by Sian Ceinwen
Lita woke the next morning and started thinking about her relationship with Sebastian, or lack thereof. He’d sent her a text not long ago.
Morning, princess. I hope you slept well. I’ll see you first thing.
She scrolled back through their text conversations and read them all from the beginning. Some were just organizing flights and hotels, but a lot were conversations, jokes, and flirting. Lita was crying when she realized just how much she’d missed it.
She needed to talk to someone about it, but it was too early in the morning to call Becky. There was no way that she could speak to Heather about this either. Lita sighed, then saw Hayden’s name in her text messages under Sebastian’s in the list and called him before she chickened out.
“Hey, Lita. Is everything okay?” Hayden sounded concerned when he answered the phone.
“Yeah, it is. Sorry to call you so early. Did I wake you?”
“No, you didn’t. What’s up?” He sounded curious now.
“I just…needed to talk to someone,” Lita sighed, then backtracked. “This was a bad idea. Don’t worry about it, Hayden, sorry to bother you.”
“Wait, don’t hang up,” Hayden said. “Is this about you and Sebastian?”
Lita hesitated before answering him honestly. “Yes, it is.”
“What about you?”
“It’s not fair for me to talk to you about it; you’re his friend.” Lita frowned.
“I’m your friend, too, Lita. Well, I like to think that I am,” Hayden told her in a friendly tone. “I have to assume that if you’re calling me at seven in the morning, it’s not for no reason at all.”
“I realized last night that I’ve been miserable since I made our new ground rule about not having any physical contact with each other. Is it crazy that I was happier being with Sebastian, even knowing that he was going out and sleeping with other women when he wasn’t with me?” Lita asked him the question that she’d been turning over in her mind since Sebastian had hugged her yesterday.
Hayden took his time responding, but Lita had gotten used to this with him. He thought his answers through on topics that were important.
“I don’t think that it’s crazy. You both seem happier when you’re together than when you’re apart,” he told her.
“It’s not the relationship that I imagined for myself, though,” Lita told him around a lump in her throat.
The thought of being with him and sending him out to sleep with other women regularly was awful, but what she’d been living with was so much worse—not allowing herself to touch him or be with him at all. For so long, she had forced herself to envisage a future with some unknown man that wasn’t Sebastian. Now, a future without him in her life as a lover as well as a friend was unbearably sad.
“What relationship do you mean? Just with Sebastian in general or something specific about it?” Hayden asked.
Lita grimaced. “I never envisaged getting into a relationship with a man knowing that he is going to regularly go out and sleep with other women. I’ve hated it ever since the day he told me that he loves me, but I’ve hated being without him more.”
There was a very long pause before Hayden responded this time, and he sighed heavily before he did. “I told you to ask him about that once before, Lita. I knew that you hadn’t, but you really need to.”
“Ask him what?” Lita was confused.
“Ask him about sleeping with other women after he told you that he loved you,” Hayden replied.
“What? Why?” Lita really couldn’t understand why he would suggest this.
“I’m going to go because that’s pretty much all I can tell you. Just…tell him what you told me and then ask him about the other women, okay?”
They ended their call, and Lita sat in the bed, running through their conversation in her head. Hayden had told her on Sebastian’s birthday that he couldn’t answer her question about why Sebastian went out to clubs when he was in Seattle as well. Now, he wanted her to ask about sleeping with other women.
Lita had eaten her breakfast and been through a round of observations from the nurses by the time Sebastian walked into her hospital room. She was feeling incredibly nervous about the conversation that she wanted to have with him, but he was looking happier than she’d seen him look in a long time.
He had a smile on his handsome face, and he was wearing his usual jeans and t-shirt, with the same leather jacket he’d had on when he went out in Seattle.
“Morning, princess,” he said cheerfully. “How are you today?”
Sebastian sat down in the chair next to her bed, still smiling at her as he did.
“I’m good. Look, we really need to talk,” Lita told him.
The smile fell from Sebastian’s face immediately. “Oh, shit. That has never been said before anyone was about to have a good conversation.”
“Well, it might be good.” Lita chewed her bottom lip, but she had thought this through, and she was confident in her decision. Whatever the fallout was in some unknown future, she would deal with it. “I miss you. A lot. Much, much more than I ever thought that I could miss someone, especially when they’re sitting right next to me.
“I’ve hated the last two weeks so much. I miss you holding my hand. I miss you hugging me. I miss you kissing me. I really miss you fucking me. I know that I said I didn’t want to be in a relationship with you, but I do. I’m in love with you, Sebastian.”
There was silence between them when she finished talking, and Sebastian wore a look of shock on his face. Then he gave her a slow smile.
“Cool story, bro. Needs more dragons.”
Lita cringed. “I can’t tell if you’re happy and making fun of me or if you’re rejecting my idea of being in a relationship together.”
Sebastian stood from the seat and moved next to the bed before he lowered his head to hers and kissed her softly.
“I love you, Lolita Ciccone. You know that. Of course, I want to be in a relationship with you.”
Sebastian smiled widely at her before he turned to pull the chair up right next to the bed. He took her hand in his and began to stroke her skin with his thumb, and Lita felt as though her heart was being mended by that simple action. She remembered Hayden’s instruction and sighed.
“I need to ask you, though. Why did you keep going out to clubs and sleeping with other women after you told me that you loved me?”
There was silence for a second before Sebastian replied. “I was hurting a lot, princess. The times that I went out to clubs, I just wanted to get drunk and forget that you didn’t want to be with me. As for sleeping with other women, there’s a reason that there haven’t been any stories about me with other women since then.”
Lita frowned as she processed what he was telling her. It seemed as though he was saying he hadn’t slept with anyone else, but he’d told Heather he had.
“What do you mean? Are you telling me that you haven’t been sleeping with anyone else?”
“That’s correct, princess. When I told you that Seattle was the only place that I could get epic sex, I really meant it.”
“You took a woman to a hotel the night you first told me that you loved me. I heard you tell Heather when she called you from the bachelorette party.”
Sebastian nodded. “I did. I was so hurt; you’d rejected me and told me to do it, so I did. I got her back to the hotel, and she was even naked on the bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I realized that I didn’t want her. I just wanted you, except you didn’t want me.
“So, she left, and I felt like shit. I didn’t want to go back to the apartment because you were there and you didn’t want me. I stayed at the hotel instead. Heather called me in the morning and just assumed that I’d slept with the other woman. I was angry and hurting, so I didn’t correct her.”
Lita thought back through the conversation, and he was right; he’d never said he had sex with the other woman. They’d all just assumed the worst of him.
“Why didn’t you tel
l me you weren’t sleeping with anyone else?” Lita asked as tears started to fall.
Sebastian passed her some tissues and said, “I knew what everyone thought. You kept talking about not wanting me and mentioning the idea of some future with a man who wasn’t me. It was so fucking painful, so I let everyone keep thinking that I was sleeping with other women.”
“But you didn’t come home on those nights. If you weren’t sleeping with anyone, where were you?” Lita asked as she wiped away her tears.
“Hotels, most nights. Sometimes, here in Chicago, I crashed at Hayden’s if Blake wasn’t there and swore him to secrecy.”
Lita understood now why Hayden had told her that he couldn’t answer her questions.
“Blake said you were trying to pick up chicks when he was out with you, though.” Lita frowned.
“Blake is a liar and a fucking asshole.” Sebastian rolled his eyes. “He likes to stir shit. I mean, sometimes fans come up and talk to me when I’m at clubs, but I was never trying to pick anyone up on any of those nights out.”
Lita shook her head as she thought about it all. So many times, they’d talked and acted at cross purposes. If either of them had ever just been honest about their feelings, they might not have wasted the last two months being miserable.
“You really haven’t slept with anyone else since that day on the plane?” Lita was still in shock.
“Since before then, actually. I was following the grounds rules while I was with you in Seattle.” Sebastian shrugged. “It’s more than just preferring sex with you; I don’t want to be with anyone else, princess.”
“I don’t want to be with anyone else either,” Lita told him.
“So, what does this mean for us?” Sebastian asked.
“I need time to process this,” Lita told him. “I was expecting to offer the idea of going back to our initial agreement. Sleeping together when we’re in the same city, no randoms, etc.”
Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t want that. I want to be beholden to my baby mama and kid. I want to be the boyfriend that you move into your new apartment. I want to be able to tell the entire fucking world that I’m in love with you and that every other woman on the face of the planet sucks.”
“That’s probably going a bit too far,” Lita laughed.
“You’re right; my mom and my nonna are pretty cool.” Sebastian grinned at her.
“So are mine,” she told him. “Okay, so to be clear. What are you offering me?”
Lita’s heart felt so full of her love for him as she waited for him to answer her question. She had spent months in turmoil, but this conversation had placed a soothing balm on her bruised heart.
“Me,” Sebastian said.
“Yeah, I’m going to need a little more information than that.” Lita smiled at him.
“You accused me of not having thought about it that day on the plane. Well, it’s pretty much all I’ve thought about since then, princess. I want a real relationship with you. I want to be your boyfriend. I will stay here, or I will move to Seattle; what I do depends on what you do. Obviously, I’m going to have to go away for the Games We Play tour, but other than that, I don’t want to be away from you. I love you, Lolita Ciccone.”
“I love you, too, Sebastian Fox.”
Sebastian stood and leaned over her, stopping when his face was hovering just above hers. “Say that again.”
“I love you too,” Lita told him with a smile on her face.
Then, he kissed her.
It was a week and a half later that Lita was being discharged from the hospital. She had recovered quickly, and Dr. Floyd was happy with both her and Mirabella’s progress.
“You both look great,” he told her as the nurse wheeled away the portable ultrasound machine that he’d used to scan her while she lay in her hospital bed. “You’re practically in the realms of a regular pregnancy, not even high-risk.” Lita must have looked shocked, and a bit scared, because he laughed at her reaction and said with a grin, “It’s okay, Lita. I’ll keep you under my care for the rest of your pregnancy, even though your case is completely boring for me now.”
“Oh my god. Thank you so much. Three doctors are more than enough for one pregnancy! Do you normally see a pregnancy through to the end? I thought you were a heart specialist.”
Eric smiled at her. “Yes, occasionally, I do. Where the case has been particularly complex, or the patient requests it. Sebastian asked me if I would keep you under my care, so you didn’t have to have a new doctor.”
Lita rolled her eyes. “Of course he did.”
Sebastian arrived shortly after that. Ben was with him, and he took Lita’s luggage out to the SUV for her. When he came back, he warned them that there was a massive crowd of paparazzi outside. Both he and Daryl escorted them out of the hospital. All of the members of Cruise Control, as well as Heather and Ariana, had been photographed on their visits to see Lita. Even their parents had been photographed the times that they had visited. Rumors were rife on the internet about whether or not Lita had given birth early.
The reporters all began taking pictures and videos as soon as they appeared in view.
“Why were you in hospital, Lolita?” one called.
Sebastian squeezed her hand tightly as they walked through the throng of people.
“Is everything okay with the baby?”
Lita hadn’t realized how much her stress had been weighing on her before. These questions didn’t bother her now because she had the knowledge that Mirabella was safe. She placed a hand on her bump and rubbed it with a smile.
“Are you giving birth here, Lolita?”
“As if we’d tell them,” Sebastian mumbled to her.
“What are you saying, Sebastian?” another one asked.
“How big a bribe did Heather give the Attorney General to get her charges dropped?” someone called out as they finally made their way to the SUV.
Sebastian rolled his eyes but didn’t respond. Cooper’s lawyer had been vicious. Lita didn’t know what he’d done to swing it, but two days ago they’d had a meeting with the Attorney General himself, and the charges had been dropped shortly after it ended.
Daryl opened the door to the SUV, and Lita climbed in, followed by Sebastian. Lita gave a sigh of relief as the door was closed behind him, and their questions were shut out.
“Are you okay, princess?”
“Yeah, just glad to be going home. Well, to Galena, but you know what I mean.”
Sebastian smiled at her. “I do.”
Lita rested her head on his shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head, then wrapped his arms around her. It still felt unreal that they were in a relationship now. She’d gone into the hospital feeling worse than she’d ever felt in her life, but now they were in love, and their pregnancy was back on track. She’d spent the last month and a half in constant fear for her child and fighting her feelings for Sebastian. It was hard to accept that it was all actually going to be okay.
35
LEVEL 29.5 – My Kung Fu Is Stronger
Your baby is the size of Gizmo.
Remember that most excellent cleavage you’ve been rocking lately? Well, the reason for that is…milk! You may find that your boobs start to leak. The yellowish fluid is colostrum, which is the precursor to breast milk. It might be time to get your hands on some nursing pads. Two wet patches on your shirt is never a good look…
It was New Year’s Eve, and Lita was sitting in the office at Galena, working on the Cruise Control game, when Sebastian came and interrupted her. He was shirtless, wearing only jeans, with his wet hair slicked back from his forehead.
“Hey, princess. I just thought that you might want a heads up that the guys will be here soon.”
They’d had Christmas together last week at Hayden’s parents’ place but were spending New Year’s Eve together here at Galena, just the group. Apparently, Sebastian had turned down attending a massive celebrity party, and when he did, the band decided to come here to be wit
h them instead.
Lita walked over to Sebastian, and he watched her as she did, not moving from where he stood.
She placed her hand on his chest, between his pectoral muscles and said, “You’re so fucking sexy.”
She slid her hand slowly down his smooth, muscled chest until she came to the waistband of his jeans.
“What exactly is your plan here, princess?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow at her. “Because if you continue any further, I’m going to be fucking you when our friends arrive.”
Lita grinned at him and dropped to her knees in front of him. “Well, how far away are they? I only need ten minutes to earn myself a million dollars.”
Sebastian laughed and pulled his phone out of his pocket as he looked down at her.
“I’m ready, but you aren’t going to do it, and I’m probably going to regret this when I have to make small talk with everyone for hours before I can fuck you.”
Lita smirked and began to undo the button of his jeans. She pulled the zipper down slowly before she dropped his jeans to his ankles. Sebastian was already semi-hard, and she kissed his cock through his underwear, causing him to groan.
“The timer doesn’t start until it’s in your mouth, princess.”
“I know,” Lita said, as she pulled his underwear down and released him.
She licked him from base to tip incredibly slowly, and Sebastian moaned softly. “Tease.”
Lita looked up and into his eyes as she finally put him in her mouth, making sure that he started the timer. He was fully hard, but Lita kept him there, using her tongue and lips to tease him. He was telling her how much he was enjoying it, and she looked up again to see him with his eyes closed and his head thrown back in ecstasy.
Lita’s jaw had started to hurt, but she kept going, enthralled by watching his enjoyment. She moved her head slightly, keeping him in her mouth as she bobbed up and down on his cock, easing the pain a tiny bit as she did.