Page 26 of The Moon & His Tides

He touched me then, a hand on my shoulder, and his grasp seared through my blazer, button-up, and bone.

“I’d have you do exactly as you wished,” Sebastian said softly, innocently, even though something was dark and eager in his eyes I felt mimicked in my gut.

“Society, career, and family be damned?” I countered harshly.

“Castrarsi per far dispetto alla moglie,” he murmured in spiced Italian. “Do not cut off your balls to spite your wife. I think in English, it’s do not cut off your nose to spite your face. Which is greater, what people think of you or whatyouthink of you?”

“What do you think of me?” The question pooled on my tongue before I could swallow it down. How stupid it was to ask such a man what he thought of me.

We were as different as night and day.

The dark, raw masculinity and irreverence of Sebastian contrasted with my well-bred attractiveness and sharp, cultivated class.

Maybe that was why I liked him.

Because I didn’t trust him not to rip me open at the seams like a savage looking to plunder.

“What do you wish to do to me right now?” he countered, hand tightening almost painfully on my shoulder. “Fuck the crowd inside. It’s just you and me in the dark.”

A shudder rippled through me at the lavish lasciviousness of my thoughts. This I was comfortable with.

This I could use.

The desire ate at me with voracious teeth, taking huge chunks out of my resolve. My rapidly diminishing veneer of civility.

Because the truth was, I was just as heathen as the man before me.

No, I thought as my lips pulled back over my teeth, and something like a snarl rose from my throat,more.

Before I could think, I was standing, forcing Sebastian back, unbalanced. I caught him around the forearm and tugged him harshly into my front, plastering our bodies together from toe to clavicles. When he was steady, we were close enough to share the same breath. He tasted of tobacco and something sweetly addictive like fortified wine.

I raised the smoldering end of my cigarette into the small gap between us and sucked too hard on the filter. It dropped from my fingers, and I crushed it beneath the toe of my shoe, holding the smoke in my mouth.

Sebastian watched me all the while with those huge golden irises as keen as a wild cat.

When I tipped my head to the side and leaned close, he understood what I wanted and mirrored the movement.

His lips parted, and carefully, I curled the smoke over my tongue and into his mouth. The silver mist swirled in that pink cavity and then disappeared down his throat. A groan worked up mine, and I fed that to him, too, this time with my lips sealed over his.

7

ADAM

The moment our mouths met, it was over.

Sense.

Reason.

The world of glamour, power, and money at our backs blazing like a beacon.

There was nothing but two ill-suited men clutched together in the dark, taking from each other with silken thrusts of tongue and hot, seeking lips.

It might have started with feeding him smoke, feeding him my desire on a groan as angry as it was lusty, but it finished with what he gave me.

A head rush greater than the nicotine lingering on our breath, a freewheeling sense of calm like dropping from a plane before you pulled the chute.

Peace.