“Does it bother you that I was spying on you?”
I shake my head. “You weren’t doing it for nefarious reasons. This is who you are.” I gesture at the painting. “You find beauty in everything you see. I’m honored you found me to be a worthy subject.”
We settle into a long stretch of silence on the verge of disquiet. Unable to take it a moment longer, I gather my courage and do what I came here to do. “We should talk about what happened the other day.”
Our eyes meet, and something shifts between us, clicking into place.
“I’m sorry,” we say at the same time.
He reaches a hand out, knuckles brushing my cheekbone. “You already apologized. Now it’s my turn.” Another caress, and I turn to liquid from his touch. “You were right to smack the shit out of me. I shouldn’t have said the things I did. I have a mean temper, and when someone pokes it, I strike without considering the fallout.”
“I know you have a temper.”
“And I know you have feelings for Castle. It’s wrong for me to hold them against you, all things considered.”
I gulp, taking the last step into the territory of courage. “But I’m in love with you.” My declaration hangs in the air. His reaction is subtle, but the quick rise and fall of his shoulders tells me it affected him.
“You don’t know how bad I want to believe that.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to prove it to you.” Standing on tiptoe, I grab his face and bring my mouth to his. The instant our lips touch, the coil tightens, sexual tension mounting in our bones. He picks me up, his hands steady on my ass.
“Will you come to bed with me?” The question holds a hint of a plea against my lips.
“You don’t need my permission, Sebastian.”
“Maybe so, but I want it.” His stare holds me captive, guard crashing at his feet.
“Take me to bed.”
He carries me toward his quarters, switching the light off as we go. His bedroom welcomes us with sense-heightening darkness, and we fumble our way out of our clothes, mouths merging as he guides me to the place where he sleeps. His hands and tongue explore me as if I’m a sensual canvas, like a work of art he intends to worship for the rest of his life. When he enters me for the second time, his lubed cock pushing past the ring of resistance, I’m aroused and prepared. He takes me like he did at the cottage, face to face with a pillow under my hips, inching his way into my ass with careful thrusts.
“I think you’re in trouble.” His head hovers above me, cast in silhouette.
“Why is that?” I ask.
“I could get used to being inside of you.”
“We’re both in trouble then. I could get used to it too.”
Seating himself fully, he groans as he cradles my face. “Explosive chemistry, princess. We have it.”
We also have explosive tempers, but I shove that acknowledgement to the back of my mind to deal with later. We have plenty of time to talk about the things we’ve put off.
Because after barely speaking to him for five days, let alone touching him, I just want to be in the moment with him, climbing higher from the full sensation of him moving inside me. He makes sure I reach the summit first, then he catapults me there again before finding his own climax.
Afterward, a sense of calm steals over his bedroom as we lie in the sheets, skin slick with sweat and flushed from release. He wouldn’t be him if he weren’t playing with my hair.
“I promised you the heavy shit, didn’t I?” He twirls a tiny braid around a finger.
“I recall you saying something along those lines.”
“I hate to wreck this, but I’d rather get it over with than have it bite us in the ass later.” He sighs, his breath hitting my forehead. “No more repeats of the last five days, okay?”
“It was your fault.”
“Novalee.” His voice dips with warning.
“I was teasing.” I burrow further into his arms. “I don’t enjoy fighting with you.”
“I don’t like it either, princess.” He pauses a beat. “I see a shitload of arguments in our future, but let’s not let five fucking days go by without fixing it.”
“Agreed.”
“Good, because I want this to work, but it won’t be easy.” He swallows hard. “The Brotherhood will destroy us if we let it.”
“You mean them?” He talks about the Brotherhood as if it’s an entity—not a group of men that hold on to archaic ideologies.
“No, it. The Brotherhood is a way of life, Novalee. It’s an institution forged in a centuries-old curse.”
“So you believe in the curse?”
“There was a time when I didn’t, but life taught me otherwise.”
“Will you tell me what happened?” I struggle to keep my voice steady.
He’s quiet for several moments, and then his soft-spoken “yeah” drifts in the darkness. I wait him out, clinging to a sense of patience I don’t have, because I’ve waited to uncover the mystery of Sebastian Stone for months.
“My mother was the last queen.”
I blink. “I didn’t know that.”
He smoothes a palm down the back of my head. “She cared about my father, but during her first year at the tower, she fell hard for the chancellor.”
Another bout of silence descends, hovering in the air like a stifling blanket. He wasn’t kidding about the shit being heavy.
“And your father loved her,” I conclude, the disquiet cutting through me like a burning blade.
“I like to think he loved her, but my father isn’t big on showing weakness. To him, love is the biggest weakness of all.” He returns to his absent-minded molestation of my hair. “I blame him for my sister’s death.”
The air stalls in my lungs. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”
Or that she’d died.
My verbal prod for him to continue tiptoes between us, fearful of stumbling on a landmine.
“She did everything she could to get the bastard’s attention, but he only saw me—the child with a penis who would carry on the legacy for the House of Leo.”
My lashes flutter, staving off the burn of tears, because I know how painful it is to lose someone you love. “What happened to her?”
“She committed suicide when I was fifteen.”
“I’m so sorry, Sebastian.”
“I’m the one who found her.” He rolls to his back, and I try not to let his need for space bother me. “After she died…” He draws in a shaky breath before letting it out in a noisy exhale. “I told my father I wouldn’t transition into the Brotherhood. He had me beaten for even thinking such a thing and threatened to have me locked in my quarters.”
His words thunder in my ears, every muscle in my body tense with stunned disbelief. “What did you do?”
“I told him what he wanted to hear, then I ran the first chance I got.” A scornful laugh falls from his lips. “I wasn’t gone three days when the news of my mother’s death hit the media. It was a freak car accident, but…” His voice cracks, and it takes him a few seconds to complete the tragic thought. “I’m the reason she’s dead.”