Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Capri
It had been twenty-four hours since I had last spoken to Sebastian.
When my father stormed into the hotel lobby after his visit with Sebastian and didn’t say anything to me, I decided it might not have been the right time to state my case.
I also didn’t think I should go back to Sebastian’s suite last night.
As I rode the elevator to his floor, I tried not to fill my head with negativity, but no matter how I spun this situation I found myself in, it never ended well.
How were we going to navigate a relationship when there was so much anger and tension between Sebastian and my father? The uphill battle wouldn’t be an easy victory, but something told me to keep fighting. There had to be a reason I had found Sebastian after all this time.
I knocked on the suite door before bending down to fix the buckle on my wedge sandal. When the door swung open, I glanced up, losing my balance and landing on my backside.
Sebastian, looking so put together in a custom black suit, tried to conceal a smirk as he extended his hand for me.
“If it isn’t my little stalker.” He tugged me up from the floor, drawing me into his chest with one swift motion. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“I got tired of waiting for you to call me.” I wiggled out of his hold. “So I took matters into my own hands.”
“A girl who knows what she wants.” He slid his finger under the strap on my arm and swiped it back onto my shoulder much like he had the first night we met.
“I find that incredibly sexy.” Creeping his fingers along my collarbone and to my neck, he traced them across my throat, helping me to abandon all the anxiety I had stored up these past few days.
“Hmm…” I bit the corner of my bottom lip. “Were you ever going to call me?”
“Do you think I would have come all this way and not called you?” He cupped the side of my face and dropped his gaze to my mouth. “I wanted to let things settle between you and your parents.”
“I’m not sure things will ever settle between us.”
“Don’t lose hope.” He touched his lips to mine, barely kissing me but creating enough heat between us that I thought I would combust at any moment. “Everything will work out.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’ll never let you down.”
My father couldn’t even look at me. Not that I could blame him.
If I tried to see the situation from his perspective, I couldn’t deny it seemed pretty bad.
I mean, what dad wanted to think about his daughter sleeping with someone?
It had to be even more difficult to know the man she chose was not only twenty-four years older than her, but he was also someone he hated with every fiber of his being. Could it get any more complicated?
“Trust me.” Sebastian led me into the suite by my hand. “We’ll figure this out.”
I nodded, feeling less confident than he appeared.
“Do you regret pursuing me?” He confined me between the wall and his muscular body, resting his forearm against it. “Because there isn’t anything I would do differently.” His breath danced across my lips. “Well, that’s not entirely true.”
“It isn’t?” My knees buckled when he skimmed his hand down my side and to the bottom of my sundress, bunching it in his grasp and lifting it to my hip, exposing my yellow panties.
He held me captive with his gaze. My lips quivered as I waited for him to claim them.
“If I had to do it again, I never would have allowed you to leave my bed in Greece.” He raised my dress higher as he inched closer to me. “I’d hold you hostage and fuck you whenever I wanted.”
“I would have stayed.”
“Now you tell me.” He pressed his lips to my jaw. “I’m taking you back with me, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
“I want to say yes but…”
His lips were on mine before I could finish my sentence.
His rough kiss rendered me speechless as I gave in and allowed him to steal my senses.
If I left with him now, I could go back to believing there only ever needed to be the two of us.
No feuds, no vendettas, and no guilt. I didn’t want to have to apologize for what my heart wanted.
What my soul craved. What my body desired.
“You will say yes,” he muttered against my lips. “I won’t give you a choice.”
“I have to finish school.”
“We have schools in Greece.” He wedged his knee between my legs, spreading them apart. “You’ll get that degree in fashion. The one you wanted in the first place. We’ve already discussed this.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I breathed against his mouth. “I only have one semester left and I…”
When he trailed his hand from my hip to my thigh, I abandoned my thought process as quickly as I would my life here to be with him. How had I fallen so hard and so fast?
He clasped his hand in mine and pinned it to the wall above my head as he glided his other hand inside my panties. Wasting no time, his finger strummed my clit as he swept his mouth across my jaw and to my ear.
“I need you with me,” he whispered. “Just as much as you need this.”
Pushing his fingers inside me, he shifted his wrist in a slow, tormenting rhythm. I unraveled under his touch. The possessive pressure that kept me coming back. I couldn’t stay away from him.
“You came to me.” He kept my legs open with the strength of his muscular thigh pressing into mine as he circled his fingers inside me. “I tried to make you go.”
“You didn’t try that hard.” I seized the lapel on his jacket. “Wasn’t it you who asked me to strip and get into the pool with you?”
“After you trespassed on my property.” He traced his tongue along my lips. “Wasn’t it you who asked me to take your virginity?”
“Yes.” I rubbed my mouth along his, licking the seam of his lips. “I’ll never regret that.”
“And I’ll never apologize for taking what was always meant to be mine.”
“I… Yes.” I hoisted my leg over his hip and rocked into his hand, forcing him deeper. “Oh…”
“I love watching when you come.” He released my hand from the wall, abandoning it for my throat. “You’re beautiful.”
“Hades… I…” I shuddered into his hand, spilling hot and hard onto his fingers. “Mmm…”
“You’re mine.” He spoke against my lips. “You’ll go wherever I tell you to go.”
I gazed into his eyes, agreeing to whatever he wanted, because he had the capacity to make me see who I really was. Fuck the consequences. For the first time in my life, I wanted to have the control to choose my own path. In surrendering to him, I found freedom.
A pounding on the other side of the door vibrated into my back.
“Hades,” Atticus said.
Sebastian released my throat from his firm hold and drifted his hand to my lips. “Shh.” He winked. “I’m almost ready,” he replied to Atticus.
“We’re going to be late,” Atticus continued. “We can’t keep Bilotti waiting.”
Romero Bilotti?
With his fingers still buried inside me, Sebastian said, “I’ll meet you and Zeus in the lobby.”
“Hurry up!” Atticus mumbled as his footsteps traveled away from the door.
“Sorry to cut this short.” Sebastian brushed his lips along mine, taking my chin between his fingers and slowly kissing me. “I have to take a meeting.”
“With Romero?”
“You’re on a first-name basis with the mafia boss of New York City?” He released me. “Interesting.”
“He wasn’t a mob boss when I met him,” I said. “And I used to have a crush on his brother Gio, but my father said he was too old for me.”
“Funny.” He headed to the bedroom.
Gio was ten years older than me. My dad probably wished he had let me pursue that relationship now that I had found Sebastian.
I followed him into the bedroom and waited as he washed his hands and then fixed his hair in the bathroom mirror. After a few minutes, he emerged looking even better than he had when he answered the door. Not a sexy silver hair out of place, and his green eyes twinkled when he smiled at me.
“Why are you meeting with Romero?” I asked.
“My presence after all this time unsettles people.” He reached for my hand. “I need to reassure him that I’m not here to cause a problem.”
“Do you regret coming back?”
“No.” He brought my knuckles to his mouth and kissed them. “But I am ready to go home, and I’m taking you with me.”
“You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
“I told you that you had five days to come back to me. Your time is up.”
“I want to go with you,” I said.
“Then it’s settled.”
If I wanted to explore more with him, it had to be done in Greece, away from my parents. I wasn’t sure I had the strength to walk away from them, knowing how much they disapproved of my relationship with Sebastian.
“We can leave tonight,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“You just said you wanted to go with me.”
“I do.”
“Capri.” He let go of my hand and glanced at his watch. “I’m losing my patience.”
“With me?”
“With the circumstances.” He punched a code into the safe on the wall and took out a black gun.
“Why do you need that?”
“Precaution.” He secured the weapon in his waistband and then buttoned his suit jacket. “I haven’t been summoned to a meeting with a mob boss in a long time.” He motioned toward the hall that led to the main living space. “I have to meet Atticus in the lobby.”
“So you can go to your meeting where you need your gun?”
“I never portrayed myself as anything other than who I am.” He opened the door. “Guns are part of my world.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me.” He took my hand and guided me to the elevator. “But the less time I’m in the city, the less I have to worry about threats.” He pressed the express button on the panel that would take us straight to the lobby without any interruptions.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” I said.
When we stepped into the elevator, he backed me against the mirrored wall and took both of my hands in his. He waited for the doors to close behind us before he continued the conversation.
“Do you really believe that?” His jaw tightened.
“No.” Being with him had become part of who I was. “I want to go back to Greece with you.”
“You said that already.”
“I never got a chance to tell you why I came to see you today.”
“It’s not because you missed me?”