Page 24 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

I was rewarded with a little gasp, near inaudible over the splash.

I had to turn my back to her to hide my mean, triumphant grin.

And it was mean because I felt mean and had all morning.

A greedy, irascible voice in my head kept snarling mine, mine, mine .

I wanted Linnea with me.

At my side on a hike in Runyon Canyon, jogging down Carbon Beach, at some fancy dinner at a place like Spago .

And I wanted Adam there, too.

It was as gluttonous a desire as it was an absurd one.

I’d thrown Linnea in Adam’s path so he would not be outed as bisexual to the press.

There was no room for me in them .

In Linam .

I was alone on the outside as I’d always been.

My fists clenched on my towel so tightly I tore the edge with a loud rip.

Linnea watched me, but I refused to look up at her.

I was raw, my skin washed away by the brine of the sea, by the heat of her looking at me and seeing through into what lay inside.

The car door slammed shut behind me after I strapped our boards to the roof, and my fingers squeaked on the wheel as I gripped it too tightly.

She let me stew, singing along softly—poorly—to the playlist she played through Bluetooth as we drove through Los Angeles toward Malibu. I had agreed to drop her off at Adam’s and viciously regretted it now.

My finger jammed into the intercom at the gate, and I grunted out my name when the speaker came on, pulling into the opening gate too fast.

Linnea didn’t say a word, but I could see her fingers drumming on her thigh.

Adam’s big, beautiful house came into view, and I hated that, too, because it was exactly the kind of house I would have chosen for myself.

Most of it was pale gold stone, styled almost like an Italian villa but from the modern touches that carved huge sections of the house into unblemished panes of glass and black millwork.

It was both modern and classic, gorgeous and sophisticated.

I had been house shopping in Los Angeles nearly every time I came out to film or do a press circuit for years, yet I had never found a house that called to me the way this one had.

Of course, Adam had been the one to find it.

Yet another thing that should have been mine that he had first.

I put the car into park so brutally it ground the gears.

Dio mio , I scolded myself as I raked my hair back through my damp, salty hair, get a grip .

Without thinking, I twisted to take in Linnea because I knew she was the perfect anchor.

She sat with one bare foot up in the seat, an arm wrapped loosely around her slim, browned leg, her hair a wet, waving mass around her shoulders.

I could only see a sliver of her profile as she stared out the window at the front of the house, the rounded tip of her nose, the ridge of her full, petal-pink mouth, and the thick fringe of her spiky lashes.

Even so, she was beautiful.

Even turned away from me and toward the other man waiting for her on the opposite side of the door.

Stay , I wanted to say with such suddenness I almost gave in to the urge, stay here with me .

For the day? she might have said.

Forever , I could tell her.

I had decided too late that this was one toy I did not want to share with others, one part of my life I wanted selfishly to guard for myself.

All my life I’d sacrificed for my family, given everything to my mother and sisters, to Savannah and Adam.

Cazzo , I was tired of it.

Linnea turned her head against the seat to catch me looking at her, but she didn’t seem surprised by it.

“Done brooding?” she teased lightly.

I huffed out a surprised chuckle.

“It’s not a good look on you,” she continued blandly. “You should leave it to Adam.”

Another laugh, this one from the belly.

Oh, she could light me up. Every corner. Even the ones that hadn’t seen the light in years.

My stomach twisted with regret, a feeling that was alien to me.

Even after everything ended so cataclysmically with Savannah and Adam, I’d had no regrets about it. Of course, I would always wish it had turned out differently, but loving them, even for a short time, had fundamentally changed me. I was the man I was today because of that year in London.

If I could go back, I would still flirt with my duchessa in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce. I would still follow Adam to the car in the back alley, rife with confused, irritated arousal. I would still give them both my heart in cupped palms.

So I wasn’t used to the sensation of sour-bitter regret on the back of my tongue as I thought about arranging for Linnea to date Adam.

Why couldn’t I, just once, have someone love me? Want me?

Why did I have to set it up so that was not even a possibility?

Did a part of me—fetid and small, a result of a father who had never loved or cared for me, a childhood full of poverty and uncertainty, of a mother who cried herself to sleep too often—believe I wasn’t worthy of happiness?

Did the artist in me trick my mind into thinking I had to suffer to create art?

I started at the soft press of Linnea’s thumb over the crease between my brows.

She was up on her knees in the seat, bent at the waist over the console to reach me.

Her hair had shifted forward over her arms, close enough to smell the salt of the sea caught in the strands.

But it was her eyes that I fixated on, almond-shaped and that unique shade of indigo that seemed otherworldly.

“Hey,” she whispered as if she felt the bubble around us, knew that the reality was suddenly very far away. “You’re doing it again. What has you frowning like that?”

Words raced up my throat, and I had to glue my tongue to the roof of my mouth so that they wouldn’t all tumble out into her lap.

Instead, I swallowed thickly and shook my head slightly.

Her fingers traced over one brow and down the side of my face to cup my cheek. I leaned into the pressure, almost purring when she rubbed a thumb along the rasp of my stubble.

A little smile flickered at the edge of her mouth, but her eyes were questing around my features, searching for answers.

“Sometimes, I could glimpse your heartbreak out of the corner of my eye, but like a ghost, it disappeared every time I tried to look at it head-on. Until today. What happened?”

“You,” I said, the one syllable carving up my throat and over my tongue like a blood offering. My hand found her wrist, shackling it so she would not stop touching me.

She was a grounding rod when everything I felt was lightning.

“Me?” she asked, rearing back a little. “Have I done something wrong?”

My throat ached with the need to tell her everything, every chapter of my story, no matter how sad or shameful. I wanted to curl up in her lap like a fucking kitten and have her pet me.

I wanted to kiss her so badly it felt like life or death.

“Nothing,” I whispered, because my chest was caving in. “Only making me want you when you aren’t mine to want.”

Her eyes widened almost comically, the sunlight catching the pupils and turning them to amethysts.

“What?” she breathed, her hand spasming against my cheek.

I held her tighter against my face with one hand while the other reached up to tunnel under her heavy, damp hair so I could palm the expanse of her neck. Her pulse throbbed under my thumb.

“I have not wanted this badly in years,” I admitted, my accent thicker than it should be, so I gave in to the Italian bubbling up from my gut. “ Quando ti guardo, ti voglio . When I think of you, I want you.”

Linnea’s shaky exhale warmed my mouth. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t have anything left of my heart to give,” I confessed, even as I dropped her wrist to swipe a thumb over her plush lower lip. “If I did, I would have asked you to take it.”

“Sebastian,” she breathed, tipping her face closer, a flower seeking the light.

And I had always had a weakness for flowers, for beautiful things needing warmth and love to grow because I was the very same way.

So I lowered my mouth and met her halfway.

The first brush of our lips was suede against suede, such a soft slide I almost couldn’t feel her.

That would not do.

A soft growl worked loose from my throat, and I used the hand on her neck to press her more deeply into me, angled so I could swipe my tongue along the seam of her lips and taste the cavern of her mouth.

Warm, wet, and flavoured like the sea.

I groaned, or she did, before our tongues were sliding hotly against each other, curving and rubbing and tasting every inch available to us.

I was so hard so suddenly that it hurt, my cock an iron pole down the leg of the grey sweatpants I’d changed into, only a thin cotton barrier between it and the hand Linnea had planted on my thigh to lean closer.

Rational thought fled like a gazelle chased by a predator until I felt more animal than man. I moved the hand on the base of Linnea’s neck up into the damp, silken strands at the base of her skull and fisted my fingers, tugging her head back so I could plunder her more deeply.

Her moan shivered from her tongue to mine, and I swallowed it down.

I wanted to undo the strings of the wet bikini she still wore and lick the sea salt off her heavy breasts until her nipples puckered and reddened.

I wanted to suck marks into her long, golden neck and rub stubble burn in the valley of her chest like a map of everywhere I’d touched.

I wanted to fix my teeth to the curve of her shoulder and bite hard enough to bruise.

And I wanted Adam to see it all.

To know I wanted her, I’d had her, some part of her was mine .

But also, that some part of her could be his.

That some part of me had been and would always be his as well.

What the two of us could do to this golden girl in the velvet fold of night, when the outside world faded away and sins could flourish like creatures in the dark.

“You’re intoxicating,” I told her, before sucking her full bottom lip between my teeth.

“So are you,” she said instantly, pressing even deeper into me so that she was almost straddling the console, one knee on my thigh, her hard nipples rubbing against my chest. “I could get drunk off this. Off you.”

I pulled her head back with a sharp little pull that made her mouth fall open on a gasp, showcasing kiss-swollen lips and flushed cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open, revealing blown pupils that spoke even more eloquently than her words.

She wanted me.

Did that make this so much better or worse?

Before I could decide, there was a loud bang from outside the car.

Like guilty teenagers caught necking after curfew, Linnea and I sprang apart. She fell ungracefully into her seat, her long legs akimbo, so that when the passenger door suddenly opened, she fell out backward first.

Only to be caught in the strong arms of Adam Meyers.

Who lifted her deftly to her feet, holding her close as he did so, though his eyes were pinned to me.

And he was glowering as fiercely as I’d ever seen him.

For one crystal-clear moment, it was clear he was on the edge of violence, and if I breathed wrong, he would launch himself at me, looking for blood.

I just couldn’t tell if he was angry because I had kissed his fake girlfriend, or if, perhaps wishful thinking, he was angry that she had kissed me .