I felt trapped by it, by the passion radiating from this mystifying girl.
Her hand was so damned soft when she gripped the base of my cock. She squeezed, and I hissed when she slid her palm up, slowly…deliberately. Her tongue swept along that lush bottom lip as she ran her thumb around the fat ridge of my head. She watched, enraptured, as the shiny bead grew from the slit, sending a fresh rush of anticipation burning through me.
She leaned in and licked it clean.
I jerked and buried my fingers in her hair, just as she drew me deeply into the heat of her mouth.
“Shea…baby…fuck,” I mumbled, trying to remain coherent, searching for any threads left of my control as Shea began to stroke me with her mouth. What she couldn’t fit, she stroked with her hand. Her tongue was performing all kinds of magic that drove me right out of my damned mind.
I cupped the sides of her head, my pinky fingers sliding along the corners of her mouth, needing to feel where we were connected. She moaned against the sensitive flesh.
Pleasure coiled, that fever tightening my balls and tingling down the inside of my thighs.
I jerked, coming in her mouth, before I stilled with a grunt while Shea swallowed me down.
Never had I seen anything more beautiful than that. Shea’s lips wrapped around my cock, her eyes locked on mine.
Caramel.
Honest.
Tainted.
Pure.
My body rolled with the revelry while my head swam in bliss.
She pulled free of me, tongue swiping across her swollen, puffy lips, and tucked me back into my boxers. I dropped to my knees and framed her unforgettable face in my hands.
Floored.
“Don’t understand this, Shea. Not for a second. But I’m never going to be the same.”
GIGGLES RANG IN THE AIR, her head kicked back and her face bursting with happiness as the endearing sound lifted toward the sky. Kallie held onto my hand, her easy trust my comfort, and she shook her head as if what Sebastian had said was completely absurd. She leaned forward so she could see around me to him as he strolled along at my opposite side.
Her words were filled with the same childish laughter. “No, you silly, butterflies don’t have noses. They smell with their antennas and taste with their feet.” She said it as if it were of the utmost importance, my sweet child thinking it her duty to enlighten him on every single detail she knew about butterflies.
And for the last two weeks, she’d been doing it every chance she got.
Hands stuffed in his pockets, a grin slid across that handsome, handsome face, and my heart beat erratically, a wild crash of foolishness as I watched him interact with my daughter so effortlessly.
“Now that just sounds gross, Kallie. Tasting with your feet?” he said, sparring with her more. He shot me a little wink when I smiled up at him. I loved how he humored my chattering child. Loved how his eyes crinkled at the corners when he did. Loved how he looked with the last of the sun’s rays slanting across his face, twilight glinting in those dark grey eyes, and shadows playing along his strong jaw.
Most of all, I loved him here, at my side, as fleeting as I knew it would be, as terrified as I was of having to let him go.
Kallie huffed, my precious child skipping along beside me. “It’s not gross!”
“Are you crazy? What if you tasted food with your feet?” he teased.
Kallie’s little nose scrunched up at the thought. “No way!” She laughed, grinning widely. “I don’t wanna taste nothin’ with my feet.”
“But I thought you said you were a butterfly?”
Those giggles just kept flowing, and her shoulders lifted up toward her ears, her body twisting up in a little girl’s pleasure. Joy radiated from every inch of her.
A breeze rustled through the heavy canopy of trees hugging us from above, the cool evening brushing at our skin. We slowly wove through the crowds and browsed through the seemingly endless rows of vendor tents set up for the craft fair at the park in the center of town. A jazz band played at the end of the park on an elevated stage, and the smell of open barbecue pits and deep fried churros floated on the easy air.
Sebastian hooked his arm casually around my neck.
“Good idea, yeah?” he asked as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to my temple.
I beamed up at him as if I were a little girl, too. One who’d just discovered that knights in shining armor really did exist and this one had come to rescue me from my loneliness.
It had been two weeks since Sebastian had spent that first night irrevocably altering something inside me. Two weeks since he’d shattered me in the best ways possible…then walked out my door and proved he held the power to shatter my heart. But it’d been just as long since he’d turned around and come back to me.
Since he’d stayed.
In moments like these, it was easy to pretend that he always would.
We’d spent so much time together, it was becoming hard to remember what it was like before he’d been there, the man making up ideal days full of laughter and ease, perfect nights spent beneath him and above him, our bodies alive, and my heart forming a million memories to sustain me when he was gone.
Because below it all, there always remained the current of the charade we both knew we were playing, that as truthful as our touches and time were, there was a false security in them, a danger that was lurking just beneath the surface. He was still a man I knew so little about, his words always vague but the meaning so transparent. In the cover of darkness, I’d whisper questions to him, desperate to know him more. But he held back, only admitting that he needed me, needed someone who didn’t look at him through the past, but instead, lived with him here in the present.
Still, I felt closer to him than I had with anyone else in a very, very long time.
Well, in ever.
He nuzzled his nose behind my ear, and a shiver rolled down my spine, settling in my belly where this bundle of energy thrived, a constant chaos of excitement, a kind of happiness I’d never experienced—as dangerous as I knew it was.
“Tonight’s perfect,” I whispered, and he pulled me a little closer, the tension that continuously roiled between us mellowed and tempered in the relaxed mood.
“Who’s hungry?” he asked, the question directed at Kallie.
“Me! Me! Me!” She jumped on her toes beside me. “I want kettle corn!”
“After dinner,” I told her.
Baz mouthed, “You’re no fun.”
I jostled into him with my shoulder.
He laughed and promised her, “After dinner.”
Taking my hand, he led us toward the delicious smell traveling on the wind. We rounded the corner to the food vendors set up along the perimeter of the large square area of lawn in front of the stage, where we ordered plates full of deep-fried chicken and grilled corn-on-the-cob, sat on the grassy, damp ground, and ate together as if we’d done it since the beginning of time. My daughter laughed and Sebastian smiled and played and teased and my heart pressed so full.
“Be right back.” Sebastian hopped up and strode across the field. Minutes later, he returned, a huge bag stuffed full of kettle corn crooked in his elbow. “Here you go, sweetheart,” he said quietly as he passed the bag to my daughter, and this time it was Kallie’s turn to beam up at him. I was praying my daughter wasn’t falling for this man as quickly as me, because I couldn’t stand to put her heart on the line, not when it was me who had chosen to allow Sebastian into our lives, allowed this distraction to distort our reality.
“Thank you,” was uttered with a little contented squeal.
Sebastian stretched out his hand, helped me to stand, tore me up more with the lingering kiss that was far from crude and much too tender. Kallie swayed beside us. Sebastian’s hand was at my back, my daughter at my side. We headed back down another row of crafts as we made our way out, the Sunday evening growing late.
Sebastian suddenly stopped at a tent that was crammed with handmade quilted ba
gs and blankets and stuffed animals, a patch-work style of mismatched colors and patterns. “Look at that, Kallie. It’s a butterfly.”
It was strung up from a top metal beam, hanging down amongst a bevy of birds, the super soft stuffed animal nearly half the size of my dainty daughter.
“It’s a Monarch kind,” she said quietly in awe, even though this butterfly was bright colors, mismatched prints, and didn’t come close to depicting a single one of the butterflies Kallie loved to pretend she was, but neither Sebastian nor I were going to correct her.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
Apparently so by the little happy dance she was doing at my side, her eyes wide and so sweet. My heart was beating wildly because I couldn’t stop this man from slipping deeper.
Taking hold.
Sebastian caught the woman’s attention who was working the tent. “Can we get that butterfly there, please?”
“Of course.” She climbed a ladder and was quick to unhook it while Baz was digging out his wallet from his back pocket and, once again, pulling out a small stack of large bills.
“You don’t need to do that, Baz. You already took care of us all day. I’ll get it.”
He frowned at me. “I want to, Shea. Let me do this.”
And I saw that same thing there, the same awareness I felt constantly, that time was stealing away, that he too was rushing to fill up these days with memories, because as hard and rough as he was, I saw the softness, too. Saw that even though I knew he would never admit it, my daughter was impossible not to love.
He knelt down and passed Kallie the butterfly. “There. Right where she belongs.”
Excited, thankful noises flew from her mouth as she squeezed and hugged it tight. She sidled up to his side and slipped her hand into his, and something passed through his expression that stole my breath, something dark and hard and sad.
Silently, we traipsed back through the grasses, passing by people still milling around. Many vendors were beginning to tear down their displays as the show wound down and moved onto whatever city called to them next.
We hit the sidewalk that ran along the riverfront. Goosebumps lifted on my skin as a breeze blew across the waters, the air cool and heavy. I pulled in a deep breath, hoping it would push out some of the fear that kept trying to gather in my chest.
We passed by Charlie’s that was closed down for Sunday night and toward my neighborhood. Kallie began to drag her feet.
Sebastian looked down at her, his voice light. “Are you tired?”
She nodded with a yawn.
“Come here, Little Bug,” Sebastian offered quietly into the deepening night, and that murmured sentiment ripped at my spirit, words he’d never called her, something all his own.
Releasing me, he scooped up my daughter and tucked her close to his chest.
Effortlessly.
Kallie clung to him, her head on his shoulder and her butterfly clutched in her arm.
Simple, simple dreams.
They grew bold and unsettled.
He didn’t hesitate to carry her up our walkway and through the door. His steps were subdued and quieted as I followed close behind, and he toted her upstairs and into her darkened room. Gently, he laid her down on her bed then stepped aside so I could remove her shoes and tuck her in, my child already drifting to sleep.
I peppered her sweet face with kisses, my precious girl, and she smiled a soft, comfortable smile, and my chest burned with the devotion and love I had for her. Shuffling out, I looked at her once more over my shoulder, before I flipped off her light and left her door open an inch, edging back out to the landing where Sebastian had retreated.
Waiting for me.
He stepped toward my room, his chin lifted like a threat while he held open my door.
My heart beat wildly as I approached him.
He was never gentle, his body always desperate, every touch filled with urgency.
I never minded.
I wanted him raw.
Unbridled.
Because it was the truth he could afford to give me.
Even though I also saw the truth in the gentle way he handled my daughter, in those moments when I was caught in his compassion, in the dedication that slipped from his mouth when he spoke of his brother and friends.
It was Sebastian who didn’t know it existed.
He shut the door behind us. Two fumbled moments passed before our clothes were forgotten. Tonight we didn’t even make it to the bed. Sebastian was covering himself with a condom as he took me down onto the floor. He hooked my legs up over his shoulders, my breath gone as I became his. My back chafed against the carpet while my spirit was seared by every inch of him.
“Shea,” he whispered urgently. Regretfully.
And I was falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
I could feel him at the ledge, earth crumbling beneath his feet, frantically trying to hold ground.
I clung to him, a selfish part of me wishing for a way to reach up and drag him over the edge with me.
Most of all, I wanted him to jump.
CONFUSION SQUEEZED MY CHEST as I neared the doors to Charlie’s, that constant conflict that raged inside me churning hard, one side pressing at me to keep returning, to go to her, to take her, while the rational side of me—the side that grasped my reality, the side that knew the kind of life I was going to be returning to—kept screaming at me that what I was doing was wrong.
Few things could be more appalling, more selfish, than using up a girl who deserved to be given the world. Not my kind of world. Shea didn’t deserve any of that. She didn’t need the drama or the depravity, the consequences of the fucked-up nights. Knew in my gut she didn’t give two shits about how much money I had in my bank account, either, that she wasn’t about sinking greedy claws into some unsuspecting guy, leeching off him until he was bled dry.
The girl could take care of herself.
She was all about good. About living right. About her daughter, who had to be the cutest thing I’d ever seen. About spreading her joy and light.
And if that didn’t make me want to take care of her.
But I had nothing to give but more of the debauchery that was my real life. I mean, fuck, in a very short time, I was likely to find my ass behind bars. Again. Shea was so above that, so far above it that I couldn’t begin to see it, couldn’t even touch on all that light I’d been dying to sink into.
So instead I’d drugged myself on her dark, burying myself in her body every chance I got, feeding from her perfect seduction—the depth she took me to—where I could feel her desperation and burden. I pretended I was half the man she thought I was, keeping all my secrets dirty—hidden and unrevealed.
Pretended I didn’t see the way she looked at me.
“Would you two hurry the fuck up?” I glared over my shoulder at Ash and Lyrik who stumbled along behind Zee and me, throwing fake punches, messing around in the middle of the street like a couple of teenagers.
Assholes were already half in the bag.
The afternoon had been spent celebrating. We’d hit that rhythm over the last couple of weeks, when the music just flowed between us, and we’d somehow pieced together the skeleton of our next album. Which seemed like a fucking miracle considering I’d been spending a ton of time with Shea.
Apparently, all that confusion had left me feeling inspired.
Ash smirked at me. “You in a hurry or somethin’, Baz?”
I gave him a finger and he laughed, shaking his head as they caught up. He clapped me on the shoulder. “Look at you, chomping at the bit. Haven’t seen you so worked up about a girl since you were thirteen and Miranda Escobar let you touch her tits.” He grinned over at Zee. “Think we’re going to have to stage that intervention after all. Our boy’s balls have gone missing and someone needs to step in before he becomes a straight-up pussy.”
My jaw clenched. Ash was just razzing me, he always did and he always meant not
hing by it. But there was something that pricked at my skin with every word he spit out.
Zee caught on. Always did. “Shea’s a nice girl, man. Don’t be a dick.”
And that was precisely it.
Shea was a nice girl.
I was fucking around with a nice girl, knowingly messing her up. The only promise I’d given her?
I was going to break her.
And I would.
Shit.
A bolt of anxiety struck me when we stepped inside and my eyes immediately sought out Shea where she was standing at one of the high-top tables, slanting an unassuming smile at a table full of douchebags that looked no different than the one who’d roughed her up—preppy boys out with the belief the world owed them something.
That possessiveness surged like a dam being knocked free.
Like she could feel me there, watching her, she glanced over at me, and her face lit up. She floated toward us, winding through the crowds, but that didn’t mean it was empty of the force that lived between us, because it was there. Like from across the room, she was touching me everywhere.
God.
I sucked in a breath, felt myself shaking a little when she came to a stop in front of us. She didn’t hesitate, just hiked up on her toes and planted a swift but sweet kiss to my lips.
“Hi,” she said.
Couldn’t stop the smile flitting at my mouth. “Hey.”
“You want your booth?” She craned her head toward the secluded spot that had become like some sort of sanctified altar to the muddled mess she made me.
“Sure.”
Of course I did.
“Go on. Let me grab a couple of drinks that are ready at the bar and have Tamar make yours.” She eyed the guys, that friendly way she did that made people feel like they were welcome without her saying a word. “Everyone want their regular?”
We’d been here enough that she knew exactly what we’d be ordering.
Ash laughed lightly, scratching at his jaw, as if he were devising a plan. “Sounds good to me, Beautiful Shea. Though make it a double. We’re celebrating tonight.”
A Stone in the Sea Page 16