Page 51 of Worth Every Moment (Hawkston Billionaires #4)

ERICA

H e leaves and I don’t stop him. I know this isn’t rejection. I know he cares… but it damn well feels like rejection.

For an hour, I sit in the hotel room on our shared bed. Or not shared, as the case may be. Maybe he won’t come back. Maybe he’ll find another room to sleep in.

Maybe I should have told him I was a virgin before things got hot and heavy, but in all honesty, it felt like some dirty, shameful secret. Something that Seb Hawkston could never have understood, and by the way he walked out of here, I suspect I was right.

I held it in until the last second. My body was humming for him, desperate for him to take me whatever way he wanted. If I’d waited a second longer, he’d have released his dick from those trunks and it would have been so much harder to stop him.

It’s not as though we’d need more lube.

In some alternate reality, we’re probably going at it without reserve.

In another, we’re probably not talking to one another at all.

Maybe never even knew each other. Never met.

A dull pain gnaws at my lungs, a sense of horror seeping into my bloodstream.

I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t know Seb; where I can’t touch him, talk to him, hear his laugh or see his smile.

I can’t sit here and wait any longer. I open the door, the heat of the evening air hitting me like a blast of redemption. My sandals flip on the sand, the grains rough where they slip between the soles and my bare feet. I don’t know which way Seb went, but I’m pretty sure I’ll find him.

I pace along the sand, the rhythmical roar of the waves on the beach doing its job to calm my racing heart. I see him, down by the water in the moonlight, staring out at the waves. Alone.

I don’t know what’s going through his head, but I know that whatever it is, we’re going to have to talk about it at some point. It might as well be now.

He doesn’t turn, but when I’m close enough, his deep voice says, “Lefroy.”

My insides compress at the sound of my name on his lips, but I offer a cool, “Hey,” in response.

He taps the sand next to him. “Take a seat.”

I sit awkwardly by his side, watching the waves. He takes a breath and blows it out slowly. “Sex, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say quietly.

The rhythmic wash of the waves fills the silence

“All these years, and I never knew this about you.”

Deep sadness rolls through his words, bringing with it a sense of betrayal that I know will linger longer than I want it to. “I don’t tell people.”

His gaze doesn’t shift from the water. “I guess I hoped I wasn’t just ‘people’ to you.” He lowers his head, running his hand over the back of it and down his neck. “You think we really know each other at all?”

“Bits of each other. Not the whole story. I don’t think you can know someone’s whole story. Most of the time, they don’t even know it themselves.”

“Do you know yours?”

“Maybe,” I admit. “Do you?”

He emits a hollow laugh. “If I do, I wish I didn’t.”

We sit quietly after that, me not wanting to push him.

I keep expecting him to make a joke of all of this.

To ridicule himself or his reaction, and the fact that he doesn’t makes me think this means more to him than I could ever have anticipated.

It holds a weight that’s keeping him beneath the surface, and I wish I could lessen the burden, but I don’t know how. I don’t even know what the burden is.

Seb draws an infinity symbol in the sand with his fingertip, over and over. The logo for my brand. Is he conscious he’s doing it ? Then again, maybe it’s just the number eight.

“How?” he says after he’s traced the shape at least ten times.

“How what?”

“How have you never slept with anyone?”

“Do you mean why? Because ‘how’ makes it sound like I’ve managed to avoid some inevitable accident. Like tripping as you get off the bus.”

His exhalation sounds almost like a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on a bus.”

“Figures. Tripping as you step off the private jet then.”

He smiles to himself as he wipes away the infinity symbol with one hand. “Sorry. I didn’t handle that very well. I was… surprised.”

The hiatus before his final word makes me wonder if surprised wasn’t the first thing he meant to say, and whether he used it to replace a deeper sentiment.

Has Seb had me fooled this whole time? The smiles, the jokes, the impression that he doesn’t really care too much or think too hard about anything…

But is that even true? There’s always been that watchful look in his eye, like he notices more than you want to show. He sees everything .

“I want to sleep with you,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. “Don’t for a second think that I don’t. But it’s… it’s just different. I wasn’t expecting it, and I’m out at sea here.” He nods at the water and laughs, but it’s a pitiful little chuckle. “I want to do right by you. I want…”

“You want to make it perfect.”

One side of his lips tugs up, but his dimple doesn’t appear. “Yeah.” He scoops up a handful of sand and lets it filter through his fingers. “Thing is, I don’t know if I can do that.”

I want to reach out and touch him. To close the distance between us that feels much more than the physical space. "I don’t need it to be perfect. I just need it to be with you."

He’s quiet, and I imagine him rolling my words around in his mind, examining every possible meaning for them.

“I need you to look at me when you fuck me,” I add, and Seb hangs his head. Both hands come up to cup the back of his skull and his biceps flex as he pulls his head down. It doesn’t look comfortable.

He releases the position, picks up a fragment of shell nearby, and flings it towards the sea. It doesn’t reach the water. “I’m not going to fuck you.” He pauses, and my heart dips in the silence before he adds, “I’m going to make love to you.”

For some reason, this makes my nose tingle and a lump rise in my throat, even though his tone suggests it was a mere statement of fact. “Oh.”

“Can you tell me what you have done?”

“Nothing, really.” I sense his body tighten, but I’m not going to make this more palatable for him.

“No one had really touched me until you did that night in the gallery.” He nods as though this explains something he doesn’t share.

“Apart from that, there’s nothing to tell, really.

I had a minor fumble when I was a teenager, but I was drunk and so was he, so his dick wasn’t even… "

Seb glances sideways at me, and I can’t force the word ‘hard’ from my mouth. “Hmm.”

“I never even saw it. It was dark. He still had his clothes on. Ugh . It was stupid. I didn’t even know his name.

” I shudder, but the memory is interrupted by the slight shift of Seb’s body away from me.

“Sorry. I know you’ve done it with loads of people whose names you don’t know.

But it wasn’t for me. I woke up the next morning feeling like shit, and I vowed I wouldn't do it again, and that if I wanted to be with someone, I would choose them in sobriety. It would be a deliberate, considered decision. Not an impulse. Not something I’d regret. You know?”

He doesn’t look at me, but I can sense the sadness coming off him, and I’m not sure how it relates to what I’m telling him, but he’s not sharing, so I keep going.

“Mum was also watching me. Measuring up every potential boyfriend against some unknown set of criteria. No one met it. When I came back from that party, twigs in my hair and mud on my jeans, she called me a little whore. Demanded to know what had happened. And after that, she watched me even more closely. And then stuff with my career kicked off, and I was busy, and I suppose I was in the habit of not seeing anyone. So I didn’t.

And then I was famous and still a virgin, and I hadn’t met anyone and there was no way I could have done it with someone I didn’t really know because the story would have leaked to the tabloids, or there would have been photos of my bloodied sheets on social media, or… ”

Heat spreads from my heart, spilling through my torso. I never imagined having this conversation with him.

Seb rubs a hand over his eyes. “Fuck.”

I bump my shoulder against his in a transparent attempt to lighten the mood. "So, yeah. I haven't seen a... penis .” I cringe at how hard it is for me to say the word out loud, but Seb gives no indication that he notices, even though I’m sure he does. “In real life, or touched one or…”

He offers me his hand without a word, without even glancing at it. I thread my fingers through his larger ones and just being held by him that way makes whatever we’re working through feel more manageable.

He shifts to look at me, and I turn to face him too. The openness in his expression causes a dull, wary ache beneath my ribs. “Are you sure you want it to be me?”

The question lights up my skin. My heart. Every erogenous zone in my body. “Yes. I’m sure.”

He pulses my hand in his once, twice, before he looks back out at the sea and lets go.

Just as I worry that he’s going to shut down on me again, his arm comes around my shoulders as he pulls me into him until I’m leaning against him.

He kisses my temple, and for a brief second I think he’s actually going to whisper some secret, share something to explain his behavior, but he merely hmms in the back of his throat and kisses the same spot again.

“I love you,” he murmurs, and I know that’s all I’m going to get, and for now, it’s enough.