She searched his face, trying to figure out what the right answer would be here. What he wanted. Her experience with men had been limited to either the dates her father had sent her on, with men who had hardly noticed she was there. Or the men she’d actually dated, who had been so eager to please that she’d hardly had to express half a wish before it was excessively granted. And every now and again, the odd one who thought insulting her was the right tack to take—and it was certainly different. In all cases, it had always been easy enough to simply sway close, say something sultry, and sort them out with sex.
She didn’t understand why Dylan wasn’t so easily led.
That drumming thing inside her got louder. Longer.
And maybe that was the secret she’d been dancing around all this time. Men who could be led didn’t produce that giddy, begging for more effect. How could they? Standing at a rail looking out over Sydney Harbour as the evening ferries slid past, that answer seemed so obvious. How had she missed it all this time?
“Nothing will change,” she told him. “This will be our secret. An experiment between two good friends and when I leave Australia, everything will just...go back the way it was.”
“Will it now.”
She laughed. “Of course it will.”
Because she couldn’t imagine any other option.
Dylan shifted, one of those big hands moving up to slide along the length of her jaw, as if it belonged there.
But it was like a storm. A hurricane, unleashed from every point of contact. Skin to skin, like something torrential. The heat of his palm, its faint roughness. Everything inside her...rioted.
But she didn’t move. She couldn’t.
“You keep acting as if we’re talking about regular sex. Tepid, faintly embarrassing fumbles in the dark with men who come too soon and act like you should be grateful all the same. But what if that’s not all there is?” He shook his head slightly, his gaze so hard on hers it would have hurt, if she could feel anything but hishand.“I know you think that there can’t be that much of a difference. Not really. You’ve come to conduct your wee science experiment, but in the final analysis, you don’t really think I can rock your world. Change your life. Show you the difference between black-and-white and full-on color. Do you?”
And his hand was on her face like a brand. And he was crowding out the night, and the city, and the whole wide world. And her heart was beating so fast she was vaguely concerned it might turn into a medical issue.
“I think if anyone could,” she managed to say, “it would be you.”
She thought he should look pleased at that. But he didn’t. He looked as if she’d hurt him. “And what if I do everything I claim I can do, and more, and you do the very thing I suspect you think is impossible?”
Her eyes searched his, and she frowned, faintly. “I have actually had an orgasm before, Dylan. You don’t have to be quite so up yourself.”
“I’m talking about love, not orgasms,” he said with a certain brutal directness. And once again, there was thatferocitystamped all over him, so she couldn’t tell if he was about to laugh or shout or take over the world. All of the above, maybe. “It tells me everything I need to know about the sad sex you’ve had that you don’t understand how they could be connected.”
“You think I’m going to fall in love with you if we have sex?” she asked, astonished.
He didn’t laugh. Not exactly. It was all much too intense for that. “I think that if I fuck you properly, there is almost no possibility youwon’tfall in love with me.”
“Why aren’t you worried that you’ll fall in love with me?” she demanded. And told herself that was outrage, not panic, that leaped around inside her, then. “Isn’t that just as possible?”
“No chance of that,” he said, and she could have sworn there was something almost sardonic in the way he said it.
She refused to dwell on the little stab of hurt that bloomed inside her then. That panic—thatoutrage—spurred her on.
“It doesn’t matter if I go head over heels, however unlikely,” she told him hotly. “I’m still engaged.”
“So the worst case scenario is that I teach you what it means to properly fuck.” And there was definitely a sardonic little twist in the corner of his mouth then, though she was too wound up to focus on it. “There will be sobbing, in all likelihood. Begging, almost certainly.”
“I won’t hold it against you,” Jenny said magnanimously.
His green eyes glittered. “I appreciate that. Things may get emotional. Your plan, no matter how emotional things get, is to hop a plane back to England, continue to wave that great bloody ring around the place and marry the man your father personally selected for you. Is that it?”
“You’re the one who just pointed out to me that that’s always been it.” She lifted her chin. “And you’re right. I don’t believe in love, Dylan. I never have. You and Erika seem to think that I’m some great, hidden romantic—”
“Not hidden. You’ve made no secret of it. You read romantic books. You like romantic films.”
“That doesn’t make me a romantic. I like horror films and I’m not a ghoul.”
“You don’t believe thatyoucan have a romance, Jenny,” he said, and he sounded almost tired, then. As if this conversation was costing him something, which made no sense. “Or you’ve decided you won’t. That isn’t quite the same thing as not having a romantic bone in your body.”