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“What?” Sebastian stopped in the center of the room and spun to face Hess. He crossed his arms and puffed his chest out in a mirror of Hess’s pose. “What do you want? For me to just go to sleep? With all this in my head?”
“What’s in your head?” Hess asked firmly, the frustration frustratingly gone again.
“Everything! All of it!” Sebastian uncrossed his arms, unable to hold them so still any longer, shifting from foot to foot. “The fucking”—Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to talk about it directly again, and he waved vaguely in the direction of Kaston, far away—“that day.”
Sebastian swung away to resume his pacing, but Hess grabbed his arm hard enough to bruise and dragged him back. “Goddammit, Sebastian, just stop moving.”
Chapter Seven
Sebastian’s feet finally froze, and he stared down at Hess’s broad hand around his arm with a lump rising up in his throat. He swallowed, not ready to look up into Hess’s face and expecting Hess’s grip to drop off him at any second, but it didn’t. Hess held him tight and firm, and when Sebastian finally spoke, his voice came out small. “Moving is the only thing that stops the thinking.”
Hess grabbed Sebastian’s chin with his other hand and pulled his face up to look at him. “Does it, though?”
After a moment, biting his lip to keep it from trembling, Sebastian shook his head.
Hess’s grip on his chin gentled, and he stroked a thumb over Sebastian’s jaw.
“No, I didn’t think so.” Hess quirked the corner of his lips. “I’ve spent enough hours pacing myself to know that.”
“Staying still doesn’t stop it either, though.” Sebastian wrinkled his nose but made no move to pull himself free of Hess’s hands. They felt too good—grounding and solid and real after everything that had happened in the past two days. Firm and authoritative and the blessed opposite of chaotic.
“Sleep does.” Hess’s eyes roved over Sebastian’s face in the same way they had back in the office at Kaston, searching, ascertaining, like he was about to take a great course of action and weighing the likely results before he did so. Anticipation shot up Sebastian’s spine, and he took a half step closer so he could feel the heat of Hess’s chest.
He dropped his eyes to Hess’s lips, still set into a firm line, but Sebastian knew how soft they were. “But I can’t sleep.”
“Not yet.”
Then Hess hardened his grip on Sebastian’s chin and yanked Sebastian’s mouth to his.
Sebastian yielded with a groan. Such a strong wave of relief swept through him that his knees weakened. But it didn’t matter because Hess wrapped his other arm around Sebastian’s waist and held him so tightly against him that Sebastian didn’t need to hold himself up.
Hess kissed demandingly, angling Sebastian’s face with firm motions that opened him up to be plundered and devoured. He swept his tongue into Sebastian’s mouth, twining around his and then withdrawing and making Sebastian sway forward with a little whine. And then Hess rewarded his neediness with another kiss. He ran his calloused thumb over Sebastian’s lower lip before nipping it hard and making him gasp, then plundered him again.
Sebastian didn’t realize they’d been moving, too absorbed in the push and pull between the softness of Hess’s lips and the sharpness of his teeth, until his back hit the wall. Hess stepped in and all but crushed Sebastian against it, pressing the hard line of his body against Sebastian’s until Sebastian felt trapped.
Hess braced his forearms against the wall on either side of Sebastian’s head and then nosed into the hollow under his ear with a deep inhale. “You’re alive.”
Sebastian clutched at Hess’s hips as his hands shook. “I’m alive.”
He dropped his forehead onto Hess’s shoulder, and Hess gave a shuddering sigh. Tears stung at Sebastian’s eyes, and he quickly turned into the fabric of Hess’s shirt to soak them away. He didn’t want to cry. If he started crying, he wouldn’t stop, and he didn’t want to break down into tears.
But then he felt Hess’s body shake against him and a fresh sob choked up his throat. He tightened his grip on Hess and buried his face into his shoulder, pressing his forehead into the warm skin of Hess’s neck. Hess pressed against him even tighter as though he could swallow Sebastian’s body with his, and Sebastian bit down on the next sob even though there was no hiding the way it wracked his body.
“Shh.” Hess moved his lips to Sebastian’s ear and kissed it softly with a whisper. “You’re alive. You’re safe. You’re mine.”
You’re mine.
Those words in Hess’s voice sent a surge of electricity into the overwhelming emotions choking Sebastian’s mind, jolting them into a new form. They twisted into something else inside him, and he gasped.
Hess pulled back and put his forehead against Sebastian’s, and Sebastian’s pulse skyrocketed when he saw that calculating look in Hess’s eyes. He remembered being pressed against that heavy desk in Kaston with Hess’s hands on him and his orders in his ears.
For a while at least, Hess could make everything right. And Sebastian desperately wanted him to make everything right for him because god knew he couldn’t do it himself right now. He just wanted to stop thinking, and to stop remembering, and to stop asking himself what came next and next and next in this endless series of things they had to do which would become things that they had done—
Hess tangled his fingers in Sebastian’s hair and pulled his head to the side, making his neck twinge with pain. He leaned down to Sebastian’s ear, and Sebastian felt his teeth against him as he spoke. “Focus, Sebastian.”
Sebastian’s spiraling thoughts snapped back to the pain in his scalp, the smell of Hess surrounding him, and the hard heat of his body. “Yes, sir.”
The words rolled off his tongue, and as soon as he said them, a warmth trickled down his spine, and he wanted to say them again. He closed his eyes with a little sigh.
