Dylan wasn’t rippling, though.
Despite slipping into the oblivion that came with an orgasm, she noticed that. He just kept up the thrusts as if giving her every possible ounce of pleasure. Which he did.
And then he stopped.
Jordan was still in oblivion land so she couldn’t actually form words yet. But Dylan managed that just fine, too. Along with moving her off his lap and onto the side of the seat by the passenger’s side window.
“I’ll drive us to the jail now,” he said.
And with Jordan still in stunned silence, he moved behind the steering wheel to do just that.
* * *
DYLAN FELT LIKE SHIT. And it was a three-ring kind of excrement circus. He wasn’t Corbin’s father. That was the biggest reason for this extreme low he was feeling. But he was not only in this crap pit of despair solely because of that. He was about to confront Adele about her lie, but also he’d used Jordan to soothe his frustrations.
Or rather he’d tried to soothe them.
But he was just as angry and tense as before their sexual encounter in her car. Maybe more so. He’d stopped after he’d gotten her off because he’d realized that it wasn’t right. He’d been using her. Now he was going to have to apologize until he was blue in the face to make Jordan understand just how sorry he was. She hadn’t needed to be his outlet for the anger and hurt he was feeling. Mainly because there was no outlet to help with that. Plus, Jordan had her own worries without him adding sex to them.
“You want to go in alone to visit Adele?” Jordan asked him.
He appreciated that she made the offer, but he could tell she was hoping he’d turn her down. That’s because she wanted to be in the visiting room. To hear Adele’s explanation and also to try to stop him from saying and doing something he might regret. Jordan wouldn’t be able to stop that because Dylan was absolutely certain there’d be some ugliness going on.
“I’ll yell at her whether you’re there or not,” Dylan said to her.
But that might not be true. Despite his feeling so bad about it, giving Jordan an orgasm had actually burned off some of the anger that would have ensured some yelling. Now he wasn’t sure what he was going to say to Adele or how loud it would be.
Jordan took hold of his hand, linking their fingers together. “No matter what happens, you don’t have to apologize for what went on in the car. I started that. I just wish you’d finished it...for yourself.”
He didn’t wish that. It’d been rule-breaking enough without his getting off in the process. Of course, the end result didn’t matter as much as the act itself did. Attempted sex was still sex. He’d known his vow of celibacy wouldn’t last, but it hadn’t been smart to break that vow with the one woman who’d broken his heart.
Of course, the heart breaking was so long ago, and it would have been much easier to put it aside if Jordan and he had ended up raising Corbin together. But now that wasn’t going to happen. Jordan would probably take Corbin from the ranch. Or maybe Corbin’s real father would do that. Either way, Dylan figured he was going to be in that shit pit for a long time yet to come.
Dylan got to his feet the moment the guard came into the waiting room and motioned for Dylan and Jordan to follow him. Adele was already seated at a table in the visitors’ area.
“Is Corbie all right?” Adele immediately asked.
Jordan nodded. “He’s fine.”
Adele studied their faces for a moment before she looked away. “Oh.” That told him loads. Even though Jordan hadn’t specifically mentioned what this was about when she called to arrange visitation, Adele must have known from their expressions what had happened.
“Start talking,” Dylan said when he sat down across from her. “And during this explanation, you will tell me why you lied.”
Adele repeated that “oh” and groaned softly. “You did a DNA test.” But she waved that off. “Or maybe Lucian did.” She waved that off, too. “I know in your eyes you think what I did is unforgivable—”
“I don’t think it,” he snapped. “It is unforgivable.”
Dylan didn’t yell, and he was surprised that there wasn’t more emotion in his voice because he was certainly feeling a lot of emotion inside every part of him. He’d held out a tiny glimmer of hope that Adele would say the test was a mistake, that he was Corbin’s father, but she’d just dashed that glimmer with what she’d said.
Adele acknowledged that with a nod.
“How could you do this?” Jordan demanded, and unlike Dylan, she didn’t hold back in the emotion department. She was angry and loud, and it got the attention of not only the guard but everyone else in the room. “How?” she repeated. It was quieter this time around, but she spoke it through clenched teeth.
Now the tears came, shimmering in Adele’s eyes, and normally that would have brought out his need to soothe her, but nothing he was feeling right now called for soothing.
“I was desperate.” Adele didn’t dodge his gaze this time. She looked right at Dylan. “I was about to be arrested, and I couldn’t get in touch with Jordan. I didn’t want Corbie to end up in foster care, not even for a couple of hours. And I knew you’d take excellent care of him.”
If Adele truly believed that, then she was the only one, because no one else in Wrangler’s Creek had felt he’d be a good father. Dylan had proved them wrong—for all the good it’d done.
“That’s your explanation?” Jordan howled. “Because it’s a piss-poor one if you ask me.” Again, she got the attention of the guards, and since Dylan didn’t want them to get tossed out of there before they even finished this chat, he caught onto her hand, hopefully a reminder that she needed to hold it together.
“It’s not piss-poor,” Adele argued. “I love my son and would do anything for him, and I mean anything.”
Since Dylan now had firsthand experience as to what it was like to love Corbin, he could understand that. But no way was he letting Adele off the hook simply because she’d been worried about foster care.
“You didn’t have to lie to us,” Dylan told her. “You could have just had Corbin sent to me until you worked out something with Jordan. I would have taken care of him.”
Adele was shaking her head before he even finished. “Social Services said the only way they could expedite the paperwork was to turn him over to a family member. Jordan’s the only family I had, and I couldn’t get in touch with her because she was on a flight from Germany.”
Obviously, Adele was forgetting that there was one other family member. Corbin’s real father. He could have stepped up to handle this. Well, maybe he could have, but before Dylan could ask her about that, Adele continued.
“We didn’t even have sex,” Adele whispered. “I lied about that, too. Sorry,” she added. “You’re really hot, but you’ll always be Jordan’s in my eyes.”
If this had only been about sex, that probably would have made him feel better, because he hadn’t cared for the notion of bedding Jordan’s cousin. But this was about Corbin more than the sex.
“I remember seeing you that night,” Dylan pointed out. Though that was about all he could remember about that evening.
Adele nodded. “We hung out, but you were so loopy from those meds you were falling asleep at the party so I got you a hotel room so you could crash.”
He had indeed woken up in a hotel and had had to call Karlee to come and get him because he didn’t know where he’d left his truck. That explained one thing about that fateful night, but it didn’t explain the three-thousand-pound gorilla in the room.
“You named Corbin after me,” Dylan reminded her.
Another nod from Adele. “I’ve always thought you were a great guy, and I liked the name, too. It just seemed to fit Corbin.”
“And it didn’t bother Corbin’s real father that you’d done that?” Jordan again, and she was back to snapping.
&nb
sp; “No.” That’s all Adele said for several moments. “He was already out of the picture by then. Actually, he was out of the picture before I even learned I was pregnant. Even if I had told him about Corbin, I doubt he would have cared.”
That caused Dylan’s chest to go tight. Because it was a slap-to-the-face reminder that he no longer had a claim on Corbin. No chance of winning this custody battle that had threatened him for weeks.
But Corbin’s real father could get the boy. And he could whisk him away from not only Wrangler’s Creek but also from Dylan. He wasn’t sure he was ready to hear who that person was, but he had to know. However, Adele spoke before he could even ask.
“As for Corbin’s father,” Adele finally continued. “Well, he’s someone you know.” And now she dodged their gazes again. “Please, just don’t be upset when I tell you who he is.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“MACK O’MALLEY,” JORDAN heard Adele say.
Jordan made a sharp sound of surprise. If she’d come up with a list of likely candidates for Corbin’s father, Mack O’Malley wouldn’t have been on it. Heck, Karlee’s troubled kid brother wasn’t even on her radar for something like this.
Dylan obviously felt that same kick of shock because he didn’t say anything. Neither did Adele. She just sat there, obviously waiting for them to absorb what she’d just told them. It wouldn’t have been that hard to grasp if Dylan and she hadn’t already met their shock quota for the day by learning that Adele had lied when she’d first named Dylan as the father. But this double dose of surprise was too much to swallow. Especially since Adele had already established herself as a liar, liar, pants on fire kind of person.
“Mack?” Jordan finally said, and she made sure that she sounded skeptical.
It was common knowledge that Karlee’s brother was a screwup, along with having a police record. Of course, these days Adele had those same labels. But as far as Jordan knew, Adele had never been attracted to screwups like herself. She’d gone more for men like Dylan. Or even Theo. Hot, rich or adventurous. Dylan had the first two. Theo, the last one. Mack met the hot requirement—all of the O’Malley men did—but he was definitely lacking in the money department.
And then there was also the age issue.
Mack was only in his early twenties, five or six years younger than Adele. That meant Mack had been just nineteen or twenty when he’d gotten Adele pregnant. Not exactly a jailbait relationship, but it was close.
“Yes, Mack,” Adele confirmed. She then turned to Dylan. “I know you don’t think much of me after what I did, but I lied because of Corbin. There’s no way Mack’s responsible enough to be a father.”
“Then you shouldn’t have fucked him,” Dylan growled. He shoved himself away from the table and stormed out of the visiting room.
Jordan stood, too, not only because she needed to go after him but also because there was nothing else she could say to Adele that would help. Unfortunately, there were plenty of things she could say that would hurt.
“You’ll tell Mack, I suppose?” Adele asked.
Jordan stopped in midstep but didn’t turn back around to face her. “No. You will tell him. Have your lawyer arrange for Mack to come to the jail so he can hear the news from the mother of his child.”
Adele probably wasn’t happy about that but tough. She’d been the one to make this mess, and she needed to get started cleaning it up. If cleaning it up was even possible, that is. Jordan wasn’t sure that Dylan would recover from this. Mack might not, either.
And then there was the really huge problem of how this would eventually affect Corbin.
Jordan hurried out of the visiting area, but her heart went to her knees when she didn’t see Dylan in the waiting room. Heaven knew what he would do so she hurried to catch up with him. Well, she hurried as much as she could, considering that she had to work her way back through the levels of security along with collecting her purse and phone. When she made it out the front, Dylan was already by her car. He was pacing and cursing.
She wanted to do some cursing of her own, along with maybe yelling at the top of her lungs, but it was probably best if only one of them went into the batshit crazy mode right now. Since Dylan had more at stake in this, it was his turn.
“You want to go to a bar and have something to take the edge off?” Jordan asked him.
He didn’t answer, not with words anyway, but he did get in the car once she unlocked it, and Jordan started driving, not sure where she should go. Probably not back to the ranch. Not yet, anyway, because she didn’t want Corbin to see Dylan while he was this upset. Dylan wouldn’t want that, either.
Karlee would need to know what had happened, and Jordan was betting she wouldn’t take the news any better than Dylan and she had. But this meant that Corbin was Karlee’s nephew. She could have a claim for custody if Mack didn’t want the boy. For that matter, Jordan still had a claim, too. After all, he was still blood kin.
But the two people who didn’t have any claim whatsoever were Theo and Dylan.
Theo was already out of the picture, and Jordan wasn’t even sure if he’d actually thought Corbin was his child. However, Dylan certainly had believed it and so had his family. Actually, everyone but Lucian had, and that’s why he’d done that blasted DNA test that had set all of this into motion by uncovering Adele’s lies.
Even though it’d only been a month since Dylan had had Corbin, Jordan had no doubts that he loved the boy. And vice versa. For heaven’s sakes, Corbin called him Daddy. It was going to be heartbreaking for both of them to be torn apart. That didn’t help the anger that was surging through her, and Jordan had to again remind herself to stay calm.
Jordan wasn’t sure what to do until she spotted the hotel, and she pulled into the parking lot. At first, she thought maybe they could just sit there for a while and talk this out. But Dylan was still mumbling profanities, still had a white-knuckle grip on his phone, so talking it out might take a while. Like a day or two.
“I need to call Karlee,” he said.
“You can do that later. Regina and she won’t be expecting us back for a while.” Though they would want to know what they’d learned from Adele. That’s why Jordan texted Karlee.
Dylan’s upset. Will talk to you in an hour or two.
Hopefully, in that hour or two, Adele would make arrangements to see Mack so that Mack could be the one to tell his sister that she was an aunt.
When she opened her car door, Dylan looked up at the hotel as if he’d just noticed it. He shook his head. “I thought you were taking me to a bar.”
“I decided sex would take the edge off better than whiskey.” She meant it as a pseudojoke. It would indeed take off the edge. She suspected that’s why she was slightly less agitated than Dylan—because she’d recently had an orgasm. But the real truth was that it was only eleven in the morning and too early for most bars to be open.
He stared at her, maybe waiting for her to indicate it was a joke by adding a smile or a wink. She didn’t. “All right,” he said, getting out of the car.
Stunned to silence, she sat there for a few seconds, and then had to hurry to catch up with him. She got delayed because she had to give her keys to the valet. When she made it inside, Dylan was already checking them in.
It was a trendy boutique place that thankfully had one room available. A suite on the top floor, which meant it was out of her normal price range, but Dylan didn’t blink an eye about the pricey rate of not only the suite but the bottle of whiskey he ordered from the room service menu. Dylan had even asked that the whiskey be brought up immediately and had given the clerk a huge tip to make sure that happened.
Jordan figured by the time they made their way up the elevator that Dylan would have decided this wasn’t a stellar idea. Or that he would just crash until the whiskey arrived. He didn’t. The moment he had them in the room, he shut the door, hooked his
arm around her and kissed her. That put an end to the wacky notion she had of them talking this out or Dylan changing his mind.
He definitely didn’t talk. But there was more of that intense anger kissing that’d gone on in the car. Jordan just went with it. Better yet, she let herself slide right into the heat of the foreplay—which she figured would be very short. In fact, this might be a sex against the door kind of thing.
Or not.
Just as quickly as he’d started it, Dylan stopped, looked at her and cursed again. “Sorry,” he grumbled, and he moved away from her.
Jordan immediately felt the loss of two things. The pleasure from his kiss. That oh-so-nice pressure of his body against hers. But she gained something in his stopping.
A whole boatload of disappointment.
Yes, it’d only been a couple of hours since their encounter in the car, but she suddenly felt very needy in the sexual urge department.
“We don’t have to stop,” she managed to say.
Dylan obviously didn’t feel that way because he went to the massive floor-to-ceiling window, and with his back to her, he stared out. “I’ve already used you once today to cure what was ailing me. Best to go with the whiskey and a cold shower for this round.”
Jordan made a sound that reeked of that disappointment that was still washing over her. The sound got Dylan’s attention because he looked back at her.
And her breath flew off to Pluto.
He certainly made a picture there in his jeans and boots and with the sunlight framing him. Of course, Dylan didn’t need frames. Actually, he didn’t need clothes—but that was the disappointment and her overly aroused body talking.
“There are other things better than whiskey,” she added. That was her overly aroused body talking, too, and she was sending him a big-assed invitation for sex.
Dylan picked up on the invitation. She could tell because the air changed between them. The temperature skyrocketed probably because of the intense heat that was suddenly in his eyes.
Lone Star Blues Page 21
