Everything I Left Unsaid(38)

“Take off your clothes, Layla,” he breathed. “I’ll tell you how you can thank me.”

I went back into my bedroom and did every single thing he told me to do. I didn’t think, not for even a second, of saying no to him.

“You can do it, baby,” he breathed, when I was sobbing that I couldn’t take any more. I had three fingers in my * and my clit was on fire. He wouldn’t let me touch it. “I want you to do it.”

He wanted it, so I did too. I wanted it for myself, because it felt so sharp and real. Painful and so good at the same time. And I wanted it for him.

I wanted to please him.

So, inside my tight, aching body I slipped a fourth finger. I was stuffed, so full. Too full. My hand hurt, my arm ached. My body was shaking.

“Dylan,” I whimpered. “Please…”

“Now, you can touch your clit.”

I did. And the world exploded. My world exploded. It was dark and bright at the same time. And I didn’t recognize myself in it. I didn’t recognize my body, as if it had been fundamentally changed by this pleasure.

Changed by Dylan.





DYLAN


Dylan walked from his house to the warehouse, where the rest of the team was still working on the engine. They weren’t gods yet, but they were getting close.

Yet instead of contemplating improvements on the bit slopes, he was thinking about vibrators.

Specifically, sending one to Layla.

And maybe some lingerie. Expensive, classy stuff. He had a thing for black lace, but he could send her something in every color. But he didn’t know what size she was, so that made it tricky.

He’d go with the vibrator.

It wasn’t hard to imagine her shocked; she’d be shocked. But then she’d be interested. Very interested.

The thought made him smile. And hard. An entirely new and weird sensation. But one he was getting used to when he thought about Layla.

“Dylan!”

Margaret was waving him down from the door of his house. She was actually waving a kitchen towel at him. As if he were a plane, or a soldier leaving for war.

“What?”

He’d spent too much time arranging to send cake and talking to Layla. His team—Blake, actually—was getting pissed, and he really needed to get to the warehouse or he’d have a mutiny on his hands.

“There’s a call for you on the landline,” she said.

“Take a message.” He turned, folding and putting away thoughts of Layla and vibrators, and tried to get his head to focus on the work.

“It’s from the hospital down in Cherokee.”

That made him pause and Margaret took advantage, coming at him with the cordless phone. “I think you should take it,” she said.

Dylan stared down at the phone she was holding out to him. Layla wouldn’t use this number, so it couldn’t be her.

“Everyone on staff is here, right?”

She nodded.

Which meant it was someone in his family.

“What do they want?” He didn’t touch the phone.

Margaret’s sympathy vibe was turned way up and he realized whatever was waiting for him on the phone, it was bad.

When he was a boy and Mom was using again, he and his brother would hide all their nice shit. Anything that might be worth some money that she could sell. Bikes got buried beneath the weeds behind the apartment. Swiss Army knives and video games, shoved beneath a floorboard in Max’s room. When Dylan started racing, bringing home hundreds of dollars, Max got him a cash box and they buried it in the side yard. He’d been sixteen years old and making more than Dad as some petty soldier in the Skulls. Sometimes they didn’t see it coming until it was too late, and shit was gone before they had a chance to hide it, but they got better. Faster. Started hiding everything they got the second they got it.

Just in case.

In his head, in his gut, he was doing the same thing. Hiding everything that made him happy. Everything that made him soft. Anything that might hurt when it got ruined or driven away by whatever was waiting for him on the other end of the phone.

I’ve been an idiot, he realized. He’d let down all his guards.

“Give me that,” he said, grabbing the phone from her hand, too rough. Too mean. Margaret didn’t deserve it, but he was sharpened to an edge and anyone that got close got hurt.

“What?” he said into the phone, braced for impact.

“Dylan Daniels?” a woman asked. A nice-sounding woman, which only made him colder. Sharper.

“Speaking.”

“Are you next of kin to one Ben Daniels?”

He shifted his foot in the dirt. Widening his stance. Bracing himself for impact. “Is he dead?”

“No,” the woman rushed to say. “Gosh, no. I’m sorry I led you to think that. He’s not dead—”

“Is he dying?”

“No,” she laughed. “The man is tough as nails. I’m calling because—”

“He’s not dead and he’s not dying?”

She paused. “No, he’s not.”

“Then don’t call me until he is.”

He pressed the end button and handed it back over to Margaret.

“I need to get to work,” he said and headed back toward his garage. Toward his work. It had saved him from his family once before and he could count on it to do so again.