“I know you didn’t, and it’s fine.” He looks at me gently, his voice turning softer as he says, “I told you that I’m glad I’ve never actually fucked any of them. I only want you.”
His words warm me, but they don’t fully soothe. “I believe you,” I say, matching his soft tone. “But being glad that you haven’t fucked them is completely different from being glad that you can’t.”
He closes his eyes for a moment and nods, acknowledging the truth of my words.
I’d been shocked to learn that I was the only woman Dallas has ever penetrated—and that was seventeen years ago when we’d been captive and terrified. Before he’d been tortured.
Before he’d been broken.
Now he plays a game of smoke and mirrors, satisfying hordes of women, but never literally fucking any of them. And since no woman who’s romped in his bed wants to admit that he didn’t actually lay her out and fuck her hard, his reputation just keeps growing. And frankly, considering his skill in bed, I bet most women didn’t even realize he was never inside them; they were too busy wallowing in the aftershocks of multiple orgasms.
Honestly, it’s one hell of a marketing scam. All of it is, really. The playboy persona. The King of Fuck reputation. He flirts with, touches, and beds a procession of women because that feeds an illusion and serves his purpose—Deliverance. An elite vigilante organization dedicated to rescuing kidnap victims and punishing their tormentors.
Until I learned that Deliverance was essentially Dallas’s brainchild, I’d been firmly of the opinion that it was a dangerous group that needed to be stopped. I’d done enough research and written enough articles and books on kidnappings and vigilante justice to know that mercenaries often do more harm than good. But I know Dallas; I understand his motives. And, honestly, I’m not sure what to think now, at least not about Deliverance. And so I’m officially withholding judgment until I learn more.
That in-depth educational experience hasn’t happened yet. But I know enough to understand what he’s doing. Creating camouflage. Hiding in plain sight behind the facade of a man who is too much of a player to be a threat.
“I’ve been living a life built on secrets for years, Jane.” His voice is soft, pulling me back from my thoughts. “Secrets are familiar territory.”
“We said we weren’t going to have any more secrets.”
“Between you and me. Not between us and the world.” He draws a breath, looking away from me as if to gather himself before turning back to meet my eyes. “I’ll tell you whatever you want about how Deliverance works. You know that.”
“I do.”
“So, do you want me to tell you now?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” I sigh, then run my fingers through my hair. “That’s not what’s bothering me.”
He nods. “Yeah. I know.” He stands again and starts to pace, obviously frustrated. “Tonight—this party—maybe I should have sent you back to New York. Maybe you should be at your own house tonight.”
I shudder, feeling suddenly cold. “You don’t want me here?”
“Oh, baby, no.” He stops in front of me and reaches down, taking my hands to pull me to my feet. “I want you with me more than anything. But I planned this party for one purpose only—I need to talk with Henry Darcy. I need to find out if he has any idea who’s behind Deliverance. And I need a woman on my arm when I talk to him.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to make sure he sees the playboy, not the man who might have set him up with Deliverance. I need him to talk to me, but I want his attention split. And a beautiful woman is an excellent distraction. This has been my camouflage for years, baby, and if I step out of character, I risk everything.”
“Which means the woman on your arm can’t be me.” The statement is rhetorical; obviously I can’t be the woman at his side. Even so, he opens his mouth to answer. I lift my hand to cut him off. “No. I get it. I do.”
About a year ago, Henry Darcy hired Deliverance to rescue his kidnapped daughters. He’d jumped through all of the hoops to contact the group, and as far as Dallas and his team knew, Darcy was ignorant of the identity of the individual players in the vigilante group. For that matter, he didn’t even know the name “Deliverance.” Or, at least, the team had assumed he didn’t. It was, Dallas explained to me, an internal code name only.
That’s the way all Deliverance operations work. Contact is made through a very complex system that Dallas hasn’t yet described to me. But the bottom line is total anonymity.
So when Henry Darcy revealed publicly that the vigilante group that had rescued his girls was called Deliverance, Dallas and the team were more than a little concerned. What else did he know? Was he a threat?