“I...” But her throat wasn’t working properly. And her mouth was so dry she thought she might go up in flames.
Maybe she already had.
“You don’t have to tell me about it, Jenny,” Dylan said in that quiet, powerful way of his. It hummed inside of her. “You don’t have to find the words. You can either get up from the table and make your way to that bathroom, or you can sit here. We can discuss the weather, or the football. Old stories from uni. And everything will go back to normal. It’s entirely up to you.”
The breath in her lungs felt too hot. It took up too much space, and was much heavier than normal breath. Jenny was shaking so hard she worried she might fly apart at the seams, but when she looked down at her hands, she wasn’t shaking at all.
And she wanted to find the words, to findsomethingto help her gain her footing again—
But something washed over her as she gazed into the quiet, unmistakable challenge in his green eyes. It wasn’t quite peace. It was too jagged and edgy for that.
Still, it helped.
And he was Dylan. With new and surprising facets, but still her Dylan. He would keep her safe. He would keep that bubble of his around them, and whatever happened there, it would be okay. She knew without a shred of doubt that he would fight to keep it that way.
Jenny pushed her chair back. She stood and tossed her linen napkin on the table.
Then she turned, and walked off to take his challenge.
And she had every intention of acing it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JENNYMADEHERway through the rooftop restaurant, only vaguely aware that there were other people tucked away in their own little pockets of privacy in the soft, close dark. Because all she could think about was Dylan.
All versions of Dylan.
She found the door that led into the building, then down the same hallway they’d come up—while she’d been reeling from his mouth and barely aware that she was upright and walking.
Sure enough, there was another door with a WC slapped on the front. She stood in front of it for a moment, wracked with indecision, and then swallowed. Hard. She looked around, but there was only the one. No chance that she might arrange herself fetchingly in the wrong bathroom.
She laughed a little bit at that, but when the laugh was done, she was still standing there in the hallway. Definitely stalling, and after all that big talk at the table.
“Right, then,” she told herself bracingly, as if that could launch her forward.
As if what she really needed here was a stern talking to, and then what she was about to do would all seem normal.
But it was Dylan. And she’d come here for this. And even though everything that had happened tonight was so far out of the realm of what she’d imagined or anticipated, it was all right, somehow. Because it was Dylan, and if she believed nothing else, she believed in him.
She always had—but maybe this wasn’t the right time to dig into her long friendship with a man who’d apparently hadall of thisinside him all the while.
She pushed her way into the bathroom. It was small, but still managed to seem infinitely luxurious the way everything else did in this place. There was only one stall, but it was behind its own full door and it was empty when she checked.
There was dim, inviting light from a sconce on the wall. The sink was ornate, with fluffy towels on the counter and a selection of not only soaps and lotions, but a variety of toiletries.
Including condoms.
And it was only when she could hear the way she was panting—actuallypanting—that she realized there was no music piped in. It was hushed and quiet here.
“There will be no hiding,” she whispered, to test it. And her own voice seemed unduly loud.
She felt drunk, she realized then. That was different than shakiness, and better, in a way. It made her feel less fragile, and more liquid.
Jenny stared at herself in the mirror that took up the whole of the wall over the sink, and there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that Dylan knew it was right there. And more, that she would be doing exactly this as she decided whether or not to do what he’d asked.
And just as she found him difficult to recognize tonight, she looked like a different version of herself, too. Her eyes were wide and her pupils were dilated. Her hair was full and wavier than usual, because his hands had been in it. Her mouth felt overly sensitive, and her lips were more swollen than before. He’d done that, too.
And the Lady Jenny Markham she had always been would never do something like this. She would never so much as consider it. Lady Jenny Markham was unfailingly polite, scrupulously well mannered, and she did not create scenes. Ever. She did volunteer charity work. She facilitated conversations between the kinds of businessmen who frequented clubs like this, and made them run smoother. She was a credit to her bloodline, as her father liked to tell his friends.