The Dare Collection May 2020

But she was lost in a cascade of too-hot, too-bright images of him and her and that bed of his with all its wrought iron, and all Jenny could do was gape at him when he lifted his head.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” he said, and even his smile was dangerous.

Then Dylan bent that last little bit and slammed his mouth down on hers.

CHAPTER SIX

THERE WERE VERY few things in life that exceeded expectations.

And it turned out, Jenny was one of them.

Dylan didn’t waste time on niceties. He claimed her mouth with his, finally.

He’d been building up this particular hunger since the moment he’d met her, and he’d long since given up hope it would ever happen with them, so he didn’t hold back. It didn’t occur to him to hold back.

He’d warned her. He’d given her every chance to back out or change her mind. And despite all that, he knew full well he was the one who was going to have trouble closing this bloody door now it was opened.

But he couldn’t care about that now. He couldn’t tie himself up into knots over the future when there was still now. When there was still this.

Her mouth beneath his. The touch of her tongue. And her taste, better than he’d imagined—and sweet Lord, had he imagined it. Over and over again.

Dylan didn’t kiss her sweetly. This wasn’t a fairy tale. He ate at her mouth, holding her face where he wanted it and indulging himself.

At last.

She fit him. He’d imagined she would, year after year, but this… The taste of her surpassed every last fantasy he’d ever had.

Particularly when she kissed him back, hesitant at first, but then meeting him fully. Hot and greedy, just the way he liked it.

Deep and wet and long and perfect, and he had to fight to remember that they weren’t in private. That he had to control himself when that was the last thing he wanted to do. Because it was so good. Because it was Jenny.

Dylan wrenched his mouth away, aware that he was breathing too hard as he dropped his forehead to hers.

“I told you,” he growled at her, and he didn’t even know what he meant. Only that he’d warned her. And there was a madness in him, bright and hot and tangled up deep, and it had her name written all over it.

She was panting and her eyes were closed, and he angled himself back a bit, dimly remembering once again that they were in public. That his cock was so hard already that he was likely in danger of scaring off the tourists, and a chat with the local police was not part of his plans for the night.

Not when he’d finally gotten his hands on Jenny. This was Jenny. He had her taste in his mouth, still. She was in his veins now, the fire in his blood. And God knew she’d been in his bones for years.

She was the ruin of him. But Dylan didn’t feel ruined just then. Or he liked the ruin, maybe.

But her eyes were still closed. And he found himself tensing as he watched her struggle to control her breath. As he waited to see if she’d set him back on his heels the way he’d always imagined she would. That was the way it went between the lady of the manor and an upstart chancer.

It felt like an age or two before Jenny’s lashes fluttered, and she opened up her eyes to look straight at him. The brown of her eyes that he knew so well was shot through with gold. There was a flush on her cheeks that made his cock feel heavy. The look on her face made his fingers itch to tear off her clothes and see where else that flush touched.

“You kissed me,” she said, there was a scratchy sort of awe in her voice. “We kissed. You and me, Dylan.”

“We did.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, that mouth he’d studied, dreamed about, fantasized over. And could now taste against his own. He wasn’t sure he could believe it. “I did.”

She lifted a hand to touch her lips and he couldn’t tell if her fingers were shaking, or if she was simply hesitant.

And he was Dylan Kilburn. He was renowned for his confidence, though his detractors used other words to describe it. Whatever it was, he had it in spades. He could walk into any room, talk to anyone, raise up empires on the strength of his handshake. And yet this slender creature with soft eyes and an elegant neck made him forget that he was one of the youngest billionaires in Australia—and the world. She made him forget that he was normally treated like a man a good ten or twenty years his senior, such was the power he exuded and the ruthless competency he brought to any given situation.

Jenny looked at him and just like that he was once again nothing more than a poor wee lad from the worst neighborhood in Dublin, out of his element at Oxford, and terrified that at any moment he’d cock the whole thing up. Absolutely certain every moment of every day that he was about to be found out and summarily sent down, because the smartest kid in a neighborhood like the one he’d grown up in didn’t mean smart enough for the pampered toffs who swanned about the dreaming spires.

And in the middle of those years of anxiety and ambition, there had been Jenny, who’d been his friend.

It wasn’t lost on him that lusting after her for all these years was a bit of a betrayal of that friendship. Nor was it lost on him that in kissing her the way he had, carnal and raw, he’d made absolutely certain there would be no going back. No matter what she’d said.

But then, she was marrying a man she didn’t love. The way he’d always known she would. The way she’d always said she would. It shouldn’t eat at him the way it did that everything was going along according to plan.

And she might think that a man like Conrad Vanderburg wouldn’t care if she stayed friends with her old pal from her university days, but Dylan knew better. No husband in his right mind would be all right with Dylan hanging about—because a husband would see Dylan for who he really was. He was friendly, understanding, patient, endlessly supportive and undemanding only for one person on this earth. Her marriage was the end of things.

Dylan couldn’t regret kissing her the way he had, no matter what she was about to say next.

But the thing about Jenny was that he could know her inside and out, and she still surprised him.

She did now. Because she smiled. That wide, faintly wicked, fully joyous smile of hers that made him feel as if it was the middle of summer, not winter. As if it was bright daylight, instead of night.

“We kissed,” she said again. “Can you believe it?”

She leaned forward and braced herself on his chest again, tipping back her head with the ease of someone who’d done it a thousand times before. When she hadn’t. Because there had always been barriers. There had always been distance.

Because Dylan had needed to maintain some level of sanity.

But he knew how she tasted now, and the hunger in him felt new. Wilder and sharper than before.

Jenny’s eyes looked more gold than brown. “Would you say that kiss was a proper kiss?”

Dylan felt nearly grim with want, drunk with desire, but he laughed anyway. “It would be hard to find a kiss more proper, in my opinion.”

Her smile widened. “And do you think that was representative of your work?”

There was a teasing note in her voice, and he found himself grinning in return. But not that happy, friendly, toothless grin he’d always given her in the past. Because the door was open, and he had already shouldered his way through it. That was who he was and always had been, in every scenario but this one. And now it was too late. There was no going back to pretending he was her lovable old buddy, Dylan.

Not when she was plastered against him and her lips were still damp from his. Not now.

“A proper kiss is an excellent advertisement for proper fuck, yes,” he assured her, doing nothing to rein himself in. “At least when I do it. What do you reckon, Jenny? Have I scared you off?”

And her smile faded a bit as she gazed up at him, making his heart kick at him again.

Because he honestly didn’t know what he would do if she said that yes, he had succeeded at last in scaring her away from this course of action.

Cry like a bitch, mate, a voice in him said. Caustically. You’ll cry like a little bitch, and who could blame you?

“You haven’t scared me off,” Jenny said, her hands still pressed against his chest and her eyes solemn. “And I appreciate your attempts, but you’re not going to. The only thing that’s going to stop this from happening is if you don’t want to. If you’ve changed your mind. Or scared yourself off.”

Dylan laughed again, but not because anything was funny. “Impossible.”

He jerked her to him and took her mouth again, indulging himself all over again. He sank his hands into her hair, finding it silky and thick, and warm there at her scalp. He tugged her head back, giving himself the angle he wanted, and then it was on. A little rough, a little intense.

All magic.

Because this was Jenny, his Jenny, and he was never going to recover from this. And if she was going to go ahead and marry herself off, he was going to make sure she had something to remember him by.

He was going to imprint himself on her, the way she’d imprinted herself on him at first sight.

Dylan didn’t think that he could ruin her the way she’d done to him, but he could ruin this. Because they fit together like a dream, and this kiss was already better than whole nights he’d spent with other women, none of whom he could ever remember too clearly. Not when there was Jenny. And he’d done his best all these years to get by without her, but he didn’t have to now. Not now. Not tonight. Not for as long as she stayed here in Australia, hiding from her real life.

He could ruin her this way. He could teach her what proper was, and the truth was, he felt as if he’d been practicing his whole life for this opportunity. To worship this woman in every last way he knew, turn her inside out as many times as possible, and let her spend the rest of her life fantasizing about this. The same way he would be doing.

He pulled away again and liked it when she moaned out a protest.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m going to feed you.”

Her eyes were a bit fuzzy, which made his cock pulse. “Feed me? Is that a code for something debaucherous? Please say yes.”

His hands were still in her hair, and he kept them there, because it felt good to have control of her. To hold her like this. To have her right where he wanted her.

Another subject they were going to have to cover, but he’d get there.

“That depends how you eat.” He tilted his head a bit as he gazed down at her. “Are you feeling gluttonous?”

Her gaze sharpened at last, but she was looking at his mouth. “Yes. I believe that’s the perfect word.”

“We need to make sure you can keep up your strength,” he said. Then he reached down and helped himself to her hand, threading her fingers through his.

She stared down at their hands, clasped together like that.

“You’re holding my hand,” she said, with a certain reverence. Or more of that awe, or wonder, that was one more way she was going to kill him. “Dylan Kilburn is holding my hand.”

He opened his mouth to say something wicked, or offhanded. Something to dispel the tension a bit. But she gazed up at him and the words died on his tongue, unsaid.

Because even their hands fit together perfectly, and her taste was still flooding through him, and she wasn’t being silly. If anything, he would have said that look on her face was sacred.

And for once, he didn’t have to pretend.

For once, he could meet that gaze of hers with his own, and acknowledge this thing that was between them. This thing that had been in him, and a part of him, and a defining characteristic of his, for so long now he didn’t know who he was without it.

And it was only holding her hand. But it felt like the world. It felt right. A key into a lock.

Coming home at last.

Dylan could have stood there for another lifetime, but she wasn’t here for his feelings. She was here to fuck. And he had every intention of living up to his promises.

So he made himself look away, gripped her hand harder and led her away from that dark railing and the bright crowd at the Opera Bar.

He led her around the quay, climbing up into the narrow, cobbled laneways that rose up opposite the opera house, and comprised the oldest part of Sydney.

“Are we really stopping for food?” she asked as they climbed a set of stairs between two buildings. “Do I get a vote?”

He slanted to gaze down at her. “No.”

“Just…no. No explanation. Just straight up, no debate, no.”

“I don’t think I stuttered, did I?”

Jenny was laughing as he escorted her toward a deceptively old-looking building that was only accessible down a long, cobbled alleyway. The door was painted a bright red, and that was its only distinguishing facet. That and the keypad next to the door. Dylan punched in the code, and the door clicked open, instantly giving away the fact that the building had been gutted and refurbished inside, though it looked quietly historic from without.

“What is this place?” Jenny breathed. Her eyes sparkled as she looked up at him, her fingers still wrapped up tight in his. “Is this some kind of secret club? For sex?”

“I don’t need a secret club for sex.” He shook his head at her. “Sex is a group sport for some, sure. More power to them. I’m more of a singles player, myself.”

He ushered her inside. Then he led her down a set of stairs, lit up with a buttery golden light. At the bottom was a discreet welcome desk staffed by a smiling attendant.

“Good evening, Mr. Kilburn,” the man said in a plummy British accent. “Will you be dining with us tonight?”

“A table with a view,” Dylan replied. “And we’ll make our own way up.”

“Very good, sir,” the man said, and typed something into the tablet in front of him.

Dylan led Jenny farther into the building, making his way through the various lounges, bars and nooks and crannies alike that made up this particular club.

“It is a club,” Jenny said, as if she’d caught him out. “I’ve always wanted to spend time in an illicit sex club, populated entirely by deviance.”

“I hate to ruin the fantasy, but this club is more for business connections, entrepreneurial fantasies and high profile meetings that need to remain strictly private. There are deviant sex clubs out there, and there’s sex here, too, but not of the public variety. The club provides rooms for weary travelers, and doesn’t much care who fills them.”

“That’s a lot less fun.”

“The truth about highflyers is that most of them are boring,” Dylan said. “Because the reason they’re highflyers is that they work themselves half to death.”

“And here I thought the point of making shedloads of cash was to fling it about indiscriminately, laughing all the while.”

And years ago, Dylan would have let that go. This morning, even. But everything was different now.

“The difference is whether or not you’ve worked for said shedloads.”

He expected Jenny to stiffen, but her expression only turned rueful. “Unlike me, you mean.”

“Not everyone is born rich.”

“And not everyone born rich is automatically evil,” Jenny replied. She squeezed his hand as she held it. “Something you’re going to have to come to terms with should you create a new generation some day. Will they grow up pampered and spoilt? Or will they learn they have a responsibility to do what others can’t?”

He found his thumb moving back and forth over the back of her hand. “You don’t make money at what you do, do you?”

“Of course not. I’m a career volunteer. It’s what makes swanning off to Australia on a whim possible.”

She peered past him into one of the salons off the hall, where a scrum of finance types were boozing it up like they were down at the local, except what they were quaffing would qualify as a mortgage payment in some places. All she did was smile, but Dylan was suddenly uncomfortable. He’d been there once, in the first flush of his first million. And the notion that Jenny might have looked at him then as he was looking at the pack of them made something twist inside.

“That’s the trouble with money,” he said darkly. “If you’ve never had a lack of it and don’t understand what a gift that is, you don’t cherish it. You grow complacent.” He nodded toward the pack of idiots, but pulled her along past their room. “And you find yourself using it to help yourself feel things you wouldn’t otherwise.” Like entertaining the wrong women for years because the right one was permanently out of reach. But he remembered himself. “Like leaping out of planes, which the lot of them like to do on the weekends. Regularly. But no one’s a thrill junkie if they can feel things on their own. They wouldn’t need it.”

Jenny was looking up at him again as they walked, that rueful expression turning to something more pointed. “Have you already become bored? So quickly?”

“I don’t believe in boredom,” Dylan told her, growling it out as if she was hitting hard into the very heart of him. “That’s one more privilege I never had.”

“You seek thrills for the hell of it, then.”

She wasn’t quite frowning at him, but there was a challenging light in her eyes. And Dylan didn’t want to debate class differences with the one person who had always treated him as if there weren’t any. As if he was grand as he was, always and forever.

And she was going to leave him, soon. He didn’t want to tell her that she was his model for how a very wealthy person ought to behave, because he didn’t want to admit how much he thought about her, felt about her, changed himself for her. Start discussing one part of it and who knew where he’d end up?

Jenny never hid her wealth, but she never flaunted it, either. She gave back quietly, without fanfare. And she was unfailingly kind. He fell short of these things daily, but she was always there as a goal. He was good at goals.

But then, there were other, more attainable goals tonight. He could work on being a better version of himself in all the lonely years ahead of him.

Dylan stopped at the next door they passed, seeing the discreet green light that indicated it was empty. He coded them in, then leaned back against the door when he closed it. And locked it.

“Does that mean you don’t feel anything?” she was asking, paying no attention to what he was doing as she walked into the lounge area, then turned back to him. “And, crucial follow-up question, if you can’t feel anything, are you really the best tutor when it comes to sex?”

“Jenny.”

“I’m no expert myself, but I did think it had a lot to do with sensation,” she said, shaking her head at him. “Feeling. All those things you just said—”

“There’s only one thrill I’m after,” Dylan told her.

He hauled her into his arms, where she belonged, and he got his mouth on hers once more.

And this time, in private.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IF JENNY HAD ever had the slightest idea that kissing could be like this, her whole life would be different.

Dylan was addictive.

The scrape of his tongue, the way he moved that hard jaw of his… She couldn’t get close enough. Her whole body was flushed, hot, ready.

She felt needy, filled with greed, and some part of her thought that this experiment was going to take a bit longer than planned. Because she could kiss him forever. Calling what he was doing kissing seemed to do it a disservice, in fact. He tasted the way she imagined heroin must feel. An impossible, magical lift, and then a beautiful storm.

And she felt dizzy, but it took her a moment to realize it was because he was moving her, backing her up until something prodded her at the hips.

She pulled away from him, which made her want to cry. But she looked around, and realized they were in a sitting room of some kind. There was the door to one side discreetly marked with an embossed WC. There was the door they’d come in, and then a third with no markings.

“Is this a hotel?”

“After a fashion,” Dylan said, in a perfectly normal voice that was at complete odds with the ferocity in his gaze. The contrast made her skin feel too tight. “These are considered day rooms. They are most properly used for members fighting off jet lag when they come in on one of those early flights. A nice place to have a bit of a sleep, freshen up and then head straight to a business meeting.”

“Are we having a business meeting?” Jenny asked, there where he’d backed her up against a sturdy little antique secretary.

But he only smiled. Like a wolf. And then he was shifting, going down on his knees before her.

And suddenly, she didn’t care what took place in this building. All she could see was Dylan, his eyes blazing and his face set. Hungry. Very nearly feral.

She felt the same. And she wanted to ask him what he was doing, but her mouth was too dry.

Then his hands were on her. He smoothed his way over her hips, then went straight to the fastening of her jeans.

“I’m going to feed you,” he told her, and his voice sounded thicker. Darker. “But first, I need to taste you or I’m not going to make it.”

She wanted to laugh at that, because it seemed like the right thing to do. To make this less intense. Less overwhelming. But he angled a look up at her when he said it, green and hot, and she was terribly afraid she might shatter.

And she didn’t know if she meant she would come—or come apart. Or both.

There was a noise in her ears, some kind of ringing. And maybe that was her breath, heaving in and out of her.

Dylan unbuttoned her jeans, then worked her zipper down.

And she wanted to tell him not to bother. That she’d never cared that much about this thing that all women were supposed to find so delightful. That in her experience, it was always a bit messy and embarrassing. The boyfriends she’d had were always so proud of themselves, so bound and determined to prove something, that she’d felt nothing but enormous pressure to scream and carry on and make out as if she was transported. When really, a person’s head was between her legs while an endless spiral of anxiety traipsed about in her head—

“Hey. Jenny.”

Dylan’s voice snapped her out of the cycle, and she found his gaze. There was something in the way he was looking at her, then. Some kind of charged patience. As if he knew exactly what she was thinking. His hands were busy, even as that gaze of his was still. He tugged her jeans down over her hips, and she would have protested, maybe. But his hands were so big and they skimmed over her legs easily, and it was easier somehow to let him tug one leg free.

And besides, she liked it when he touched her.

His gaze caught hers, almost stern now. “This is for me.”

“What?”

“This is for me,” he told her, and there was that patient thing there in all that green, and a light she didn’t quite understand. “This is what I need. All right?”

She nodded, because she couldn’t speak.

“Good.” His mouth seemed stern, then, too—a word she never would have used to describe Dylan. Her Dylan, so funny and happy and bright… But she liked this side of him. Something about that hard line of profoundly male lips and his finely cut jaw made her shudder inside, and her pussy feel wet and swollen. “I want you to think about that, please.”

“Think about what? What you want?”

“I told you I was hungry.”

He smoothed his hands up to her hips again, and pulled one leg wide as he went, making space for himself. He kept going up her thigh, until he reached the edge of the panties she wore.

And when he flicked his gaze to hers again, she understood that both of them were feeling that same wild heat. She was lit up with it. With him. His palms were against her skin, and as he knelt there, she could feel his breath against the lace that covered her pussy.