A Stone in the Sea(100)

Intoxicating.

I let my lips graze across the fullness of hers. “Shea,” I said again, madness taking me over when she shook, those quivers radiating from her nothing but a fucking match striking across my body. Chills rushed, winding up every cell that made me up, nerve endings coming alive.

My arms were around her waist, tugging her flush, my mouth overtaking hers—the same way she’d overtaken me.

And we spun.

Spun and spun and spun.

Our kisses frantic and touches demanding.

Wouldn’t ever get enough.

One arm banded around her waist, I yanked the covers down on her bed. I never let go of that body or that mouth as I crawled with her up into the center of her mattress.

She trembled, and those lush, long legs opened to make room for me, her knees gripping at the outside of my thighs as I sank against her heat, friction and fire and blinding light.

One of my hands went to the mattress to support my weight, the other to the back of her neck, forcing her chin up.

I took possession of her warm, wet mouth.

Devoured what was always going to be mine.

I nipped at the plush of her lips. “Do I want to be with you?” I repeated her question on a barely constrained roar, on the fury that there were people out there looking down on this girl in the same way those pictures portrayed.

Like a worthless mother.

Like trash.

When she was nothing less than a treasure.

I kissed along the salty flesh of her cheeks that were soaked with tears, gathering her sorrow, before I kissed right back down to that soft, sexy mouth.

She trembled more and arched into me. “Sebastian.”

I edged back onto my knees, my fingers laying siege to the buttons of her pajama top, whispering hoarse as I ate through them. “Do I want to be with you?”

Every inch revealed a little more, the flush on her chest, perfect tits that pebbled as soon as they met with the shock of unsettled air, the flat, delirium-inducing planes of her stomach.

I spread open the sides of her top and shivers lifted across all her silky skin.

Still hovering, I leaned over her, my hands pressing under the fabric so I could push it over the delicate caps of her shoulders and drag it down her back. She lifted just enough for me to twist it free.

I grazed my knuckles over the taut peaks of both breasts, making her jump. Easing back, I pressed a tender kiss to the jut of her hip where the butterflies scattered out from just above the hem of the pajama bottoms. Butterfly. My fingers wound in the waistband, dragging both them and her underwear down her legs. I pushed back from the bed so I could peel them off.

My beautiful storm.

A needy sound of protest left her, tightening my chest, sending another wave of overpowering emotion pounding through me.

God, she was a vision.

Lying there—hair strewn out over her pillow, every naked inch of her my own personal perfection—she was seductive and sensual. Teeming with sex and lust, her storm throbbing full, all mixed and muddled with that glow of goodness shining out from around her like her own secret aura.

More.

I undressed in front of her.

The first time I’d done it, it was a warning.

A threat.

Praying this girl would see me, understand who I was, and run.

And she did see me.

She fucking saw me and loved me all the same.

This time when I stripped, it was a promise.

I stood there, muscles twitching beneath the irresistible weight of her stare. Bared to her. Completely exposed. My cock straining, my body burning up in the flames of her fire.

Ruined for this girl.

Caramel eyes latched onto me.

That storm fell down around us.

Full force.

Beating.

Beating.

Beating.

A frenzy of light and need and dark, dark, dark.

Tears soaked her face, every line imprinted on my heart and mind.

Words fumbled from her mouth in a desperate confession. “I don’t remember how to breathe without you.”

And I got it.

Fucking got it.

Because I felt it, too.

This girl had become a necessity.

Fundamental to who I was and who I was always gonna be.

Slowly, I crawled back over her, eyes drifting down to watch that body shake as I did.

I bracketed my forearm above her head, the other hand gathering up both of hers between us. Pulling them to my lips, I kissed across her knuckles, the movement slowed as I dipped down and kissed the moisture gathered in the creases of her eyes.

Inching back just far enough to catch her gaze, my mouth a breath from hers, I asked her again, “Do you see me, Shea?”

This time…this time it was a plea.

Shea pulled one of her hands free, fingertips gentle as they traced across my face, glancing across my lips and over my chin. She pressed them a little harder as she dragged them down my neck, like she was searing them into me, harder still as they moved down my chest.

Like she was again searching for a crack, for a fracture in my worn, scarred heart, for a way to sink inside.