Page 85 of The Sun & Her Burn

The left corner of his mouth curled just a fraction, and his thumb swept over my pulse point. “A man uses every weapon in his arsenal, Linnea.”

“Are we at war?” I teased, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that I was still breathless.

Adam arched one brow, and though he didn’t look at Sebastian, he might as well have. “Seduction can be a kind of battle.”

“Hopefully one with considerably less blood and pain,” Seb quipped dryly.

“Blood, certainly,” Adam agreed on a throaty rumble.

Both Sebastian and I paused to suck in a steadying breath.

Beneath the cover of my heavy hair, Adam’s hand slipped from my neck to Sebastian’s forearm and shackled it briefly before returning his hold to me.

A faint ruddy flush stained Seb’s tanned cheekbones.

“I own a club downtown.” The cool French-accented words hit me like a bucket of cold water, and I shivered slightly as I dropped my head back down to look at Daniel. “We will go dancing after we eat. I already informed Chef Dev that we have extra guests and he’s adjusted our meal accordingly.”

“When did you manage that?” Giselle asked him, leaning in close to kiss the square hinge of his jaw as if she couldn’t help herself.

In answer, Daniel raised his free hand to show his phone.

“It is settled,” Caprice announced, every ounce the matriarch. “Sebastian, get Adam a chair,dio mio, he has nowhere to sit. Linnea, you must eat everything on your plate,ragazza, you are too thin.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes playfully at me as he stood to do his mother’s bidding and whispered, “You are perfect whichever way you come.”

“Even gangly and awkward as I was at sixteen?” I countered with a grin.

He stopped behind his chair to reach forward and touch two fingertips to my cheek. It was such a little gesture, but it lit me up like a lightning rod.

“Whichever way you come,” he repeated, smiling softly at me before glancing up at Adam and then going off to retrieve a chair.

When he was gone, Adam shifted to press his hips against the table beside me so we could cup my face and tilt it for his study. In the dim glow of the lamps, his eyes were dark as the night forest, hiding so many secrets I wondered if I would ever understand them.

“We can leave,” he said quietly, shutting out the others for a moment so I could be honest with him. “We had a date.”

A date.

For some reason, those words hit me like a slap.

Because I wanted it to bereal.

A date with a man like Adam. Not because he was rich and famous and in need of a beard, but because he was queer and handsome and lonely and kind, and I wanted to be his girlfriend.

It was a good reminder that what we were doing wasstaged.

This, having dinner with Sebastian and his family, would be a good reminder to both of us that we were just playacting.

Only the stakes seemed so much higher than simply playing pretend.

Because somewhere along the line, I had forgotten this was an acting gig.

I’d thrownmyselfinto Adam, and Sebastian, and the strange dark currents between them without holding anything back.

It was only me who would get hurt at the end of three years, and I wasn’t sure I could afford to lose Adam, Sebastian, and most likely Miranda all within that time.

So, I smiled widely, hoped the expression touched my eyes and said, “Dinner would be nice.”

A little thrill of secret pleasure zinged down my spine at Adam’s put-upon expression. He’d wanted to take me out.