His eyes glinted with amusement. “I might have bribed him.”
“And how’d you do that?” I asked, my voice going hoarse when Sebastian tightened his hold, energy growing thick.
“Might have told him I’d do anything…pay anything…to get to you.”
My chest squeezed with emotion, but still I teased, “Sounds pretty risky.”
“Totally worth the risk.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
His nose was back to brushing mine, his kiss hovering a centimeter away as his words turned hard, all coarse and jagged and demanding. “Tell me you’re mine.”
I pushed up on my toes and wrapped my arm around his head, lifted my chin in brazen challenge. “Not until you tell me you’re mine.”
A growl rumbled in his chest, and his huge body edged me closer to the wall. He stretched his arms out over my head, hands flat to the wall, stance wide.
Eclipsing me.
Dominating me.
The man possessing complete control.
His mouth skated to my ear. “You own every inch of me.”
I was sure my entire existence exhaled the strangled breath it’d been holding since he’d walked out of my life ten days before. “I’m yours.”
Then my hands were in his hair, and his were in mine, tongues and hearts and bodies colliding.
My pulse pounded frantically—matching time with his—an extra beat for every second he’d been gone.
Reluctantly, he dragged himself away, panting at my mouth. “Let me take you home.”
As difficult as it was, I shook my head and pressed my hand to his chest, knowing I needed some time to catch up to another sudden shift in my life. “No. Not tonight. I need to process this…explain to Kallie that you’re back. It’s a lot to take in.”
Thirty minutes ago I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.
And now he was mine.
I watched the jagged roll of his thick neck as he swallowed, and he nodded once. “I get it, baby. Doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking about you.”
“Believe me…the only thing I’ll be thinking about is you.”
NIGHT CLUNG TO THE WALLS. The canvas of moonlight shimmered through the sheer drapes of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and glass balcony doors strewed shadows into the huge room. Outside, the ocean rolled, rushing up the bank before it fell, the soothing calm of the constant ebb and flow of the sea brushing my ears.
Wide awake, I flopped onto my back in the middle of the enormous bed.
Never imagined I’d be back here. Thought when I boarded that plane ten days ago, I’d never return. Thought I’d never be able to handle coming back.
What I didn’t know was I wouldn’t be able to handle leaving her.
For days, my conscience had struggled and battled and clashed with every convoluted emotion drawing me back here, and I’d done my best to crucify the notion that maybe I could have something more. That maybe with all the shit eating up my life, there was still some room for something greater than all of that.
My chest squeezed tight.
Shea.
That gorgeous girl who swallowed me whole with just one look.
I glanced over at the nightstand clock. Three thirty-four.
By now, she should be off work and home. Immediately, I was assaulted with all kinds of visions of that girl laid out across her bed. Where I’d ravaged and explored and fucked. Where I’d tasted and experienced, and got caught up in a storm that I now knew would never free me from its grip.
Unable to resist, I grabbed my phone from the nightstand. A smile tugged at one side of my mouth as I typed out a message. What are you doing right now?
I got why she sent me home, demanding some time to think. Our bodies were like tinder. A brush of our skin the match. We would have let the physical devour and distort, silencing words that still needed to be said.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going mad over missing her. Every inch of my body was still drumming with her touches and her kisses and her words.
I lay my phone on my chest, tapping my fingers to the beat of a tune that’d been worming its way into my consciousness.
A few moments passed before my phone vibrated with a call. I lifted it up, and a black background with the message FaceTime Call from Shea Bentley lit up the screen.
The grin that had been pulling at my face spread, and I pushed up to sitting, making myself comfortable against the massive leather headboard, all too eager to get a look at my girl.
It was weird feeling…happy. Expectant. Like I was sitting right at the edge of something amazing getting ready to happen. And now it was finally within my reach.
Told her I didn’t know what it was like to miss someone until I was missing her. It was true. Different than the consuming pain with missing Julian. With missing Mark. Missing them was resigned because there was nothing I could do to get them back, even though I’d give up my life to do it.