Page 56 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

LINNEA

“ A re you sure about this?”

I tore my gaze from the rare rainy skies of Los Angeles out the window to look at Sebastian in the driver’s seat.

He was wearing black jeans that skimmed his powerful, long legs and a crisp white dress shirt with black buttons undone to the top of his chest. It should have been a professional outfit, but the way the Italian wore it was distinctly sinful.

He looked exactly like a man who could convince a holy saint to sin with a flex of his full mouth into a seductive smile and the shine of his golden gaze.

It was exactly what we were banking on, really, so I was glad he had come to play.

I was similarly dressed in a fairly conservative wrap dress, a colour of bruised blueberries that almost exactly matched my eyes.

A pair of stilettos was on my feet, the same gold as Seb’s irises.

Beneath the fabric, though, I wore a creation that had taken me weeks of careful hand sewing to bring together.

Italian lace was extremely delicate, as was the silk I used to accent the plum-coloured corset and thong set.

I fiddled with the clasp where the stockings connected to the garter belt through the slit in my dress and watched as Seb’s stare slid to my legs before jerking back to watch the road.

Was I sure about this?

The plan I had concocted in the thirty seconds it took me to locate my phone after Adam left and call Sebastian to come over wearing something sexy.

I wasn’t even sure it would work until I hunted down Chaucer in her office in the basement and asked her very pleasantly to tell me where the hell Adam’s sex club was.

She was Adam’s number one, his manager but also his assistant, friend, and secret keeper.

I was shocked she told me without hesitation, typing the address into the map app on my phone.

She’d shrugged at my look of astonishment and offered blandly, “If Adam won’t look out for his own happiness, someone should.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant herself or me or both of us, but it didn’t matter.

She was right.

I would force happiness down Adam’s throat if I had to, which was basically what the plan consisted of.

Showing up at Bacchanalia Sex Club with Sebastian in tow in order to seduce our reluctant Brit into finally giving this a chance.

Us.

Together.

“Yes,” I said, and my voice was sure. “Are you?”

It was a more complicated question for Sebastian, I knew.

He and Adam had so much history between them, years of stagnated pain that was just starting to properly heal now that they were addressing it.

But I knew Sebastian in a way I was only beginning to know Adam.

We had been friends for a very long time, and even though it was over distance, our postcards often served as diary entries.

I wanted a love , he’d written me once, that moved the stars and the sky . I thought I found it a long time ago, but maybe I was wrong .

Only half wrong, I thought, or maybe hoped.

To see Seb and Adam together was to believe in soulmates.

I didn’t think Savannah deserved to be considered in that equation, but I desperately, wistfully hoped I might be.

Sebastian’s hand found my thigh, skirting up the thin nylon stocking until he reached my bare skin bisected by the garter. When I looked up at him, his face was cast in the red of the stoplight, his expression raw with hunger.

“I have never wanted anything so much in my life,” he said honestly, accent thick. “I have always been willing to work for what I want, Linnea. But if this is to work with Adam, he needs to be willing to fight for us, too, capisci ?”

“I know,” I agreed. “But I think he needs us to take the first steps. To prove we’re here even when he tries to push us away.”

Seb made a broken noise in his throat, hand spasming on my thigh. “I went when he told me to the first time. I won’t make this mistake again. I am older and wiser, and I have you.”

“I make a difference?” I asked, trying to be playful as if the question didn’t mean anything to me.

“Without you, I think, Adam and I would still be strangers who used to love one another,” he answered.

I chewed my bottom lip and picked at a hangnail. “You know, if this love story is about you two and there isn’t room for me—”

“Do not continue,” Sebastian ordered, lifting his hand to press it over my mouth. “ Dopo la pioggia, arriva il sole . After rain, the sun arrives,” he translated. “You are our sun, Linnea. Do not doubt that you are vital. I’m beginning to think you were made for us.”

“And Savannah?” I asked because I had to.

Sebastian had loved her for a very long time, in a way that Adam didn’t seem to share.

If we were going to convince Adam to take a chance on us, we couldn’t afford a ghost muddying things up.

Seb’s hand returned to the wheel with his other one and squeezed hard enough to squeak. “That,” he said somberly, voice deep, “is done.”

We pulled in front of an ornate gate blocking the entrance to a long driveway in Brentwood, of all places.

“This is it?” I asked as Seb lowered the window and pushed the intercom.

When a voice asked for the password, Sebastian spoke the Latin phrase Chaucer had given us.

A bene placito .

At one’s pleasure.

Fitting for a sex club, especially one whose clientele included the rich and famous of Hollywood’s elite.

Chaucer had contacted the manager for us, but it still took over an hour for her email to respond with the requisite forms that Sebastian and I had to fill out to be allowed into the club, even for the night.

Without Adam’s consent, he couldn’t sponsor our evening, so Sebastian had reached out to someone else.

His brother-in-law, Daniel Sinclair.

He’d blushed when he made the call, but Sinclair only treated the favor with cool professionalism without requesting any messy questions.

Without me asking, Seb had explained, “My family isn’t exactly vanilla. Sinclair is fairly infamous in BDSM circles. I try not to think about it too much.”

The gates swung open, and Seb pulled the Lamborghini up the manicured drive until we reached a circular driveway in front of an enormous Tudor-style mansion.

A woman wearing leather hot pants and a corset with a matching leather chauffeur’s hat waited for us, opening my door and then walking around to take the keys from Sebastian.

Another woman waited at the entrance with a silver tray of champagne, wearing a sheer black mini dress with white frills like a very naughty maid’s costume.

I swallowed thickly at the sight of her round curves spilling out of the deep collar.

Sebastian’s chuckle was smoky in my ear as he took my arm and tugged me into his side. “You look very flushed already, Linnea. Are you ready for what we might see tonight?”

“I’m ready for what we might do,” I corrected, because even though I was wildly excited to enter this sordid domain, I still felt like a coltish, overeager teen who didn’t quite belong.

“Outdoor clothing is banned beyond this point,” the woman told us after handing over the champagne. “There are lockers in the antechamber just through here. When you’ve disrobed, I will take you inside. Please pick a mask from the selection on the wall as we value our clients’ anonymity here.”

Sebastian led me into the beautifully appointed change room, empty of people but filled with the rumbling bass of music I recognized as Glass Animals.

“Have you ever done this before?” I asked, suddenly needing to know.

“No,” he assured me, guiding me deeper into the room. “Adam had a club he frequented in London, but Savannah didn’t like to play in front of others, and I never thought to ask to go along. This is a first for me, too.”

“Does it turn you on?” I asked.

“You turn me on. In any place or time, even when it’s inconvenient. Now, let me help you with this,” Seb murmured as he shifted behind me and twisted my hips until I faced a floor- length mirror. “I’ve been dying to see what you have under this dress since you opened the door for me.”

A violent shiver scoured through me as he planted a flat hand in my belly and used the other to slowly tug at the sash tying the dress closed around my hips.

He looked so powerful towering over me, so much taller even than my five nine height that I felt uncharacteristically dainty pressed against him.

The low lights limned him in gold, casting his features in shadows so that he seemed almost sinister.

I shivered again and leaned my weight back against him.

“That’s my girl,” he murmured, pressing his lips into my hair as the sash finally pulled through the knot and unbound.

I watched his eyes, azure gold in the lamplight, as my dress gaped open to reveal the intricate lingerie I’d designed myself.

His sharp inhale sounded almost painful.

“ Dio mio , tu sei incantevole ,” he muttered in husky Italian before remembering to translate. “My God, you are enchanting.”

His hands traced the path of the high-cut plum-purple panties from my hips to the apex of my thighs, then fiddled with the bow at the top that dipped down to expose a V of bare skin on my pubis.

Trailing his rough fingertips up to my belly button, he feathered his touch over the points of lace that draped down to touch the sides of my hips and then up to the center point of my ribs where boning plumped up my breasts until they raised obscenely over the cups, my nipples one heaving breath away from exposure.

“If I was not touching you, I would think you are a dream,” he told me in a ragged voice as he cupped my breasts through the delicate fabric, rubbing his thumbs over the points of my nipples. “What beautiful wrapping for Adam’s gift tonight.”

I trembled at the possessiveness and praise.

“Will he reward me, do you think, for giving him something so lovely to play with?” Sebastian murmured, dragging his mouth from my ear to my neck, where he sank his teeth into my skin. He laved the small hurt with his tongue. “Should I leave my own mark so he knows who the present is from?”

“Yes,” I breathed, tipping my head to the side as if my spine had dissolved.

“ Si ,” he echoed, before closing his mouth over my flesh and sucking hard.

I gasped, my knees weakening at the dual sensation of pain and pleasure that arrowed down my chest and sank into my low belly. Sebastian banded one arm under my breasts to keep me on my feet and sucked harder.

When he lifted his head, the bruise he’d left behind was very nearly the same dark purple as the lingerie I wore for them.

“My turn,” I suggested, already twisting to Sebastian and raising on my toes in my heels so I could reach his neck.

Without hesitation, he lowered his head so I could sink my fingers into his rumpled black waves and fist them tight while I left my own vicious love bite on his throat.

When I stepped back, we were both breathing heavily.

“Pick my mask for me,” Sebastian asked, smoothing his hands down my sides as if he could not stop touching me.

He spun me by the hips to face the wall of masks, and I hummed as I surveyed the hundreds of options. It only took a moment to pick one for him, though, and he laughed when I walked over to pluck it from the hook.

It was a black velvet mask with a spray of what looked like real diamonds across one side of the eyes that resembled the Milky Way. The rich color brought out his golden eyes and deepened his swarthy allure.

Without saying a word, he reached around me to secure my own mask, a delicate gold affair with a blazing sun in the crest of the forehead.

As he secured the ribbons around my head, I tipped forward to snag one more from the wall. It was pale silver and pockmarked like the surface of the moon and fitted in the shape of the same one worn by the Phantom of the Opera.

“He’ll be wearing one already,” Sebastian reminded me. “But I agree this is perfect.”

“The sun, the moon, and the stars,” I told him, spinning so I could press my body against the length of his. “Now, all you need is love enough to move them.”

Seb made an inarticulate noise in the back of his throat, slid a hand into the back of my hair, and lowered his mouth to mine. This kiss was slow and sensual, a lead-up move that left my thoughts fuzzy around the edges and my thighs pressed together to stem the ache between them.

“ Trottolina ,” he murmured against my damp mouth as he stroked a hand along my jaw. “I am tempted to keep you in this room and ravage you myself. If you want to include Adam, we should leave while I have the will to do so.”

Female satisfaction curled through me. “I want you with or without him. I always have,” I confessed, taking his hand and pressing it between my thighs so that he could feel the dampness already gathered there.

“I just happen to think the three of us together makes sense, somehow, more than just the two.”

“Oh, I agree,” he growled, cupping me hard through the lace and nipping at the love bite on my neck again. “How do you want to play this?” he asked me, and I loved that he was letting me set the stage.

Sebastian wasn’t a total Dom like Adam, but he had a dominant streak that ran parallel with his submissive one, and it felt like a gift to be given the reins.

“Speaking of gifts,” I said coyly, feeling inspired. “Do you think that woman has a pen and paper hidden anywhere in that little dress?”

Sebastian’s answering grin was sly. “I’m sure we can find out.”