Especially when he came over and leaned against the island opposite her.
“Is everything . . . okay?” Sebastien studied her somberly and his voice held nothing but solicitousness.
His eyes, though . . .
Something about the way he watched her.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Marin gave him a chilly smile and straightened up, turning her back to him. “I wasn’t the one stomping around like a bear twenty minutes ago.”
Of course, he had the luxury of . . . of . . .
And just like that, whatever composure she’d regained shattered, falling to slivers around her.
She moved over the refrigerator and reached inside for the pitcher of water he always kept on hand. She hadn’t even managed to grab it when she sensed him coming up behind her. The heat of him was like a brand against her back, and although logically, she realized he probably wasn’t standing that close, she thought she could feel every nuance of him, every inch.
“I’m . . . I’m thirsty,” she said, steadying her voice. “Want to get some water. I won’t be here long. Just need a few minutes of you.”
The words popped out, lingering there and heat suffused her face as she realized what she’d said.
“Of me?” Sebastien’s words were spoken softly against her ear.
She snatched the water pitcher from the shelf with enough force to send some of it splattering. Spinning around, she gave him a smile so brittle, it felt like it might break. “Your time, of course. Just . . . well, something I thought we should talk about.”
She edged out from between him and the refrigerator, wondering what in the hell was wrong with her—with him.
He was standing there wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans and smelling like the sun and soap and Sebastien, and she wanted to grab him and just gobble him up.
And she might have.
If a memory hadn’t crept up on her.
The memory of another woman’s name on his lips.
***
Marin was actually going to stand there and act like she hadn’t been watching him.
Bemused and still so hard he could have hammered nails with his cock, he watched as she moved around his kitchen, her movements oddly jerky. Marin was elegance personified and to see her bumping into things, opening the wrong cabinets, and fumbling with the glasses would have been almost funny, if he’d had the ability to laugh.
But every instinct, every fiber of him was focused on her.
“Denise called.”
“Hmm?” Eyes on her ass, it took him a few seconds for the words to penetrate and that happened only when he managed to drag his gaze away from that perfect part of her anatomy.
“Your mom. Denise.”
Slanting his gaze up, he saw her shoot a look at him and realized he needed to focus on her upper body—particularly the parts above her neck or she was going to think he was still stuck in teenager hyper-sex-drive.
Which he was, when it came to her.
But he was going to at least pretend he had some level of maturity.
Her words did click, and he realized that the impossible really was possible.
His mother could be brought up in a conversation and his sex drive wouldn’t take a sudden plummet toward Earth.
“Okay.” Turning away from Marin, he lifted a shoulder. “I’ll call her back. I sent her a message earlier, asked if she and dad were doing anything. I’m . . . uh . . .” Self-conscious now, he gave Marin a quick look. “You asked earlier. Yeah, I’m thinking about driving down there.”
“Oh.”
For a few minutes, nothing was said and he busied himself with rummaging through his fridge for the makings of a sandwich. It was either that or focus on Marin and lose the fraying edges of his control completely.
There was a downside to it, though. Once he forced himself to focus on something that wasn’t Marin, he started thinking more about that upcoming trip to see his folks and he realized that there were shades of making the impossible possible—and now, like somebody had been dripping cool water down his spine, he could feel his balls shriveling and the hot pulse of lust fading as dread started to seep in.
“Second-guessing that trip down there?”
He jerked his head up to see that Marin had eased in a little closer. She wasn’t close. Now that he thought about it, she had taken deliberate care to make sure she wasn’t close, and not just since he’d gotten out of the shower, either.
The distance had been between them for a few days at least. She hadn’t called or texted and she hadn’t given him the quick, easy hug that had become the norm for them. He’d come to expect those hugs—need them, even.
Something had changed between them, and although he knew when he’d noticed it, he couldn’t say what had caused it. It had started just before he’d seen her with Dash. The days when she hadn’t returned his calls.
She’d hardly called him since before he’d gotten wasted—again.