Page 87 of The Sun & Her Burn

Because I was fairly sure my traitorous, greedy heart was beginning to fall in love with two men who were not mine to want.

18

ADAM

Ihad often imagined meeting Sebastian’s family properly. What kind of people had helped formed such a man, such a masterpiece? It was a question that had kept me awake at night many nights in the wake of his leaving me—of me demanding he do so. He had spoken of them so often, the women in his life, and with a ferocity of love and loyalty that often left me feeling slightly, even childishly, jealous.

I wanted him to feel that way about me even though the idea also petrified me.

Of course, his entire family wasn’t present at the table. His twin sister, Cosima, was holed up in England, about to give birth to triplets, and his eldest sister, Elena, was at home in New York City with her husband and three children.

But meeting Caprice, Giselle, and Sinclair was wonderfully insightful.

They teased Sebastian playfully but mercilessly about his stardom, a cowlick in his hair that caused a lock to fall constantly across his forehead, and his unique ability to state the year a film had been made and its director, from blockbuster to totallyobscure. I had read somewhere that teasing was a sign of love and intimacy, but this was perhaps the first time I understood how that could be true.

Linnea joined in as if she had been born into the family.

She had that magical ability to be at ease in any situation, so comfortable in her own skin that it did not occur to her to doubt herself. I wondered if it was a result of growing up with a famous mother who had also mostly abandoned her, in contrast to the wild love and stability she had experienced in Maui with her father and uncles. By the time Chef Devereaux brought out dessert—a citrus confection of lemon meringue, raspberry coulis, yuzu mousse and dark chocolate curls—Linnea was even bantering with Daniel Sinclair, a man known professionally to be as cool and aloof as they came.

I was, unfortunately, ridiculously charmed by the entire evening, but particularly by the two people who had so quickly become the center spokes of my life.

Sebastian and Linnea.

So, after Sinclair tried to pay for the bill only to discover that I had taken care of it on a trip to the toilet and then tried to argue with me senselessly about it, I found myself agreeing to go with the group to Sinclair’s night club, Temptations.

We all piled into an enormous SUV Sinclair had ordered after saying goodbye to Caprice, who declared herself too old to party into the wee hours of the evening, and suddenly, I was pressed tightly between Seb and Linnea.

My throat went dry at the feel of them lined up against either side of me and the spicy, ocean salt taste of them both on my tongue.

After so many inventive experiences in the back of the Rolls-Royce in London, cars had become a strange aphrodisiac for me, not to mention the two people beside me.

The savagery of the desire that barrelled through me was almost terrifying, a bloodlust, a ravening that called me ripped into their clothes like a beast and rut until they both felt and smelled like mine.

“All right?” Sebastian asked in a typically British manner that reminded me of our time together in London.

We were so close that his nose brushed the hair over my ear as he spoke, and a shiver bit into my spine and shook it like a rabid dog.

I clenched my hands on my thighs.

Why had I agreed to wine with dinner?

I almost never drank anymore. Maybe a celebratory glass of champagne or a very cold lager on a hot summer’s day, but mostly I was sober. Alcohol had been my crutch in those bleak years after Savannah and Seb had left me, and when I pulled myself, with Chaucer’s help, out of that dark place, I had resolved never to let booze derail my life again.

Yet here I was, buzzing just slightly but still enough to crank up the volume of the wicked fantasies whispering in the warm dark of my subconscious.

“Perhaps I should take Linnea home,” I said carefully, the words clicking against my teeth like ice cubes.

Seb reared back as far from me as he could, and I realized I wasn’t the only one who had been lulled into a false sense of security by the lovely evening.

“You can leave,” Linnea said lightly, but her hand curled around my thigh, yellow nails digging just shy of painfully into my flesh. “But I am going dancing with Sebastian, Giselle, and Sinclair.”

“By all means,” Sebastian said, changing tactics to align with hers, his voice dropping into a smoky tenor. “Leave Linnea with me,Adamo. I am happy to see her home and to bed safely at the end of the night.”

Visions of their long, lean bodies tangled in sheets erupted like fireworks behind my closed lids. Linnea was so curious, and Sebastian had always been adventurous, an eager student himself. What had he learned in ten years that he might apply to a night of sin with her?

I swallowed thickly.

“Very well,” I said. “Though I should warn you, I am a very good dancer.”