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Like the bloody queen.
That only made him angrier. Dylan stalked toward her, that raging thing in him a drumbeat against his ribs. When he got to the foot of the bed, he reached out and hauled her toward him. He tipped her back so that her legs were in the air, her head was back on the bed and he could pull her hips to the edge.
He reached down, yanked the zipper of his jeans open, and his cock was already hard. Ready. Because his cock was always hard and ready when Jenny was around. That was the problem.
And she was already wet for him. Because she was always wet for him, and that was one more thing that wouldn’t matter when she left him.
Dylan slammed into her with no foreplay and no kind words, just her hips high and her legs splayed open.
She screamed with that same bright joy that lanced through him, arching up off the bed. He gripped her hips and hammered into her, because she was coming already. She was coming over and over, her pussy milking him, hot and tight.
And when she opened her eyes, her gaze was steady. Adoring.
Dylan reminded himself that was a lie, too. Or it wouldn’t last anyway, so it amounted to the same thing.
He pulled out and flipped her over, so she was bent there over the bed. And he didn’t have to look at those beautiful brown eyes so filled with emotion and pretend he didn’t know what he saw there.
Dylan slammed back into her from behind. He watched her dig her fists into the bedclothes as he pounded into her, their bodies making a delirious sort of slapping sound every time he sank himself to the root.
And he could feel it every time she constricted around him, shuddering and shuddering. He went harder. Deeper.
And when he came, he yelled her name the way he always did. He let himself fall down over her back, fully clothed except for his cock. And because she couldn’t see him, or what might be written all over his face, he buried his head in her neck.
Dylan tried to breathe. He’d spent all these years fucking other women and pretending they were her. He’d made a hobby out of it. But now he knew better.
Now he knew.
And he didn’t see how he was going to go fooling his cock into thinking that anyone else was her. That anything else was this.
His breath sawed in and out of him. Everything hurt, and not from exertion. Jenny’s lips were parted as she did her own bit of panting, and her eyelashes were dark against her cheeks. He would remember this, too. It would haunt him.
Her lashes fluttered as she opened her eyes, and then she smiled over her shoulder, intimate and soft. Dylan pulled out and turned her over, lifting her up so he could get his mouth on hers.
And he kissed her, haunted already while she was still right here, until they were both a little dizzy. Then they both lay there, breathless again, as the ocean crashed around outside and absolutely nothing changed between them.
Because it never would. Why couldn’t he hold on to that the way he should?
“You’re going to have to go soon,” he said, because not saying it was no longer doing the trick. “Have you sorted out your plane ticket yet?”
He turned his head to look at her, stretched out beside him, and there was something stark and awful on her face. But she looked away before he could look too closely. And Dylan didn’t like the fact that she was hiding something from him, or that she was feeling something she didn’t want to share.
He wouldn’t wish the hurt in him on anyone, especially not Jenny.
But he couldn’t say he hated the idea, either.
If she hurt a little more, maybe she’d hurt him less.
And maybe you’re a bleeding idiot, a caustic voice in him snarled.
“I keep meaning to do that,” she said softly. To the ceiling.
Dylan sighed. “You can’t hide forever, Jenny.”
“On the contrary.” And when she looked back at him, there was something wise and weary in her pretty eyes. It made the ache in him deepen. “It turns out you can hide forever. All you have to do is pretend to be blind.”
“People are blind for a whole host of reasons,” he countered. He wanted to pull her close. Or jackknife up, then storm about the room, pacing out this mess in him. But more than that, he wanted to pretend. He wanted to keep on pretending, because that was how this worked. That was how this had always worked. “And those reasons aren’t going to go away simply because a person takes a long holiday and engages in a little unexpected intimacy with an old friend.”
“It’s not unexpected to you,” she said quietly. “You told me it would happen.”
And there was a part of Dylan that wanted this so badly that he thought he might break out in blisters from the wanting.
But he wasn’t made of steel. And he knew what that look in her eyes meant. He was sure it was in his, too—the only grace in that being that it had always been in his eyes and all over his face. She wouldn’t see any shift because there hadn’t been one.
You’ll have to be fine with this as is, he told himself stoutly. Bloody martyr that he’d always been. You always thought that given the chance, she’d be head over heels in love with you. And so she is.
But he couldn’t celebrate his rightness, because it didn’t matter. It changed nothing. She was Lady Jenny Markham. And he might have put a shine on things since he’d left university, but he was still nothing more than one of those Kilburns. He’d made a silk purse out of the proverbial pig’s ear, but that didn’t change what he was. Who he was.
Money would never change where he’d come from.
And a few weeks in sunny Australia, taking in the Tasman Sea, didn’t change everything he knew to be true about Lady Jenny. Or, more important, Lord Fuckface himself.
Jenny might not want her arranged marriage any longer, when this was said and done. But when she got away from Dylan and flew back to England, reality would trickle in. She would remember who she was. Who she’d always been. And the complexities of the life she’d planned out long before she’d decided to come down under and see what she was missing.
Dylan knew that all he had to do was give her the faintest signal, and she would tell him every last thing he’d waited his whole life to hear. That she loved him. That finally, finally, she loved him.
And there was a part of him that wanted that almost more than he could bear.
He reached over and smoothed her hair back from her face. He saw her eyes get glassy, and he felt that same emotion land on his chest like a block of concrete.
In a way, he’d always known she loved him.
Because she hadn’t treated him like all those other boys back when. Because he was the one she called her friend.
Dylan had always held that as a sacred trust.
Because he’d never been one of the wankers. He’d truly been her friend—that part hadn’t been pretending. And that meant that now, he had to be a better friend to her than she was to herself. If he bailed on her when it mattered most, he’d be no better than every last one of those tossers who’d tried to use her for their own ends.
Dylan would bloody well love her enough to let her go.
He was sure he’d seen that shit embroidered on a tea towel somewhere.
She was still gazing at him, everything he’d ever wanted right there in her eyes—but he knew it wasn’t what she wanted. He never had been.
“I told you what would happen,” he agreed, and made himself sound kind. “It’s a byproduct of proper fucking, remember? I did warn you.”
Her eyes were glassier, then. And he knew he’d hurt her, he hated that he’d hurt her, but it couldn’t be helped.
“A byproduct,” she repeated, her voice thick. She cleared her throat. “How long does it take for it to go away?”
His hand was still on her face, and he couldn’t bring himself to let go. “Not long.”
“But what if—”
“There are some people in this life who’ve always known exactly what role they had to play,” he said, gruffly. “And how to play it. You’re one of them, Jenny. You’ve never wavered from the path you’re on. As you’d normally be the first to tell me.”
“This feels very far away from that path.”
Dylan wanted to break things. He frowned at her instead. “If you don’t want to marry Conrad, don’t. But you and I both know that you should never make decisions that will impact the rest of your life when you’re taking a vacation from that life. Go home, Jenny. Figure out what you want there, not here.”
“What happens if I go back to my life, marinate in it for the appropriate amount of time and still find that it doesn’t fit?”
And he hated the anguish he could hear in her voice. The little crack in it, the darkness in her gaze.
“You have a life already. It fits you perfectly. You’re the one who told me you needed to arrange a life around your head. Not your heart. And certainly not what’s between your legs.”
“Sometimes I think what’s between my legs is the most honest part of me.”
“Coming feels like honesty,” he agreed, gritting the words out. “But in the end, you can make yourself come with a vibrator. With your own fingers. And if it’s just wanking in the end, you don’t want to make it into something more.”
“Dylan.” His name was like a sob. “You have to know that I—”
But he moved his fingers to cover her mouth, because there was only so much of this he could take, and he’d passed that mark some time ago.
“I want you to imagine explaining this to your father,” he said, his voice stern. And he tried to keep all that fury and hopelessness locked tight inside him. “The honesty of your pussy, for example. Will you sit down in his sodding great hall and tell him that? To explain why you’ve suddenly changed the whole of your life?”
“No,” she whispered. “I certainly will not. And thank you for the…clarification.”
That last word was a blow, aimed straight for the gut, but he made himself stay where he was. Jenny rolled up, then sat there for a moment with her back to him.
Then she got up and walked away.
Dylan let her go.
Because it was high time he started practicing for the real thing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JENNY DIDN’T BOOK her ticket home the next day, as Dylan had been certain she would.
Another week rolled by, still glorious in all the same ways, but there was an edge to it now. Something dark in the midst of all that glory. And Dylan found he missed the sheer joy of his fantasy come true, but he told himself this way was better. Because this was the truth.
There was an end coming. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. Better, maybe.
But on some nights it was all too easy to forget.
Tonight, Jenny met him at his office. She smiled politely at his secretary, looking entirely too elegant and pulled together to be the same woman who, a few nights back, had met him in this very same office, and come away with rug burn on her knees.
She’d laughed that heart-stopping laugh of hers, still there on her hands and knees, and called her marks badges of honor.
Tonight it was cold and rainy. Jenny shivered in the coat she wore as they made their way down the street toward the restaurant Dylan had picked.
“I keep forgetting it’s winter here,” she said.
“Winter has a way of reminding you it’s around,” he replied. “Like it or not.”
And he was trying so hard to remember different things, now. While she told him stories from her work at her charity, he watched her hands. And that ring she’d never removed in all the time she’d been here. Despite the things they’d done. The ring that told the truth about her intentions no matter how confused she imagined she was.
It’s only a matter of time, he reminded himself. She’ll be gone before you know it.
Still, when their dinner was finished, he had every intention of taking her home, getting her naked and indulging them both. Letting their bodies say all the things he wouldn’t let them say in words.
But his mobile chimed in his pocket on the street outside the restaurant, and he swore when he saw the message. “I’m going to have to go back to the office.”
“That’s all right,” Jenny said. With another one of those smiles that killed him. “I’ll wait for you.”
And once again, Dylan was torn. Because he had to make an unpleasant call—and possibly deal with a whole host of other calls after it—and the part of him that had been ruined for this woman pretty much at first sight loved the idea of her waiting for him. Sitting on the couch in his office like another page out of some sweet, domestic book he would’ve laughed at, had he ever read such a thing. That she wanted to spend time with him even when it wasn’t all about her made his heart seem to thud a little harder.
But on the other hand, it was one more thing he would have to forget when she was gone.
And he was weak, because he took her with him back to the office. And debated making the call he needed to after all, because she was so happy to wave him off and turn her attention to what she told him was a massive library on her mobile. He thought of other women he’d spent time with, and how little they would have understood him cutting a night short. And Dylan really didn’t need more reasons to think that Jenny was perfect.
He already bloody knew.
When he checked in on her later, between disasters, she’d fallen asleep. She was curled up on his couch, her pretty shoes kicked aside. He pulled her coat over her like a blanket. Then he kissed her on her temple.
And he wished he was less her friend and more the ruthless bastard he was in every other area of his life. He could take that ring off her finger and smash it. He could spirit her off somewhere and maroon her there, until the next thing she begged for was his ring. He could marry her, get a few kids on her and indulge this fantasy of his in every possible way.
A bastard like that wouldn’t care how she’d feel some years down the road, when the enormity of how hugely she’d disappointed her father would kick in. He’d weather it, not giving a shit, because he’d have her. Having her would be the only thing that mattered—not how she felt about it.
And not how the world would view it. They would tut and smirk and no doubt get far nastier, if it suited them. No one would ever accept that their beloved Lady Jenny should fall so far, and end up linked forever to a bit of Irish trash.
He couldn’t help but wish he cared more about the end result and less about how he’d get them there. It would make everything so much easier.
But Dylan had learned a long time ago that there was no profit in wishing. The only thing that mattered in this world was what a man did.
So he kissed her, then he left her and went back to tend this empire he’d built. Because his business was the only thing that was real. And it was the only thing he would have left when she came to her senses.
He didn’t finish until the early morning.
He went into his office again, and woke her this time. As much because he thought he should take her home as for the simple pleasure of watching her blink at him, then smile the way she always did. As if waking up to see him before her was a gift.
God help him, but he was going to miss that.
“Well?” Her voice was foggy as she pushed herself up to sitting position. “Have you staved off disaster?”
“After a fashion.”
“I believe in you,” she said, still smiling.
Dylan couldn’t keep himself from leaning forward and capturing her mouth. And as usual, he didn’t know how to kiss her…appropriately.
Because a simple taste of her was never enough.
It got raw, fast. He found his hands in her hair, and he was angling his mouth over hers for better depth. And he didn’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t pulled back, her eyes dilated and her breath all but gone.
“Are we alone here?” she asked.
Dylan muttered a few choice swearwords. Because they weren’t. “No. Half my staff could walk in at any moment.”
Jenny smiled again, and maybe he was only imagining that it was more muted than before. Something like sad. She reached over and ran her thumb over his mouth, for a change.
“I’m up for anything,” she told him. “It surprises me how true that is, in fact. But I think I’d rather not expose myself to your entire company.”
Dylan had a better idea. He stood, pulling her up with him. He grabbed her coat, tossed it to her and then took her hand in his.
“Where are we going?” she asked, laughing, after he hustled her into the lift, and then, when it took them all the way down to ground level, hurried her out the door into the cold early morning street. “Am I going to take a car home?”
And he loved that she called his house home. Just like he loved that her being there made it feel more like a home than it ever had before. Because that was Jenny, really. Always his homecoming, no matter where she was or why. And no matter how soon she might leave him again.
He intended to celebrate that in the most carnal way possible today, and as quickly as possible.
“You’re not taking a car home,” he said. Shortly.
“You thought a kiss like that was a good precursor for a brisk walk?” But she was laughing as he hurried her down the street, away from his office building.
“Pick up the pace,” he advised her, steering them toward the Rocks.
And he could see she understood where they were going the minute they turned into the laneways. She laughed. And she was still laughing when he took her in through that same red door. And when he nodded and murmured something to the man at the desk.
But Dylan couldn’t wait to find an open room. He needed a taste to tide him over while he dealt with such practicalities.
He swept her into the first alcove they passed, hoping that the early hour meant that no one really saw the way he was kissing her. And maybe also not caring too much if they did.
He pressed her back against the wall, and she wound herself around him instantly. His hand moved of its own accord to get a good grip on the plump curve of her ass, and he loved the greedy little noise she made in return. Lust and encouragement. Need.
It was never enough.
It was never, ever enough, no matter how he kissed her, no matter how tightly she pressed herself against him.
And she was still laughing whenever he pulled away to catch his breath, but he wasn’t laughing at all. Dylan had forgotten entirely that he was meant to be her friend first, because she tasted like fire and rain at once. Because she inflamed him and she soothed him, all at the same time, and it only made him want her more. And he had loved her so long now that each new layer was less a revelation and more a confirmation.
She was the love of his life. She always had been.
She always will be, something in him said, like a dark prophecy.
And at some point he realized that someone was standing there, much too close to their not-so-private alcove. He assumed it was a staff member, come to gently suggest they find a private room, so he pulled away from Jenny. Little as he wanted to stop kissing her.
He automatically twisted to block her, because the staff here might have been paid handsomely to maintain their discretion, but he didn’t particularly like anyone looking at his woman.
His friend, he corrected himself acidly.
But when he looked at the man standing there, it was instantly clear that he was no staff member.
He stood tall and faintly disapproving, and he reeked of power and consequence. Though what he wore was not in and of itself particularly telling, it was the way he wore it. Dark trousers. A dark shirt. And the coldest gray eyes Dylan had ever seen.
Something clicked in him. This man was familiar.
Next to him, half behind him, Dylan heard Jenny pull in a sharp breath.
In distress.
And he knew. If he thought about it, he could even see the family resemblance to Erika.
He fucking knew.
And in that rush of recognition, he had to face the unpalatable fact that it was a lot easier to think about what a great friend he was in the abstract. Because it felt a whole lot more like dying now that it was happening. Now that he had the opportunity to prove it.
The man before him kept his gaze trained on Dylan for a long, frigid moment. Then he shifted it over Dylan’s shoulder, and Dylan could feel Jenny’s whole body jolt.
And he wanted to come out swinging. He wanted to teach the rich fuck standing before him exactly why he shouldn’t tangle with a man who’d been an Irish brawler before he’d ponced off to Oxford with the rest of them.
But that was the sort of thing a man who was in love with Jenny would do.
Dylan’s job was to be Jenny’s friend. Her best friend. That was the promise he’d made.
When that glacial gray gaze tracked back to him, Dylan didn’t react the way he wanted to. He made himself stand still.
He forced himself to do nothing at all.
“You must be the famous Dylan Kilburn,” the other man said, his voice precise. And frigid. “I believe you were at Oxford with my sister.”
“Guilty as charged, mate,” Dylan managed to say. And while he didn’t strike the easy, friendly note he was going for, he also didn’t sound entirely like he was chewing on broken glass, so he chalked it up as a win.
“I’m Conrad Vanderburg,” the other man said, as if Dylan might not have figured that out already. “And it appears you’ve already met my fiancée.”
“Conrad…” Jenny began, pushing out from behind Dylan’s shoulder.
And everything in him demanded that he pull her back. That he handle this. That he do whatever he needed to do—beat his chest, roar. Come over like the raging Neanderthal creature he’d always been, just there beneath his skin.
He ached with the need to beat Conrad back, using whatever means necessary to get him away from Jenny.
But no matter what happened here, he knew where this would end. Where it was always going to end.
“If you don’t mind,” Conrad said, with such scrupulous politeness that it made Jenny flinch and Dylan want to break things—more things—“I’d like to have a word with my future wife.”
Jenny took a deep breath, and Dylan could see what she was about to do written all over her face.
And he was the best friend she would ever have. He loved her more than he would ever love anything in this life or the next. Dylan knew that, because, instead of standing there between Jenny and her future, he stepped aside.
Literally.
“Of course,” he said.
He nodded at Conrad as if they were exchanging business cards. He forced himself to look at Jenny, and it was worse than he’d expected. She was staring at him, shock and betrayal on her face, because she already knew what he was doing. That was the trouble with all this friendship shit. There was no goddamn mystery, and that was one more thing he was going to make certain to beat out of himself as he got home.
He nodded at her, too. “Take care, Jenny.”
Dylan thought he heard her say his name, but he made himself walk away. He imagined them retreating back into texts as the weeks went by. There would be fewer and fewer of those as time went on, he imagined. It would be easier to forget. To pretend. To head back to England and plan her wedding, the way she should have been doing all along. She would invite him, no doubt, and he would go and smile and toast her happiness, because that was what friends did. And in a handful of years it would be like none of this had ever happened. He would be nothing more to her than an old school friend she saw rarely, if at all.
He figured he was already more or less a memory by the time he pushed through the doors, back out into a bright, cold Sydney morning.