I freeze and dig my fingers into the cloth material on the chair. And now I can feel the warmth radiating off him. “What are you doing in here?”
“You told me you wanted me close,” he says. Hooking his finger on my hair, he slides every bit of it over my right shoulder. As the heavy weight thumps against my right breast, he runs his finger slowly down my bare neck. “Why do you still have it, Talia?”
I’m exposed, and it’s not just because I’m standing here in skimpy underwear and his jacket. How can I explain this in a way that won’t leave me raw and shredded? I stare at the snow outside and think about the sense of peace I felt just a few seconds ago. “You know when you said my penname means ‘alone’, you were half right. The ‘A’ is supposed to represent Amelia and the ‘T’ is me, but the whole name does mean ‘T Alone.’ I’ve always been alone, Sebastian. At least…I felt that way until I ran into you.”
His finger pauses at the base of my throat and when he lifts it away, my heart sinks, but I refuse to let my fear of scaring him away keep me from telling him this part at least. “Whether you meant to or not, you helped me believe I was worth more. I can’t thank you enough for that.”
His warm hand cups my right thigh and his chest brushes my back as his lips graze my ear. “Is that the only reason?”
My heart rate soars when he spreads his fingers along the front of my thigh. “What do you want me to say?”
“That you need me, Talia.” He grips my thigh tight, his hold tense as his mouth hovers along my neck. “That you want my hands sliding along your thighs, spreading them wide, my mouth consuming every part of you.” Prickles race along my skin when his lips move just behind my ear, his warm breath making my stomach swirl crazily. “I want to hear your moans of pleasure as you come while I’m deep inside you.” His hand glides up the outside of my thigh to my hip, then slowly slides downward and under my panties. Just as his fingers trace the bit of hair at the juncture of my legs, his other hand smacks my ass hard.
I gasp at the dual erotic sensations, enjoying his hands arousing my body while his aggressive descriptions short-circuit my brain. My ass stings—and all I can think is how much I want him to touch me while he does it again. I’ll explode in two seconds flat.
As if he knows what he’s doing to me, Sebastian slides his hands to my hips, then thumbs my panties to the middle of my ass, exposing my rear. He smacks the other cheek harder, then grabs both stinging cheeks in a possessive hold as he nips at my ear. “Spread your legs.”
The commanding edge of his voice makes my heart sprint. It’s beating so hard, my chest aches. I take a step to spread my legs, then gasp when he grabs the back of my underwear in his fist and yanks my hips against his. “Why won’t you wear any of the jewelry I’ve bought you, but you willingly wear a necklace from a goddamn sideshow game?”
“Sebastian—” When I start to speak, he turns his hand and twists my underwear, pulling the material tight against my clit.
“Don’t even think about lying to me, Talia,” he snaps fiercely, then yanks the flimsy material completely off my body.
The rough act was just enough to put me on the brink of an orgasm. I curl my fingers into the chair’s seams and take a deep breath to keep it together.
“Why,” he demands. Ever so slowly he traces his fingers down my ass, then slides a hand between my thighs, tracing his fingertips along my dampness.
His barely-there touch is making me want to scream. I can’t tell him it hurts too much to wear a piece of jewelry that was based on something I won’t be able to hold onto forever. Those other gifts stemmed from him thinking of me in a sexual sense, of us together. This gift was just…because. “You won it for me, that’s why,” I say on a desperate exhale. My voice is hoarse, my emotions raw, while my body throbs. I ache so much to feel him inside me.
He pauses and mutters, “Simple things,” as if filing the information away, and then slides his fingers along my sensitive lips. He’s so close. I swallow to keep the yearning wail rising in my chest from escaping. I close my eyes in embarrassment when I feel my dampness dripping out of me, seeking his fingers, making them slicker.
“Christ, I don’t even have to touch you, you’re so fucking wet,” he whispers, arrogance and strained desire in his gruff comment.
I tuck my chin to my chest to keep from panting loudly and hiss, “Then do something about it!”
“You drive me out of my goddamn mind,” he grates out, then pushes two fingers aggressively deep inside me. The rough invasion feels so good, I grab the chair in a death grip and throw my head back, pressing into him, crying his name.
“It’s not enough though, is it, Little Red?” he purrs in a knowing tone.
Before I can move, he quickly pulls his hand away. I can’t believe he’s torturing me like this. I’m about to turn and lay into him, when I hear his zipper sliding down. Instead I bite my lip and my whole body vibrates as I wait for him to take me. At this point, I’m his puppet. I need him to pull the fucking strings. And yank them hard.
“Damn right, it’s not,” he answers my silence and grips my hip with his right hand. The second he touches me, I arch my back, then mewl at the sensual feel of his rock hard erection sliding between my thighs. He rubs himself along my slickness, teasing my sensitized folds. When a strained groan rushes past his lips, I feel a little less like a desperate hussy and press my jaw to his mouth as he rasps against me. “I want to feel your sweet pussy clamping around my cock, Talia. Like you never want to let me go.”
I don’t. Ever. The length of him glides back and forth oh-so-slowly, arousing and just out of my reach. My legs start to shake when I realize he’s lubricating himself with my desire for him. I’m so turned on and frustrated, but I know if I try to pull him inside me, he’ll stop and tell me to put my hands back on the chair, so I hold myself perfectly still.
When his thickness finally tests the edge of my entrance, I inhale quickly and instinctively flex my lower muscles. Craving him. God, I want him. This. Us.
“That’s it, sweetheart.” He nips at my neck, while holding himself just outside of me. “Your body’s telling me what you’re too afraid to admit.”
My heart stutters and my breath rips from my lungs. “What do you think I’m afraid to tell you?”
The fire alarm starts blaring in long, piercing bursts. As I grind my teeth at the interruption, Sebastian curses, then pulls away. A second later, he turns me around, and while he quickly zips my coat closed, he says calmly over the noise, “That we’re meant to be together.” Is he saying what I think he’s saying? “Until we’re both fully satisfied,” he finishes with a dark, sexy smile, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear.
Fierce burning spreads through my chest and my lungs feel like they’re on fire, but I hold in the scream reverberating in my head. Forever is all I want, Sebastian! I’ve already told him that I want more than a fling. “I hate being at a stalemate,” I say in a flat tone. He starts to speak, but I hold my hand up and shake my head, then walk over to my open suitcase to riffle through for underwear, jeans, socks, and my boots.
While I quickly dress, Sebastian moves to the door and flattens his palm against the wood. Glancing back, he waves me forward. “It’s not a false alarm. It’s faint, but I smell smoke. Grab what matters. We need to get out.”
Sebastian and I stand under the awning of a restaurant across the street from our hotel, while snow falls on the crowd of guests standing outside, waiting for the firemen to clear them to go back in. Even though I don’t see any visible signs of fire, I also smelled smoke when Sebastian escorted me down a back stairwell he had a special keycard to access.
I gesture to the fire truck’s flashing lights. “The firemen have been in there for at least twenty minutes. I told you taking that back stairwell was overkill. This wasn’t a ‘diversion’. Someone pulled the fire alarm for a reason.”
As Sebastian grunts his assessment and readjusts my laptop bag on his shoulder, a sudden realization hits me. Even though I know I won’t find it, I open my purse and search through both zip-up sections inside, looking for the folded piece of “2 Lias” artwork.
“What’s wrong?” Sebastian glances down at me, his brow furrowed.
I shrug and try not to let him see how worried I am. “Nothing.”
He grasps my elbow once I fold the flap closed on my purse. “What did you leave behind?”
I count the floors to the fifth one and nod toward it. “I left something in my other room. You wouldn’t have known it was there, so I know you didn’t pack it for me.”
His eyebrows lift. “What is it?”
“Just something I don’t want to lose.”
Releasing me, he nods. “When they give us the thumbs up to return to the hotel, we’ll go back to your old room first. It’s still in your name, so no one else should be in there.”
Nodding my appreciation, I try to let the worry go.
Sebastian makes me wait until the fire trucks leave and the crowd dissipates before returning to the hotel. It has been a full hour since we left my room. At this point, I’m assuming the cocktail event has been cancelled, and even if it isn’t, I’m excusing myself for tonight. Stepping onto the elevator ahead of Sebastian, I start to push number five, but a piece of paper has been taped over it that reads: See front desk.
My heart jolts and my gaze jerks to Sebastian’s narrowed one. “Maybe there’s something wrong with the elevator,” I say, then walk back toward the lobby.
“Excuse me,” I call quietly to the blonde woman working on some paperwork behind the front desk. “The fifth floor button is taped over. It says to see the front desk.”
The girl nods and quickly moves to the computer to tap a few keys. “We had a small, contained fire upstairs. Everything is fine, but to make things comfortable for our guests, we’ve shut that floor off while we ventilate the smoke properly. If you tell me your last name, I’ll let you know where we’ve moved you for the night. You should be able to retrieve your things tomorrow morning.”
“The fire was on the fifth floor?” As my voice cracks, Sebastian puts a hand on my shoulder.
“You said the fire was contained. Where did it start?” he asks in a calm tone.
She frowns. “I’m not allowed to disclose—”
“I’ve been cleared,” he interrupts. “Now tell us where.”
Tapping on the keyboard, she looks nervously at Sebastian. “It was contained to room 529.”
As the blood drains from my face, Sebastian squeezes my shoulder. “Call Bryce Sellers and get him to clear us to go up. Miss Lone left something in that room. She’d like to see if it survived the fire.”
The security officer, Bryce, locks our stuff away in his office, then brings gloves and masks with him as he escorts us upstairs personally. Sliding my mask on, I rush out of the elevator and head down the hall the moment the doors open on the fifth floor.
A thin haze of smoke and the smell of burning wood hangs in the air. Tubing is hooked to huge industrial fans running at both ends of the hall to draw out the smoke. The loud noise drowns out the sound of my heart thudding in my chest and the soft thump of my feet hitting the carpet as I run down the hall.
Sebastian grabs my hand before I can enter the burned room. “Careful. We only have a few minutes. Bryce says the fumes are still strong.” His warning sounds muffled behind his mask as he hands me gloves once Bryce walks up behind us.
“If a couple guests hadn’t brought their fire extinguishers up from the floor below to help the sprinklers put the fire out, the flames would’ve made their way into the hall before the fire trucks got here.”
I gape at the burned out door and scorched walls just inside my room, and even though my heart jumps to a faster pace, I take a deep breath and nod to let Sebastian know that I’m calm.
Bryce steps in behind us. “According to the firemen, they found what smells like gasoline just under the door. They said someone must’ve slipped a soaked piece of paper or something underneath, then lit it. This was definitely arson. What the sprinklers couldn’t put out—water rolls off gasoline—thankfully the fire extinguishers took care of.”
I know the head of security is trying to sound optimistic, but I just want to tell him to shut up, because everything in the room is covered in white, sopping goop. I walk over to the desk and look for the room service binder, my eyes stinging from the remnants of smoke still hanging in the air.
It’s not where I left it.
When I start to bend down, Sebastian grasps my arm to stop me, sympathy in his eyes, but I’m frantic. “I have to find it.” I shake him off and get on my hands and knees. The goop soaks through my jeans as I look under the bed, lifting wet covers and pillows. When I see Bryce and Sebastian move the desk, I get up and peer behind it. Nothing.
I finally find the leather portfolio several feet from the desk. It’s open on the floor near the chair. The artwork is water-smeared, and a fireman’s boot print has torn the paper completely in half.
I hold the two halves up, and then let them fall back to the floor in a sopping heap.
Unshed tears make my eyes sting even more and I look up to Sebastian. “I’m ready to move hotels now.”
I don’t say much to Sebastian on the way to the hotel. I think he knows I’m feeling raw inside, even if he doesn’t know why. While the hot shower water rains down on me, I cry for the final loss of Amelia, angry with myself for being so afraid to return to my past before now. If I had retrieved the drawing sooner, it would be safe in my apartment, not a mangled mess on the floor of a burned hotel room. As soon as I turn off the shower, I freeze when I hear another man’s voice just outside the bathroom door.
“Here are your bags.”
I relax when Sebastian answers, “Thanks for bringing them, Connelly. I owe you.”
“Everyone okay?” the guy asks.
I’m surprised by the concern in his question, but even more by how familiar his voice sounds. Where have I heard it before? I don’t know anyone named Connelly.
“Yeah, it will be,” Sebastian answers and then the door shuts.
Sebastian doesn’t know that. I wish I felt his confidence. I take my time drying my hair, then I press my ear to the door to see if I hear him moving around my room.
When silence greets me, I walk out in a towel, thankful Sebastian has moved to his own room and is apparently talking on the phone. I quickly grab a pair of sleep shorts and a T-shirt from my suitcase and get dressed in the bathroom. Once I turn off the light, I stare at the door Sebastian left open. The shower’s running in his room, giving me the perfect chance to shut the door without him hearing.
I worry my bottom lip, my teeth digging deep. I don’t like the idea of sleeping with my back to an open door, but I realize that Sebastian probably just wants me to feel safe, so I leave it before climbing into bed.
The shower stops, then a few minutes later the bathroom door opens and he turns off his light. My room goes dark for a second before my eyes adjust to the fresh three-inch blanket of snow reflecting outside lights into my room in a dim glow. It’s completely still outside now. The snow stopped while we were looking through my old room at the Regent. Amelia loved the snow. I remember the delight in her laughter as she stuck her tongue and arms out and spun in circles, trying to capture as many flakes as possible. The sudden resurfacing of an Amelia memory is so unexpected, silent tears trickle across the bridge of my nose, hitting the pillow.
I freeze when the bed dips and Sebastian slides under the covers. “What are you doing?” I whisper and quickly brush the tears away.
“There’s no way I’m leaving you alone tonight,” he says, punching the pillow before he settles. “Might as well accept that you have a roommate for the evening.”
His simple act of just being here for me is so sweet, my volatile emotions get the best of me. I hunch my shoulders and try my best to cry silently into my pillow.
I squeak when Sebastian’s strong arm curls around my waist. Pulling my back against his hard body, he twines his muscular legs with mine. “Tell me about the drawing. Why did it mean so much to you?”
The sincerity in his voice, coupled with the pleasing smell of masculine soap and shower-warmed skin, work together to relax me. I brush the last tears away and melt into his hold. He’s the only one who really knows what happened to Amelia, so I might as well tell him about the drawing.
Resting my cheek on his pillow, I take a deep breath. “That’s part of the errand I ran the other day. I went to my old apartment building and retrieved the artwork. Amelia and I had drawn it together. She was so excited to learn our names had the same letters. I called it the ‘2 Lias’ since it was our names inside two hearts. She died that same night. I just couldn’t leave the drawing behind, but it started to rain as I left the apartment. I didn’t want it to get ruined, so I hid it for safe keeping.” I exhale a sad sigh. “How ironic that water finally destroyed it after all. It’s like I was never meant to hold onto her memory.”
“The sick bastard who set fire in your room is to blame.” Sebastian’s arm tightens around me. “I’m just glad I moved you when I did.”
I cover my hand over his on my waist. “Me too.”
Sebastian spreads his fingers and threads them with mine, folding our hands together. “Tell me the rest.” When I don’t answer, he says, “You looked so devastated. Tell me, Talia.”
I swallow and nod. “I’ve been losing bits and pieces of Amelia from my memory. I can’t picture exactly what her face looks like anymore.” My voice cracks as I finish. “That artwork was the only thing I had left of her, Sebastian, the only sweet memory to hold onto. Nothing else survived the fire.”
“You didn’t mention a fire before,” he says quietly.
A part of me wants to confess all my sins. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t tell him everything. I just…can’t, but I can tell him about the fire. “When I got back to my apartment after you dropped me off, there’d been an explosion in the building, destroying our place. We were later told it was a gas leak.”
He presses a gentle kiss to the back of my head. “I’m sorry.”
“I am too,” I whisper. A few quiet moments of silence fill the space. It feels right, laying here in silence with him.
When a bright red alarm light shines in the shape of Sebastian’s watch face on the ceiling from the nightstand, I’m instantly reminded of the inscription on the back. I’m proud to call you son, Sebastian. Stay brave, remain loyal, and protect family above all else. I love that his father saw those qualities in him, even when he was a rebellious teen.
“It’s one-eleven,” I say quietly. “Tell me why you set that alarm everyday.”
Sebastian turns off the silent alarm, then wraps his arm around me once more. “I told you, it’s a reminder.”
“To remain ‘diligent, aware, and ready.’ I know, but you haven’t told me why.”
He sighs into my hair. “That night my mom died, I came home late. I’d been out drinking and doing something I shouldn’t have.” He pauses and exhales sharply as if the memory still pains him. “One-eleven is when the intruder entered our house. If I’d been fully sober, things might’ve turned out differently. Maybe I could’ve taken control of the situation and protected her.”
“Is that why you don’t drink?” When he remains quiet, I say, “Sober can’t stop bullets, Sebastian. Your mom would be proud of the protector you’ve become, of the good you’ve done, and the people you’ve saved.”
He squeezes my waist. “Keeping those I care about safe is how I operate.”
It suddenly hits me where I’ve heard that other voice from earlier before. It was Theo talking to Sebastian outside my bathroom door. I should’ve known Sebastian would keep an eye on me. He wouldn’t let me go undercover at the Sly Fox club without inserting his own level of protection. He has always watched over and protected me. “You assigned Theo to me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
I can tell by the tension in his body, he wonders if I’m mad. I sigh and rest my head on his arm. “Thank you for being my friend. The best actually. You’ve always been that to me.”
Nobody surprises me like Talia does. As she burrows her soft body even closer, I keep my thoughts on task so I don’t react to her sexy curves and arousing floral smell. If I get hard right now, I’ll lose all the ground I’ve gained with her. Somehow I stay focused and find my voice. “I thought Cass was your best friend.”
“She is, but even she doesn’t know about my past like you do. You’ve always been there for me when times were the hardest.” She grips my fingers tight. “Always. Promise me we won’t lose that for each other. That no matter what, you won’t lose faith in me.”
“Never.” I uncurl my fingers from hers and press the flat of my hand to her chest. Her rapid heartbeat hammers against my palm, while my heart calmly thump, thumps against her back. Why is her heart beating so hard? How could she think I’d ever lose faith in her? “I promise.” Folding our hands back together, I press her closer and softly command, “Now go to sleep, Little Red. You’re safe.”
I’m amazed that she instantly falls asleep in my arms.
Best friends. It’s a foreign concept to me. Like love. I’ve never had a best friend. Calder is the closest, but he’s family. And so is Mina. I would do anything for my family, but I’ve never once told any of them that I loved them. Losing my mom the way I did was more than my teenage mind could handle, so I shut that part of me off. Learning to control my emotions helped me make sense of the world that crumbled so completely around me. It seems that life has never stopped shifting under my feet, but Talia’s been a beacon among the chaos.
I feel protective of her like family, yet that’s where the similarity ends. My response to her is savage and passionate, my dominant instincts jacked to the highest level, pushing me to possess and defend every inch of her. I would take an entire clip of bullets for Talia. I don’t even want to think how I’d react if something had happened to her tonight. I would be an epically scary motherfucker. “Best friends” is a tame, one-dimensional…safe description of us.
Talia’s quietness as we made our way to the new hotel bothered me. She didn’t speak as we entered her hotel room. I was thankful I’d booked our adjoining rooms this morning, so at least we could go straight up to the room. She didn’t spare the room a glance, just set down her laptop and purse on the desk, then immediately walked into the bathroom and shut the door, locking it behind her.
As the shower turned on, I leaned against the wall next to her bathroom door and scrubbed my fingers through my hair. I’ve never hated being so fucking right in my life. The look on her face when she gazed up at me while holding that destroyed artwork tore me to shreds. I’ve seen fear, worry, sadness, anger, fury, and defiance flicker through her gorgeous eyes, but the emotion I witnessed tonight nearly brought me to my knees. I’ve never seen disillusionment in Talia before. In that moment, it felt like she’d lost hope. One of the things I’m in awe of is her unflappable optimism.
The sad sound of her sobs rising over the pounding water made me want to break down the fucking door, climb in there with her and hold her close, but I knew she wanted to be alone. So I stood there and listened, grinding the back of my teeth and growing more determined than ever to find the bastard responsible not just for threatening her life, but for taking that light out of her eyes.
She mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep, bringing me back to the present. While my gaze slides over her profile, my erection hardens. I ache all over for her. She’ll let me be her friend, but not her lover? She claims I’m the only man she trusts, and to an extent, I believe that. But now that she won’t allow herself to be with me, unless I seduce her into it, I feel torn up inside. My gut tells me she wants us just as much. What changed from the woman who gave herself over to me so freely at Martha’s Vineyard? How do I convince her to want us again?
The snow outside reflects in the room, giving me a full view of her profile. Knowing she’d tense up if she were woken, I gently roll her toward me to stare at her gorgeous face. Without conscious thought, my fingers slide into her soft hair and I rub my thumb tenderly along her cheekbone. She’s so soft and smells like heaven.
Touching her is pleasurable torture. I know I’m pushing my luck, but I can’t help it. I’ve never craved someone as much as I do Talia. I can’t stop thinking about her, wanting to touch her. I trace my thumb along her cheekbone once more, my fingers pressing into her scalp. Mine. She sighs and snuggles against my chest, whispering my name, like she’s done it hundreds of times before.
The surprising act of unconscious trust and the sound of my name from her lips radiates through my chest, shooting straight to my cock. Does she feel more deeply for me than she lets on? I know she cares, because that’s her nature, but could her unshakable trust in me as her protective friend also mean an unfettered acceptance of me as her lover? I’m not a perfect man and I might be broken in many ways, but no one arouses every part of me like she does. She makes me forget my flaws, and fucking hell, she satisfies me on every sexual level. Like she was made just for me. The unexpected realization sends warmth spreading through my chest, lifting the heaviness and letting me breathe deeper than I’ve been able to in a long time.
I smile in the darkness and press a kiss against her forehead, murmuring. “No more running. No more hiding your feelings from me. You are going down, Little Red.”