Thinking that I talked with him about it, and he didn’t say anything. Or even Emily, but for some reason, I can’t manage being bothered by her.
So, I don’t know why it’s so different with Dylan.
“You could have told me. As…”
“As what? You think I would compromise my company and my work for you? I barely knew you.”
“We had sex before I even mentioned that merger, and you had the chance to tell me it was you!” I stand up walking around his desk to grab my purse and leave. He stands and corners me by the table lining his doorway.
“It wasn’t me, Forbes. I run a company and not on my own either. Even if you had asked, I wouldn’t have told you.” His eyes blaze as he stares me down. “You don’t get to be mad about this.”
“Get to? Is it that crazy to ask for the truth?”
He scoffs at me and clears the space, so he is right on top of me.
“No, because that’s not what you’re asking. You want validation, you want to think that you mean enough to compromise my integrity, and you don’t.” As he finishes, he winces with the possibility that he may have regretted what he said.
But I don’t see if that’s the case before I turn and leave.
21
Dylan
Forbes is incredibly infuriating. Here I am running after her in my office building. One that I own, in charge of my own image, running after a woman. Through the office corridor and main hallway, she hoists the elevator before I can catch her and have to wait. I ignore the few passing employees, stragglers after a long office day until I catch the next one going down and politely get everyone out of it.
Assuming she is going to the parking garage.
I didn’t mean what I said, and I couldn’t rectify that before she went running off.
I don’t blame her, I was harsh. But that was mostly only because I believed she could take it, that she could absorb as much as she spews out. Obviously, I was wrong, but it wasn’t on lack of information. Forbes met me hating me, and now we are in some middle ground that I can’t identify.
The parking garage is lit in fluorescence, and I get a quick view of her flowing golden hair, red-bottom heels, and sinuous body lines before she rounds a corner.
“Forbes!”
She doesn’t stop. I’ll be damned if I run after her in brown point shoes and this suit, but here I am. Because my strides are longer, determined, I reach her by the door of her sky-gray car, mid-size, so it’s easy for me to grab her around her waist and fall through the open door of her back seat once she opens it.
“Dylan, what the hell?” she shrieks, pressing her hands against my chest. I don’t let her gain ground until I shut the door behind me and clasp both her wrists in her lap. I turn in the seat staring her down.
She still struggles with useless squirms against me.
Though it’s very clear I’m not overpowering her to a dominating level, she can’t get out of it if she wanted to. It’s a fine line I’ve found with her.
“Don’t run away from me when we’re having a conversation.” My thumb traces the inside of her slender wrist feeling her pulse thumping.
Her shallow breathing fills her car which is kept very clean, the only thing out of the ordinary is her phone charger hanging over the gear shift. The swift scent of her perfume fills the air.
“That wasn’t a conversation. That was an ambush. You think you can say whatever you want to me, Dylan, just because I let my guard down and slept with you and told you about all the sad things in my life, and that isn’t true. That isn’t fair. I—”
My lips are on hers before I hear the end of that sentence.
I hear her, I do, but I would rather feel her fighting against me, at first, then letting me right in.
Her full lips parting, sighing against me as I sweep my tongue inside her and give her my taste as I take hers. I release her wrists, and her hands fly to the brush of my hair above my ears and curves back holding me to her.
I swing her in my lap and spread her legs over me, the warmth of her sears over my cock, hardening in my pants once again if it ever had a chance even to settle down.
Forbes grinds herself down on me on purpose, very effectively. I feel a lapse in my spine as my cock reaches out for one thing. My fingers tumble up her thighs and between her legs until I reach her dripping sex. She cries out when my thumb hits the throb of her clit teasing her as I see fit.
Her lips spread over mine breathing heavily as she rips through my shirt, sparing my buttons at least. With one hand keeping her on the edge, I use the other to barely free my cock through my zipper. I hiss as my tip grazes her sweet center barely remembering to forage through my pocket.
“You carry condoms in your wallet now?”
“Shut up.”
Forbes curls her lips barely sneering before I kiss her and roll the condom on all the way before I’m inside her.
She softly bites my lip. I groan as I sink her into me and connect with her in a way that seems to be the only way we know how.
I unzip her dress down far enough to expose her black, lacy bra holding her breasts by thin fabric at the bottom. My lips run over the edge of them. I tug her bra down to free her left breast, kneading the other in my hand as my mouth closes around her other nipple swirling my tongue, grazing my teeth over her, and biting her softly. Her moans in my ear go right to my cock pulsing inside of her.
She rolls her hips in expert fashion clenching around me in every circle and roll of her hips. I get my fill of the sweet flesh of her breasts before I go to her lips again.
She kisses me back, roughly, her tongue as furious as her lips on mine. I return it.
Her nails rake down through the hair on my chest and down the line to my navel. The sensitivity above my cock has me grinding against her for more. Our kiss breaks for air, and my hands go to the flesh of her ass as I rake her dress up higher and bring my hips up into her further.
She pulls back to look at me, her stunning green eyes blazing, trapping me.
She licks her lips, and I get lost in her eyes as she stares me down.
Brings me down.
My cock is inside of her, our half-naked bodies pressed against each other in the back seat of a car and somehow, we’re still grand—royalty in how cracked the foundation of a relationship can be.
But that doesn’t seem to matter. It only matters that we are together, her ignoring the angry emotions that go bump in her head and focusing on what is between us—that doesn’t waver. She whispers in my ear, moans, and mewls, and I listen to her—not stopping, going harder, and not stopping.
Our breaths stall together, her lips hovering over mine as she dissolves into a beautiful orgasm around me. Stilled inside of her, I do the same pulsing at the bit, giving yet another part of me to her. I close my lips over hers, kissing her softly at first before she leans in, wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me deeper. Our tongues fly swiftly together, lips pulsing around each other, sharing a breath of air and soul that can’t go unnoticed.
When we’re able to, we separate. She does her best to look decent, but it’s no use. I get out of the car, lucky no one saw us from the building. Her purse is hanging halfway out the door, and I catch it before I open it fully and turn to face her.
Coming out of the car, stumbling, a golden emblem of beauty.
“Say you forgive me,” I say.
She scoffs, rolls her eyes in a show as she moves between me and her car. I open her driver door for her, and she gets inside, tosses her purse on the other seat, and revs the engine. I stop the door from closing, running my hand over my messed-up hair down to the drip of sweat on the nape of my neck.
“Dylan…” She shakes her head staring out the window, blinking once.
“Forbes, you know my hands were tied. We’re beyond this. I didn’t mean what I said, and you know that,” I plead.
She exhales softly licking her lips as her head shakes, and she doesn’t look at me for a while. I wait with
the exhaust of the engine burning my feet under the car. Waiting for her is what feels like an actual fire burning.
“I know that.” She turns to me with an expression in her eyes I can’t read. “That’s not what I care about. I just don’t trust you, Dylan. Now please move, before you lose an arm.” She reaches for the door, and I don’t want to stick around to find out how serious she is.
I step back. She barely misses me as she speeds away.
* * *
“I ran out of gin.” I barge in Holden’s office. He’s the only one of us who would still be here at seven, but I find Carson and Evan there too. A crowd is too much for me right now.
“Help yourself. What’s your deal?” Holden asks. He is on his couch reviewing papers. I assume it’s expense reports since that’s what we are focused on for a while after the fiscal year ends.
“Nothing.” I pour myself a glass and sit at the armchair by the center table. Carson and Evan are on the couch.
Ending their conversation, Carson turns his attention to me.
“Why were you running through the hallways?” Carson smiles.
“I wasn’t,” I lie, swishing the glass around so the ice clinks inside of it.
The cold of the glass isn’t what tingles my skin, it’s the memory of Forbes—fucking her in the car, watching her drive off angry. Not necessarily in that order.
“Liar. Forbes was here, and then in your office, and then both of you were gone.”
“I didn’t know you were a PI in your free time,” I say to Carson. He laughs, and I finish my drink.
Holden pays his attention to us, and Evan shuts the screen of his laptop. He’s been on the fence with Holden since he suggested he run the company in London. But it was a passing conversation. He should get over it.
“I’m not, but it’s obvious you just had sex. You forget we shared a wall growing up.” Carson chuckles, so incredibly annoying which I did get used to growing up, our bedrooms were next to each other. Mom did that on purpose, it pretty much went in order by age. So, when we got to a certain age, it was easier to hear everything that was going on and see it too.
“That’s… neither here nor there,” I murmur. My brothers laugh at me. The pricks.
“Whatever. I thought that was a missile in the strap.” Evan chuckles, at least he can still joke.
“It… it was.”
“I’m confused.” Carson leans forward. He matches Evan today in a gray suit. I seem to be the only one to stick to blue or black. Holden is always in black.
I sigh, figuring their deductions and theories will give me a worse headache than telling the truth, so I do. At least most of it, leaving out the parts about her dad. I’m still undecided about that.
Suddenly, I’m a liar and untrustworthy. I know we barely know each other, but ‘knowing each other’ is a construct. Forbes and I are practically the same people plagued with grief and resentment.
Maybe that’s why we don’t get along.
But I don’t tell them that, only enough to block the questions they might pester me with. Because the only reason a family as big as ours, that’s like ours, stays together, is the absence of being apart. Telling each other everything isn’t a sleepover, loose tactic, it’s how we were brought up.
“She knows you couldn’t say anything about the merger. Not before the IPO was made public. Which, I might add, performed better than we thought. We can now break ground in London sooner,” Holden says.
I nod. “She does. It doesn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t any more than getting that out of my system,” I lie.
Forbes would frown at me for it too. Being in the midst of my brothers in Dad’s old office and now Holden’s, I’m strongly thinking of telling them the truth about Dad, but it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t pass the center of my brain that makes the right decisions, but I do hope that it might one day. If it does, I imagine I would tell Mom first. To be courteous.
“Right on. We were all about to leave anyway. Dinner at my place?”
“Is the chef cooking? Because you can’t.” Evan grins. Holden stands and ignores him, slightly smirking as he gathers the papers.
“Yes. You in?” He turns to me.
I nod, not really thinking about it.
It would be better than going home and ending up at Forbes’ place. Something tells me she needs her space, and I plan to give it to her.
I don’t know for how long.
22
Forbes
This day is cyclical. Bad, then good, bad again, and good again.
I wonder what might be next.
I don’t wonder long before my lawyer calls with a friendly reminder. He can’t do anything, that much I could deduct. What my father left has dried out, financially at least. Hospitals seem to be in the business of taking money they don’t have, though I can’t form a strong enough opinion on that considering hospitals saved my life as much as they pained my dad’s.
In short, I have to pay the bill at some point. I’m not sure when. It’s the farthest thing from my mind as I drive home feeling dirty in my sodden panties and incredibly unruly hair.
Dylan.
He’s a tornado only picking up speed and power when the land is flat, and there is nothing for miles. Sometimes I’m that land, and when I have the slightest bit of inhibition toward him, there he goes, dismantling everything I think is right. If it weren’t for him, I still think my father could have had an easier way out of this for me if his termination wasn’t so secretive. What I used to know is gone now, and what happened with this merger might only prove that he will never be honest, not if it means compromising his integrity.
It’s admirable and infuriating. Unfair.
Emily calls me, one block from my apartment. I consider letting it go to voicemail before I remember only a day has passed since last night at the bar, and that it’s my birthday, including the birthday dinner I planned to have with her. My birthday is a passing holiday. Over the years, I have done less for it.
Emily is the one who reminds me.
“You aren’t bailing on me, are you?” Emily’s chipper voice carries over the hands-free in my car.
“No, I’m not. I just got home.” I pull into the underground parking garage and park.
“Good. I didn’t even see you in the office today. Anyway, I’m coming to pick you up, ten minutes.”
I hold back a groan. “Okay.”
Up in my apartment, I walk into the aftermath of last night. My heels clank with the beat of each memory—the couch, a long talk at the breakfast nook amongst other things, and finally, my bedroom. I strip down and shower despite Emily arriving at any minute. It’s necessary. Dylan is all over me.
His lips, his scent, his taste on my tongue, and pulse on my skin. I feel inclined to him, to do things I am not sure of with him.
Something draws me in. I must only have space for it since I no longer actively hate him, it wouldn’t be fair. He knows what happened, he and my father, one of whom is dead, and the other is promised to a dead man.
It isn’t fair.
I get out of the shower in time to hear Emily knocking at the door. I toss on my blue robe and slippers to answer it.
“Is this what you’re wearing?” She looks me over once before strutting inside. Her pink, thin-strapped, knee-length dress adheres to her tanned skin, and her dark hair is in loose waves down her back.
“Yes, I thought it would be fun.”
She laughs at me putting the white wine in the fridge.
“You didn’t have to bring wine.” I face her, the blush and eyeshadow she has on matches along with her lipstick. Emily always had this princess aura to her. In college, we joked about it as Mulan before the whole war thing.
“Well, I did. Now hurry, we have reservations at eight.” She smiles, shooing me along.
I dress in record time in something similar to what she is wearing but not overly so—a blue dress with straps that cross in shapes at the back and stops at my knees, loose but st
ill fitting. Since I didn’t wash my hair, I brush it out, the curls from a few days ago still good enough. I don’t want to leave her waiting too long, so I quickly redo my makeup as fast as I can, and it comes out good enough, even the red lipstick.
“Okay, I’m ready.” I come out to find Emily smiling and texting, probably to Carson.
“Good. You look great. Happy birthday!” she squeals, hugging me by surprise. I almost stumble in my heels, the same ones from today. Breaking out red-bottoms should be enjoyed for more than an office day.
“Thank you. We should get going.” I smile back or try to at least.
Her car has been upgraded in the past few months—the same model but newer and flashier—purple, but the kind that is almost black. It was a birthday gift from Carson. My birthday was always at a weird time, so soon after the holidays on January tenth, but it was always fun for me growing up with my dad and me at least.
Emily pries me for information about Dylan on the way. To avoid the incessant headache she is able to bring me, I am honest with her.
As I can be.
“Dylan is… a different breed,” Emily comments over the tall wine glasses we sip from after carrying the conversation inside. The restaurant is elegant, a steakhouse in the city near the office corridor. Emily went all out with the reservations and a nice table, and even the wine is waiting for us. I was second in line for her birthday, so I barely got the middle of the lunch hour, but we had fun the next day.
“I know that,” I murmur, referring to any number of things.
“You should give him time. He might come around.”
I pick at my fancy bread and butter. “Maybe not. Secrets get better the longer they go on.”
Our eyes meet over the small flower vase at the table, square and flat.
Wilde About Dylon: The Brothers Wilde Series — Book Four Page 15
