, but it was more than that. More than travel, clearly. It was the way she was holding her head, deliberately, as if fighting back some kind of strong emotion. She seemed more fragile than usual.
Dylan had once been called a grinning bloody shark by a business associate—and it hadn’t been meant as an insult—because he could smile nicely while eviscerating his opponents. Because he’d been raised up in a bleak, hard place and it was in him, too, that bleakness. That hardness. It was what made him rich. And he liked his sex the way he liked his many business deals and everything else in this life he’d built entirely with his own hands—completely under his control.
There had only ever been one shred of softness in him. Her.
And she had no clue.
It was almost funny, really.
“Did you really fly all the way to Australia to quiz me about my sex life?” he asked.
“I’m getting married,” she said, and he didn’t make a face or roll his eyes at the unnecessary obviousness of that statement, because she was looking at him so intently. “And I know that many women in my position don’t intend to keep their wedding vows, but I do. Or I don’t see the point of being married.”
He was long past the point where mentions of her boyfriends, or dates or various other relationships with lesser men got to him—but that didn’t mean he wanted to sit around and talk about her marital vows.
Though he would.
“Is he planning to extend you the same courtesy?”
“He said he would.” Jenny shrugged. It was a sharp, almost bitter sort of movement. “But I think we both know that’s easier said than done. For him, I mean.”
“A promise is a promise, Jenny.”
“I don’t think he cares,” she said, then, and not as if it hurt her. As if it was a simple, small truth. “You’re the only one I can say this to. But Conrad is a very cold man. I think if he decides to shut himself off, he will, and that’s that.”
“He sounds grand.”
The look she sent him then was reproving, but that was an improvement, to his mind.
“Part of me thinks that this is the best it can be, given the situation.” She propped her tea mug on her curled-up legs. “Most people with our sort of arrangement wouldn’t dream of expecting fidelity. It’s a lovely bonus.”
Dylan rubbed a hand over his face. “If you say so.”
“I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed.” She frowned down at her mug. “And you know Erika. I think that’s as much embarrassment as Conrad ever wanted. I don’t think he would cause a scandal.”
“Are you trying to tell me that your man doesn’t satisfy you?” Dylan asked, possibly with more edge in his voice than was needed. “Because there are books you could read, or you could have rung up, Jen. No need to go to such lengths.”
“Oh, I don’t know if he... I mean, we’ve never...” She scowled at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“You’re going to marry a man who you’ve never had sex with.” He shook his head, though it kicked at him. Or maybe that was his heart, trying to crack his ribs wide open. “I’ll be honest, there’s a lot I don’t understand about you. But this might take the bloody cake.”
“It wasn’t as if the dates we went on were romantic,” she protested. “And then he proposed, very quickly, which would be strange and off-putting if things were romantic—but this was never about that. So why not go along quickly? And what’s the point of trying it out ahead of time? It isn’t going to make a difference. Good or bad, we’re stuck with it either way.”
He wanted to break something. “For fuck’s sake.”
“I didn’t come all this way to debate whether or not I should marry Conrad. I’ve already agreed to do it. It’s a done deal.”
“You do know what year it is? Fathers don’t get to go around selling off daughters. You have a say.”
“Of course I have a say.” Dylan beat down his temper enough to notice she didn’t look upset. She looked annoyed. At him. “If I didn’t want to get married, I wouldn’t. It’s not as if my father would force me down the aisle with a gun to my back. You’ve met him. You know he’s not like that.”
Dylan certainly had met Lord Fuckface, who had sneered down the length of his nose at the likes of Dylan Kilburn, Irish trash, anywhere near his precious daughter.
Or that was how Dylan assumed the man had felt. It was how he imagined he’d feel if he had a daughter—especially a daughter like Jenny.
“Sure, and he’s a real peach.”
“It’s just that once I get married, that’s it,” Jenny said, ignoring his comment on her father. Having lectured him more than once on how shit it was to dislike people simply because they were richer than him—not an issue he had much any longer. “It will be however it is with Conrad, and I’ve already made my peace with that. We’ll have children and a good life. I’m sure of it.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
He didn’t point out that her presence on his deck suggested otherwise.
She glared at him. “It’s something Erika said. It’s something she’s always said, actually. But I guess it feels a little more urgent these days.”
“I’m not sure I would take advice from the likes of Erika,” Dylan said mildly. “Unless you have a hankering to go clubbing. For a year.”
He had no quarrel with Erika. She was a gorgeous little mess and always had been. The only reason Dylan hadn’t tried it on with her back in Oxford was because she’d been so close with Jenny. And Dylan was never going to do anything that might create a wedge between him and Jenny—especially her friend.
“She settled down,” Jenny told him. “Quite seriously, actually.”
Dylan laughed. “Are we talking about the same Erika?”
“I know.” Jenny grinned. “But yes. She’s even going back to Oxford to finish her degree.”
“Is she now.” Dylan laughed, and it wasn’t forced. “I’ll be damned. I wouldn’t think it would matter to a trust fund princess if she finished a degree or not.”
“I told you. She’s turned over a new leaf.”
“I can’t abide people with every advantage in the world pissing it away. Good on her.” He eyed Jenny more closely. “Do you feel you need to turn over a new leaf too? I don’t even know what that would look like. Saint Jenny, queen of good works, got a first, as I recall.”
“I understand academics,” she was saying, with that pas
sion in her voice that made his cock ache, though it was never directed where he wanted it. “And I love the charity. It makes me feel good to help, if I can. To be honest, I still love the role I played for my father. We’re all we have.”
The way she said that tore at him, and kept him quiet. He didn’t understand the bargains she made with her father. Dylan’s contact with his own relatives was limited to their semiannual attempts to extort money from him, which they’d started during his time at Oxford, so he could only assume that having a family member he loved would be a transformative experience that could possibly lead to arranged marriages. Or something.
But they’d spent years comparing and contrasting their families and upbringings without Jenny turning up in Australia. This didn’t quite seem like the time to continue that conversation.
“It’s beginning to feel like you’re leading up to something here.” And it was harder to keep his voice mildly lazy. To produce that friendly grin. “Better get to it. The suspense is killing me.”
“Sex,” she said.
For a curious moment, Dylan thought something must have plummeted from the sky above and hit him in the head.
His ears rung. He was almost light-headed.
But no. He wasn’t imagining it. His Jenny, forever his friend and decidedly off-limits, was sitting opposite him talking about sex.
Not having a laugh about his revolving bedroom door. Not rolling her eyes at his conquests. She was staring at him with what looked like naked sincerity in her eyes, and...blowing his mind.
“Did you just say sex?” he asked, because he had to make sure.
He expected her to laugh. To roll her eyes at him and call him a pervert for hearing sex everywhere.
But instead, she nodded, her eyes big. “Erika says I’ve never been fucked properly.”
Very seriously, God help him.
And Dylan would never know how it was that he stayed where he was. Lounging back in a chair on his deck on a lovely Saturday morning, while joggers ran heedlessly by on the coastal walk, seabirds careened about in the air and Jenny Markham had flown all the way down to Sydney to talk to him about fucking.
He would never know how he remained calm.
“Well?” he asked, casually. As if this entire conversation didn’t feel, suddenly, as if he’d sustained a series of knockout blows and was reeling about blind. And wanting things he couldn’t have. “Have you?”
CHAPTER THREE
THERE WAS SOMETHING about that intent look on Dylan’s face, the patience in his green eyes. The way he asked her a question and then waited. Like he could wait forever, if that was what it took.
It made Jenny feel safe. But then, he always did. She could tell Dylan anything.
Even things she was afraid to tell herself.
“I think maybe I’m bad at it,” she confessed.
Something flashed over his face then, some dark gleam, that reminded her of that moment out in front of his house. When she’d stared at his familiar face and hadn’t recognized him at all.
Deep inside her, something clicked. Then flared into life, but she ignored it. Because she was here, in his house. With him. And wherever Dylan was, she could depend on him to keep them inside his bubble. Where everything was always okay.
And if it wasn’t, he would fight it off.
“Not possible,” he told her, a strange note in his voice.
“You don’t know that it’s not possible,” Jenny argued. “Because here’s the thing. I’ve never staggered off after having sex with someone giddy and filled with joy the way that girl did today. And I certainly don’t leave anyone in that state.”
She expected him to leap in, to contradict her, but he didn’t. Because Dylan let her tell her own story. How had she forgotten how freeing that was? How he allowed to her relax and really, truly say what she felt?
Then again, she was here. Maybe she hadn’t forgotten.
“Everyone talks about sex like it’s a compulsion. Passion and desire. Need. This hunger that takes them over.” She shook her head, and frowned at him. His legs were thrust out before him, highlighting the powerful muscles in his thighs. How had she never noticed his thighs before? Because she doubted they’d cropped up overnight. “Is that what it’s like for you?”
“I wouldn’t bother otherwise, would I?”
“It’s never that way for me.” Jenny took a breath, flipped over that ugly little stone she’d never wanted to look beneath and reminded herself that this was Dylan. That she could say anything to him. “I think maybe I really am frigid. Or broken, somehow.”
He didn’t sit with that in a solemn, concerned silence, as she’d expected he would. He rolled his eyes and didn’t look the least bit shaken by her declaration. “For fuck’s sake. Because that wanker told you so? A hundred years ago now? Real men don’t berate women for their own piss-poor performance in bed.”
Jenny had dated Christopher for two months that had seemed like a lifetime during term time their third year. A relationship—such as it was—that had ended after they’d slept together, he’d informed her that she was crap at sex, and he’d moved on to manipulate a wide-eyed first-year into his bed instead. A real charmer, that Christopher.
But.
“Christopher was renowned for being good in bed, Dylan,” Jenny argued. “You like to pretend you can’t remember, but girls used to go around swooning left and right every time he smiled.”
“When he smiled, sure. After he embarrassed himself in their beds? Not near as much swooning, as I recall.” Dylan crossed his arms, which should have made him look angry. But when Jenny studied his face, his expression was bland. Maybe too bland. “It was his job to make you come, Jenny. Everything else was a load of shite mixed with mind games to disguise the fact he was a selfish prick.”
Dylan had growled the same response at her during their final year at uni, but she couldn’t remember all this...prickly heat.
“No one is good or bad at sex unless they try,” Dylan continued, sounding even more growly. “It’s sex, not surgery. Sometimes people have mad chemistry, which takes it all to a different level. But you don’t need astonishing chemistry to have good sex, Jenny. You can have good sex if you want it. It’s that simple.”
“I can tell you that it is not, in fact, that simple.”
“It isn’t a spot of calisthenics,” Dylan said, and again, there was something about how relentlessly bland he looked that made the back of her neck prickle. Even more than before. “Supposed skill or experience matters far less than what I’d call...” And he smiled then, in that friendly way he had that made her want to smile, too. “Observant enthusiasm.”
She wanted to smile, but she didn’t. “I have no idea what that means.”
His expression didn’t change and yet...there was that strange flickering thing inside her again. “Do you pay attention, Jenny? Do you think about something other than getting yourself off when you’re naked with someone else? I’m betting you do.”
There was no reason for her to be...breathless.
But Dylan didn’t give her time to respond, even if she’d managed to find breath. “But I’d also bet that if you’re finding sex lacking, it’s a commentary on your partner, not you. It was true years ago and it’s true now.”
Jenny frowned and tried to look stern, not prickly and strangely overwarm though she sat beneath a cozy blanket and was bundled up nicely against the cool breeze—unlike some people, who were bare chested and barefoot. “That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”
“I’ve seen the men you date. So, no, it’s not sexist. It’s an informed opinion.” He did something with his face that made him look harder. Flintier, even. “And it’s not hard to make a man come, Jenny. That’s why it’s on him to make sure you do, or why bother to have sex with another person? He could just have a wank and be done with it.”
All
of this suddenly seemed a lot less safe than it had before. Maybe it was the exhaustion messing with her, but he kept talking about coming and now she was imagining him handling his own cock, that same fierce look on his face she’d seen outside while he—
Stop, she ordered herself.
She was so horrified she was afraid she might spill her tea all over his lovely deck, so she took great care to set it carefully to the side on the table there.
And maybe that wasn’t precisely horror that coursed through her veins then, making her shift beneath the blanket he’d draped over her. Making her aware of her own pussy when normally, she saved such awareness for the privacy of her own bed.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Jenny made herself say in as dry and unaffected a voice as she could manage. “I like sex. Sometimes I quite like it.”
“Damned with faint praise.”
“Let’s talk about you, Dylan.”
She concentrated on him then, and the whole golden sweep of him that she’d been trying her best not to gape at. Without much success. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. He was nothing but ridiculously lean muscle wherever she looked, and for all that he was meant to be a CEO forever in meetings, he clearly spent time in the sun. A lot of time. And then there was the hair that arrowed down beneath the waistband of his jeans, and made her need to shift a bit in her chair. Again.
Her mouth was dry. She told herself it was the sudden immersion in winter, the lack of sleep and all the rest of this strange and endless day.
“You’re doing something different,” she told him, as if she’d conducted an academic study. “I’ve met a lot of men who sleep with loads of women, and they’re all pigs. But you’re not.”
“Careful, or you’ll make me blush.”
“I can’t figure out what it is. Why are all those women so happy all the time? You toss them out, but they’d all gag for another chance. I’ve watched it happen. You’re this...magician.”
“Are you asking me a question, Jenny? Or leaving a review?”
And suddenly, it didn’t matter where they were. How tired she was. All the other things she’d been telling herself this whole time.
Take Me Page 3
