Page 30 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

“You know, for a very long time, he was all I wanted,” she mused.

“But now that I am starting to know him better, I get the sense that I fantasized about a myth, and I want to get to know the man.” She slid her gaze coyly to mine, long lashes casting deep shadows on her cheeks, which were painted pink in the setting sunlight. “I feel that same way about you.”

“That I’m a man of mystery,” I said with an arrogant smirk to deflect that intimacy we were building so tightly around each other.

“That I might like the man much more than I liked the legend,” she explained solemnly. “That I feel privileged to get to see behind the mask, however exquisitely you’ve crafted it.”

Something icy slid down my spine, real fear, the kind I hadn’t felt since Sebastian Lombardi moved into my carriage house ten years ago, and the tectonic plates of my life had begun to shift beneath my feet.

“You don’t know the first thing about the real me,” I told her, baldly, even a little cruelly. “If you did, you would not have such a romantic look in your eye. I may have been bred a gentleman, Linnea, but I am a natural-born sinner. The extent of which would make your innocent ears burn.”

“You can’t shock me,” she protested. “I may be younger than you, but I’ve been a curious girl all my life. Perhaps some of my exploits would appall you .”

This was dangerous territory in a way our previous conversation—which I had been so desperate to change—was not.

I did not need to think of Linnea as a hot-blooded creature with curious fantasies and a wealth of experience. Best to let her remain an untainted saint-like figure, too young and innocent to experiment in my infernal playground.

She was already too gorgeous to ignore, the lush curves and long limbs, the perpetually tousled hair that begged for a firm grip so that one could plunder the soft, full set of that sassy mouth.

God, the things I would do to her without even knowing how many things she might want to do to me in return.

It had been too long since I had a creative bedfellow instead of a rote submissive at the club.

A touch to my thigh drew me back from my fantasies with a jolt. Linnea’s hand was sliding up my leg, dangerously high, as she leaned so close I could count the striations in her jewel-toned eyes.

“I’ve spent hours on my knees,” she whispered, voice dropping into a sultry rasp that hooked me through the gut.

“Mouth open and aching from use as I sucked a nice big cock. I like to feel like that, though. Used and wet and open. Tied up, held down, fucked full. I’ve tried so many things, I keep waiting to feel satisfied, but I suspect I might truly be insatiable because I read something in a kinky romance novel at night alone in bed, or think about the handsome stranger putting his hand around my throat in an elevator.

I know there is so much more I want to experience.

” I bit back a fierce shiver as she lilted her head to let her silken lips brush the outer shell of my ear, breath hot on my skin.

“I only need the right person to teach me.”

Cold air slapped me in the face as she pulled back and grabbed a fried shrimp, snapping off the head before offering me a toothy smile.

And though I was Dominant through and through, with very few tendencies toward submission, at that moment, I felt utterly in her thrall. It was work to pull myself out of it, ripping apart the sticky web that held me prey until I could remember who I was and why I lived the way I did.

“That would not be wise,” I said, barely recognizing the gutturalness of my own voice.

“No,” she agreed easily with a flippant shrug. “But most things worth doing aren’t.”

“You promised you would not fall in love with me,” I reminded her, forcefully enunciating my words so they were clipped and cutting. “Sex might muddy those waters.”

“For me or you?” she retorted.

I scoffed. “Did I not just tell you I was a sinner?”

“Did I not just tell you I’m a woman who loves sex?

” she countered, suddenly close again, her hand on my thigh, yellow-painted nails digging into my tensed muscle.

“Three years is a long time for a sinner to be abstinent, Mr. Meyers. A little stress relief might do you some good. If not with me, then think about asking Sebastian for forgiveness and seeing where that may go.”

“Don’t be preposterous.”

“Don’t be a coward,” she dared.

Our eyes met and held, hers large, almond-shaped, and unblinking.

The standoff was broken only by the sound of Linnea’s phone going off, “Mamma Mia” blasting from the small speakers. She pulled it from her purse immediately, with the haste of someone responsible for a dependent.

“Hello,” she said, huskiness gone, all professionalism.

Only the lingering heart in my gut to remind me of the dangerous games we’d been playing.

Because now she’d done it.

Implanted the imagery in the fertile soil of my brain.

Linnea on her knees for me, bee-stung lips swollen from the movement of my cock over her tongue, her hands tied with a ribbon behind her back like a present given to me by the man fucking into her from behind, tall, dark and swarthy and glossed with sweat.

The iterations of three bodies tangled together in an erotic dance flittered through my mind like dailies after a day of filming.

Seb fucking her as I fucked him. His mouth on her breasts, mine between her thighs.

Linnea and I teasing him as he strained against the ropes tying him to my bed, because I thought they both might like that.

I certainly would.

Fuck me.

She had opened Pandora’s box, and now I feared I would never be able to stuff those lustful dreams back inside.

“Adam.” Her voice, ringing with panic, cut through my daze.

Immediately, I was alert, pulling her closer into the cage of my arms and searching the parking lot for paparazzi who might have followed us.

“That was Chaucer,” she said, nails digging into my forearm, her face bloodless beneath the tan.

“She couldn’t get a hold of you so she called me.

Apparently, Oscar Hampton did an interview with Tamara Bridge at the London Entertainment Herald .

There’s a photo of the two of you in a Rolls Royce smiling at the camera.

He claims you were in a secret relationship while you were married to Savannah. ”

The news drowned me like a bucket of arctic water, reminding me why I did not get to have nice things like pretty, sunshiney blondes with wisdom beyond their years or Italian actors with enormous hearts.

Because I may have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth but that was when my luck had run out.