Another moan escaped as he sucked hard on the sensitive peak.
Sebastian pulled away, admiring the expressison of tortured ecstasy scrunching her brow. Her head was thrown back, her neck a tempting arc before him. Her swollen mouth had fallen open, her lips slack with passion and still moist from his ministrations.
She opened her eyes and he could see heat flaring in the amber depths and her dilated pupils as a mewed protest fell from her lips.
A surge of male pride rocketed into his system, ratcheting his craving to possess her even further. ‘You’re beautiful.’
The ragged whisper brushed sticky tentacles across her pelvic floor. Her breath hitched. She yanked at his head. ‘Don’t stop.’
Callie’s knees almost crumbled when he complied, lavishing attention on her other breast. She gripped his shoulders, warm and solid beneath her palms, for purchase. The action pressed her closer still and she could feel the virile thickness of his erection as it rubbed against her.
She had to touch him.
Her hands drifted lower as he reclaimed her lips with a neck-snapping passion. She moaned into his mouth, and the muscles in his back rippled in response. When her fingers breeched the band of his underwear and she grasped his bottom, she felt the involuntary clench of his smooth gluteal muscles.
And when her hand sought and found the long hard length of him, squeezed him, his groan was soul-deep satisfying. He tore his mouth away, placing his forehead on hers, dragging in harsh breaths. Callie squeezed again, and he grasped her upper arms and growled, ‘I think we need to lie down now.’
He caught her hand and dragged her towards the bed, somehow managing to step out of his underwear as well. And then they were tumbling onto the mattress and Callie’s underwear was gone until all she was wearing was a silver necklace and two hoop earrings.
And then they were lapping at every inch of each other’s bodies like they were covered in honey and neither of them had eaten for days.
‘Now,’ Callie cried, her hips rising off the bed.
Sebastian looked down at her. Her skin was flushed like an exotic jungle bloom, lush and open before him. He kissed her hard. ‘One moment.’
Sebastian, his heart thundering in his ears, heard her mewed protest. He found his jeans, located his wallet, extracted a condom, and was back by her side in twenty seconds flat.
‘Now,’ he said, lowering his head further to drop a string of kisses around the base of her throat, his tongue tracing the line of her necklace, ‘where were we?’
Callie felt the heat lick at her. ‘Here,’ she said, grasping the firm globes of his buttocks and rubbing herself against him.
Sebastian didn’t need any further invitation. Her scent filled his head and it was the easiest thing in the world to slide into her, feel her tight around him, her fingernails pressing into his shoulder blades. And when she asked for more, he gave it, and when she wanted it faster, he picked up the pace, and when she cried out, his voice joined hers.
And when she went over the edge, he joined her.
It was quite some hours later they finally lay sated in a post-coital drowse among tangled sheets. Callie lay on her back, Sebastian’s shoulder a perfect pillow. His arm crossing her chest was warm and vital and his fingers trailing up and down her arm kept the hum in her cells, the thrum in her blood on a steady burn.
‘So. the bridge?’
Callie’s eyes snapped wide-open, the malaise invading her bones and infecting her thought processes evaporating in a heartbeat. The hum and the buzz snuffed out.
‘Sebastian.’
He regretted it immediately as her body tensed. All that languid warmth draped against him seemed to still and then tauten. ‘Come on, Callie.’ He ran a finger down her arm and felt her flinch. He stopped.
‘Something happened back at the restaurant. If Gerri’s to be believed, I think it has something to do with what happened on the bridge this morning.’
Callie vaulted up, pulling the sheet with her and leaving Sebastian exposed—not that she cared. She squirmed to the side of the bed, her feet finding the floor. She sat forward, her elbows on her bare thighs, her hands supporting her head. The only person who knew the story was Gerri. And that was the way she preferred it.
Her heart somersaulted in her chest at the mere thought of confiding in anyone else. ‘Gerri should mind her own damn business.’
Sebastian rolled on his side. The golden skin covering the long column of her spine, the graceful arc where shoulder met neck, the dimples in the small of her back all tempted him. Sitting hunched over like this, as far away from him as possible, she looked so alone.
Still, she hadn’t moved off the bed…
He reached out his arm and swept his palm down her spine. She didn’t flinch this time and he dared to run it back up again and rest it on her shoulder.
‘Maybe Gerri knows that sometimes talking to someone that you don’t know very well is easier.’
Callie snorted. ‘That’s a nice euphemism for virtual stranger.’
Sebastian wasn’t fooled by the sarcasm. He gave her shoulder a squeeze and dropped his hand to the bed. ‘Okay. How about I guess?’
Callie shook her head. Couldn’t he see she didn’t want to talk about this? ‘Just leave it, Sebastian.’
‘I’m thinking that you lost a client on that bridge. Maybe recently? Maybe someone you were negotiating with at the time who decided to end it all anyway?’
Callie was horrified to feel tears pricking at her eyes as a sudden flash of her brother’s anguished face flickered before her.
‘Someone you couldn’t help no matter how hard you tried.’
Callie heard Zack’s little voice asking for his daddy and sucked in a breath. She had tried.
So hard.
‘We can’t be all things to all people, Callie.’ On a deeply personal level, Sebastian knew that all too well. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
She knew that. She did know it. But a familiar pain built in her chest anyway. And the pressure build-up behind her eyes was almost unbearable. A tear trekked down her face and the urge to unburden overwhelmed her.
For God’s sake, she’d just shared the most intimate thing two human beings could share. She’d been as physically vulnerable as it was possible to be with a man. But to feel such an emotional connection, a compulsion to open up, had been totally unexpected.
Sebastian watched her closely. Was she trembling? ‘Callie,’ he murmured, stroking her back again, ‘talk to me.’
Callie wiped at her face. His silky tone was so inviting. So soft. So understanding. If she didn’t say something, say what was on her mind, she was going to burst. And in some strange way she couldn’t understand,
