Glow (38 page)

He reached and grabbed her hand. He pressed his mouth to the back of it. “I understand better than you think,” he said. “I knew you trusted, and I knew at the same time you doubted that trust.”

“I don't doubt anymore,” she whispered, stepping closer. “
That's
why I came.”

He touched her cheek, amazed all over again at how soft she was. How precious. For all those years, he'd sought her, and yet he'd really had no idea just how precious she was. He cradled her jaw.

“The ability to trust is granted only to those who are well loved,” he said gruffly. “That's why I always said you should trust me. Because I don't think anyone could be loved as much as I love you.”

He swooped down to capture his name on her tongue. Her taste and texture flooded him. So sweet. So familiar.

Ever new.

Without thinking, reacting purely on instinct, he lifted her in his arms and headed toward the closed office door.

*   *   *

SHE'D
started to get used to it before being with Dylan; so many layered, complex, and yet inexplicable feelings mingled with
single-minded sexual need. Now as she experienced it again in that moment in the stables, Alice was able to put a name to what had happened to her . . . what still
was
. It was love and a deep, enduring connection, a bond that was too mysterious to dissect.

Her hands outlined his hard chest and shoulders with lust. With reverence. He tasted so good. She pressed closer to him, so hungry to fill her senses with him. Had she been out of her mind to deprive herself of this? She moved her hips in a tight circle, feeling his arousal mount. He groaned, rough and deep, his arms tightening around her.

He lifted her against him and they began to move. A thrill went through her. She'd always loved his strength and his dominance during lovemaking. Even their first time, here in these stables, he'd positioned and taken her with a single-minded focus that had left her stunned and intensely aroused.

Addicted.

Once they'd entered the office, Dylan tore his mouth from hers in order to slam the door and flip the lock. He turned back to her, his heavy-lidded gaze lowering over her flushed face in a way that made her crane up to taste him again. He placed his hand on her shoulder.

“Maybe we should go up to the house and do this right,” he said, even if the way he was staring at her mouth with a slight snarl on his lips was making it clear it was a halfhearted offer.

She shook her head. “You
always
do me right. I don't need candles and violins right now. I just need you,” she said, tearing at the first buttons of his shirt. She unfastened them to just above his bellybutton, shoved open the plackets and pressed her face against his skin, inhaling him. Tasting him. She ran the edge of her teeth along his side and felt his skin roughen with the tip of her tongue.

“You're always such a greedy little thing,” he growled. She heard the edge in his tone, the evidence of the savage in him that
she loved. To show him how accurate he was, she bit at a dense, succulent pectoral muscle and slicked her tongue over a small dark brown nipple, making it stiffen. He groaned and sunk his fingers in her hair. His skin roughened beneath her lips and seeking fingers. Applying a slight pressure on her head, he moved her over his chest and ribs, down onto his ridged abdomen. She lost herself in the glory of him, kissing and licking and using her teeth until she'd hear that growl in his throat, the one that both told her how much he liked her caresses, and was a thrilling warning, too.

Their desire pulsated around them, encapsulating them in their own small world. She was unoffended and eager when he urged her lower, her fingers sinking beneath the waistband of his jeans. He steadied her as she sunk to her knees before him. Then she was jerking at his button fly, her excitement mounting at the sensation of his cock pressing against the denim. Unable to wait, she pressed her hand along the length of it. She moaned, made feverish at the feeling. She sunk her head and clamped the column of it between her upper and lower teeth and twisted her head slightly. He groaned and pressed her head to him tighter. His jeans protected him from the rough edge of her teeth. She stimulated him like that for a moment. He seemed to appreciate the sharp pressure, groaning roughly in pleasure. But like her, he was impatient. He lifted her head and hauled down his jeans and underwear.

Her mouth parted as she watched him fist his erection from below and stroke his rigid length. He looked so beautiful. She made a choked, desperate sound in her throat as his scent pervaded her nose. She craned for him.

“I know, baby,” he rasped, tightening his fingers in her hair into a gentle hold. “I missed you, too.” He stepped forward slightly. Sensing what he wanted, she kept her mouth parted while he pressed the smooth, warm tip of his cock around the circle of her lips. Then he caressed her cheek with it. She looked up at him
as he stroked her, helpless in her desire. His nostrils flared slightly as he looked down at her.

“You're so beautiful,” he said.

“So are you,” she whispered, turning her chin and licking the succulent head of his cock. She waggled her tongue. He let his hand drop. His firm, heavy erection bobbed in the air under the influence of her tongue. She looked up and met his stare while she played with him, licking just the head and making his cock twitch.

He made a rough sound in his throat, palmed his cock and her jaw at once.

“Always pushing it, aren't you?” he asked thickly. He pushed his cock between her lips, stretching them to make way for his girth. Their gazes held as he slid onto her tongue and slowly filled her mouth. Made bold by the depth and expression of her feelings, she ducked her head forward and took him deep, recovering from the daring stroke as she sucked and pulled her mouth back on his length.

“Jesus,” he groaned when she did it again. “Alice—”

She was a woman on fire, her lust fueled by love. All she wanted to do was show him. Nothing could stop her, especially when she heard his incredulous groans and growls of approval. Sure, she'd made a breakthrough just now by talking honestly about her emotions, but Alice was most at home in the physical realm. This is how she expressed herself with him naturally. It always had been, and would be.

She sunk him deep again, squeezing the base of his cock with her fisted hand, then pulled back, sucking hard on the shaft of his cock. God, he drove her crazy. She popped him out of her mouth, batting gently at his jutting erection with her hand, and then sucked him back into her mouth with greedy abandon.

“You little—”

Suddenly his cock was gone and he was hauling her up, his
hands below her bent elbows. His face looked flushed and hard as he pushed her toward the desk. Poor Gordon Schneider. They were about to desecrate the stable manager's desk for a second time. Dylan jerked her sweater down over her arms, and then her cotton shirt was blinding her as he whipped it off over her head.

“Get your pants off,” he ordered tersely, pulling off his riding boots with haste.

“That's what I always loved about you,” she said, kicking off her flats. “Once you get in the zone, nothing stops Dylan Fall.”

After a record-breaking strip on both their parts, Dylan pulled her to him. His arms enclosed her. She had a flashing vision of his rigid features descending and then he was kissing the living daylights out of her, his hands moving over her naked body, rediscovering her, taking her breath away. Once Dylan got going, he hit her like a tidal wave every time.

He palmed her buttocks and squeezed them for a moment before he lifted, and plopped her on the edge of the desk.

“It's been too long, baby,” he said, and she wasn't sure if he was apologizing for his forceful desperation or just stating the obvious. They were both bursting with need. He stepped between her open thighs and bent her knees toward her shoulders. Grunting once in acute dissatisfaction, he scooted her closer toward the edge of the desk.

“Brace yourself,” he instructed. Glancing down and gauging the angle of things, Alice put her hands behind her on the blotter and tilted her upper body back. She also shifted her pelvis up, tilting her pussy into a slightly upward angle. “That's right,” he growled, his expression almost angry as he stared between her thighs. He guided his cock to her entrance and thrust. He groaned in mixed agony and pleasure when he sunk into her partially and halted. Alice thrust her hips upward, so desperate for him. It'd been more than a month now since she'd been with him. Her mind was more ready for him than her body was. She whimpered in frustration.

“Shhh,” he soothed, nipping at her mouth, plucking at her lips hungrily. He always melted her with his forceful, greedy, coaxing kisses. She grew so focused on reciprocating that her body relaxed around him as he sawed his hips. He clasped her rib cage in his big hands as he worked his cock into her with gentle but firm deliberation. He cupped a breast and ran his thumb and forefinger over the nipple, caressing her beading flesh. She moaned, feeling her body heat around him. “That's right,” he said next to her open lips. “Let me in, beautiful girl.”

He flexed his hips. A rough groan tore from his throat. She cried out when he drove all the way into her, two halves of a whole sliding home. She saw his eyes roll back in his head.

“
Way
too damn long,” he grated out through a clenched jaw.

“I agree,” she whispered, because the sensation of him filling her and throbbing so deep was stealing her voice.

He looked up and met her stare.

“Never again,” he stated simply.

“Never again,” she promised.

He reached around her, his hands at the small of her back and his strong arms squeezing her knees until they touched her shoulders. Her legs were spread and immobilized between their straining bodies. Alice bit her lip at the intensity of the pressure of his piercing cock. He'd put her in a very vulnerable position. She was at his mercy.

She had been on other occasions before, too. But now, she knew she trusted him, and she was so much stronger because of it. She looked into his deep, lustrous eyes as he began to move, and knew there was no going back.

*   *   *

ALICE
had had only a shadowy idea of what would be involved in the press conference. It turned out that it was probably a good thing that she hadn't understood the implications of what was what about to occur, or she would never have agreed to attend it.

After Dylan's and her emotional and passionate reunion in the stables, they'd returned to the castle and continued their celebration in a more leisurely fashion in bed. Alice couldn't think of anyone or anything but Dylan. Discovering her ability to love and trust left her liberated. Reborn. Dylan seemed equally as awed, and she was reminded again that despite his superior confidence and faith in their relationship, he, too, had once been a loner. He had once been that wary, angry boy who had let down his guard for an innocent girl of four.

In those moments, she never understood more clearly how doubt and uncertainty could have caused her to lose him.

She'd never risk that happening again.

Lying there in bed together entwined, touching and talking and making love, Alice felt like she'd been given the gift once again of innocence, to look at him and wonder, to admire him, to love him without the burden of anxiety.

She wasn't even concerned when it came time for them to rise and get ready for the press conference, still encapsulated as she was in the bubble of their intimacy. She decided to wear a dress that Dylan had bought for her, a cobalt blue wrap dress that was professional-looking but still complimented her figure and eyes. When she saw Dylan choose a dark blue suit, she walked into his enormous walk-in closet and chose a cobalt blue tie. She draped it around his neck, grinning.

“So we look like we go together.”

He quirked his dark eyebrows and slid the tie beneath his collar. “We more than just
look
like it.”

His reply made her giddy. She grinned wider and started to turn away to put on her shoes. He caught her hand. She turned around, her eyebrows arching when she realized how sober he looked.

“You don't fully grasp it yet, Alice, but your life is about to change forever,” he said quietly. Her smile faded at his intensity. “You're
about to be acknowledged as Alan Durand's sole heir. You're a very wealthy woman. People are going to question our involvement. They're going to insinuate and assume a lot of things about us.”

“I don't care about that—”

He held up a hand. “Let me finish.”

Alice nodded.

“I want a future with you,” he stated simply.

“I want one with you, too.”

“Because of that basic truth, I will never, upon any occasion, ask you for or share a penny of the money or estate your parents left you. Never. That's not a shifting promise, Alice. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to step down as the executor of your trust. You can take it over yourself, or hire a legal and financial representative or a team to handle it. If you want advice on who to hire, I'll give it, or I'll point you in the direction of someone else who can advise you on some different candidates. The point is, you are the sole beneficiary. It's your choice to make.”

Alice flushed in discomfort. “Do we really have to talk about this now?”

He squeezed her hand. “
Yes
. Don't let the topic of money make you wary. You, of all people, are going to have to learn to talk bluntly about it. It's not crucial to our relationship, but it
is
important in a general sense to your life. Very. I want you to know right up front that, thanks to Alan and the success of Durand, I'm not doing too badly myself.”

She exhaled in exasperation. She knew a thing or two about Dylan's financial standing, thanks to the research study she'd done. “You're worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I realize you're hardly pauper material, Dylan. Do you think I care?”