Page 113 of Sterling Heat

“Make me yours,” I demand, clutching at the firm globes of his backside, desperate to keep him inside me.

“I— I can’t,” he strains, but we both know it’s too late. I’m already his. I’m in love with him.

Despite his denial, we still thump against the countertop. I chase his retreat. He’s drawn into me. We move as one until the catch happens. My breath hitches. He gasps.

“I can’t come inside you,” he warns.

But he can. However, I don’t say it. I ride out the rush as I fall apart around him, clenching at him, desperate to keep him inside me until he breaks the spell.

With an abrupt jerk, he pulls back and kneels. The slap of skin tugging skin tells me all I need to know, then my lower region is coated in a sticky mess.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters as a finger spreads his seed just above my tuft of hair. “I’m so sorry,” he winces before lowering and kissing me, just once, with tender apology, where he has left my body and taken my heart.

Sebastian scrambles backward and I turn my head toward the kitchen cabinets, watching him in the reflection of the window above the sink.

He swipes his hand over his hair and hangs his head a second. Then scrubs down his face almost as if washing away all thoughts of me. Of Adara. Of who we could be to him.

With shaky fingers, he tugs up his jeans and rights the button.

In the window’s reflection, I see him offer me a hand. “Let me help you up.”

For some reason, I’m reminded of when I tripped before his bakery, and he held out his hand to help me stand in the rain. If only I’d never touched him then because I now know where we’d end.

“Just go,” I whisper, my voice is hoarse although I’ve hardly used it. “I need space to think.”

“Enya.” He stares at me for the single beat of a heart.

I see myself in the window’s reflection, spread out on my island. Limbs weak. Body sated. Heart shattered.

I only need an apple in my mouth, and I’d look like a depleted feast, carved to the ribs and hollow of any substance.

I swore I’d never be in this position again, and yet, I’ve done it to myself. I was with a man who was honest from the start. At least, he didn’t wait eleven years to tell me the truth. He told me within days he didn’t want to have a family. It was all pretend.

When the soft whirl of the electronic lock on my front door suggests he’s left and the door is secure, I finally roll from the island, no longer able to face myself in the window.

I’ve seen enough of me.

Chapter 33

[Sebastian]

For twenty-four hours, I beat myself up for what we did on Enya’s kitchen island. A sacred spot in her home where I took the body of a woman I consider a goddess and treated her like a sacrificial lamb.

You should be with me.

I shouldn’t. Like the disappointment that I am, I couldn’t get around the facts. I’d killed her brother. Or at least brought him close enough to the edge that death took over. It didn’t matter. Her brother was gone, and someone was scoping out Enya’s home.

She was in danger because of me.

She’d asked me to give her time to think which was code for get the hell out of my life, and I should do just that. But I can’t. Even with a patrol car outside her place, I’d been by on my bike and looped around to the woods out back to keep my eyes on her house. I haven’t slept. I’m exhausted, angry, and hollow inside.

I don’t want to lose her or Adara. But I don’t know how to keep them, either.

With my head in my hands, and elbows bent on my desk, my office door opens. “What?” I snap, lifting my gaze and glaring at Barnett.

He’s young but he’s big and he can hold his own against my rough moods. However, I can’t deal with him today.

“I realize there’s never a good time with you.” Sarcasm has no place here today. “But—”