His expression didn’t change and yet...there was that strange flickering thing inside her again. “Do you pay attention, Jenny? Do you think about something other than getting yourself off when you’re naked with someone else? I’m betting you do.”
There was no reason for her to be...breathless.
But Dylan didn’t give her time to respond, even if she’d managed to find breath. “But I’d also bet that if you’re finding sex lacking, it’s a commentary on your partner, not you. It was true years ago and it’s true now.”
Jenny frowned and tried to look stern, not prickly and strangely overwarm though she sat beneath a cozy blanket and was bundled up nicely against the cool breeze—unlike some people, who were bare chested and barefoot. “That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”
“I’ve seen the men you date. So, no, it’s not sexist. It’s an informed opinion.” He did something with his face that made him look harder. Flintier, even. “And it’s not hard to make a man come, Jenny. That’s why it’s on him to make sure you do, or why bother to have sex with another person? He could just have a wank and be done with it.”
All of this suddenly seemed a lot lesssafethan it had before. Maybe it was the exhaustion messing with her, but he kept talking aboutcomingand now she was imagining him handling his own cock, that same fierce look on his face she’d seen outside while he—
Stop,she ordered herself.
She was so horrified she was afraid she might spill her tea all over his lovely deck, so she took great care to set it carefully to the side on the table there.
And maybe that wasn’t preciselyhorrorthat coursed through her veins then, making her shift beneath the blanket he’d draped over her. Making her aware of her own pussy when normally, she saved such awareness for the privacy of her own bed.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Jenny made herself say in as dry and unaffected a voice as she could manage. “I like sex. Sometimes I quite like it.”
“Damned with faint praise.”
“Let’s talk about you, Dylan.”
She concentrated on him then, and the whole golden sweep of him that she’d been trying her best not to gape at. Without much success. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. He was nothing but ridiculously lean muscle wherever she looked, and for all that he was meant to be a CEO forever in meetings, he clearly spent time in the sun. A lot of time. And then there was the hair that arrowed down beneath the waistband of his jeans, and made her need to shift a bit in her chair. Again.
Her mouth was dry. She told herself it was the sudden immersion in winter, the lack of sleep and all the rest of this strange and endless day.
“You’re doing something different,” she told him, as if she’d conducted an academic study. “I’ve met a lot of men who sleep with loads of women, and they’re all pigs. But you’re not.”
“Careful, or you’ll make me blush.”
“I can’t figure out what it is. Why are all those women so happy all the time? You toss them out, but they’d all gag for another chance. I’ve watched it happen. You’re this...magician.”
“Are you asking me a question, Jenny? Or leaving a review?”
And suddenly, it didn’t matter where they were. How tired she was. All the other things she’d been telling herself this whole time.
Dylan sat there across from her, and suddenly the sweet sea air between them was taut. And his gaze changed, the green of it shaded with a certain glittering thing she couldn’t understand.
But she felt it. And she felt naked, suddenly.
Because the actual reason she’d come here was so clear to her, then.
All the fuss and noise she kicked up around it, telling herself this lie and that lie as she’d gotten on the plane, all the many hours she flew, and then when she’d come to find him, too. Telling herself she was safe and she wanted his advice and she wanted totalk.
So many lies, and all of them boiled down to this. Here. Now.
That look in his eyes like she wasn’t the only one imagining things she shouldn’t.
Jenny didn’t want his advice.
She wanted him to show her.
And he was sitting so still, so intent, that she had the distinct impression he knew it.
Her heart pounded in her chest, so hard she was certain it had to have bruised her ribs.
But she couldn’t look away.