by Parker Swift
“Okay then,” I said, “you can take me to your childhood home, but only on one condition.” I rose onto my knees in the chair and wrapped my body around him, basically climbing him. He caught me as I jumped and landed with my legs around his waist.
He raised his eyebrows at me, waiting.
I whispered in his ear, “Take me to your childhood bedroom and do that thing you do with your tongue.”
“Which thing?” he asked, smiling.
“The one where you put your fingers in me, and then use your tongue to tease my—” He cut me off by diving towards my mouth, kissing me hard and fast, and then gently, slowly rimming my lips with his tongue so lightly that I couldn’t be sure if he was actually touching me or not.
“That’s the one.”
He smacked my ass hard, making me jump higher into his arms, and then put me down.
“Wait, so who do you walk with?” I asked again, gesturing towards his clothes.
“No one. By myself,” he began. “When I get there, I need some time before I see my parents.”
When he said things like that, I didn’t think he realized what he was saying—that he needed to what? Prepare? Brace himself? Before he could spend time with his own parents, the people who should love him unconditionally? Although what was I even thinking? My own mother had disappeared completely.
“Are you sure you have to go there this afternoon?” I was trying not to let it show, but I was so disappointed to lose this day with him.
“I’m afraid so, baby. He was on me about heading out there this weekend to discuss some things about Hale Shipping, and I said no. These photos gave him the excuse to insist.” There was an element of disgust in his tone, and frustration.
“What did the magazine mean about there being trouble at Hale Shipping? Is the company in trouble? Does he want you to deal with it?”
“Possibly. My father fired someone who’s threatened some kind of tell-all about him. It’s a mess.” Dylan walked around the room, picking up odds and ends, then laced up his shoes.
“Does the guy have any real dirt on him?”
“I’ll tell you about it sometime, but not now,” he said, rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger, and once again not really telling me what I wanted to know. “I’ve summoned Frank—he’s parked outside. Please don’t go anywhere without him.” He said this with a raised-eyebrow plea, because he knew he didn’t have the authority he wished he did with me.
“I’ll do my best. But, you know, I’m perfectly capable of being on my own,” I said, smiling.
“Oh, I know,” he replied. He shook his head slightly, and as he turned around, he said, “Be good, you little minx. I’ll collect you a bit before nine.”
I watched him walk out of my bedroom and heard him descend the creaky stairs of the little house. That morning I’d woken up feeling impossibly close to him, like the day was ours, like we could settle into our world. But in the past hour, I’d been reminded, once again, of the ways in which his life was a universe away from mine.
* * *
It was ten minutes before nine that night when I got a text from Frank.
SATURDAY, 8:50 pm
Mr. Hale just texted and said he’d like me to bring you to the restaurant. I’m warming the car and am ready when you are.
That was weird. Why hadn’t Dylan texted me himself? Since when did we have a go-between?
SATURDAY, 8:51 pm
Thanks, Frank. Be down in a sec.
“Frank?” Frank asked incredulously as I slid past him and into the warm interior of the Jaguar. It had been the first time since meeting him that I’d called him by his actual name. I’d been so thrown by his text, or more accurately by him texting me instead of Dylan, that I’d slipped.
“Oh, sorry, sweets. Do you need some affection?” I looked up at him, batting my eyelashes and willing myself to smile a little more as I fastened my seat belt and he closed the door.
“Not at all, Lydia, just wanted to be sure it was really you I was texting with and not your sinister evil twin,” he replied happily while pulling into the Saturday night Notting Hill traffic.
“Is Dylan okay?”
“I believe so,” Frank said, looking at me via the rearview mirror.
Ten minutes later, we pulled up to Will’s restaurant. Dylan was there outside the door, looking earnestly at the screen of his phone. He noticed me and came over to open the door and pull me out of the car into his arms before the seat belt had fully recoiled.
“Whoa, hi there,” I said, my words muffled by his jacket. Even though his arms were blanketing my whole body, holding my head close to his chest, I could hear Dylan talking to Frank.
“Abbott, thank you. We’ll see you tomorrow.” Dylan had addressed Frank by his last name, dismissing him. Then he held me just a little tighter. “I missed you,” he whispered into my hair.
I looked up at him. “Everything okay?” He was different from this morning. As though he’d been to war and back.
“It is now. Let’s eat.” But he still had that cold tone he got after spending time with his parents. And before I could press for details, he pulled me into the warmth of Will’s beautiful little restaurant.
Two enormous bowls of pasta later—butternut squash ravioli with sage and some kind of roasted sausage bits—and Dylan, Will, and I were at risk of polishing off our third bottle of wine. Dylan had been quiet, sipping slowly. I could feel that he had slipped into his faraway place, as though he were standing behind a black screen, lost in his thoughts, and I couldn’t reach him. It was concerning—I didn’t like seeing him all knotted up, ruminating—but it was also frustrating. He’d been at Humboldt Park all day, and now that he was back with me, he still wasn’t even really here.
“So, little lady,” Will said, looking at me, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I hear you may head out to the farm one of these days.”
“The farm?” I asked, taking another large sip of wine.
“That’s what we called Humboldt when we were in school—‘the farm,’” Dylan explained halfheartedly. “There is still a working farm on it. I’ll show you.”
“Ahh,” I said. “So would you milk the cows before or after school?” I looked at Dylan smugly, knowing full well he’d probably never even seen a cow being milked in his life. Meanwhile, Will nearly fell off his chair laughing.
“Milk the cows,” Will sputtered and squeaked—the words barely discernable in his fit of laughter. I giggled with him, but Dylan just sighed heavily, resigned to being made fun of. Eventually Will wiped the tears from his eyes. “Blimey. Your girl’s funny, mate.”
“Should I be nervous?” I asked Will, but he looked confused. “About going to Humboldt?”
“Well, whatever you do,” he said, conspiratorially leaning over the table, “don’t tell the duchess that you like the Roman statue in the fountain.” I looked at him quizzically. I could sense Dylan stiffen in warning to his friend, but thankfully Will was too drunk to notice or care. “About ten years back, old Geoff’s lady of the hour chose to drape herself over the statue for his birthday.”
“That’s just odd,” I said.
“Wearing nothing but an enormous red ribbon in her hair.”
“Oh.”
“The statue has been a bone of contention ever since.”
“Understandably,” I added.
“I don’t even remember telling you that horrible story,” Dylan said, staring with a half-glaring, half-puzzled expression at Will.
Will shrugged and continued, “Primarily, I’d be nervous about this man of yours finding the time to take you out there. If old Geoff has his way, this poor bugger”—he pointed at Dylan—“will be running Hale Shipping and taking over for the old man before sundown Sunday.” He put his hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “Why, he’s already got our boy in on more deals than I’d ever thought possible—between HS and the architecture firm, I’m amazed you see him at all. I got an email from him at nearly three in the morning th
is week!”
“You’ve been working for Hale Shipping?” I sobered a little and looked to Dylan. At some point this week I’d been sleeping soundly beside him and he’d been awake, working. It felt weird not to know that. And it felt weird that Will did.
“A bit,” he said, and I looked at him, worried. He’d just taken on a new design in Amsterdam and was finishing up a bid for the Olympic Stadium in Auckland, and I’d often heard him talking about a personal project he was working on for himself. Working for his father too seemed outrageous. Worry, at least, was a feeling I was familiar with—it had been my primary emotion for eight years as I cared for my father, and as much as I didn’t like thinking about how stressed out Dylan clearly was, and as frustrated as I was that Dylan wasn’t communicating with me about all this, for a brief moment, I actually felt relieved to be on familiar emotional ground.
I may have wanted him to open up to me about all the things that made him rub his forehead the way he was at that moment, but right then I just wanted him to snap out of it, to come back to me. After this day, I wanted to feel close to him again, and I wanted him to feel close to me. I reached over and kissed him on the cheek, and in doing so allowed his hand to slip fully between my legs, right at the top. I heard his breath hitch slightly, saw his eyes widen a bit, and a tiny lustful smirk wrinkled his brow.
I continued to fill Will in on the progress with the store and the goings-on at work, all while slightly shifting below the table. Will shared advice on managing a retail space in central London and clarified a zoning code question I’d found mind-boggling. We talked about business, design, food, fashion. I asked about Will’s famous whisky-distilling family and told him about New York. All the while, I just let Dylan come down from whatever dark place that had him. And slowly I felt him inching closer, chiming in to say how proud he was of my work on the store or about how my father had owned the last standalone sheet music store in New York City. Inch by inch he came back to me.
“So, Dylan, have you asked Lydia about the CBC yet?” Will directed a mischievous look at Dylan as he said it.
“CBC?” I asked, gripping his hand tighter as it rested on my thigh.
“Conservation in Building Conference,” Dylan explained, more relaxed. “It’s an international conference—”
“A meeting of the architectural geniuses of the world, your boyfriend included,” interrupted Will, pointing at Dylan proudly.
“Yes, well. The queen has asked my father of all people to open the conference and to have us for tea afterwards. The first time in his life when he’s taken the least interest in my chosen profession, and of course it’s to serve his own needs.”
“Architecture? Shouldn’t it be you opening it or leading it?” I protested, my hand flying upward and banging into the underside of the tabletop, which caused Will to look down at us curiously and Dylan to firmly clasp my hand and bring it straight back between my legs.
I coughed slightly and took a big gulp of wine.
“It would be improper for Her Majesty to bypass my father and only invite me,” he said. “So he’ll be the star, but I will be there to make him a legitimate choice.” Dylan loosened his grip on my hand only to move his fingers right up against my warm center. The tables were turning. Not only had I gotten Dylan to snap out of his funk, I had awoken the monster.
I took another swig of wine, tried to keep my head in the conversation, and asked, “What did Will think you’d ask me about it?”
“If you’ll go with him, of course, meet the old bat!” Will interrupted, smiling big and answering for Dylan.
“The old bat?” I asked, not fully understanding, and then I realized. “To have tea with the queen?” I looked wide-eyed at Dylan, and he nodded in affirmation. “The queen queen?”
Dylan chuckled and nodded again.
“Uh, yeah. Of course I’ll go,” I said, and I could see the corners of Dylan’s mouth perk up a bit. “You’ll prep me, right? I mean, I have no stinking clue what to say to the queen, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, not ‘for Christ’s sake,’ for starters, or she may tell you that yes, that is exactly for whose sake she is there.” He was full-on smiling now, clearly pleased that I’d be there. He pulled my chair closer to his.
“When is this shindig anyway?”
Dylan turned more fully towards me and grabbed my face in his hands, pulling it towards his own. “Two weeks, sweet girl.” And he gave me that look. His I love you look. And he kissed me. Softly at first, then harder. He even let just a flash of tongue in before letting me go.
“Ah, Jesus,” snorted Will. “Off with you two, and don’t come back. You’re clearly a filthy pair.” We were near giggling in our seats, and we looked back to Will, not apologetically at all.
Chapter 8
We didn’t get home that night until nearly two. I was asleep before we got home and had no memory of being brought to bed or undressed.
The next morning, whenever I’d start to stir, I’d happily roll back under my covers and into Dylan’s warm body, prolonging sleep as effectively as I could. When I woke up for good, it was because Dylan was drawing circles with his fingertips on my bare chest, making ever-wider shapes, tracing invisible pathways and leaving a cool alertness in his wake. I smiled before I opened my eyes.
“There’s my girl,” he said, and I squinted into the bright room, taking him in. He was lying on his side, his head perched on his hand, supported by his elbow. In the mornings Dylan looked just a little less precise, a little more rugged, like his cool, polished exterior had been marched through an outdoor sports magazine. His scruff was at its longest, his hair was at its most unruly, and his smell—that refined warm earthiness that was unmistakably him—was at its most pronounced. It was possible that I loved him more first thing in the morning than I did at any other time of day.
His whole hand was across my chest, a couple of fingers lying just atop the lower curve of my breast, others wrapping around my side, tapping my soft skin there. It was a subtle drumbeat, not overtly sexual, but summoning my blood all the same.
“Morning,” I said, stretching my arms up above my head, running into the headboard, and incidentally pushing my chest farther into his hand.
“Good morning,” he said.
Oh.
It was subtle, but I could hear the calm control in his voice. It was that tone. His hand gripped a little tighter, moved a tad higher, so his thumb was right by my nipple, not quite touching it.
I reached my arms over his head, moving to wrap them around his neck, but he gently gripped my wrists in his hand and firmly placed them back above my head. He just shook his head, indicating that no, I couldn’t, shouldn’t move my arms again.
“How did you sleep, damsel?” he asked smoothly, again that control right at the surface.
“Well.” I gulped a little, feeling the anticipation, my arousal shifting, awakening. I cleared my throat. “I slept well.”
“Good.” His hand steadily drifted down my torso and resumed drawing those tantalizing circles around my hip, swiftly brushing over my landing strip, then lower, but never close enough. Lazy, as though he had no intentions, as if this were totally innocent, naïve. As if.
“Not too hungover?” he asked.
I mentally ran a check over my body, and by some miracle I was foggy but not in the misery I probably deserved. I shook my head.
My hips shifted involuntarily, tilting, hoping to coax him into accidentally speeding up his process. But he lifted his hand altogether and made a quiet tsk-ing sound.
When his hand returned, it was to grasp my upper thigh under the light sheet and pull it firmly towards him, so my knee ran into his rock-hard stomach. I lay on my back, my arms arched above my body, my breasts exposed, nipples taut, my legs spread wantonly, and goose bumps rising to the surface of my skin. My breaths were shallow, and I shut my eyes, trying to revel in the purity of this feeling, this readiness.
Dylan ran the cool back of his hand up one th
igh and down the other, again and again, making a circuit but only ever just touching or just missing my damp core. God, it felt good. He wanted me soaking wet, and I would be.
“I know you feel like I’m not telling you everything.”
My eyes shot to his. Now? Was he going to open up to me now?
“I—” I started in a husky whisper.
“Shh, baby. I know.” He moved entirely on top of me, my face framed by his forearms, his body tenting mine. I was practically shivering from physical anticipation underneath him, and now I was also out of my mind with anticipation for what he was going to say.
He was holding my wrists in his hands, stroking my palms, and he had kneed my legs apart and settled between them, hovering above me. Unbearably, our bodies were not touching anywhere except our hands and where he held my legs apart with his knees.
“Damsel. I don’t talk about my business or my family. I never have—I’ve told you more than I’ve ever told anyone.”
“Dylan—”
“And I know I’ve not been around as much as you deserve.” He let his body drop a fraction, the air between us getting warmer. “But be patient. Let me take care of you. Trust me.” He kissed my lips hard, firm, conveying the seriousness of his request. “Trust me to protect you.”
“No,” I said firmly, surprising even myself and feeling the warmth dissipate.
He tried to silence me with a kiss, but I turned my face, only to find him confused, annoyed even. But fuck it. He wasn’t going to get away with only pretending to open up to me. I wanted him to keep doing what he’d been doing—Christ, he was so freaking good at seducing me that stopping him required a willpower I hadn’t known I possessed—but in my gut I knew that I couldn’t just keep waiting for him to open up to me.
“Lydia?”
“Nope. You’re talking to me,” I said, inching up into a seated position and bringing the sheet with me to cover my breasts.
“About what?” He reached for the sheet, but I slapped his hands away.
“No, sir, not until we talk. About all of it. About your crazy need to protect me. About what’s going on at work, with your father. Anything. Everything. I know you’re seeing a lot of your dad, and it’s upsetting to you, but I don’t know why, not really. I know you’re working for him—or I do now, thanks to Will—but again, I don’t know why. And I know there are things you’re not telling me about whoever is emailing me. There’s all of that, but it’s more. There is just ambient tension around you. You were in another place entirely last night.”
