Page 64 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

LINNEA

P reparing for the Critics Choice Awards had barely prepared me for the Academy Awards.

This was Hollywood’s shining award ceremony, the one to be nominated for and seen at.

Sebastian was being nominated for Best Actor, and Adam was presenting for the category of Best Picture.

They had to be primped and prodded by a team of makeup artists, fashion stylists, and hairdressers, but they were still done long before I was.

Five women were working on me, one for my nails, another for my hair, one for my makeup, and two more for styling with one specializing particularly in jewelry.

Adam had rented a number of options from Tiffany’s for the evening based on three dress options the stylist had okayed from my designs.

I knew as soon as I saw the enormous yellow diamond pendant at the end of a sleek yellow gold choker that I had to wear the gown I’d labored over for the past week.

It was a golden yellow silk gown with a flowing A-line skirt and a bodice constructed of carefully overlapping and hand-stitched swathes of delicate fabric that resembled flower petals.

Even Eleanor, the stylist, clicked her tongue as she helped me step into the fragile silk and fasten it at my back. It fit like a dream, hugging and emphasizing the nip in my waist and drawing subtle attention to my leg through the slit of the dress and the roundness of my breasts above the bodice.

“I was skeptical when Chaucer told me you were wearing something you designed yourself,” Eleanor explained. “But you look absolutely gorgeous and completely one of a kind.”

I beamed at her because a compliment from an A-List stylist was as good as gold. “Thank you, that means a lot.”

“The hair helps,” Joey, the hairstylist, added with a cheeky wink as he carefully patted a few stray hairs down with an eyebrow brush coated in hairspray.

“It does,” I agreed, because he had coaxed my wavy, often unruly hair into perfect retro Hollywood glam waves that gleamed just a few shades lighter than the dress.

“If I didn’t love you,” Rozhin said from where she sat on the bed in “my” room, though I hadn’t slept there in over a week. “I would punch you for looking so damn stunning. You’ll give normal women everywhere a complex.”

I laughed, tossing a cotton ball at her over my shoulder. “So dramatic. Are we sure you aren’t the wannabe actress?”

“There is no ‘wannabe’ about it,” she corrected, standing up to come just behind and beside me in the full-length reflection of the mirror.

I towered over her in my five-inch heels that would put me at eye level with Adam and Sebastian.

“You’re a bona fide celebrity now, honeycakes.

Dating one of the hottest men in Hollywood and being…

friendly with another.” She paused to let me fill in the blanks, but I skittered my gaze over the crew of beauticians who had started to pack up around us, and she took the hint.

“Your episodes in the hottest comedy on television are airing in a few weeks, you’ve been cast in a Georges Galagoes film, and Sebastian has promised you a leading role in the first film he’s written since Blood Oath . ”

She sighed heavily. “Soon, I’ll just be a footnote in the life and times of Linnea Kai.”

“Never,” I promised, tugging her into my side for a hug. “I don’t know how I would have made it through those first few months in LA without you, Ro. You’re stuck with me for life.”

She hummed but hugged me back briefly before stepping away to look at Miranda, who was seated in a wheelchair in the corner by the window.

She had been quiet, but fairly lucid for the first couple of hours we were getting ready; even excited that I asked the nail tech to do her nails.

However, now she had zoned out. It made my heart ache to see her stare vacantly into the distance, but I reminded myself I was doing all I could for her.

She seemed to be thriving as much as she could living in the guesthouse, which was much more spacious and well-appointed than her own house, and with the lovely nurses, Bituin, Jasmine, and Reyna.

That alone would have made my arrangement with Adam worth it.

But I never could have known how much happier it could make me.

My pussy still ached from Adam’s and Sebastian’s fucking earlier that morning, and I relished the phantom feel of them inside me. Just thinking about Adam’s cum inside Seb as he readied himself to walk the red carpet, to win an Oscar, was enough to make a flush spill down my chest.

But it wasn’t just the earth-quaking, life-altering sex.

Even in my wildest fantasies I couldn’t haven conceived of how right it felt to be with them both, to submit to their pleasure and my own.

It was easier than it had any right to be, too.

But I had spent so many years taking care of my dad and uncles, and then Miranda, that giving up control to two men I could trust felt like peace .

Although, that was everything I had ever dreamed of and more.

It was the fact that Adam and Seb ran lines with me for my episodes on Family Sentence , that they made time to go surfing with me when they could in the morning, and that Adam was actually almost as good as Seb, a fact that blew us both away because he had kept his surfing habit secret from us, or that we tried to watch one of our favorite movies when we had a minute, and last night, Sebastian had tried to teach us some Italian while we watched Cinema Paradiso with subtitles.

It was that Sebastian made time to visit with Miranda, and Adam took time out of his afternoon one day to drive with me to Mrs. Ramirez’s house so I could introduce her to her favorite actor of all time.

It was simply that they were the best men I had ever known, and that included my beloved Dad and uncles.

It wasn’t that I could overlook their flaws, which were myriad and obvious, but that I found them so much more compelling because they were complicated creatures.

No one knew that Adam Meyers woke from nightmares about his time in the Royal Airforce with the crowned prince of England, Arthur Whitley-Fairfax, and the death of his uni flatmate, Gregory, which he reluctantly told me about one morning when he woke me by shouting his name.

No one knew he loved to listen to jazz music while he went for his runs, and that a signed album from Miles Davis was one of his cherished possessions.

That he could rattle of statistics about the English Premier League and, in particular, his favorite team, Kings Cross United, at the drop of a hat.

No one knew that he had such an enormous heart, his capacity for love seemed to scar him.

No one but Seb and me.

Sebastian pretended to be more of an open book than the Brit, but there were things no one would have thought to think about him based on his public persona.

That he was just a little pretentious about food, with a heavy bias for all things Italian being highly superior to anything else.

That he called one of his sisters or his mother almost every day to check in and chat, and he often seemed a little melancholy afterwards, as if he couldn’t breathe for missing them.

That he was ticklish on the bottom of his feet and laughed like a hyena when you brushed your fingertips there, or that he talked in his sleep, murmurs of Italian and English blended in an indecipherable mix.

The intimacy of knowing these two great and famous men in all the little ways, the most poignant ways, made me happier than securing that role in the Georges Gallegos film, happier than Eleanor complimenting a dress I’d poured my sweat and tears into for weeks, happier, even, than surfing at Ho’okipa Beach Park in the winters on Maui.

It felt like such a gift, almost a miracle, that not one but two extraordinary men would trust themselves with me.

It felt the same to know I could trust myself with them.

Because we might not have exchanged words of love, but I knew that was what this was.

Love.

Love so bright and warm that it felt as if I’d swallowed pure sunshine.

I wasn’t used to holding back. My personality, for better or worse, was candid and passionate to the extreme, so it was hard to curb the frequent impulse to tell either of them that I loved them. That they had changed my life, and I was happy I seemed to be changing theirs.

Impulsive, I might be, but Sebastian and Adam had too much baggage for that. They were still finding their footing with each other on a seriously cracked foundation, and we were still figuring out what the three of us even meant.

We didn’t talk about it, but like blind men in an unknown room, we were groping our way toward each other.

I could wait.

At the very least, I had three years to work with, but my greedy heart hoped for much, much more.

“I better go,” Ro said, as the crew started to say their goodbyes and filter out the bedroom door. “I have a shift tonight.”

“Okay,” I said, but I held her a little tighter.

In the whirlwind of the last two months, Rozhin had been my constant, and I suddenly felt like a child who'd been told to give up their comfort blanket.

She laughed as she pulled herself away from me. “You’ll be wonderful tonight, Lins. Don’t worry about anything. I have it on good authority that Adam will make this a night to remember.”

“He makes every night feel that way,” I confessed, twisting to face her as she started for the door, adjusting the train of my gown as I moved. “Lately, things have felt just…too good to be true.”

“Hey!” she snapped, knocking a fist against her head. “Knock on wood, Jesus. Don’t jinx yourself.”

I rolled my eyes but laughed as she meant me to. “Okay, okay, I’ll just try to enjoy.”