by Jill Shalvis
He sucked in a breath and his arms tightened on her. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
He lifted her up against him and set her onto his desk. Holding her gaze, he leaned past her and swept the desk clear, letting everything hit the floor.
It gave her both a laugh and a ridiculous shiver.
But Dylan wasn’t playing. “Cold?” he asked, his hands gliding up the outside of her thighs, encouraging them open so he could step in between, snugging their bodies up against each other.
“No. It was the cheesy gesture of knocking everything off your desk that got me.”
He met her gaze and at whatever he saw in hers, smiled. “I’ve got more cheesy moves.”
“Bring ’em on.”
He gave her one last very hot, very amused look before his mouth came down on hers. This kiss, unlike his others, was serious and most definitely heading somewhere, and it thrilled her. She explored his chest with her hands, slowly relearning the feel of him, following that with her mouth because she needed a taste.
With a groan, his hands went to her hips, squeezed, and then slid beneath the hem of her dress, his fingers toying with the lace edging on her undies.
“Dylan,” she whispered as his fingers found his way beneath the lace to tease her bare flesh, making her moan his name and him groan at finding her so ready for him.
One tug and she was bared to him, and it only took her a second to push his jeans back down and free him.
Their gazes met again and she could see the need and hunger she felt mirrored back at her.
But also a hint of doubt.
“Tilly—” he started but she surged up and took his mouth with hers.
“I want this,” she reminded him. “I want tonight, whatever we can give each other.”
Producing a condom, he leaned down and gave a soft, loving kiss that so thoroughly disarmed her that she gasped when he slid home. She was instantly swept away, lost in the sensations as he enveloped her into his arms and took her with a slow, steady rhythm that grew an ache into a flame, and a flame into a flash fire that consumed her.
Somehow she managed to open her eyes and watch the intensity on his face, which moved her almost beyond bearing. “Dylan,” she whispered.
He inhaled sharply and let out an unsteady breath, leaning into her to bury his face in the crook of her neck. His heat seeped through her so that she no longer felt the chill of the desk beneath her bare ass.
“You feel so damn good,” he murmured, nuzzling and kissing her neck, her jaw, her ear, all while continuing to move inside her until she let go with a cry of pleasure that took him along with her.
Her senses took a moment to return, a long moment, and the first thing she heard was a tinny male voice from somewhere on the floor.
“Hey, man, either you’re calling for help or butt dialing me.” Penn. “But it sounds like a good time is being had in there. Hello? Open the office door and let Leo in, he’s sitting there wanting his mama.”
Dylan picked up the fallen phone and hit Disconnect.
Tilly opened the door and let Leo in before biting her lower lip, torn between horror and laughter. “Oh my God. They heard—”
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said, “but I promise you, they won’t ever say anything to you about it. Not if they want to live.”
Laughter won.
Dylan looked at her with wry amusement. “Still think I’m smooth?”
Chapter 6
Sometimes my great accomplishment is just keeping my mouth shut.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
Ten years prior:
Tilly watched out the window until she saw Dylan show up for work. She’d texted him to come a little early, but he hadn’t. She’d had to be quick to catch him getting out of his car before he entered the café.
“Thought you’d come over and see me,” she said.
“Can’t. I’ve got work. And you have to study for finals this week.”
“I’m taking a day off from studying,” she said.
“No, you’re not.”
She stared at his back as he turned away, hurt to the core that he didn’t want to be with her. “What do you care?”
He turned to face her again, eyes dark, expression dark. Hell, his life was dark. “You think I don’t care?”
She swallowed as he strode back to her and glared down into her eyes. “I spend more time on your schoolwork than mine,” he said. “I check on you every single night that I can get away. I’m working more hours than I have in a day so that after I give most of my pay to my mom to cover her rent, I can put a little bit away for a future that I’m not even sure exists.”
Tilly felt her throat burn. “It does.”
His face softened. “I’m going to go to work, Tee. And you’re going to study. We need the money and the education.”
She held her breath. “We?”
“Yeah.” And then he did something he rarely did—he touched her. He cupped her face in his big, callused hands and dropped his forehead to hers. “It’s all about the we,” he murmured. “Don’t ever think otherwise.”
Tilly redressed herself and watched Dylan do the same, not wanting to miss a thing. The image of his very fine bod was now permanently burned into her brain, where it would most certainly fuel her fantasies for many nights to come. But then she froze.
Because his knees. Both were marked up with multiple harsh-looking scars that looked terrifyingly real. “Ouch,” she said softly.
He shrugged and once again stepped into a pair of jeans, pulling them up. “Guess some things have changed,” he admitted. “And yeah, it was a bitch.” He dug past some things in the bag and came up with a T-shirt.
“You don’t even limp,” she marveled.
He shrugged on the shirt. “Rehab was brutal,” he admitted. “Thought I was tough going in, but I wasn’t. Not even close.”
“How did you get through?”
He turned to face her. “Penn and Ric. They pretty much bullied me into it.”
She nodded like she was all calm, but she wasn’t. Wasn’t feeling anywhere near calm. “So,” she said, trying to sound reasonable when she felt anything but. “You bailed on me, having made the decision for me that I deserved more than you could give me. You gave up your dreams and went into the military, all to get away from me.”
“I didn’t give up on anything,” he said. “The military was a way to keep my astronaut dream alive.”
Okay, she could understand that. “Until you got hurt,” she guessed.
He gave a brief nod of agreement. “I’d qualified and gone through flight school.”
“And then . . . you were hurt,” she guessed. “What happened?”
“On a recon mission, we were given bad intel.” He shrugged. “We took on fire as we were heading back to base.”
“How bad?” she whispered.
“Not as bad as Penn made it sound. I took a spray of bullets across my knees. Not life threatening.”
“Penn said—”
“—I nearly bled out before help arrived. Would have, if Ric hadn’t been there to yell at me that if I died, he’d follow me to hell, and that then his mother would come haunt the both of us for all of eternity.”
“Him yelling at you kept you alive?”
He gave her a small smile. “That, and the fact that he literally hooked us up to each other with fuel tubing he ripped out of the tank and used to give me his blood. Good thing we shared a blood type, huh?”
Dear God. Picturing the circumstances, the utter chaos they’d been in, and the unbelievably heroic actions of the people who served overseas had her throat tightening. “He’s a good friend.”
“Yeah. They both are.”
And they’d been there for him when she hadn’t. Couldn’t. Because he’d shut her out. “You were discharged.”
“Had both knees replaced, which meant no getting into the ast
ronaut program and in fact, no more flying for me. Not for the military and not as an astronaut.”
She looked down at his leg, covered in his pants. “You’ve had a remarkable recovery.”
“Long-ass road through PT.” He lifted a shoulder. “I was . . . determined. Because I wasn’t going to give up flying. I could go private.”
She nodded, her chest feeling too tight for her rib cage. He’d never given up. Not like she had . . . “Why didn’t you come home?”
He met her gaze. “Wildstone wasn’t really home for me.”
She felt the air back up in her lungs at that.
“The only place that had ever felt like home to me was being wherever you were,” he said quietly and took a step closer.
Leo picked his head up off Tilly’s shoulder and growled.
“Zip it, Leo,” she said, staring up at Dylan. “Except you looked me up, determined I was off the market by one photo, and didn’t bother.”
“Are you saying you weren’t?” he asked. “Off the market?”
She looked away. Because the truth was, none of the men in her past had ever made her feel what Dylan had. “I’m saying it doesn’t matter. You wanted me to forget about you.”
“I did,” he said, and ignoring Leo’s low growl, reached out, running a finger along her temple, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “But I never forgot about you.”
She shook her head. “Why are you here now then? You guys could have started up your company anywhere.”
“Ric got a deal here at this airport. And I told myself that eight years is a long time. A lifetime. That you’d moved on and so had I.”
She stared up at him. “So now what?”
He gave a slow shake of his head. “Yesterday, I’d have said we just ignore our past and deal with the here and now. Live our lives the way we’ve been living them. Separately.”
“And now?” she asked, inexplicably holding her breath on his answer.
“And now, the ball’s in your court.” He gave Leo a very hard look. “I’m going to move in close,” he warned the dog. “Don’t even think about using your teeth on me.” And with that, he leaned in and kissed Tilly.
Like yesterday’s kiss, it was gentle. Sweet.
And no less devastatingly sexy for it. She heard a soft, surprised moan. Her own. She couldn’t help it—at the touch of his tongue to hers, memories exploded, playing across her eyelids. This man had been her first, and God help her but she wanted him to be her last . . . With that thought she broke free and stared up at him. “I thought you just said the ball’s in my court?”
“It is. I just believe in stacking the deck.”
Chapter 7
After experiencing “feelings,” I’ve decided they’re not for me, but thanks for the opportunity.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
Ten years prior:
Tilly’s heart did a little happy dance as she tiptoed out of the quiet house and made it to the park in a record-breaking three minutes.
The place was deserted. No one on the swings. So she walked past the swing set to their tree, and the tree house. In the dark, she could see the glow of a phone screen. She climbed up and found a tall, lanky figure sitting there and her pulse sped up even as her smile faded.
Dylan was hiding from the world and that meant he was hurting.
She plopped down next to him. “Hey.”
Dylan lay flat on his back and stared up at the stars. “Wouldn’t mind being an astronaut.”
Her heart caught. He had the grades for it. Or he would’ve had the grades for it if he hadn’t had to work his ass off on top of school. “You could totally do it,” she said, lying down next to him so that their arms brushed. She touched his fingers with hers. “You could do whatever you want.”
He snorted and she wondered what had happened to upset him. She’d ask, but he wouldn’t tell her so she did her best to look him over to see if he had new injuries. Thankfully, she didn’t see any. “You can,” she whispered. “Be an astronaut.”
“Says who?”
“My mom.” Her breath caught because it was a reminder that she was gone now. “She always told me that.”
Dylan rolled to his side and propped his head up with his hand as he studied her in the dark. “She was trying to be nice. Nobody gets to do what they want. When school’s out, I’m going to have to dig trenches for my dad.”
He already worked as many hours a week as he could spare to help his mom cover expenses. “Once you graduate, you can do whatever you want.”
“Don’t be naive, Tee.”
She pulled her fingers from his and sat up. She hated when he acted like he was so much older than she was. Hated when he made her feel like a stupid little kid. “I’m not naive.” She pulled her knees in and pressed her forehead to them. “But sometimes, you just have to believe in something.”
He blew out a sigh and sat up beside her. She felt his hand brush over her hair and wrap around her and he pulled her in closer. “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”
“You’re not.” She turned her face to look up at him. “You aren’t like your dad, Dylan.”
His expression hardened at the thought. “And I’m never going to be.”
“Good.” She hesitated because he didn’t like to be told what to do. Hated it actually, because so many of his choices had been taken from him. And she didn’t want to make things worse, but she really wanted to say something. “And just as you don’t have to be the dick your dad is,” she said carefully, “you also don’t have to follow his chosen profession. You do whatever the hell you want to do. And you’ve got me at your back. You know I’ve been helping out at the café in the mornings and Quinn insists on paying me. I’m going to save every penny in case you need it. Do you hear me?”
A ghost of a smile twitched at his mouth. “I hear you. So do the people in China. But I’m not going to take your money, ever. I’m saving mine too, I’ll be okay.”
“So why would you go be a laborer when summer hits? Why wouldn’t you do something you love? Like work at the rec center and help coach the little kids in baseball?” He’d been a baseball superstar until he’d had to quit the team for his job. “Or you could be a lifeguard. Lots of kids are doing that this summer and they’re hiring.”
“The class to become a certified lifeguard is three hundred bucks,” he said. “The rec center won’t hire me because I had to have a recommendation from my coach and the principal, and though the coach said I would be great in the job, the principal said I had a bad attitude and a temper.”
This pissed her off. “That’s not fair.”
“I trashed his office when he accused me of stealing money from the cafeteria,” he reminded her.
“Wrongly accused.”
Dylan lifted a shoulder. Didn’t matter. The damage was done. And now he would be digging ditches for his macho, sadistic father all summer and she’d be worried for him every single second of every single day.
Halfway through Tilly’s next day of class, she had the students working quietly on their billboard design while she walked around the classroom, tentatively impressed at what she was seeing.
They’d voted on a theme for their submission and had come up with just about the opposite of what Tilly could have imagined.
Love.
Her idea had been to divide the billboard space into a grid. Everyone would take their block and do what they wanted, but then have it fit together with the others like a puzzle, making one whole cohesive piece.
She glanced up at a movement from the classroom door and found Quinn standing there, waving at her.
Tilly drew a deep breath. They hadn’t spoken in three days. Extremely unusual for them. Quinn had been butting into Tilly’s life since she’d first stepped into it all those years ago.
With a sigh, Tilly moved to the door. “What?”
“Brought you cookies.” Quinn handed her a tin. “Fresh baked. Double fudge. Soft
and gooey.”
“Baked with guilt?”
Quinn sighed. “You’re still mad.”
“I’m still mad,” Tilly confirmed. She looked back at the class, relieved to find no one paying them any attention. Her voice lowered, she said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about Dylan, about why he left, why he stayed gone, what happened to him . . . None of it.”
Quinn’s eyes were solemn and apologetic. “I only knew for a few weeks, and only because I’m nosy as hell. I wanted to tell you, but Mick thought that Dylan would want to tell you everything himself, so I promised Mick—”
“You made a promise to me too—to be my sister—”
“I am your sister,” Quinn said. “If I’d told you back then, you’d have dropped out of school and run halfway across the world to be with him and he would’ve seen that as pity and shoved you away. I didn’t want you hurt, Tilly. You both needed to grow up, and now you have—” Quinn broke off, her eyes widening slightly as she caught sight of something in the classroom. Someone. She grinned. “He’s still in your class,” she whispered. “Dylan.”
Like there was any possibility of mistaking who she was talking about. Tilly glanced at Dylan, had a flashback to the other day in his office when he’d been buried deep inside her, and then got uncomfortably warm. She grabbed Quinn’s hand. “Excuse me a sec, class, I’ll be right back!” And then she tugged Quinn out into the hall and shut the classroom door.
“You didn’t kick him out,” Quinn said.
Ignoring her sister’s smug and annoying grin, she counted to five for patience. None came. “Look,” she said, reaching out to rub Quinn’s huge belly. “You’re ready to pop. What the hell are you doing here?”
“That’s not the right question,” Quinn said.
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
“Nope.” Quinn lifted her phone and snapped a pic of Tilly. “The right question is, why are you all flushed and bright-eyed?” She showed Tilly the pic of herself.
Dammit. She was indeed flushed and bright-eyed. “Maybe I’m enjoying teaching.” She paused. “A lot,” she admitted.
