by Abby Green
When she’d arrived in the doorway she’d almost turned and run, totally intimidated by the monied crowd. Even though they weren’t as formally dressed as the other night, they were still intimidating.
She’d seen Sebastio straight away, standing head and shoulders above everyone else. Not in a tuxedo this time, but no less breathtaking in a three-piece suit.
He’d met her eye, and before she could lose her nerve he’d been cutting a swathe through the crowd to get to her. The sheer force of his charisma had held her motionless, and the next thing he’d been leading her into the crowd, and she’d been trying not to look as self-conscious as she felt.
But she did feel self-conscious. Desperately. As if everyone here could see under the fancy dress and know that she was still inexperienced and awkward.
Why had he asked her here? Because he knew that, in spite of her brave words the other night, she still wanted him with a hunger bordering on desperation? Because he knew she would be easy to seduce?
Just the faintest touch of his hand on the bare skin of her back as he’d propelled her through the crowd had been enough to send her pulse into triple time. She didn’t want to look down because she could feel her nipples, tight and hard against the sheer lace of her bra. Were they visible under the thin silk?
Embarrassment rose up in a hot wave. She never should have succumbed to the temptation to put on this dress and attend the party.
She was about to open her mouth and make an excuse when Sebastio said in a low voice, just for her ears, ‘I want you, Edie.’
She looked at him. She didn’t doubt what he said. It resonated in her body, setting off a chain reaction of sensations. Prickling heat under her skin. Awareness down low in her belly. Damp heat between her legs.
Past and present meshed for a moment, and the humiliation Edie had felt four years ago jarred painfully with Sebastio’s declaration now. He sounded so nonchalant, as if he told women all the time that he wanted them. And of course he did! He was a consummate lover. Hadn’t she seen him in action four years ago? Surrounded by beauties before kissing one of them and making sure that Edie saw it.
Edie felt more than exposed now. She felt as if he’d reached inside her head, taken out her deepest yearnings and fantasies, and was now teasing her with them. Because he could.
She reacted from that place of hurt and humiliation and said, without thinking, ‘Just because you rejected me four years ago, please don’t feel like you owe me anything...’
The words were out and hanging between them, and Edie saw Sebastio frowning just as the full realisation hit her of what she’d said. Before she could utter another word, he spoke.
‘Rejection? What are you talking about? I didn’t even know you four years ago.’
Instant panic flooded Edie and she gabbled, ‘It doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.’
She turned to leave but Sebastio caught her arm, restraining her. At the same moment two men came up to them, seeking to speak with Sebastio. His hand tightened on her arm and Sebastio said something to the men that made them step away for a moment. They were looking at Edie curiously and she managed to pull free of Sebastio’s hand.
He must have sensed her intention to run as far and as fast as she could. He stood in front of her. Stern. ‘Do not leave. This conversation is not over, Edie.’
Oh, yes, it is, she thought to herself.
‘Forget I said anything—it was nonsense.’
She backed away and Sebastio frowned again, saying warningly, ‘Edie...’
Before he could touch her again Edie turned and fled, putting her glass of champagne down on a table as she left. She walked blindly across the reception hall and found herself in the main library, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves and its smell of old leather. A curiously comforting smell.
She walked over to a window and wrapped her arms around herself. Big fat snowflakes were falling outside, but that fact barely registered on her consciousness.
Her heart was pounding and she thought, What have I done? The last thing she’d wanted to do was draw Sebastio’s attention to the fact that they’d met before. It was excruciating.
She’d never expected to see him again, and she’d certainly never expected to be in a situation where she did meet him again and there was this explosive chemistry between them. It had been so close to her fantasies that she’d automatically assumed he was privy to them on some level. That he was using that knowledge to tease her because he couldn’t possibly really want her.
But of course he couldn’t know her secret fantasies. And all she’d done was expose herself spectacularly.
That kiss the other night hadn’t felt like a fantasy. It had felt all too real. Edie quivered just thinking about it.
She heard some movement coming from the main hall, but was too afraid of seeing Sebastio to go outside and investigate what was happening. So she hid in the library and told herself that she would return to her flat in Islington in the morning. There would be no need for her to stay the weekend. She and Jimmy would have plenty of time to re-dress the house in time for the next party early next week.
She needed to get away from the disturbing orbit of Sebastio’s presence before he saw through her completely and realised how utterly flimsy her defences were. She might have fantasised about being a match for him, but she knew she wasn’t.
* * *
Sebastio’s jaw was tight with irritation and frustration. He’d just seen off the last of his guests and was standing outside Edie’s bedroom door, yanking open his tie and loosening his shirt.
It didn’t help.
He couldn’t believe she’d just slipped out of that room with a flash of green silk, like some ethereal sprite. He couldn’t believe she’d defied him. But then she’d consistently confounded his expectations since he’d met her.
He knocked on the door and waited. No sound. His frustration levels increased. He opened the door, saying, ‘Edie...’ But the room was in darkness. She couldn’t be asleep already. He flicked on the light and saw the bed was neatly made up, and empty.
He cursed and closed the door. He went back downstairs and passed Matteo, who was busy organising getting all the temporary staff home. When Sebastio asked him if he’d seen Edie he mentioned the library.
Sebastio knew before he’d even stepped over the threshold that she was there. He felt the familiar prickling awareness over his skin. He walked into the dimly lit room and saw her. Her back was to him and she was looking out of the window. She looked incredibly slender, and something tugged on his memories, but it was too fleeting and vague to hold on to.
‘Just because you rejected me four years ago...’
Sebastio closed the door behind him and saw her tense when she heard the sound. She turned around slowly.
He folded his arms. ‘So, are you going to explain what you meant by that comment?’
* * *
He’d tracked her down. In spite of the vast space of the room, and the house around them, Edie had never felt more claustrophobic.
‘You shouldn’t leave your guests alone.’
‘They’ve all left.’
Edie frowned. ‘But it can’t be nine o’clock yet.’
‘Look outside.’
‘I... I was...’ She turned around again and gasped.
The world had turned white within minutes and the snowflakes were coming thick and fast. She shivered, even though she couldn’t feel the cold.
Sebastio stood beside her. ‘The weather office issued an emergency alert. The blizzard-like conditions they forecast for the weekend are hitting sooner than predicted. We felt it would be prudent to warn our guests so they could get home in time.’
Edie hadn’t even been aware of a weather alert. The house was like a luxurious cocoon.
‘Do you want a drink?’
Edie turned to see S
ebastio go over to a drinks cabinet. He took a crystal stopper out of a bottle and poured himself a measure of dark golden liquid.
She shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’
She wanted to leave, like those guests. But her feet were rooted to the spot. She was unable to take her eyes off the fluid movement of Sebastio’s body as he lifted the small glass and took a sip. His tie was undone and the top buttons of his shirt were open.
He came back over to where she was standing. ‘Well, Edie? What did you mean by what you said? Have we met before?’
Edie gulped and regretted not asking for a drink. She forced her gaze up to Sebastio’s. She couldn’t lie. He’d see through it in an instant. ‘Yes. We did meet. Briefly.’
His mouth tightened. ‘Yet apparently long enough for me to reject you?’
Edie wanted a hole to appear in the floor and swallow her whole. She paced away from Sebastio, unable to keep still.
Then she stopped and faced him. ‘It was at a nightclub in Edinburgh, four years ago. You’d just played a rugby match against Scotland.’
He frowned. ‘Yes... I remember that match. It was our last away match before—’ He stopped abruptly. His gaze narrowed on her. ‘What happened?’
Edie wondered if he’d been about to say that it had been their last match before the accident. The timing would be right.
She felt silly now, when she thought of the crash. Her encounter with him had been such a small event and yet it had had huge repercussions for her. How could she explain that?
‘I just...saw you. And I wanted to...to meet you.’ She cringed inwardly. This was so much worse than she had imagined. ‘I tried to talk to you and you told me to leave you alone.’
More or less.
Sebastio’s skin felt too tight. As he looked at Edie he realised that the wispy sense of déjà-vu had been real. He had seen her before. He remembered her huge eyes looking at him with such a sense of naked hope that they’d sliced right through him. Now she looked at him far more warily. Had he done that? Or someone else?
Except... ‘You looked different then...’
She seemed to go paler in the dim light. ‘You can’t possibly remember.’
But he hardly heard her as he pieced the event together. ‘You were a very young girl.’
‘I was nineteen,’ Edie said, almost defensively.
Sebastio looked at her. ‘Like I said, very young. Fragile. Big eyes. And your hair was longer...’
Edie touched her hair self-consciously, surprised he’d recalled that detail of her wig.
‘Why didn’t you tell me when we met again?’
Edie’s hand dropped from her hair. She avoided his eye. ‘I was embarrassed. I approached you and you basically told me to run along. And then you kissed a woman in front of me.’
‘That wasn’t very nice of me.’
Edie made a small shrugging movement. ‘I’d disturbed you with your friends.’
Sebastio recalled the incident now—it had stuck in his mind for days afterwards. Her eyes had been so huge, and full of a kind of hope and innocence he’d never really seen before. That was why he’d sent her away, even though something about her had been very compelling.
He recalled now that she’d made him feel jaded. And restless.
He touched her jaw, tracing the feminine line. ‘I’m sorry I was harsh, Edie, but believe me I did you a favour that night. I was a different person then...you would have liked me even less than you do now.’
He had told himself at the time that he’d done it because he hadn’t wanted to taint her with his cynicism, but he realised now it had been for far more complex and personal reasons. It was as if those huge eyes had seen right through him to the root of his sense of dissatisfaction.
And she still had that ability. Except now he couldn’t push her away. He wanted her too much.
‘I don’t not like you, Sebastio. I just never expected to meet you again.’
‘And yet here we are.’
Sebastio tipped up Edie’s chin with a finger as lust coiled tight inside him. It would appear that he had no such qualms about not tainting her with his cynicism now.
‘Maybe you like me a little... Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Are you telling me you really care what I think about you?’
Her eyes flashed with dark blue fire. She might have projected fragility and innocence four years ago, and sometimes she still did, but she’d obviously grown up too. A part of Sebastio lamented the loss of some of that innocence. Which was ridiculous.
He was surprised by an urge to tell her that yes, he did actually care. When he shouldn’t. This was about sex. Not feelings.
‘We don’t need to care about each other to want each other.’
Wow. Edie absorbed this. She couldn’t fault him for not being brutally honest. She felt a dart of hurt but pushed it aside. She pulled her head back, dislodging his finger from her chin.
‘Edie...let me be very clear. What I want from you is purely physical. I don’t do relationships. I don’t offer commitment. I’m not kind or understanding. I want you...and what I’m offering is a finite affair until such time as this thing between us burns out. But don’t ever expect anything more, because I can’t give it and you’ll get hurt.’
Edie wanted to prick the arrogant well-worn cynicism he wore so well. ‘You’re saying you’ve never been hurt?’
He shook his head and a hard expression settled over his features. ‘Let’s just say I learnt at an early age not to expect too much.’
‘How do you know I haven’t learnt the same?’ Edie riposted.
Sebastio reached out again and trailed a finger across her jaw. Her breath hitched.
‘Because I can see it in your eyes, Edie. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just not for me.’
Edie felt foolish for trying to prove something to him. He was right. She would ultimately expect something more and that would be emotional suicide with a man like this.
His finger was trailing down from her jaw to her neck and he rested it on her pulse-point. She could feel the blood pulsing against the slight pressure he was exerting.
‘I want you, Edie. More than I’ve wanted a woman for a long time. I propose that we explore this mutual chemistry until it burns itself out.’
Until it burns itself out.
Edie shivered with awareness. That knot of tension tightened in her belly. She looked up at him, as if she might find the answers to questions she didn’t even know she was asking written in his features or in those impenetrable grey eyes.
She’d always wanted to find someone she could connect with on a deep level. Not just a physical one.
As much as her parents had smothered her, she’d always envied their strong and supportive bond. Yet in spite of their bond, and their love for her, she’d never felt as isolated as she had during her cancer treatment.
She’d felt if she was behind a glass wall, looking out, unable to connect with anyone, having no one with whom she could share the depth of her fears and anguish. She’d always longed to feel a sense of connection that would eclipse that awful sense of isolation.
And she had felt it that night in that club. When her eyes had locked with Sebastio’s. As improbable as it might have been. With one glance it had been as if Edie had known on some deep and instinctive level that Sebastio could understand and empathise with her sense of isolation, and she’d felt connected to someone else for the first time in a long time.
And here she was, standing in front of him again with that sense of connection surging through her blood. Obliterating all the reasons why she shouldn’t be tempted by him.
Because indulging in an affair with Sebastio Rivas would come at a cost.
What Sebastio was offering was anathema to her, because she knew she craved a deep and lasting connection with a man.
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And yet she ached for him. Only him. Even though he was only offering her this. A moment out of time.
The last thing she should be doing was thinking of saying yes, but it beat through her body like an inexorable wave. Yes, yes, yes.
This man had spurned her gauche advances once, but he’d set the bar so high that she’d never allowed another man to get close. She had a chance here to rewrite history. To fulfil the fantasy she’d had in her head since that night. That he hadn’t turned her away.
Was she going to remain a virgin for ever? Maybe she needed this to move on with her life?
Doubt entered her mind then. Was she crazy to be contemplating this? If he discovered she was a virgin he’d run a mile. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him...but something was stopping her. Something illicit and rebellious.
She wanted this. Even if it was for only one night. She would worry about the repercussions later.
‘Edie...?’
Sebastio’s voice cut through the maelstrom in her head. Edie shut it out. She obeyed the beat in her blood and took a giant leap into the unknown.
‘Yes... I want you, Sebastio.’
Sebastio heard Edie’s words but it took a second for them to sink in. Any kind of finesse he might have had before seemed to have deserted him. His blood surged and he stepped forward, cupping Edie’s jaw, stroking his thumb across silky skin, feeling the hectic pulse against his hand.
‘Are you sure about this?’
She nodded, biting her lip. Her vivid blue gaze dropped to his mouth and Sebastio couldn’t wait any longer. He had to taste her again. Now.
He walked her back until she hit a wall of books. He had to put his hands on the shelves either side of her head, because he wasn’t sure if he could control himself if he touched her.
He dipped his head towards hers and for an infinitesimal moment let his mouth hover above hers. Her scent wound around him, sweet and fresh. He had the strangest sensation that he was tipping over the edge of something he’d never encountered before but he pushed it out of his head, telling himself it was just the edge of his control...