After breakfast, Kyla headed home. She'd barely made it half a mile down the road before her phone chimed with a text message. A grin unfolded over her lips. She knew exactly who that would be and what the message would say.

Pulling up on her driveway fifteen minutes later, she didn't even switch her engine off before reaching for her phone.

Dylan: Going out with my sister? Check. No problem. Pulling some hot dude? Not cool. Having a 3some with 2 hot dudes? I'll lock you in your house and never let you leave again.

Kyla chuckled to herself. She'd really set off his dominant possessive side. This could escalate into some proper fun.

Kyla: Needing your permission to do anything? Check. No problem. We're not together so *middle finger emoji*

Dylan: ...and what if I wanted to change that?

Kyla's heart froze in her chest. What? She stared at that simple sentence for several seconds, her mind completely blank. In a daze, she got out of her car and went to her front door, only to realise she'd left her keys in the car. And the engine was still running.

Switching the car off and grabbing her keys, she wandered inside her house, shut the door, and walked into the living room, finally collapsing onto her plush grey sofa.

Her phone pinged again with another message.

Dylan: I know it would be complicated, Kyla. But I don't care about any of that.

Kyla knew she couldn't ignore him. She had to reply with something.

Kyla: We can't, Dylan. I'm pretty sure Sam knows about us as it is. She all but warned me off you.

Dylan: When? What did she say?

Kyla: At the café this morning. She said she'd do anything to see me happy, even if it meant being with you, but I can't give you what you want and that's where her issue would be.

The message turned from delivered to read. The three little dots bounced around at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds then stopped.

Several seconds passed.

Then a minute.

Finally, he replied.

Dylan: Leave this with me. She doesn't get to decide my life, only me.

Kyla: Dylan, don't cause problems, please. Just leave it. It's not worth it.

Dylan: It is to me.

Kyla: I can't give you what you want, Dylan, leave it be. Please. Trust me. It's better this way.

Dylan: There are ways around everything, Kyla. Where there's a will, there's a way. And where there's a Dylan, there's gonna be shit that happens.

Kyla let out a sigh. Just how bad were things about to get? Anxiety and fear mixed around inside her, leaving her desperate to just have things left as they were. What if Dylan said something to Sam today?

Dylan was a doer. That was his thing. People asked him to action things and he did it, no questions asked. Whatever Dylan wanted, Dylan got, regardless of the carnage in the middle. Being a private contractor for the military came with a certain attitude and mindset that didn't always merge seamlessly with civvy street.

Kyla: Dylan, please. Let me speak to her first. She might take it better coming from me.

Dylan: What are you saying?

Kyla's heart pounded against her ribcage so hard she could feel the thud of it in her ears.

Kyla: I'm saying if we're going to admit this to Sam, let me do it.

Dylan: And then what?

Kyla hesitated for a minute. He was pushing her to say she would be his, that she wouldn't ever be with another man again. That she would commit herself to him and him only. That didn't sit well with Kyla. She liked her freedom, her lack of answering to anyone. If anyone ever did tempt her to commit, it certainly wouldn't be over a damn text message either.

Kyla: And then nothing. I'm not doing this over a text message. And you can man the fuck up and ask me to my face.

Dylan: I'll be there in ten.

Kyla sighed and rolled her eyes.

Kyla: No. Not everything has to be done right now, at a hundred miles an hour. Wait.

The message delivered. Two minutes later, it still hadn't been read. Kyla started chewing on her fingernails. Was he coming over? Had he not read it because he was driving? Or had he read it on his notifications bar and decided to ignore her?

She headed into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Tea always calmed her nerves, or perhaps it was all the sugar she poured into it. Flicking the kettle into life, she stared mindlessly at the blue light, watching and listening to the kettle heat itself up.

As the water boiled, and the switch finally flicked itself off, her front door burst open to reveal none other than Dylan Mohun standing in her doorway. A gust of spring air blew through the open door, ruffling his finger length chocolate coloured hair into a sexy ruffle.

Kyla whirled around and folded her arms over her chest. "I told you not to come. And I swear to God if you've damaged that door," she said, pointing at her front door. "You are paying for it."

His dark eyes softened with a touch of care, compassion almost, something Kyla had never seen on him. "I don't care," he said, his voice low, barely above a whisper. "I'm tired of playing games, Kyla."

Kyla's heart jumped inside her chest, did a triple somersault, and then leapt into a galloping rhythm. Even his tone of voice was soft, his words careful. He'd opened up a door inside him that Kyla wanted nothing more than to close.

"Shut the door please. You're letting all the heat out and I've spent enough money trying to keep this place warm."

Dylan swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as shock and surprise filtered across his handsome face. Without a word, he did as asked, closing the door. He walked into the kitchen, his eyes fixed on Kyla, watching, waiting for her reaction, wondering if she would be receptive or tell him to leave.

He stopped at the kitchen doorway, leaning his bulky muscled body against the doorframe. Folding his arms across his broad chest, Kyla couldn't help but let her eyes rove over his fine form.

Wearing a charcoal-coloured shirt that stretched across his pecs and clung to his torso like a second skin, the various tattoos adorning both of his arms were only highlighted further by his tense muscles. This did nothing but distract Kyla from the current problem and only made her want to run her tongue in all the grooves, maybe with an ice cube or two. She'd licked the sweat from his body on more than one occasion.

"I can see the fear on your face," Dylan said, keeping his voice low and quiet.

Kyla snorted. "Then you clearly can't read me very well because right now all I'm thinking about is running ice all over your body with my tongue."

Dylan dropped his arms to his side and closed the distance between them in three quick strides. Grabbing Kyla's upper arms, he gripped her tight and kept their eyes locked. "Don't do that," he whispered.

"Do what?"

"Turn everything sexual to avoid the real problem."

Kyla rolled her eyes and looked away, staring at her white kitchen tiles. She noticed that some of the grout had started to gain a yellowish tint and made a mental note to add grout whitener to her next Amazon shopping spree.

"Kyla," Dylan said, squeezing her arms. "Look at me."

Kyla waited a few seconds before turning her attention back to him. "What?"

"Did you think this was just fun to me?"

"Well, yeah. Why would I think any different? We both agreed NSA at the beginning, remember?"

Dylan pressed his lips together and let out a sigh. "No strings attached. Yeah, I remember. But you didn't think that after all these years it might have developed into something more? Hell, surely that night with Jack proved that."

Kyla raised an eyebrow as her breath hitched in her throat. "But...but we'd only been having sex for a few months back then...that was years ago."

Dylan shrugged his shoulders. "I was hoping you would eventually start to feel something."

Water pricked at Kyla's eyes, burning its way to the front of her vision. "I can't," she whispered, glancing down at her feet. "You know I can't allow myself to do that."

"Kyla," he whispered, letting go of her left arm and tilting her chin up with his index finger. "Yes, you can. You trust me, right?"

Kyla squeezed her eyes shut as he lifted her face up. She could feel the wall of water building behind her eyelids and she knew the instant she lifted the barrier, a river of tears would stream down her face. "You're asking me for a different kind of trust, Dylan," she replied, her voice cracking.

Dylan released her other arm and touched his thumb to her left eyelid, wiping over it. A sliver of water touched his skin, confirming what he knew. "Open your eyes, Kyla," he said, his voice soft, as if speaking to a child.

Kyla bit her bottom lip and shook her head.

Lowering his voice into a gruff command, he said, "Open them. Now."

Kyla sucked in a deep breath, letting out a sob at the same time, shaking her whole body. She opened her eyes, allowing her tears to run free. "Are you happy now?" she asked, her voice laced with sarcasm as she wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

Dylan took her hand and pushed it back to her side. Cupping her cheeks with both of his huge hands, he brushed her tears away with his thumbs whilst forcing her to look at him. "I'll be happy when you trust me."

"Why?" she asked, her face screwing up into a ball of anger and confusion. "Is this some kind of game to you, Dylan? Is it some sort of challenge to get me to hand over my heart and soul to you so you can toy with it and do as you please? So you can break me all over again? Is that it? Is that what you want?"

Dylan frowned, his eyebrows furrowing together. "Do you really think that of me? That I would ask for your trust, for your heart, only to view it as a trophy and not as something to treasure?" He dropped his hands from her face and sighed. "I thought you knew me better than that, Kyla."

Kyla shook her head. "We don't know each other, Dylan. We know each other's bodies, sure. We know how to have great sex, but we don't know each other. You don't know my favourite colour or my favourite food, my most hated actor or my most hated smell. And I don't know those things about you either."

"Purple. Chinese. Ben Affleck. Cherries."

Kyla held her breath. Her head spinning at a million miles an hour she didn't know what to think. He'd shocked her for sure. "Well," she whispered. "You didn't have to fuck me silent that time."

"I don't want to hurt you, Kyla. I just want to love you."

Kyla dropped her head and closed her eyes. Huge racking sobs took control of her body. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she cuddled herself. "You need to leave," she said.

Dylan ignored her completely, instead enveloping her in a crushing bear hug. "If you want me to leave," he whispered. "Then you need to force me out of that door yourself."

As Kyla felt Dylan's arms encompass her and block out the world around her, a little shard of ice melted from her frost hardened heart. The way Dylan held her, with a tender yet strong embrace, sent shivers straight to her soul. She knew he cared for her more than either of them had anticipated.

For the first time in a decade, Kyla crumpled and allowed her sorrow to be comforted by someone else. What scared her even more was the fact that she liked knowing she had a rock of stability willing, and wanting, to be hers.