Page 40 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

“Not much has changed,” I agreed, but it was a warning to us both.

I am still the same man with the same fears , I meant.

My old lover nodded slightly, his mouth tight. “I know. Unlike you, I have changed much over the last ten years and grown past childish fantasies. The moon? It is meant to stay far above me in the sky.”

I turned from him, closing my eyes against the flare of pain his world weariness caused me.

I did that to him.

Stripped him of that romanticism and hope that had been so elemental to his beauty.

It was probably why , I thought with dawning horror, he had given me Linnea instead of dating her himself.

He no longer believed in a love that moved the stars and the sky.

At least, not for him.

Fuck , not all monsters had claws and fangs.

I had never felt crueller.

“Don’t beat yourself up too badly,” Sebastian drawled, almost teasing me. “You were always good at that. I knew what I was getting into back then, Adam. And I know what I’m hoping to get myself into now.”

I shifted to look over my shoulder at him to see the pugnacious angle of his chin and the resolution in his honeyed eyes. It made me feel better to know that he could still be a gladiator when it came to defending his passions, however foolish they might have been.

He noticed the way my shoulders relaxed slightly and smiled a little as he bumped his hip into mine.

“I wish I could dance with you both out there,” Sebastian said in a low voice. “It’s been so long since I felt a man against me.”

My throat went dry in an instant.

“You haven’t been with any other?” I asked, but it was all breath and no sound.

Happily, Sebastian understood, and he shrugged. “How could I have fallen in love with any other man? Even the memory of you surpassed the reality of any of them.”

What was a man supposed to say to something like that?

The words punctured the armored walls around my heart, cutting me straight to the soul.

“Sebastian,” I said, and it throbbed like a wound with longing and angst and the pain of new hope mingled with old fears.

“I’ve dreamed of you so many times,” he continued as if he hadn’t just broken my heart and then brought it back to life again with a handful of words. “Touching me again. Tonight, I cannot stop thinking of it.”

I swallowed thickly as warmth swept away some of the anguish.

“Tonight, I don’t want to talk about feelings,” he admitted, very uncharacteristically.

He laughed shortly when I raised a skeptical brow.

“I want to focus on this moment instead of the past or the next. I want to tell you that I wish I could drag you onto the dance floor and tangle our bodies with Linnea’s.

“I want to feel your big hands on my hips as you move me to the rhythm you set, Linnea between us and writhing. I know you’ve thought about the three of us together.

” His chuckle was wood smoke, rich and heady.

It made my eyes sting and my throat ache.

“She wouldn’t be like Savvy, cold but politely submissive, a tight restraint on her need to be a good girl for us. ”

“No,” I agreed, because I had thought about it. Linnea made it impossible not to. Just watching her move her hips hypnotically to the beat, her own hands like lover’s trailing over her curves, was enough to tempt a much better man than I to sin. “She is so curious. She would be…enthusiastic.”

“ Si ,” Seb almost hissed, adjusting his weight beside me so that the hard length of his erection pressed into my hip. It shocked me like a cattle prod. “I think she would beg and beg for more until she could no longer take anymore. But oh, she would try.”

“Maybe she would even cry for us,” I added, lost to the fantasy his Amaretto-soaked voice was feeding me. “Pretty tears as she struggled to come again, to take as much of our cum as we could give her. To please us both because it would please her so much to do so.”

We locked eyes, heat crackling between us. I loved that we were the same height and a similar build, though he was narrower through the waist. It was work to bend him to my will, and the satisfaction of a job well done was always that much greater because of it.

“Do you think she has thought about it?” Sebastian asked softly.

“Oh, I know she has,” I muttered, thinking of the filthy things she had whispered to me about her own desires, about her own insinuations. “She may look like pure sunshine, but our girl has a dark side.”

“ La nostra ragazza ,” Sebastian murmured. “Our girl.”

I stiffened as I realized my slip, but his happy grin was impossible to take umbrage with.

“I like the sound of this very much,” he admitted.

I did, too.

Fuck, I was in a world of trouble.

A muttered curse in Italian alerted me to Sebastian’s glare. I followed it over my shoulder to the dance floor and saw an actor I recognized as Jace Galantine, twenty-something American sweetheart, dancing very closely with Linnea.

Our Linnea.

I was moving before I could think to curb the blazing impulse.

Sebastian was so tight at my back, he almost stepped on my heels.

Jace was pressed into Linnea’s back, one hand on her hip, holding her close while their hips moved to the music. Linnea’s eyes were closed as she tossed her head languidly to the liquid beat, almost as if she was so caught up in the music she didn’t even know she wasn’t dancing alone.

A growl lodged in my throat.

“Jace.” Sebastian’s voice was a whip cracking across the bodies between us as we neared them.

Immediately, the younger actor’s eyes widened as he took in the sight of us. He was fit, as most leading men were, but shorter than both of us by a significant margin.

Good , I thought grimly, fists clenching.

“Step off,” I ordered him, the words sharp enough to cut my own mouth coming up. “Unless you have been living under a rock, I presume you know the beautiful woman you’re grinding against is very much taken.”

Linnea had stopped dancing, mostly, only her hips slightly swaying as if she couldn’t help the movement. Her head was cocked, though, mouth pursed as if we were curiosities in a zoo.

“We were just dancing,” Jace said, holding his hands up in surrender, but the grin on his mouth was wicked. “No crime against that, last time I checked.”

“Maybe not,” I agreed. “The crime would come later when I knocked you out for touching what’s mine.”

I was watching her so closely, it was the only reason I noticed her delicate shiver and the way she involuntarily licked her lips.

Far from being disgusted by my admittedly outrageous machoism, my Sunbeam was aroused .

Lust cut my possessive rage off at the knees.

Without sparring Jace another look, I offered my hand to Linnea, who took it immediately and let herself be pulled into my arms, her back to my front.

I banded an arm around her waist, used my other hand to push the sweat-dampened hair off one shoulder, and used my teeth against her neck instead of a kiss.

“Did you forget who owns you, Linnea?” I asked darkly.

She raised one hand to my neck to pin me to her fluttering pulse point. The scent of her was enriched by her racing heart and warm body, blossoming like a night-blooming garden.

“You left me alone on the dance floor,” she said, staring up at me through her long, painted lashes. “And I left my ‘look but don’t touch’ sign at home.”

“Perhaps we should get you a new one that says ‘property of Adam Meyers,’” I suggested.

She pouted playfully. “But then what would Sebastian do?”

I hissed as she canted her hips back into my groin and swiveled them at the same time that provocative statement sank in.

My hands gripped her hips to still her, only I found them pulling her impossibly closer instead. “Behave.”

“No,” she countered, swirling out of my arms toward Sebastian who caught her even as he continued to exchange biting words with Jace Galantine.

I hadn’t known they were closely acquainted enough for Sebastian to uncharacteristically dislike him, but the set of his jaw and the way his free hand—the other loosely wrapped around Linnea—cut through the air spoke of his animosity.

“She’s hurt,” Jace said as I stepped closer again to listen. “Both Tate and I have noticed she’s not been herself the last few days, and Edgecumbe mentioned you had been by to visit. When I confronted her, she told me you’d said some things you didn’t mean.”

Seb scoffed. “Oh, I assure you, I meant them. Savannah is just very skilled at wishing away the things that cause her discomfort.”

“She’s uncomfortable now that you’re fighting.”

“What does my relationship, or lack thereof, with Savannah have to do with you?” Sebastian asked, and I was momentarily proud of his haughty demeanor.

It seemed likely he’d learned it from me.

Jace shrugged, but it was a stiff expression and he shoved his hands in his pockets. “She’s been good to me.”

Seb’s laughter was bitter. “Of course, she has. Why don’t you worry about your own relationship with Savvy. As you can see, I have my hands full.”

It was a well-aimed retort, except for the fact that Linnea was in his arms and I was the one who had just made a claim on her.

Something cruel twisted in Jace’s corn-fed handsome face. “You seem to have a thing for other men’s women.”

“And you like to live dangerously,” Linnea cut in, stepping out of Sebastian’s hold to snap the words at the other man.

“If you’re done causing trouble, I think it’s best that you leave.

You can either do that like a gentleman, quietly and with grace, or I can ask Sinclair to send a bouncer to escort you. Which would you rather?”

He seemed shocked by Linnea’s temper, and truthfully, so was I. That she had a backbone had been obvious since the start, but the fierceness of her loyalty was unusual in this town.

Especially given who her mother was.

A woman who had five husbands in her lifetime.

God, she deserved only the very best, and here she was bookended by two men with enough baggage to fill LAX.