Revenge: The Complete Series (Erotic Rock Star Suspense Romance)

by Mimi Strong

  I’m too choked with emotion to answer.

  He continues, “He was a referral from my regular doctor. He’s actually a decent guy, considering he pokes around in people’s heads for a living.”

  His words wash over me. Dylan’s seeing someone, but it’s not a terrible thing.

  “You’re… seeing a therapist?”

  He stands up straighter and huffs his shoulders out. “Yeah. Don’t tell anyone.” He looks away.

  “Dylan, there’s no need to be asha—”

  He cuts me off with a gruff, “Whatever.”

  I look around the empty garage. I don’t even care about where we are anymore. I’m so overwhelmed by this news. I think it’s good news. Dylan is the last person in the world I thought would see a therapist, but I guess I don’t know everything.

  “That sounds fun,” I say.

  He looks at me warily, through the sides of his eyes. “Fun?”

  I give him a big, genuine smile. “Yes. Fun. Do you lay on a couch and talk about your dreams and stuff? I think it would be totally fun to do that.” I let out a small laugh. “Honestly, I’ve always wanted to try it, just to see what they’d say. It must be fun to spend an hour talking about your stuff.”

  “It’s fifty minutes,” he says. “Unless the guy’s ripping me off. He says an hour is fifty minutes.”

  I can’t stop grinning. “An hour is not fifty minutes.”

  “But thirteen is a baker’s dozen.”

  “What? Are you a baker now?”

  He pulls a set of jingling keys from his pocket and gives me a flirty look. “Do you want me to be a baker?”

  “I just want you to be happy.”

  He pushes the key into the lock of the door behind me. “Is that all you want? For me to be happy? Because I can’t be happy without you.”

  I reach up and run my fingers down his cheek and through his beard. “Is this a beard of sadness?”

  Dylan closes his eyes. “Do you want me to shave?”

  “I want you to kiss me.”

  He opens his eyes and gazes at me with adoration. “I thought you were mad at me.”

  “I can still want you to kiss me when I’m mad at you.”

  “Hmm.”

  I lick my lips and wait for him to kiss me, but he doesn’t.

  He unlocks the door and nods for me to follow him through the doorway.

  Chapter Six

  Beyond the door, I see a hallway with coat hooks on the wall.

  “Dylan, where are we?”

  “Come on,” he says.

  I follow, my curiosity rising. We pass through a door into a large kitchen, then a hallway, then an atrium. Now I know where we are. This is the Malibu mansion we rented for our wedding. This glass-walled atrium is where we planned to say our vows.

  “Why are we here?”

  He reaches for the patio door. I grab his elbow and stop him from opening the door.

  “Let’s go outside,” he says. “I’ll show you the gardens.”

  I shake my head and stare at him in confusion. “Why?”

  He turns to me and gives me a warm look. His voice soft and rich, he says, “Because you looked so relaxed today, when Clay’s wife showed you the gardens. I was watching you, walking from flower to flower, stopping to admire everything that was beautiful. You looked so serene.”

  I glance out at the Malibu mansion’s gardens. They’re rigid and orderly, growing in tidy rows, unlike the country-style garden at Iris and Clay’s house.

  The sun is very low on the horizon, bathing the room in hues of amber. I turn back to Dylan. His face is golden in this light, like he’s a statue made of bronze.

  Even this new beard he’s been growing looks beautiful in the sunset light. I didn’t like the beard, until now. He looks like a warrior who’s been marching through the mountains for days. He still has those soulful eyes of a poet, though.

  My poet warrior.

  He steps closer to me and brings his hands up to cup the sides of my face. “You looked serene,” he repeats.

  I gaze up into his dark brown eyes and feel myself falling. “Gardens make me happy, I guess.”

  “I want you to look that way again.” He moves one hand up the side of my face gently, then uses his fingertip to draw a line straight down between my eyebrows. He draws the line again.

  It tickles, so I let out a giggle. “What are you doing?”

  “This is where I give you a frown line. Right here.”

  I push his hand away and snort. “I don’t have frown lines.”

  “But you will if you stay with me. You get a crease here between your eyebrows, when you’re upset.”

  I take a step back. He’s gone from saying sweet things about me looking serene, to talking about frown lines. And we’re standing in the place we were supposed to say our vows. I’ve got a terrible feeling everything is broken, more broken than I feared.

  “It’s me,” he says. “I’m the one who drives you.”

  “What are you talking about? Drives me? Are you breaking up with me? Just say it, Dylan. Tell me you’d rather have your freedom to kiss girls like Ryanna. Don’t act like this is for my own good.” I look around at the empty atrium, at the bare, tiled floor. All of our friends were supposed to fill this space this weekend, and now they won’t.

  Everything’s empty.

  “We’re talking about you,” he says insistently. “You weren’t working enough overtime hours here, so you had to fly to Italy. I’m not enough for you, so you fill your life with work. With meaningless junk and paperwork.”

  His tone is gentle, but his words are sharp.

  The atrium swirls around me.

  “You’re the one who practically shoved me on the plane,” I say, my voice rising in volume. “I went so I could get away from the paparazzi and all the hellishness here in L.A. I needed to get out of this awful city.”

  “Just the city?”

  My jaw drops open. This isn’t like him. He’s always been supportive of my career. He’d never call it meaningless junk.

  “What the hell, Dylan? I didn’t go there to get away from you. Why would you say that? Why would you think that?”

  “We need to both be honest. With each other and with ourselves.”

  He’s standing in front of me, holding still, and his body looks like a wall to me. A big, wide, wall. I reach out and shove him by his shoulders. He barely sways.

  “I am honest!” I yell.

  “You have to tell me when you’re upset. I’m not one of your Morris clients that needs to be managed.”

  I shove him again by the shoulders. It’s not fair that he’s so much bigger than me, like a big wall.

  “Stop getting to me,” I growl. “Stop trying to get in my head. You don’t know what I think.”

  “No, I don’t know what you think.”

  Outside the atrium windows, the sun is setting. The last sliver disappears over the horizon. The light in the room changes, from gold and pink to cool and gray.

  Dylan’s brown eyes become cool and smoky, distant. I feel like he’s slipping away from me. Even though he held me in the garage, just moments ago, that was an illusion. He always takes one step toward me, then two steps away.

  He’s always moving away.

  It’s hard to get words out of my throat.

  “I want to be with you,” I whisper. “I love you.”

  His eyes are gleaming. “I love you, too. That’s why I want you to be happy. We can’t keep going like this.”

  “Like what? We just found out my phone got hacked. And they paid for someone to make up stories about you. That doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  “I don’t know, Jess. If there weren’t cracks there already, they wouldn’t get in.”

  I let out a howl of frustration and fly at Dylan. I hit him on the shoulders with both palms, sending him back a few steps. He steadies himself, his face calm.

  I don’t want him to be calm anymore.

  I shove h
im again. Harder.

  “Good,” he says. “Let it out. You resent my career, and that’s why you throw yourself into your work.”

  I make a fist with one hand, and glare at the center of his chest. He’s being so stupid right now. I just want to hit him.

  He sees my fist and says, “Go ahead. Hit me.”

  I growl, “I’m not going to hit you.”

  He pats his stomach with his hands. “Come on. How do you really feel about carrying my signed photos around in your purse?”

  My arm moves without hesitation. I punch him right in the abdominals with my small fist.

  He lets out an oof noise, but I know he’s not hurt.

  “I deserved that,” he says. “Come on. Hit me again. How do you feel when I say I’m coming home for dinner, then I call you two hours late and say I lost track of time?”

  I punch him again, right in the same spot. He’s expecting it, and his stomach is like a wall.

  “How about when I drive too fast?”

  I punch him two more times.

  “You’re too nice to me,” he says.

  I punch him three times. My muscles are getting warmed up, and I’m punching harder, throwing my shoulder into it.

  “There’s my fighter,” he says.

  I tell him to go to hell, and rain down more punches. I’ve never hit anyone before, and this feels good.

  I’d keep going, but he’s caught me by the wrists.

  “Jess?”

  I stare up at him, my head still swirling with emotions. The thin, blue light inside the atrium is weak, like we’re in a fish tank, deep underwater.

  “This isn’t how we solve our issues.” He holds my fists in my hands.

  I try to step back, to pull away, but he doesn’t let go. This isn’t fair of him. He tricked me into hitting him, to prove a point. I howl in frustration, like an animal, trying to break free.

  “We’re better than this,” he says.

  I don’t have anything to say.

  My eyes blur.

  I don’t have anything left to give.

  He lets go of my hands and takes a step back.

  I take three steps toward him and shove my face into his.

  He steps back again.

  I move forward faster.

  We keep going, until he bumps against a glass wall with his back.

  He seems surprised by me, surprised by what I’m doing.

  I stare into his eyes, looking deep, looking for a sign he still wants me.

  He bows his head forward. Our noses touch. I tilt my head to the side. He breathes on my mouth. Our lips are almost touching.

  I could stand higher on my toes and kiss him, but I don’t.

  “Dylan,” I say softly. “I’m willing to work, to chase you if I need to, but you have to meet me partway.”

  “And you have to be honest with me. Tell me when I’m out of line.”

  “Fine. You’re out of line.”

  “Right now?”

  “Absolutely. You’re out of line, and you’re being a—”

  His mouth crushes down on mine. I can feel by the curve of his lips that he’s smiling. He liked me giving him hell.

  He kisses me deeply, the wolfish hunger rising. I open my mouth to welcome his tongue. He puts his hands around my back, pulling me tighter.

  Chapter Seven

  Dylan moves his lips across my cheek and onto my neck. He nibbles on my earlobe.

  I put my hand on his chest to stop him.

  “We’re in a glass atrium,” I whisper.

  He stops kissing my ear and neck. “We are.”

  “Is this place private?”

  He pulls back from our embrace. His dark eyebrows rise suggestively. “I could take you on a tour of the place.”

  “What’s there to see?”

  “This is my home away from home. We had this place booked for the whole month, so I ordered in some furniture.”

  Suddenly, everything makes sense. He’s been staying here, at the mansion. That’s why he hasn’t been at the house.

  He takes my hand and leads me out of the atrium. The rest of the house is dark, with only a few lights on, probably run with timers. We pass by the kitchen, and now I see a few dishes in the sink. He’s been living here, hiding out.

  We walk down a hallway, into a master bedroom the size of a small apartment. There’s a mattress on the floor in one corner, and clothes everywhere. He’s got my old laptop here, propped up on a cardboard box near the bed.

  Dylan crosses over to the one lamp in the room, a cheap standing light that looks like it came from a dumpster, and flicks it on.

  I run over to my old laptop and grab it, laughing. “I haven’t seen this in ages. I thought we threw it out.” I examine the duct tape holding it together. There appears to be another layer of fresh tape.

  He shrugs. “I missed you. I found that in the garage, and it reminded me of you.”

  I laugh so hard, I’m in danger of crying. “Thanks a lot. A ratty old laptop held together with tape reminds you of me.”

  He takes the laptop from me. “Everything reminds me of you.”

  I go quiet. Everything?

  He continues, “I came by here a few days after you left for Italy. We had some problems at the house. I didn’t want to bother you with it, but some girls followed me home and tried to get into the house.”

  “They… followed you home?” I give him a look out of the sides of my eyes. This had better not be going somewhere bad.

  He looks sheepish. “I guess a bright blue Maserati is easy to spot, even in a city like L.A. They started showing up at the house every night, ringing the doorbell and drinking on the doorstep.”

  Oh. So there was a kernel of truth to some of those stories about girls at the house, late at night. Only a kernel, though.

  I look around the messy room. He was not planning to bring me here tonight.

  “So… are you living here now?” I ask.

  He grins. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  He comes closer and stops in front of me. His broad shoulders and strong body are a wall again, but this time I like it.

  “No more thinking,” he says.

  “But…”

  His dark eyes glint in the warm glow of the lamp. “No more talking.”

  I nod to show him I agree. No more thinking or talking. It’s been a long day, from my confrontation with Ryanna, to the showdown with Chet, and then the long drive and meeting with the investigator. I feel like I’ve lived a month’s worth of L.A. life in just one day.

  Dylan moves slowly. He unbuttons my blouse and gently slides it off. I kick off my shoes and stand before him in my bra and skirt, even shorter without my heels.

  He pulls his shirt off over his head. The scent of his bare skin hits my nose, and I inhale deeply. I’ve missed everything about him, but smelling him makes me miss him more, even though he’s right in front of me. I reach out to touch him, to make sure he’s real.

  His chest is hard, and he looks lean, like he hasn’t been eating enough. He’s still strong, but I want to take care of him. I run my fingers across his flat, square pectoral muscles, then over his small, firm nipples.

  He flexes under my touch, his lines becoming more defined. I sweep my fingertips down his center, toward his navel, then up again. He’s got red marks just below his ribs. It takes me a moment to realize the marks are from where I was punching him. He’s not bruised, but I feel ashamed. He invited me to hit him, but I shouldn’t have had to do it. I should have told him when I was angry, and not let it build.

  “There,” he says, jarring me out of my thoughts.

  I look up at his face. He’s staring at the spot between my eyebrows.

  “The frown line,” he says. “It just came back.”

  I take a deep breath and let my face relax. “I was just thinking,” I explain.

  “No more thinking. You promised.” He drops to his knees before me,
and now he’s looking up at me. His face is open and calm. I don’t think I’ve seen him like this in a long time.

  He looks serene.

  He unclasps my bra and tosses it aside.

  He cups my breasts with both hands, then runs his hands down my sides and my hips, over my skirt. He repeats this, gently holding my breasts for a moment, then tracing my curves. It’s like he’s memorizing me, painting my body in his memory.

  Still kneeling before me, he reaches back for the zipper of my skirt, unfastens it, and slips it down. I step out of the skirt, my legs shaking. He bows his head forward and kisses my stomach, trailing down, over my underwear.

  He reaches the seam at the bottom and presses his mouth into the fabric, blowing warm air onto me. I start to tremble with anticipation.

  He leans back, resting on his heels for a moment as he gazes up at me. Thoughts come to me. I don’t know where I stand with him, or what our relationship is now.

  He points to my forehead, to the worry line between my eyebrows. He’s right. I’m thinking again, when I said we’d take a break from all that.

  I have so many questions, but I push them away.

  He’s upright on his knees again, bare chested, but still in his jeans. He’s unbuckled them at the top, to release himself.

  He reaches up again to my breasts, only this time he’s not as gentle. I can feel his hunger for me as he squeezes my flesh and pinches my nipples to hardness. He presses firmly with his hands as he strokes down the sides of my body. He grabs hold of my underwear like he’s angry at them, and pulls them down.

  I can scarcely step out of my underwear before his mouth is on me, between my legs. I gasp and instinctively try to step back. His touch is so intimate, so intense, his tongue already pressing into me.

  But his hands are firm on my hips, not letting go.

  He nudges my legs, spreading them apart. He drives his tongue deeper, his lips firm upon me, coaxing me to pleasure.

  I come quickly and unexpectedly, crying out. I’m gasping for breath, my hands in his hair. The climax ripples through me, and I’m shocked I’m still able to stand.

  He lets out a satisfied chuckle, eases back, and gives me a love bite on the top of my thigh.

  I can barely catch my breath before he’s on his feet, standing before me. He takes my hand and brings my fingertips to his hardness. His whole body reacts to my touch. I’ve never felt him quite as pent-up as this.