Page 65 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)
“I know you don’t get this,” she said, stepping closer to take one of my hands, “but you deserve to be happy. This isn’t about luck, this is about the hard work you’ve done to be a good person who deserves good karma, to be the best actress you can be, to be the sort of woman a man like Adam fucking Meyers could fall in love with. ”
“Oh, I don’t know about love,” I said, waving away her words as a blush warmed my cheeks.
Ro’s eyes gleamed. “Well, I guess we’ll see about that. Break a leg, knock ’em dead, may the force be with you, and all that jazz. Call me tomorrow for a complete debrief.”
“I will,” I promised.
“Do you want me to take Miranda back to the guest house?” she offered, already moving towards my mum to take the handles of her chair.
“I love you,” I told her, because I seemed overstuffed with the emotion and needed a safe place to vent some of it.
She grinned as she pushed Miranda to my side and accepted my kiss on the cheek before waiting for me to do the same to mum. “We love you, too.”
The moment they left, my gut twisted into knots.
I moved to pick at a hangnail and cursed myself, clasping my hands behind my back as I twisted to face the mirror again.
“Just who do you think you are?” I asked the admittedly beautiful girl in the mirror.
“My future bride,” a familiar, crisp British accent sounded from the doorway behind me.
I angled myself in the reflection to see Adam, and I put my hand to brace myself against the frame of the mirror to steady myself.
He was an absolute vision.
The suit he wore was a deep charcoal that was almost black, a stark contrast to his crisp white shirt, which was unbuttoned at the throat.
There was a vivid yellow silk pocket square in his breast pocket that exactly matched my dress and brought out the emerald green of his eyes.
He had his hair pushed back from his forehead with product in a manner that only highlighted his masculine beauty, his strong features, and dark brows, as well as the dimple in his square chin.
He looked exactly like a movie star should, almost otherworldly and so beautiful I had to blink away sunspots.
“I could certainly be convinced to marry you if you agree to wear that to the wedding,” I said, going for playful and failing because my voice was too breathy.
Damn, he looked incredible.
For a moment I felt sixteen again, watching Adam and his wife leave with Miranda and Bobbi for one of their glamorous events in London. That I was the woman here with him now was utterly surreal.
He chuckled as he pushed off the doorframe and stalked toward me, that predatory gait that made my thighs clench even though I’d already come multiple times that day.
Knowing how skilled he was with his hands, his cock, his sinful mouth, and that depraved, devious mind only proved to amplify his beauty tenfold.
I would have sunk to my knees if it wouldn’t ruin the lines of my dress.
His grin was wicked, as if he could read my mind as he came to a stop behind me.
The sight of us together in the mirror as he slid an arm around my waist took my breath away. And suddenly, being on his arm didn’t feel so surreal anymore. We looked perfect together, so golden we seemed to glow.
“Look at you,” he murmured, eyes raking over every inch of my reflection. “Just look at you. I’m not sure I knew a woman could captivate me the way you do.”
I arched a brow. “You’ve been married and dated your fair share of actresses and models.”
“Which means I am an authority on the matter,” he countered coolly. “So you should believe me when I say I have never in my life seen a more striking woman. You will be the envy of everyone on the red carpet.”
“You like the dress, then,” I said with a pleased little smile.
“I like you in anything,” he corrected. “But seeing you in your own art is especially appealing, I have to admit. You look ravishing.”
“Thank you,” I said, because his praise felt like cool rain flushing out the lingering toxicity of Miranda’s biting criticisms in the past.
He pressed a kiss to my head and then reached for the jewelry box left open on the chest of drawers. “Allow me to help you with these.”
I swallowed thickly as he carefully swept my hair off my neck and looped the cold gold necklace across my throat so that the ten-carat yellow diamond gleamed in the hollow between my collarbones. Once done, he helped secure the matching cluster of yellow and white diamonds in my ears.
“Your hands are bare,” he murmured, taking them in his own and smoothing his rough thumbs over my knuckles.
I curled my fingers into fists. “None of my rings felt good enough to wear tonight.”
I’d bought most of them from consignment shops and at markets. Only the pearl piece from my friend in Hawaii was worth anything, but it didn’t quite go with my dress.
Adam raised each hand to press a kiss to the back of both.
“You could wear those sweatpants that cling to your hips and one of those cut-off tees you like, and you’d still surpass anyone there tonight,” he assured me with his particular brand of cool authority that made you believe everything he said.
“Are you ready to go? Sebastian is waiting in the living room to see you before he takes off.”
“Yes.” I reached out for the tube of lipstick that the makeup artist had left for me to add to my clutch, along with a mini powder puff and a travel vial of my perfume. “I want to give him something before we leave.”
“Good idea.” He frowned. “I hate that he has to go by himself.”
“He’s taking Giselle,” I reminded him. “But I know what you mean. There’s nothing for it, though.”
And truly, there didn’t seem to be.
I was marrying Adam to keep him from public scandal. Arriving at an award show with a woman and a man on his arm would truly change everything about his life and career for the better. After years of blackmail from Oscar Hampton, he deserved some peace.
Even if I felt Sebastian deserved our love in the shadows and the light.
An impossible universe, Seb called it, and I thought he might be right.
“Speaking of Sebastian,” Adam said as he escorted me down the hall toward the living area. “Brace for impact.”
“What?” I asked, but I was immediately distracted by the sight of our Italian standing in a puddle of sunlight spilling in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The beams turned his eyes to liquid gold as they rose to lock on us, the color utterly arresting against the depth of his tan and all that raven-black hair that waved a little long over his ears and spilled over his forehead.
He had grown out his usual stubble so that it was almost a short beard, the inkiness contrasting with the soft texture of his full pink mouth.
The dark to Adam’s light and just as utterly magnificent.
“How do you say breathtaking in Italian?” I asked Seb.
His mouth twitched. “ Mozzafiato .”
“ Sei mozzafiato ,” I told him in my best Italian.
“ Bella come il sole ,” he returned, and I knew enough Italian to translate that before he did. “Beautiful like the sun.”
His suit was as dark as tar, the velvet blazer sleekly tailored to his tapered waist and broad shoulders. The only spot of collar was a light grey button-up, and I was grateful it wasn’t black because otherwise my idea might not have worked.
If I was feeling particularly whimsical, I might have said Adam and Seb, as they came to stand together before me, looked like day and night, and I, in my dress, the sunshine between them.
“We both have something for you before we leave,” Adam told him, pushing me gently in the back so I stepped into the circle of Sebastian’s waiting arms.
He grinned down at me. “A present?”
“Yes,” I murmured, suddenly shy. “If you don’t want me to do it, you can just say so, but I wanted to mark you as mine before you went out there.
I didn’t like that you were alone and so far from us at the Critics Choice Awards, that there was no way to look over and know just with a glance you were ours. ”
Sebastian's throat worked around a hard swallow, and his pupils dilated with lust as he held me just a bit closer. “I can tell you right now that I will like whatever idea this is. I want to be marked as yours just as you want to mark me.”
“Good,” I breathed, smiling wide. “Because everyone will know you’re taken if I do this. But only you, me, and Adam will know by whom.”
I only had to tip my head forward thanks to my sky-high heels in order to take the edge of his collar in one hand to steady it so I could press my vibrantly painted rose pink lips to the pale fabric.
I’d had the makeup artist apply the pigment liberally with exactly this in mind so when I pulled away, I was satisfied to see the distinct print of my mouth on his shirt.
“There.” The word rumbled out of me like a purr. “Now everyone will know there is a lucky lady in your life who is allowed to kiss you however and whenever she wants.”
Sebastian stared down at me with a wealth of words written in those gold eyes. His mouth worked for a moment as if he had forgotten how to speak, but then it flexed into such a gorgeous smile I almost forgot my own name.
“I knew this suit was missing something,” he teased, but there was a seriousness to his gaze that made me swallow as he pressed our foreheads together. “There is nothing better than belonging to someone.”
“Someones,” I corrected impishly.
He chuckled and pulled back so he could smile at Adam beside me. “Someones,” he agreed.
“Well, she stole my thunder,” Adam quipped as he stepped closer to us, pressed along Sebastian’s side.
We both watched as he pulled a watch from his pocket.
It had a slightly worn leather strap, but the watch was gold, with a copper-pink dial and a moon and stars design inked in gold and navy blue.
“Only fourteen of these were made, and my mother’s father had one of them.
It is from the 1940s, and it’s the only thing I have left from him. ”
He stared at the watch as he held it between us as if transfixed by it.
His voice was quiet when he next spoke. “It’s on loan,” he told Sebastian as he finally raised his gaze to the other man.
“Until the day you feel comfortable wearing the other Patek Phillipe I once gave you. I wanted you to have something of myself with you tonight. It’s not quite holding your hand myself…
” he joked lamely and shrugged one shoulder.
Sebastian’s fingers trembled ever so slightly as he raised his hand to take the watch. “Adam, if I still had that Patek, I would wear it now. But”—he winced—“in a fit of rage, I returned it to Savannah when I first saw her in New York with Tate a few months after things ended.”
Something like heartbreak followed swiftly by rage surged through Adam’s expression. “Well, it wasn’t hers to keep. I bought that for you.”
“ Mi dispiace ,” he said, reaching out to cup Adam’s neck. “It was wrong of me, but I was hurt.”
Adam’s jaw clenched, but he shook off his anger relatively well and jerked his chin at the watch currently in Sebastian’s free hand. “I’d like to see it on you tonight when you win your second Academy Award.”
Seb lifted his hand toward him so that Adam could fix it to his wrist. It was oddly erotic watching him, and I realized I might have some kind of bondage kink.
“Now, you're ours,” I announced, leaning forward to brush my lips over Seb’s. “Inside and out.”
Sebastian chuckled lewdly at my innuendo, but there was pure, almost boyish joy as he smiled at us both and looped his long arms around our shoulders to bring us in for a three-way hug.
It could have been awkward, maybe, to hug with an extra person, but we fitted together like puzzle pieces, as if we’d been carved into shape for exactly this purpose.
I had never been a big believer in fate, but standing in Adam’s living room in his and Sebastian’s strong embrace, I thought back to that day on Croyde Beach in Cornwall and wondered if this wasn’t exactly where life had intended us to end up.