Page 83 of The Sun & Her Burn

“You are prone to dramatics,Patatino,” Caprice said with a cluck of her tongue.

“Since he was little,” Giselle agreed, grinning at me.

“Patatino?” I asked, intrigued by the nickname.

“No,” Seb protested strongly.

“It means little potato,” Giselle explained.

“He was born with his head shaped like this,” Caprice explained seriously.

I looked at Sebastian, who wore a fierce expression of regret, and burst out laughing.

That was how Adam found me, sitting at a table with Seb and his family, the Italian’s arm across the back of my chair like a flag staked in the ground declaring his territory.

I felt him before I saw him.

A crackling of energy, a lightning strike at the front entrance.

Sebastian turned at the same time as I did, both of us locked into that familiar abundance of commanding magnetism.

Adam stood beside the hostess stand in a slightly mussed black suit, the top buttons on his dark green shirt undone and the sleeves rolled up, the blazer tossed over one shoulder and hooked by one finger. I wondered if he’d headed to the airport straight from his last interview in the city.

“He does not look happy,” I murmured.

“No,” Sebastian said, a dark note of glee in the word. “He does not.”

“What game are you playing?”

His response was a smoky chuckle.

Adam noted the expression, his own glower tightening. He stalked through the restaurant like a wild cat through the jungle, completely homed in on his prey. Diners tittered as he moved by them, but he didn’t seem to notice.

The center of his attention was solely Sebastian and me.

A shiver rolled through me as my blood flashed hot and cold with a curiously arousing mix of fear and anticipation.

The Adam I knew was unfailing polite, probably do to his upbringing in the peerage and his brief stint in the British Armed Forces, but he eschewed every nicety as he finally approached the table. Instead of greeting the diners, or even acknowledging them, he kept his eyes trained on me.

I swallowed thickly as he stopped at the side of my chair, braced a hand along the back of my neck under the thick sweep of my —nestled tightly against Seb’s arm—and used the other to grip my chin to tip my head back.

His eyes were hard, glittering emeralds, almost inhumanely beautiful as they dominated my vision.

“Sunbeam,” he rasped in a possessive growl a moment before he bent to claim my parted mouth.

He plundered without hesitation, sweeping into the cavern of my mouth with his hot, dexterous tongue. A breathy moan wrenched from me as heat scored down my throat and unfurled in my belly like a growing inferno. He kissed me so thoroughly, nipping, sucking, thrusting, that, in the end, I would have been happy to have him bend me over the table right there in the middle of the restaurant.

It was our first real kiss.

A public claiming so comprehensive that when he finally ripped himself away from me, his name escaped my lips like a revelation from God.

“Adam.”

At the sound of his own name, something animal shone back at me in his gaze. A primal satisfaction that I was left so ravaged by his kiss. Instead of stepping away immediately, he gazed down at me with that intense focus and brushed the rough pad of his thumb over my kiss-stung lips.

“I’ve missed you,” he murmured, and that confession seemed just for me.

A whisper in the dark.