He scowls. “Do you really want to hear this?”
My stomach dips with disappointment. I was beginning to think I could trust him to tell me straight and not like a child.
“Now,” I snap. There isn’t long left. At midnight the day we bargained for is up, and then the moment I tell him my decision about what to do with his enemies, I’m free to go.
Funnily enough, I’m finding that an impossible choice to make, or even think about.
“I never lost you.”
I blink in surprise.
“I always knew where you were. To me, you were never lost.”
“What?” That should scare me but instead his words spread heat across my back like a perfectly cosy warm seat to nestle in. One that brackets me on all sides, safe and protected.
I was never lost.
The comfort is irrational. It can’t change the way I felt at the time: alone. Betrayed by every friend and all my family when I realised how they had used me. But it makes no sense. “The police told me no one knew where I was, and there was a fund for protective custody.”
“There was.” He circles his hand and smiles wryly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I provided it.”
“How?” I can’t process this. “When did it start? Actually, no. All the way back. Tell me exactly what happened after…” After I was drugged.
“You really want to recall this? It’s not pretty, angel.”
I nod. All I’ve ever known was a blur like a video that wouldn’t stream properly.
“By the time I heard, you were already married. I arrived at the Fletcher compound. Suffice to say he wasn’t pleased to see me and there was a disagreement. He was intent on having his wedding night, despite you being unconscious. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to remove you by force, and a number on both sides didn’t make it home that night. I took you to hospital and told them to call the police.”
It was him. I never knew. All these years, I just woke up from a horrible nightmarish dream, but I’d never known who had fetched me out. And it was Sebastian.
“Then I organised your annulment. Your education. Your protection. And every year I received an update on you. On your birthday.”
He has watched me since. All those days when I was sad and had no one, he was watching.
But he could have been in my life.
“Why didn’t you contact me? Every birthday? Could have sent a card,” I say with false lightness.
“Would you have welcomed that?”
I consider. A reminder of all that had been taken from me? “No. But still. Didn’t you want to?”
He hesitates.
“No lies,” I add.
“Yes and no.”
“I’m the Libra, weighing everything up constantly, not you.” I spread my hands as if to grip his neck in frustration. “I might yet throttle you.”
He smiles in recollection at our spat last night, but breathes in like the cares of the world are on his back.
“On your fourteenth birthday, I was sick to my stomach. You looked dead inside and out. I thought we’d screwed you up permanently. I didn’t want to contact you.” His words spill out, fast and unflinching and truthful as scalding water poured from a kettle. “Fifteen, you were a little better. I wanted to hug you and muzz your hair like you were my little sister.”
Like we were family. I wish I’d known. Those years… I’d left everything familiar behind and struggled to understand people. I thought I’d been totally deserted. But I hadn’t. He’d searched for clues in a report, while I’d been staring at the sky.
“Sixteen. You looked happy. I was delighted. I stared at that photo and told myself it was okay. You’d survived. I hadn’t failed you as badly as I thought. I kept it framed on my desk that whole year. You’d got the hang of dying your hair and it looked good. I saw that you were due to get straight As at school. You still wore that uniform but there was a confidence I hadn’t seen before. And I was proud as fuck of you for making it through.
“Then seventeen.” He swallows. “You were self-assured. The first photograph of you not in that school uniform. You wore a pale blue summer dress.”
I remember it. That was my favourite and I wore it constantly.
He shrugs. “It was a far cry from a blouse buttoned to your neck and a shapeless blazer. You were on the cusp of womanhood. And I… I responded with a man’s urges. I saw you and I burned. I wanted. I desired.
“And I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that I could never have you. That I would not drag you back to this life you’d escaped. I took down the sweet photo of you from the year before. I couldn’t trust myself to look at it and not imagine what you looked like now. And I couldn’t trust myself not to give in to the soul deep longing for you to be mine.”
There’s a silence.
I think of seeing newspaper columns about playboy bachelor Sebastian Laurent. I think of how I yearned for him to be my husband, my protector, my companion and my lover. How would I have felt, knowing it was mutual?
Excited. Hopeful. With a whole life to look forward to rather than an awkward feeling of needing to escape the inevitability of being trapped, desperate to know what the future had in store and willing to use anything—including balls of gas billions of light years away—to try to understand myself, my situation, and my fate.
“Do you still… Want that?” I ask cautiously. “Me?”
His eyes are harshly bright, like looking at the midday sun on an alpine glacier—all the heat and light reflected onto every inch of my body. I’ve never had anyone look at me the way Sebastian does. That intensity is both scary and thrilling.
“More.”
He’s like a crouched jaguar, ready to pounce, but somehow I know after his confession he’s not going to make the first move. I have to do that.
I screw up my courage. He says he wants this. I can tempt him into taking me, right? This should be simple; it should have been straightforward from the beginning, except we both naffed it up at almost every turn.
What would a sexy, experienced woman do?
Ugh. I don’t even know. And maybe that doesn’t matter. I crawl over the sofa until I’m on him. I’m a little awkward, unsure of our strange mess of limbs, and he hasn’t reached out to touch me.
Not bloody giving me any help at all. So typical of Sebastian. When it’s what he’s decided, there’s no stopping him, but until then, I’m on my own. And yet, I’m not. His looking out for me, his caring for me, everything he’s done to ensure my comfort and safety, it’s this massive net to catch me whenever I fall.
So I jump.
Metaphorically. For the main part. I lunge into his lap and press my mouth inexpertly to his. But he’s not responding. He’s holding himself like a granite statue.
“I want you too,” I say between kisses, trying to get him to join in. I reach for the buttons of his shirt and he grasps my wrists and holds them away from him.
Does he not want me? Maybe he meant “more” as in, oh that was such a little aspiration to just have you, now I want that supermodel from last night. I thought he meant that he wanted me more now, but perhaps I was wrong. Fear deflates me and I stop.
But then I recall the agony of discipline and desire in his eyes earlier. “I’m your captive, remember?” I twist my fingers to stroke his knuckles.
Sebastian releases my wrists, but instead of pulling me to him as I expect, he grabs my hair and tugs my head back, making me gasp. His grey eyes spear me.
“Don’t tease,” he grinds out. “I’ll only be pushed so far.”
“I’m not teasing. I want to be yours.” The snag of pain from my hair being pulled is slight but enough to sensitise all my skin, as though every nerve is connected.
“Angel.” He brings our heads close together, then dips his and breathes in the scent of my neck. He closes his eyes and lines crease his cheeks like it hurts him. “If I have you once, I won’t let you go. If you allow me to join our bodies, to thrust into your virgin pussy, I won’t stop there. You’ll be mine. I’ll claim you. That freedom you wanted? Gone. You’d be here, as my queen, by my side.”
His chin tilts up and he tightens his grip on my hair. I can tell he means this, and perhaps intends to terrify me. To make me think twice.
“But I’d have you.”
“You’ll have my heart forever, wherever you are.” He still hasn’t touched my skin, holding me away. “But yes, if you wanted me in your life, to have, to hold…” He stops as though his mouth ran away with him and he didn’t mean to invoke marriage vows. Then he seems to accept it and continues. “To orgasm on my tongue and my cock every day and every night. To be loved and adored. Yes, angel. You’d have me if you go through with what I see in your eyes. But I want you to be really certain. Because if I take your virginity, I won’t let you go.”
“Yes. Yes to all of that.” I’ve never been more sure about anything in my whole life. I was born a mafia princess; I will live as a queen. My place in the world is by Sebastian’s side.
He lets out a half growl, half groan and buries his face in my neck, pulling me flush to him.
“We’ll need a bed.” His arms wrap around my waist and I squeak as he stands. “Because though I will happily have you bounce on my cock on the sofa, and take you from behind against that big window, and any and all of the filthy-hot things we could do, the first time will be comfortable. You’re going to be under me and I’m going to make it so good you won’t stop shaking for a week.”
“Yes.” I’d be happy with any of the ways he mentioned, and I don’t doubt we’ll get around to all of them. But I don’t care so long as it’s Sebastian and me.
He kicks open the bedroom door and lays me on the bed. I only have eyes for him. And now I’ve unleashed him, he’s intent on undressing me. I try to get to the button of his shirt but he bats my hands away to unzip my dress and push it down. I help, lifting my bottom and he makes a sound of approval from the back of his throat when he sees the underwear I put on after the shower.
White lace. Matching.
It’s pretty and feminine. No underwire on the bra—my little breasts never need it—and the soft fabric has caressed my skin all day.
“I thought you’d like this set.” I pluck at the strap of the bra and give him a teasing smile.
“Angel, I love it. So forgive me.” He rears up, takes either side of the bra in his fists and tears it in two.
My eyes must be the size of dinner plates as he reaches deliberately down and grips the knickers the same way.
“Because pretty as this is, it isn’t your naked skin. And I can’t wait another moment to see all of you.”
For a second the fabric bites into my flesh, but then the sound of ripping rents the air. I gasp, but partly it’s not the shock. It’s how instantly hot and achy I am between the legs from how impatient he is to see all of me. And I’m the same about him.
“I can’t rip your clothes,” I say, shoving at his clothes. “Undress for me.” Not just the partial views of his chest or his cock. I’m eager too.
Big and powerful and dangerous as he is, he laughs softly at my bossy demand, but obeys. He strips so quickly I almost ask him to do it again. Instead, I reach for him, smoothing my hands over his shoulders and chest. I explore his upper arms and he lets me, watching me discover him. They’re covered in scars, some round, others long and curved, that I trace with my fingertips and my throat closes with gratitude that none of these wounds prevented him from being here with me now. Then I slip back to the “V” of muscles at his hips and further to that intriguing silky hardness that somehow is miraculously supposed to fit into me.
“Nope.” He removes my hands from his cock. “You’re going to lie there and take what I give you, Jeanette,” he purrs my name like he loves saying it. And in his voice the name that usually represents how alone I am sounds like home.
You were never lost to me.
He covers me with his body, all heat and smooth solid planes of his chest and hair that’s softer than I imagined. His elbows are planted each side of my shoulders and he cradles my face in his hands as he kisses me. Sweetly, then deeper, angling his lips on mine and his tongue demanding entry. I open my mouth and the throbbing need at my core intensifies.
Aligning us so his cock notches between my legs, he groans. I feel his cock, hot and hard at my entrance. Impossibly thick. There is no way that monster is going inside me, and yet, there is no way I’m going anywhere until I’m impaled on him. He feels far too blunt to split me open, but I’m desperate and wet and my pussy is clenching with need. However much it hurts, I don’t care. It will be sore in all the best ways and I will love every second.
His lips brush mine. “I love you.”
I don’t get a chance for my brain to register that, or respond because the first push of his body into mine makes me gasp. There’s a pinch.
“Relax,” he croons and strokes down my chest, rubbing over one nipple. “If you’re not relaxed enough to come on my cock within five minutes, I swear I’ll spank you until you learn to take me without trying to cut off my blood supply.”
I splutter with laughter and probably it’s that which eases all my muscles and the twinge of pain is gone. I feel Sebastian’s smile against my lips.
“Good girl.” He pushes deeper. And this time it’s a moan of pleasure at the slide of him, and the stretch.
He withdraws just a little and I grasp ineffectually to bring him back. Then he’s further inside of me and I arch into him, trusting him to do this right. I touch the soles of my feet together around his waist and cling to his neck.
When he pushes all the way in on the next thrust there’s nothing like it in my life before. I’ve never been this close to anyone. There’s nothing between us, just sheer love and honesty in his silver eyes. It’s him and me and we’re almost the same thing. I wriggle and dig my heels into his back until I’m even more open to him, until we’re flush together and my clit is pressed to his skin, and he stills, letting me accustom myself to being filled by him.
In that moment I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’s mine and I’m his, and it would take a clash of galaxies to drag us apart.
“Angel.” He kisses me softly, and traces his fingers down my thigh. “I have to move. You feel too good, and I promise you there’s more for you. But I swear if I don’t thrust into you, I’m going to die.”
I giggle again, and loosen my grip on his waist. Then he’s easing in and out of me, and oh god I now know why everyone makes a fuss about sex. Having him deep was wonderful but this is even more. He’s stroking me from the inside out.
My hips sync up with his thrusts without conscious thought.
And the pleasure begins to build.
