The Love Campaign (Romantic Revelations Series Book 1)

by Laura Marquez Diamond

His groan was deep and long when he reached out and placed a palm on the outside of each breast and squeezed them together. With dark eyes and flared nostrils, Sebastian fucked her with his gaze, conquered her orbs with his hands.

  “Even better than I imagined, Jaya. So beautiful.”

  Her breasts perked up to his touch, her nipples hard as diamonds yet so sensitive they felt the heat of him even before he clamped down and sucked. Sucked and licked and nipped. Sensations on her breast burst like explosions all over her body. Up her spine, to the tips of her fingers, and in her apex. The very center of her body where her climax was imminent.

  Between his hungry devouring, she heard mumbled sounds of bliss and words of sheer adoration. “I’ve been dreaming of this for so long. Oh my god, Jaya, you’re beautiful. I’ve never seen tits this beautiful, sweetheart. And they taste so fucking good.”

  She took it all back. All that talk about sweetness and caring and whatever. All that seriousness was swept away by this.

  Animal hunger loaded with fierce, manly possessiveness of his mouth, his hands, his whole being. Sebastian’s groin pushed hard against her thigh, leaving bruises even as it made her sex throb. She welcomed all of it. The sucking and the biting and the straining and the grabbing. She never felt more wanted. She never thought being overwhelmed would be this thrilling.

  Jaya surrendered to the intense and primal overtaking of his sheer size, his effortless confidence, his instinctive commands. She felt like she was made for him, for Sebastian. Made to give and receive unimaginable pleasure. Sebastian. She was saying his name over and over again like a chant to the beat of their grinding bodies.

  Her head pulled back, she pushed her tits higher. Jaya’s eyes closed to savor every bit of tactile sensuality he offered as his mouth clasped her peaked nipples. Then, he abruptly stopped. Sebastian stood up and she whined at the loss of his weight.

  After a deep chuckle, he declared, “C’mere, sweetheart. We’re going to bed.”

  ***

  Maybe it was good that she had to work today because the bustle of getting ready would make it easier to say goodbye.

  When her alarm rang and she lifted her body to turn it off, Sebastian’s grasp tightened around her hip. Even asleep, his strength was undeniable. His breathing remained calm and steady, like someone in the depths of slumber. Yet the iron arms around her body seemed to fight her wiggling escape.

  She managed to slip away. Jaya stood up to go to the bathroom but not without one more look at the bed. Jeez, he was beautiful. An Adonis with burly thighs, a marble hard torso, and all of the hills and valleys of muscles across his shoulders and down his back.

  Sebastian stirred and went from facing where she’d lain to his back, legs open and the blanket kicked off. What. A. View.

  Even asleep his massive cock was half hard. Shaped as a long and supple curve, veined and velvet. She licked her lips at the thought of waking him up with his thickness in her mouth. Wetness pooled into her sex as she stared at his body and remembered all of the things he could do with that perfect male anatomy. All of the things he could do to her anatomy.

  “Jaya, if you keep looking at me like that, you’re going to have to marry me.”

  Her gaze shot to his face. Heavily lashed eyes barely open, rendering his features sultry and sinful.

  “Or at least buy me dinner,” he quipped.

  She shook her head. It was truly inconvenient that he was so adorable while being this hot, too. Damn Sebastian and his charisma. “Your charm always was your superpower,” she teased.

  Wait. Did he just blush? She couldn’t help but point it out. “Sebastian, are you seriously embarrassed that I called you charming? After everything I called you last night? Hell, after everything we did?” A rush of affection surprised her.

  “It isn’t that…” he started to say, then stopped himself.

  “What then?”

  “Nothing,” he said too quickly.

  “You can’t do that,” Jaya said, raising a brow and placing a fist against her hip. She was running late but she would not move until he explained himself.

  “Just that,” he started to say. “You said superpower and sometimes, in my head, I see you and I think kryptonite.”

  “Kryptonite? Me? I call you charming and you call me poison?” she said, not mad exactly, but certainly incredulous. She shook her head and walked towards the bathroom to get ready for work.

  In a flash, he was out of the bed and laughing. Sebastian slipped his arms around her and pressed his erection against the crack of her ass. Then he nipped her neck and sucked, hard and wet. She didn’t stop him. The pleasure that shot through her body wouldn’t let her.

  “No, you are not poison. But damn, Jaya, sometimes when I look at you it’s like I can’t breathe. There were times when I wanted you so bad and couldn’t have you, couldn’t even tell you, looking at you from afar felt like dying.” His voice was muffled and husky against her skin.

  “Oh,” was all she managed to say.

  “Oh,” he mimicked and spun her around. He looked down at her as if memorizing every inch of her face. “But at the same time, I never feel more alive, more myself, than when I’m with you.”

  She looked away because his words tore into her and lodged themselves deeply. So deep she would never forget them, even if she should.

  “What if you took the day off?” Sebastian prodded while continuing to massage her back, heading lower and lower until he grabbed her bottom and pressed her moistness against his fully hard shaft. “What’s one day off from the community center, after all? When it’s my last day in town for a while…”

  Alarm shot through her spine. If he threw cold water on her face it would not have had a more sobering effect. She didn’t look up when she pushed off his chest and turned towards the bathroom. But she knew that he watched her in bewildered shock when she walked away and didn’t look back.

  Jaya closed the door before she exhaled.

  When he said those words, a flood of memories swept her. Memories made with another man, in another time. I’m only myself when I’m with you. Noah used to say. And no one knows you like I do, Jaya. And no one ever will.

  She hadn’t spoken to or about Noah for years. But they dated for nearly half a decade while they were teenagers. As a social worker, Jaya knew enough about child psychology to understand how impressionable those years were. How crucial they were for mental and emotional development.

  So it was with a mix of clinical detachment and personal trauma that she recognized when Noah’s voice filled her thoughts. There was a time when that voice was so powerful, it easily influenced her mood or swept away her confidence. It easily built her up and broke her down. Even today, Noah’s voice in her head was like a dormant landmine. Deceptively quiet but always with the potential to detonate.

  C’mon, Jaya, he used to say. Just blow off the midterm and come out tonight. You’ll be a WAG anyway, what do you need all those A’s for? The implication of the statement was that hockey players’ wives and girlfriends wouldn’t need to care about studies or careers. That was ridiculously false!

  When he complimented her, it was often spiked with something else. A warning. Good thing I like my woman with some meat on her bones. Other men just don’t appreciate curves like I do.

  If Jaya put more into her hockey training than was convenient for Noah, he would make her feel foolish. Inadequate and redundant. Take the day off before I go on a road trip. You don’t have to worry about your hockey career. I can take care of both of us.

  Or, and this was the most painful of all: If we weren’t together, the Michigan scouts would never have noticed you! You have your scholarship because of me! The only reason you even play hockey is because of me!

  That was perhaps the worst night of her life when she broke up with him. He made sure that before she walked out the door, he would tear her to pieces. Noah unleashed every vicious, ugly thought he ever had.

  Except perhaps he never really hid
those thoughts, did he? Not completely. Especially during the last year they were together, as his career became imminent and he knew he was going to get drafted. He actively diminished her hopes and ambitions. He spewed comments about her inadequacy and his superiority.

  At some level, he was always saying some version of that terrible refrain:

  You are who you are because of me.

  You have what you have because of me.

  Therefore, you are nothing without me.

  So, despite her parents’ protestations and her brother’s reasoning, despite her coach’s compromises and teammates’ confusion, Jaya did not return to hockey after her freshman year of college. Which was when she finally, and completely, broke up with Noah Rawlings.

  Once he was drafted, he decided not to return to the University of Michigan. Noah expected her to pack up and go to Florida with him. No argument and no compromise.

  Things were already rocky at that point. They had been bickering for a while. But it wasn’t until he told her to give up school and drop everything for him that she faced an undeniable fact. Noah cared about Noah. And he would only ever care about Noah.

  She was finally forced to choose between the man for whom she would have to dedicate her life or the job through which she could live her life. Not such a hard choice, it turned out. He was asking her to abandon her pursuit of a career she knew she could do, knew she was born to do.

  So, just like that, she resolved to end their relationship. She would not spend another minute as his girlfriend. As his doormat.

  When she walked away from that scholarship, it was ultimately the last step to completely walking away from Noah. Because no matter how hard she worked all her life or how much she loved hockey, the thought of owing him anything made her sick.

  And then, as if the nauseating memories summoned what should have stayed buried, Sebastian knocked on her bathroom door.

  “I’m sorry, Jaya,” he said when she opened it.

  “It’s OK. I was already dressed. I’m sorry I ran off. I’m just…”

  “No, it isn’t that.” His voice was so wretched, she was forced to look up and meet his pained expression.

  “When I got all those calls last night. From my agent. From Travis and the organization…”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was because…” He took a deep breath. His next words stirred the doubts and distress she foolishly thought she had laid to rest years ago.

  She could not have been more wrong.

  “I got traded, Jaya. I got traded to Florida.”

  CHAPTER 12

  It’s gonna be OK, Sebastian said to himself. It’s OK that Jaya pushed him out the door so he could get ready for one of the most important mornings of his career. She even scolded him for not returning any of Travis’s texts and voicemails as soon as he could. He needed to be debriefed by his agent, too. Chris threatened to personally pull his head out of his ass. These calls would require all of Sebastian’s attention.

  She kicked him out, but it was for his own good.

  Jaya asked not to be driven to work. Said she wanted to walk. It was an unseasonably warm day. The winds from yesterday settled, like a tired child after an especially bad tantrum. That’s OK, too, he said to himself, when she refused to be dropped off. Jaya had a routine. Wake up, get ready, walk to work, change the world for the better. Repeat.

  If only she squeezed a little bit of him into that routine. At least for today. Let him grab her some coffee or let him whip up a proper breakfast. Or, now that he finished his morning calls, it would be fucking great if Jaya answered her phone.

  Because all of a sudden Sebastian was doubting what he thought he knew about last night. Moments flashed in his mind as if they were bits of a dream. The most erotic, mind-blowing, wet dream of his life. But a dream, nonetheless.

  He didn’t want that. At all. He needed yesterday to have happened. No, that wasn’t it. Sebastian needed yesterday to happen again and again. Because last night was not enough. It could not possibly be enough for either of them.

  He wouldn’t allow it.

  Even in his head, he knew he sounded ridiculously dramatic. But her face, when he told her that he was heading to Florida, was not just shocked. Shocked, he could handle. Instead, it was also resigned. As if something was settled and he wasn’t sure if that was for or against his own intentions. That was the problem with Jaya. The surer he was about his feelings, the more puzzling her reactions seemed to be.

  All day, there was no denying the sour taste of nervous desperation in his mouth, tainting everything he drank and ate. Till they talked again, he wasn’t sure he could hold anything down. Excited about the biggest development of his career, sure, that might be why. Though Sebastian was eighty percent sure talking to her would settle these nerves. Maybe more like ninety-five percent.

  Because the absolute god forsaken shocking truth was that, without any warning at all, Sebastian’s world had tilted. He wasn’t OK right now. Because being OK required being with Jaya.

  “It’s not that simple,” Sebastian said petulantly to his housemates while they were having dinner.

  “Are you sure about that? Because from where I’m standing, you need to focus on your career, man. This is all you’ve ever wanted. Help her understand what this means to you. See where things go from there,” Travis said, being grave and reasonable instead of dryly cynical which was his usual brand of advice.

  “Negative. I can’t help her understand or relax if she doesn’t call me back.”

  “And if she does? What are you going to say?” Jake took a gulp of beer and then cut a big bite of steak.

  Despite the unexpected trade from Buffalo to Miami, Sebastian was ready to go. At least in terms of packing. He was staying in a hotel whether it was by the sunny beaches of Florida or the cold fronts of New York. So, during his last night in Cincinnati, he offered to make his boys dinner. The last steaks he would grill for a while.

  “I don’t know,” Sebastian said honestly. “I mean, this morning I thought…,” he started to construct a version that made sense. He failed. “No. I don’t know.”

  What he didn’t say was the longer the time passed before they talked, the less sure he was about the right thing to say.

  “Make a list,” Carlos broke the silence. The three housemates turned to him.

  ‘That is actually a great idea,” Jake praised the normally disorganized Carlos. “There’s a great book on the power of checklists during medical processes such as surgery and…”

  “Shut up, Jake,” all three housemates uttered, though without hostility.

  “Sorry, man,” Sebastian said and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “I know you’re always trying to help but this isn’t surgery.” Normally, Sebastian wouldn’t bother with comforting words, but he was getting nostalgic just thinking about leaving his buddies.

  “The point I wanted to make is that there are lots of lists,” Jake said, holding no grudges. “Is this a list of what you want? Or is it procedural? As in, a sequence of steps through which a goal is achieved as opposed to the itemization of the goals themselves.”

  “That’s a good point,” Travis conceded. “Well, what is it?”

  “I know what I want,” Sebastian said quickly and with emphasis, surprising even himself. His good friends didn’t rib him about what a schmuck he must sound like, pining over a girl who didn’t call him back.

  “So, procedural,” Jake concluded with his professorial voice.

  “Procedural,” Carlos mimicked the tone and raised his beer. The mood lightened though Sebastian still tasted the bitterness of uncertainty in his beverage.

  “Assuming you’ve taken your head out of your ass and are ready for Florida tomorrow,” Travis started, “step one is to relax. Make sure she knows how to reach you then chill, man.”

  Sebastian nodded. He knew Travis was just looking out for him.

  “Step two,” Jake said, “you’re chill but you don’t want to be forgotten. Kee
p yourself in her mind. Send flowers or something when you get there.”

  “The last time I sent her flowers she joked about it being for her funeral.”

  “I can see her doing that,” Travis said, amused. “How about something from Florida?”

  “Good one. Like a jersey or something. Yeah, send her something from your new team!” Carlos piped in. “Now for step three. Invite her out to Florida as soon as you’re settled in. She can watch a game. She’ll get a kick out of that. Chicks are hot for the big-time hockey player they get to bring home, right?”

  “Jaya’s not a puck bunny,” Travis said for Sebastian.

  “Not just that,” Sebastian said and prepared to launch into the deeper waters of his uncertainty. “You guys know Noah Rawlings?” They all nodded in recognition.

  “Jaya dated him for years, man. They were serious and, from what it sounds like, things ended pretty badly.”

  “Years? How? She barely looks legal,” Travis commented.

  “She’s our age. They dated all through high school. They went to Michigan together too. From what I gathered about when he got drafted, they broke up after their first year of college. He went to Florida and she…stayed.”

  “That’s years ago,” Carlos said. “So what?”

  Sebastian heard the ping. He dropped his utensils and grabbed the phone.

  “Jaya texted,” he announced. The three guys kept eating but made hand motions to indicate that he should continue. Sebastian, feeling like he was a fifteen-year-old boy with a severe crush, opened her message.

  Jaya: I’m sorry I didn’t call you back all day. Been kind of crazy.

  Sebastian texted her back immediately even if it made him look like all he did today was wait for her. Well, that wasn’t exactly false.

  Sebastian: Crazy how? You alright?

  Jaya: I’m fine. Hey, can we talk?

  Sebastian: Calling now

  Jaya: Or maybe open your front door?

  The feeling that bloomed right at the center of Sebastian’s belly and spread up, up, up to his heart and burst into a grin moved exactly as fast as it took him to go to the front door and swing it open.