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.
That touch softened, yet somehow gained intensity as she moved it down to where Julian’s monkey had been immortalized at my side.
“Yes,” she whispered toward my face, that single syllable hitting like an electric charge to the thick air.
And I no longer wanted her to make me forget. I wanted to remember every moment. Cherish each one. Give praise for every second I got to spend with her.
I set my hand on her cheek, words strained as my eyes darted over every inch of her face, memorizing this moment. “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you.”
A small gasp escaped from between those full lips, and a gentle smile tweaked just one side of my mouth as I tilted my head, shifting so I could brush my fingertips along the butterflies taking flight on her hip, my voice growing softer with the power of this admission. “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her.”
Tears streamed ceaselessly from the corners of Shea’s eyes, gliding down the side of her face and into her hair as she stared up at me.
“Yes, you were,” she said.
Wind pummeled at the outside walls, its power matching the devotion I felt inside. I took her hand and pressed it over my pounding heart.
“You told me you wanted this more than anything, Shea. I’m giving it to you. All of it. Every piece of me…it belongs to you. I have so much shit in my life, and I always thought that was all I was ever going to have. That this life was a trade-off for the band making it, retribution for all the crimes I committed on the road to getting us here. But you changed all that. You gave me hope. Something good to hang onto, and I’m not ever going to let it go.”
Awe settled on her face, and she was back to caressing mine. “Find love and bring it here,” she murmured just below her breath.
Confusion dented my brow, and a small smile wavered on her mouth as she started to explain. “My grandma…that’s what she told me right before she passed.” Sorrow clouded her expression, yet somehow all that love still came shining through. “And it was you who found me.”
I breathed in her storm, a vibration thundering through my body. “And you found me. Didn’t know how lost I was until you did. Until you filled me with everything I’d been missing.”
“I love you, Sebastian. More than you could know. More than I can understand.”
“Pretty sure I do.”
Propped on my left elbow, I let that hand find the back of her neck, lifting her a fraction from the bed, holding all her warmth against me, her nose brushing mine. She exhaled, and I sucked her in.
My right hand trailed down her side, over her slender hip, fingers flicking along the crease at the inside of her thigh. I dipped under the front of her leg so I could grab her by the back of the thigh. I bent her leg up, spreading her wide. Feeling another wave of desperation, that throbbing need, I ran my hand up and down the miles of soft skin, gripping at the flesh of her ass before I skated down the back of her leg and back up again, taking greedy handfuls as I went.
Lightning lit up against the window, illuminating the hunger and need smoldering in Shea.
Wasn’t lying when I told her I’d been dying to take that sweet ass.
But not tonight.
Not when violence skimmed beneath my skin. Not when my body burned with the need to protect. Not when I was half mad with lust, half mad with the thirst to ruin anyone who brought harm to this girl. Not when I felt myself standing at the cusp I’d been standing on all along.
Not when I was finally ready to jump.
I pulled back enough to grab the base of my cock, glancing up at her face as I aligned my tip at the heat of her center.
She locked eyes with me, her chest heaving, and her breaths shallow.