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Sebastian’s eyes rake over me suddenly, and I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly very aware of the fact that I’m wearing a loose T-shirt and shorts that ride up to the tops of my thighs. I’ve worn more clingy, revealing clothing to work out in, and surely Sebastian has seen me in a bathing suit at some point…but something about the fact that it’s my sleepwear adds a sudden intimacy to his appraisal that makes my cheeks heat.

“I know you’re not a child,” he says calmly. “There are things about this life, things your father does, or has men do?—”

“Torture.” I bite out the word. “He’s going to torture someone for information.”

“A few someones, probably,” Sebastian allows.

“Good,” I spit out, and Sebastian’s eyes widen.

“Estella—”

“I hope it hurts. I hope—” My hands fly up to cover my face, and the sobs break free again. In an instant, Sebastian is moving toward me, and he’s in the center of the bed with me, his armscircling my shoulders as he pulls me into his chest. His hand presses against the back of my head again, and I’m suddenly very aware of how hard his chest is beneath my cheek, of his warm scent rising from his skin and clothes—something smoky and musky and masculine. I breathe in, shaky, deep gulps of air and his scent, as if it can calm me. As if it could make everything okay.

“Estella,” he whispers. “Estella, I’m here. I’ve got you.” His hand curves under the weight of my hair hanging down my back, his fingers suddenly stroking the side of my neck, and my entire body stiffens as I feel a jolt of something hot and primal sizzle through my body.

Sebastian lets go of me as if I’ve burned him—or as if he burned me. He moves backwards, quickly, until he’s once again sitting at the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have been touching you. I shouldn’t have even come into the room. I?—”

He starts to get up, as if he’s going to go, and I grab his arm before I can think better of it.

“No,” I whisper plaintively. “No, please. Don’t go.”

5

SEBASTIAN

Ishould leave.

Every instinct in me, every ounce of self-preservation that I have, shouts at me to tell her that I’ll be right outside if she needs anything—and to leave the room. To spend the night standing guard outside in the hall, as Antony Gallo instructed me to do, until he returns and gives the all-clear.

I know he didn’t intend for me to gointohis daughter’s room, to put her to bed, to sit next to her on that bed, and hold her and comfort her. The line was crossed, the boundary broken, when I set foot in Estella’s bedroom.

Now I’m frantically throwing up wall after wall, trying to keep this from going further than it should.

It would be an unthinkable breach of trust to seduce Estella under normal circumstances, to give in to my desires. To give in now, to letanythinghappen between us while she’s wracked with grief and vulnerable would be beyond dishonorable. I might as well put a fucking bullet in my own head, if I took her innocence while she’s in this state.

I swallow hard as her hand wraps around my wrist. It’s not as if she can actually hold me here. But the warmth of her hand,the pressure of her fingertips against my skin, thepleadingin her eyes?—

I’ve never seen her like this before. I’ve never seenanyonelike this—in the throes of such desperate grief, and I don’t entirely know what to do.

When she launched herself at me in the doorway, when she wrapped her arms around my neck and cried into my chest, I should have disentangled myself from her then. I should have calmly told her that I would be right outside if she needed anything.

Except what she needed was me. And I gave in, because?—

No. Don’t think that. Not right now, of all times. Keep your fucking head on straight, Sinclair.

I hate myself for the fact that I can even think of her in that way right now, that my treacherous body is responding to her touches, to her warmth, to her scent as if the world hadn’t just come crashing down around her. That when she clung to me, crying, I noticed the weight of her breasts against my chest and how soft her hands felt against the back of my neck, the sweet vanilla and floral scent of her skin, and how good she felt in my arms when I picked her up. I hate that, when I carried her to her bed, my cock twitched to life at the thought ofmesetting her down in bed.

I tell myself that it’s a natural response. That death makes a man want to remember that he’s alive. I’ve heard it plenty of times from other guys in my line of work, from their days in the military or even just doing high-pressure security jobs or contract gigs. That after a fight, after a close brush with death, after knowing someone close to them died, all they wanted to do was go fuck, like it was a primal instinct that drove them to consume another person like sustenance. My body is craving that right now, to remember that I’m still alive. It would be the same if it was any woman in my arms right now.

Except that’s bullshit, and I know it. It’s Estella that makes me feel this way, and not anyone else. And it makes me feel like an asshole.

When she started to cry again just now, and I climbed fully into her bed to pull her into my arms, I got fucking hard as a rock. The feeling of her body in my arms when I’ve never touched her before tonight, except for the briefest of brushes of fingertips against skin, the feeling of her hair against my cheek and in my hands?—

Fucking Christ. I shouldn’t have touched her neck like that—like a lover. I felt the way she went stiff when I did, and I figured she was pissed at me. She had every right to be. I should never touch her like that at all, let alone right now. But she didn’t want me to leave.

Right now, she’s trying to get me to stay. And half the reason I haven’t gotten up yet is that I don’t want her to see how fucking hard my cock is right now.

The other half is that I can’t leave her when she looks like this. She’s a disaster—eyes swollen and red, hair tangled, nose running and face puffy…and she’s somehow still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever fucking laid eyes on. I could tell her that I’ll be just outside if she needs anything, but what she needs right now is for me tostay. I know that, just as I know that there’s nothing I can really do to make any of this better.