17. Sebastian
17
SEBASTIAN
“ Y ou’ll cause an accident,” I warned Savannah as I caught her gaze in the rearview mirror of the Rolls.
She pulled her gaze from the glowing screen of her phone to fix me with a haughty look that asked the question for her.
“I’m a mere mortal,” I confessed, one hand pressed to my heart. “How can I focus on driving when such temptation sits in my back seat?”
A startled laugh pealed through the interior of the car, and I was helpless against the joy that unfurled in my chest. I loved to surprise Savannah into releasing that giggle when she was so clad in finery and that well-honed aura of snobbery. In a vintage Chanel gown that was more elegant than sexy, she still managed to stir arousal in my gut. There was something about all that class I wanted to rip apart with my teeth, workingman’s hands, and cock.
Adam beside her shot me a grin. “Try to contain that charm, will you? It’s hard enough leaving you behind tonight as it is.”
Something twisted too tight in my chest, as if my heart was a wind-up toy ready to pop out of my chest straight into his hands.
Because it felt good to hear that they would miss me tonight. Silly, really, when they were going to the British Academy of Film and Television Awards. Of course, I couldn’t join them. They would exit the town car as the public expected to see them, international superstar Adam Meyers and his pretty blonde wife like an angel pulled down from the heavens on his arm.
There was no place for a third. A teenaged Italian man with no accolades to his name.
It was so impossible a fantasy, I couldn’t even envision it in my mind’s eye, and I was a writer .
Still, it was nice to hear those words from Adam when I’d oddly been feeling left out all day.
Since the dinner I’d orchestrated for them that night three weeks ago, the three of us had spent more time together outside of the bedroom. The Meyerses tried to make room for at least one at-home dinner date each week in their schedules, and we had taken to watching Kings Cross United games on Saturday mornings when we could. It was hard to properly date a married couple when they were both well-known figures in London society. We had to make do with dates at home, but I’d always been creative, and I didn’t mind taking the lead.
Especially when Adam and Savannah both seemed to flourish under the extra attention.
For a moment, I’d forgotten just how clandestine our relationship was until this evening. The casual ease of our chemistry and affection for each other seemed too natural to hide away in the shadows, yet there was no other option.
Even if I did succeed in making them fall in love with me, this was all we could ever have. This was all I would ever be, a footnote to their marriage written in invisible ink.
I liked to think I didn’t have a massive ego, but it hurt nonetheless to think about always being in the shadows. My heart stuck in a cage, unable to roam freely.
“I won’t mention that you’re hot enough to raise the global heat index, then,” I returned flippantly, catching sight of Adam’s responding grin in the rearview as I inched forward in the crowded line of cars waiting to drop off celebs at the front of the red carpet.
He did look insanely dashing tonight in the custom Tom Ford ink-black tuxedo with velvet lapels, and the crisp white shirt beneath it opened at the collar to reveal the strong column of his throat. Something primal in me wanted to lunge forward and bite at that neck, mark it as mine in a way everyone on the crowded red carpet would see. I’d had a similar thought when Savannah came down the stairs earlier that evening in a creamy diaphanous gown that floated around her slim legs.
“Better not,” he agreed. “But I had a thought. Something that might make you feel included somewhat in the evening.”
“I don’t need to be included,” I said a little too quickly. “It’s your night. You’re up for a bloody Best Actor award, Adam.”
“I am,” he agreed easily, hand dropping onto his wife’s knee beneath her simple silk gown in a pale pink like the inside of an oyster, like the inside of her pretty pussy.
He pushed Savannah’s knees apart and slowly pulled the hem up, up over her thighs so that the fabric pooled in her lap and exposed her nude underwear.
“But I think both you and Savannah need a reminder that while the night may be about me, I am about both of you,” Adam continued as he produced a little egg-shaped vibrator from his tuxedo pocket.
Savannah squirmed in her seat, a flush deepening the blush painted onto her cheeks. “It would certainly make the night more entertaining.”
I laughed a little breathlessly. “I’ll never say no to playing with Savannah.”
“Even when she’s in front of thousands?” Adam pushed.
“Who am I to deny them her beauty?” I quipped, winking at Savvy, who hid a smile behind her hand as if she was a demure lady when Adam had her legs splayed and a hand under her panties playing with her clit.
“What do you think, sweetheart?” he asked her, nosing at the side of her face before placing a surprisingly sweet kiss on the edge of her jaw. “Do you want to put your fate for the evening in Sebastian’s hands? He might turn this little toy on when we’re in the middle of an interview with Entertainment Tonight . He might make you come when we’re being photographed for every major magazine and news outlet in the world. I know you pride yourself on your control, but do you really think you can handle this?”
The gauntlet he’d thrown landed right in Savannah’s lap. Without hesitation, she leaned back in the seat to spread her legs even wider, her hand going to her mouth to wet two fingers before sinking them inside her pussy. Her pale-blue eyes locked on mine in the reflection of the rearview mirror as she fucked herself slowly.
“I can handle anything either of you wants to give me,” she declared with that haughty tilt of her chin.
Heat slid through my veins as slow and devastating as lava flow. When Savvy saw me adjust my hardening length in my trousers, her lids lowered further, and she groaned softly. I watched as Adam finally replaced her fingers with the little pink toy and then lifted his own digits for her to lick clean.
Fuck, they were gorgeous.
Weeks of living with them and sleeping with them, and I was nowhere near done with them. I doubted I ever would be.
“Good?” Adam asked her, adjusting her underwear to cover her properly and then lightly tapping her groin like she was a good girl deserving of a pat on the head.
Savvy licked her lips as she gathered herself and nodded.
I drove the car forward again, grateful for the tinted windows enclosing us in privacy as we arrived as close to the start of the carpet as I could get us.
“Good luck tonight,” I said as I twisted to smile at them both. “I hope the world is right, and you win tonight, Adam.”
“I’m going home with my gorgeous wife to you, so I believe the night will end well either way,” Adam promised, but he reached out to squeeze my shoulder and then handed me the remote to the vibrator. “Have fun with her for me.”
I grinned. “I will.”
We both hesitated for a moment, leaning toward each other, and I knew he wanted to kiss me by the way his green gaze settled on my mouth. I wanted it too, hungered for it like I hadn’t eaten in weeks, but this was definitely not the time nor place, even with the blacked-out windows.
“Good evening, my handsome Sebastian,” Savannah said, pushing Adam back to place a hand on my cheek in farewell. “Go easy on me.”
“Never,” I promised wickedly just to hear her laugh.
A moment later, Adam opened the door, and the cacophony of screaming and shouting fans and photographers spilled into the interior. Savannah waited for him to get out and round the car to open the door before she slid out, taking his hand. I watched as they moved amid the crowd of cars and bodies until I lost sight of them to the red carpet, and then, heart oddly lodged in my throat, I inched out of the drop-off line and into London traffic once more.
My fingers drummed against the wheel as I followed the route home on autopilot, more preoccupied with the angst seizing my chest than with driving. I told myself this evening was a good reminder of my reality, that I shouldn’t pin my hopes on an impossible dream. Somehow, it didn’t alleviate any of the hollow pain behind my breastbone.
So I was startled out of my mind when a pebble hit the windshield just as I waited for the automatic gates to open to the Meyers’ house. It had started to rain, which wasn’t surprising given it was England and springtime, but it seemed to have caught the girl currently drowning in the downpour off guard because she was only wearing drenched denim and a tiny cropped tee.
I opened the window to say, “Linnea? What the bloody hell are you doing out here in the rain?”
“Waiting for you!” she called back. “Can I come in?”
I jerked my chin up before I could think about it, inviting her into the car before I pulled down the drive. She jogged forward instantly, her wet masses of hair slapping against her back. When she opened the passenger door, the scent of rain and something fresh and somewhat briny like ocean water spilled into the car.
“Hey,” she said, turning to face me once she was settled, raindrops rolling down her face into her broad smile. “What’s up?”
I laughed, shaking my head as I pulled forward. “I just dropped the Meyerses off at the BAFTAs. What are you doing here?”
She shrugged one bony shoulder. “Miranda is there, too. I figured you’d be alone, and I liked hanging out with you that one time.”
I blinked at her as I parked, a little thrown by her boldness. “So you thought you’d just show up?”
“Do you mind? I didn’t have your number, and you’re the closest person to my age I know in London. I’m sick of hanging out with Miranda’s old cronies.”
I swallowed my laughter, thinking about how Savannah would react if she heard Linnea say something like that about her age cohort. It was strange to think that Linnea was closer in age to me than Savannah was when I felt so connected to the latter.
Linnea’s fresh youthful attitude was endearing, but it made me feel… older in a way that ached. Savannah’s maturity was a balm to me, steadfast and knowing like none of my secrets or shame would taint her because she already had a wealth of her own.
“Sure,” I decided impulsively because my only plans for the evening had been to wallow at the carriage house and occasionally flip on the vibrator remote just to know Savannah was squirming across the city from me. “What did you want to do?”
She shrugged again, but the move wasn’t as casual as she wanted it to be because she was wiggling too much in her seat like there was too much energy inside her bones. “I don’t know. What do you usually do for fun around here?”
I play sex games with the married couple I work for .
Somehow, I doubted that was the answer she wanted to hear.
“Honestly, not much. I’m usually too busy working.”
She frowned at me, fingers drumming on her soaked jean-clad thigh. “How long have you been in town?”
“Since August.” A few weeks after my birthday when Cosima had left for Milan. Suddenly, I missed her with the acuteness of a bullet through my chest. She would have loved Linnea’s vibrancy and matched it with her own. She would have made this dreary British night brighter just with her presence.
“If you’re so busy with work, have you had time to do any of the really touristy things?” she demanded, brow cocked and arms crossed. “Because if you haven’t been to the top of the London Eye or seen Madame Tussauds, then you might actually be deported.”
“Oh? And an American would be an authority on this, how?”
Her grin flattened into sharp edges. “My mother is English, so I have an advantage over you.”
“Touché,” I allowed because she was funny and a welcome respite from my internal suffering. “Fine. Why don’t you come in while I change out of my uniform, and we find you something warmer to wear? While I dress, you can pick our adventure.”
“Really?” The word was too surprised, half gleeful and suspicious at the same time, like no one had let her take the reins on something in much too long. Like no one cared what she wanted to do very much at all.
“Really,” I promised before getting out of the car and making my way to her side.
She frowned a little as I pulled the door open and shrugged off my jacket to drape over her shoulders. Her mouth dropped into a little moue of shock even as she fingered the fabric. “The walk to your guest house is like… four metres.”
I lifted a shoulder. “You look cold. Andiamo .”
She followed me down the path to the carriage house and through the front door, lingering in the small living area to peer at some photos I’d placed frameless on the mantel place. I left her to it and climbed the stairs to strip out of my suit and put on comfortable jeans, a tee, and a cashmere jumper in navy blue that Savannah had bought because it brought out the gold in my eyes.
Everything I owned would dwarf Linnea even though she was tall, so I picked another cashmere jumper in black I’d accidentally shrunk in the wash.
Linnea sat on the edge of the coffee table with the photos from the mantel held delicately in her fingers. There was an expression on her face that was almost wistful, and when I cleared my throat to alert her to my presence, she jumped as if I was an axe murderer.
“You scared the bejesus out of me!” she accused.
I arched a brow. “I wasn’t exactly quiet, but you seem to be lurking my personal affects too much to notice your surroundings.”
Unabashed, she sniffed at me and returned her gaze to one of the photos, which she held at an angle for me to see too. “You have a big family.”
“I do,” I agreed, walking forward to sit on the edge of the coffee table beside her and taking the photograph in my own grip. “This is the lot of us. My mother, Caprice, eldest sister, Elena, my twin, Cosima, and Giselle.”
“And who was that?” she asked, poking at the scratched-out portion of the photo I’d attacked with the side of a coin.
“Seamus,” I admitted. “My father, though he was a shite one.”
She winced, bumping her shoulder into mine. “Sorry, that sucks.”
I laughed a little at her candidness. After weeks of living with the Meyerses, who hid their emotions at the center of twisty-turvy mazes, Linnea was utterly refreshing.
“Yeah, it does.”
“You know, Miranda was like that,” Linnea admitted. “I hadn’t seen her in ten years before she showed up after Christmas.”
I blinked. “And now you’re living with her here in a foreign country?”
Her glare was pointed into the distance at someone I couldn’t see, but I had a feeling it was at Miranda.
“Yeah. I guess she had a guilty conscience, and she told my dad I should see out eleventh and twelfth year here at North London Collegiate getting a ‘proper’ education.” She made a silly face. “Dad thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Turns out, Miranda was just playing the role of mom to please her new sugar daddy. His name is Wyndam, can you believe that?”
I snorted. “Yeah, the Brits have some seriously bizarre names. Are they…” I tried to think about how to ask the question without sounding like I was coddling her. “Are they nice to you?”
“Wyndam more than Miranda, honestly,” Linnea said with a little shrug like she didn’t care. “But we have more in common anyway. He’s a banker, but he’s always loved cinema, so we try to catch movies at The Garden Cinema when he has time.”
I’d never understand why people had children when they weren’t ready or willing to actually parent them. There had been brief flares of interest from Seamus throughout my youth, but mostly he only made time for Cosima, whom he clearly liked best. I didn’t begrudge him that because it was an open secret that everyone in the family liked Cosima best, but it did make me extra protective of her. Our father had never been a good man, at least to my knowledge, though Mama said differently. The man she had fallen in love with was not the one we knew as children.
It didn’t matter how he might have started. In the end, he was a horrible father who jeopardized our lives for years, and I was glad to be rid of him.
Honestly, in my darkest moments, alone sleeping in my bed in the carriage house missing home so much I couldn’t breathe right, I hoped he was dead so he could never darken any of our doorways again.
“I’ve never been,” I said, shaking off the introspection. “Should we catch a film there tonight, then?”
Up close, Linnea’s eyes were a startling colour, a blue so rich and bright they seemed almost purple, the colour of the night sky clinging to the last vestiges of sunset. They were absolutely arresting. Almond-shaped and framed in a bounty of fine golden lashes she hadn’t bothered to darken with makeup, they somehow made her look older than her years. Maybe it was the expression in her eyes, a knowingness like she understood where my mind had wandered and sympathized with me over our shared parental neglect.
“Your eyes are almost purple,” I whispered, a little transfixed by them.
Her smile was a soft, almost shy thing. “Miranda always says they’re my saving grace.”
My brows slammed together at the force of my sudden anger with this silly woman who would say something so scarring to her own daughter. Without thinking, I pinched Linnea’s chin gently in my fingers and gave her a little shake.
“No, no, trottalina . Do you know the painter Modigliani? He once said, ‘When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes.’ The eyes are the door to the heart of a person. If yours are so lovely, it is because you are lovely inside.”
“You don’t even know me,” she whispered, but there was no timidity in that fierce violet gaze as it roamed my face.
“I will if you let me.”
She hesitated, a physical pause she held in her body, and released on a small exhale, a tiny grin curling her wide mouth. “Okay, then. I’d like to know someone who quotes Modigliani.”
I laughed, pulling away now that the moment had passed and, with it, the shadow in her gaze. “My older sister is an artist, remember?”
“And so are you,” she rejoined. “Acting is an art form.”
“So it is,” I agreed, handing her the cashmere. “Get changed, and I’ll look at what’s playing at the cinema.”
Linnea stood, her wet hair splattering water all over the ground. She bit her lip and looked up at me through her spiky lashes. “How long do you have?”
Something about her shy yearning tugged at my heart. I recognized the loneliness in the gesture as something I felt myself. Even living with Adam and Savannah, it was impossible to feel totally included, especially on a night like tonight.
“As long as you want me,” I promised with a wink.
That turned out to be the entire night.
First, we went to The Garden Cinema to watch a showing of Roman Holiday . It was a gorgeous art deco building with red velvet chairs and retro finishing. We ordered popcorn that Linnea drenched in honey packets she pulled from her purse, and we ate it with sticky fingers the whole film. Shockingly, she was well-versed on movie knowledge, even with a movie made before her time, and she had me laughing under my breath as she told me old gossip about Carey Grant and Katherine Hepburn.
“You know,” she whispered at one point when the actors were riding through Rome on a Vespa. “It’s an open secret that Carey Grant was also into men.”
A shiver crawled slowly down my spine, rattling my shoulders. “Oh?”
She nodded, plucking one of the last honey-soaked kernels of popcorn from the container. “Yeah, but I mean, c’mon. It’s Hollywood. I know only a few actors actually ‘come out,’ but sexuality is totally a spectrum, and the industry is filled with beautiful people and lots of partying. I’m sure practically everyone has dabbled here and there.”
I swallowed my laughter at her guilelessness. “That doesn’t seem to bother your sensibilities.”
She scoffed. “Why would it? It’s the twenty-first century, and I’m a modern woman.” Her gaze slid sideways appraisingly. “I hope you’re a modern man, Sebastian. We’re millennials, you know? We should be above old prejudices.”
One corner of my mouth escaped the lockdown I’d imposed on my grin. “ Certo , I’m as modern as they come.”
She nodded firmly, like she’d known all along, but the way she tipped her head to tap her cheek against my shoulder was its own kind of validation.
After the movie, we washed our hands of honey residue and went on Linnea’s self-directed film tour of the city. She had one of those fancy watches that tracked our steps, and in the four hours we wandered between the Shard’s observation deck, King’s Cross Station, Millennial Bridge, and other iconic-shooting locations, we’d walked over eighteen thousand steps. We ducked into a curry shop for supper and dared each other to eat the spiciest things on the menu. Madonna santa , they had milk on the menu because we both drank about a gallon each to quench the fire.
Linnea ended up winning by a landslide, given that Italian food wasn’t all that spicy. She laughed until she cried when sweat started to roll down my forehead and soak the collar of my sweater.
I had fun.
Fun like I hadn’t had since I was back in Napoli with Cosima. It felt like Linnea and I had been friends for years, the kind of easy enjoyment that could only happen organically or not at all. She was funny in an irreverent, witty way that reminded me a bit of Elena’s cutting sense of humour, but there was a dreaminess to her when she spoke about her love of fashion and cinema that reminded me of Giselle.
When it came time to go home to retrieve the car and collect Savannah and Adam from their after-party, I found I was a little reluctant to say goodbye. I walked her into Westminster from our last stop at Big Ben, listening to her talk about her mother’s promises to get her an internship after graduation at the St Aubyn fashion house.
She had two loves, fashion and cinema, which was almost as good a pairing as writing and acting.
“Have you ever considered going into acting like your mother?” I asked as we walked down the dark, relatively empty streets of the posh neighborhood.
“I’ve thought about it,” she admitted almost reluctantly and then shot me a little look as if she sensed my curiosity. “I don’t particularly want to be anything like Miranda, if you haven’t noticed how much I dislike her.”
I cocked my head to the side. “I don’t particularly like my father, who was an academic writer and professor. That doesn’t mean I can’t be a screenwriter, though.”
She made an irritated noise in the back of her throat and threw up her expressive hands. “That’s not really the same thing, and you know it. Miranda and her gang are all so… focused on the wrong things. On the money and the status and the gossip . I think I’d like to act, but the idea of being in the world’s spotlight makes me want to throw up. Everyone having an opinion about you when they don’t even know you… just sounds awful.”
I thought about Adam just that morning in the gym racing me on the pair of treadmills while Savannah used the elliptical in the corner and watched Entertainment Tonight . The host had mentioned Adam being cast in The Devil Cares and expressed their opinion that he was too posh and stuck up to play the role of Freddie Bannerman.
It didn’t seem to affect Savannah who only rolled her eyes in our direction, but Adam had missed a step on the treadmill and had to recalibrate his stride to catch up to my speed again.
It was such a little thing. A single comment. But over a lifetime of exposure, it could be death by a thousand cuts.
Adam especially seemed sensitive to criticism, not only of his acting but of any negativity in general. Which was strange, really, because Savannah seemed to thrive on it.
“It does,” I agreed finally.
Linnea peered over at me, the bright moon overhead turning her hair to silver. “Yet you’re signing up for it.”
I’d told her about Blood Oath , about how Adam and Savannah were kind of mentors to me as well as employers.
I shrugged. “There’s a double edge to everything. You have to decide if what you love is worth the price you have to pay for it.”
“Spoken like a true writer.”
I shoved my shoulder against hers in response, and she laughed lightly before stopping in front of a lovely white townhouse.
“This is it,” she said, not this is home .
Because I knew home was a pretty little house with a wraparound porch in Maui where her father and three uncles lived.
Linnea shoved her hands in her pockets, the sleeves of my overlarge cashmere rucked up to her bony elbows, her hair having dried in a nimbus of golden waves. She was lovely, I thought, not for the first time, and she’d be so beautiful one day people would lose their breath to her.
“Well,” she said, scuffing the toe of her shoe on the asphalt. “Thanks for keeping me company tonight.”
“It was my pleasure,” I told her honestly, dipping a little to catch her downcast gaze. “I had a great time. Though, I thought your tour skewed a little too much Harry Potter.”
“They’re classics,” she insisted again.
I only smirked at her because we’d been having the same argument all night. I didn’t go in for fantasy much, and Linnea thought magic was the best kind of topic.
“I’d like to hang out with you again,” she told me, forcing herself to lift her stare to lock with mine.
It was her most disarming quality, I was coming to realize. That bravery after a moment of natural bashfulness.
“ Certo ,” I agreed easily. “You promised you’d teach me to surf.”
Her head tipped back with the force of her laughter, mouth moving at the moon. “I did! I can’t believe I forgot about that. I can’t wait to see that great big body fall again and again off the board.”
“Hey,” I argued. “Just because I’m a drama geek doesn’t mean I can’t hold my own in sports.”
“Sure,” she drawled, grinning beatifically at the idea of my embarrassment. “We’ll see who's proven right.”
“We will,” I promised, moving forward to cup her elbows in my palms and place the customary kisses on her cheeks. “ A presto, trottolina .”
“ A presto ,” she murmured back in a half-decent approximation of an Italian accent.
I tucked my own hands in my pockets as I pulled away and started walking backward away from her.
“Hey, Sebastian? What does trottolina mean?” she called just as I was about to turn away to walk properly back toward the metro.
“Little spinning top,” I told her, deciding to relay the literal translation.
Her answering smile was as bright as a wedge of moonlight. Slowly, she spun in a graceful pirouette, and something inside the cage of my ribs did the same.
When I picked up Adam and Savannah at NoMad, I was still thinking about the girl with the sunshine hair in a pool of moonlight spinning and spinning until I turned the corner and lost sight of her.
“Sebastian, darling,” Savannah’s sharp voice cut through my thoughts as I leaned against the car at the exit, waiting for them to emerge.
I jerked away from my lean against the Rolls and smiled at my duchessa as she moved gracefully toward me on sky-high heels. She had changed from her gown into a short, beaded number like something from The Great Gatsby, and Adam was in a similarly themed outfit of vest and dress shirt in different shades of green that made his eyes almost neon toned even in the dim light of the sodium lamps lining the street.
“ Siete sensazionali ,” I murmured because I’d lost some of my breath to those two golden-haired beauties walking toward me.
Savannah’s narrowed glare softened at the reverence in my tone, and her hand was gentle as she placed it in mine so I could lead her the last few steps to the car and open the door for her.
“You were somewhere else,” she accused lightly.
I helped her get settled and closed the door, taking the time to wonder how I should respond to that. When I walked to the other side, I passed Adam getting into the back seat. He gripped my forearm before I could move by and leaned in closer, breathing deeply.
“You smell of another woman,” he noted, eyes flaring with surprise as he leaned back.
My pulse hopped straight into a sprint like a rabbit pursued by a predator through the brush.
I swallowed thickly and turned away from him to get into the driver’s seat.
There was nothing wrong with spending the evening with Linnea. She was only sixteen, but even then, she was closer to my age than both of the Meyerses. It was only fair that I should be allowed to have friends outside of their marriage.
When I closed the door and buckled up, looking into the rearview mirror to pull out of the parking space safely, Adam and Savannah were both watching me.
“Well?” Savannah asked, acid dripping from the one word.
“Well what, duchessa ?”
“Don’t sweet-talk me, Sebastian. Were you with another woman tonight? Adam said you smell like perfume. And don’t try to pass it off as mine. I certainly don’t wear something as childish as coconut .”
I rolled my eyes, but by the sound of Adam’s low grumble in the back seat, that was not an acceptable response.
“I don’t know why we’re talking about my night when you two were the ones at the star-studded party. Tell me, was Clooney there?”
“Sebastian,” Adam warned.
It was a command more than anything, and it affected me better than Savannah’s peevishness.
I sighed. “You’re both being very jealous. I spent the evening with a female friend. We went to the cinema and shared a curry.”
The silence that followed my statement was sticky as a web cast between the front and back seats, ensnaring me in tacky fibres.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware it went against the rules for me to make friends,” I said slowly, so dry the words scraped my throat coming out.
Savannah’s energy was a palpable thing, a vibration that cranked high enough to set my teeth on edge.
“Of course, you can have friends,” Adam soothed, but his tone was brittle. “We would never want to isolate you.”
“Your current response says otherwise.”
“I just encouraged you two days ago to catch that Kings United match with your old flatmates,” Adam argued.
“Who are men,” I quipped. “You know, I’m interested in you, right? Sexually. Yet you encouraged me to hang out with blokes, and you’re… what? Jealous that I spent the evening with Linnea? If you’re going to be possessive, at least be bipartisan about it.”
“Linnea Hildebrand?” Savannah asked, shock clearing the furrow between her brows.
“Linnea Kai,” I corrected.
“Miranda’s daughter, though?” When I nodded, Savannah laughed, and the sound was airy with relief. “Oh, well, of course, you should spend time with the girl. Her mother was just telling me she doesn’t quite fit in with the Eton class after growing up like a heathen surrounded by her father and truckload of uncles.” She shivered delicately. “She’s practically a boy herself, really. And she didn’t inherit any of her mother’s beauty.”
“Savannah,” I snapped, lungs compressed in my chest by the force of my anger. “Don’t speak about her like that. I’ve just told you, she’s my friend. Even if you can’t respect her, have enough respect for me to be kind toward her.”
Savannah blinked those huge, luminous eyes at me, suddenly looking younger than her years. An ingenue in a socialite’s dressings. “Sebastian… she’s just a girl.”
“She’s my friend,” I declared resolutely. “And if you think I’ll be flattered by your jealousy, you’re both wrong. You have… everything . Our power dynamic is already unbalanced. If you start trying to control who I’m friends with and what I do in my time away from you both, this won’t work.”
Alarm trilled through the car, silent yet blaring, quiet with a heavy bass like thudding hearts.
“Don’t be dramatic, darling,” Savannah said softly, leaning forward to brush her fingers against my shoulder as I pulled onto our street. “I’m… well, I’m sorry I was rude about your friend.”
“I’m not sorry we were jealous, though,” Adam added blandly, slouched insolently in his seat, eyes hot on mine in the mirror's reflection. “You’ve become ours, Sebastian, and if you say that wasn’t by your doing, I’ll call you a very poor liar. You knew what you were doing when you hooked us through the mouth and reeled us in. Now that you have us, you must suffer the consequences of our affection. Possessive and dramatic though it may be.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth as I pulled through the gates into the driveway, waiting until after I parked the car to look at them in the rearview.
“Shouldn’t you have matured past petty jealousy?” I asked, though it was mostly a tease, to show them that all was forgiven.
Savannah’s spine softened back against the leather seats, and she looked truly relieved in a way that made my heart skip a beat.
She cares, she cares , my soul trilled.
“When you can’t stop thinking about someone, they quickly become someone you’re not willing to give up without a fight,” Adam told me.
Each word hit my heart like a fucking gong.
He cares too, he cares too .
Something like relief and hope and joy tangled together into euphoria that echoed through every atom of my being. Before I could second-guess my instincts, I was unbuckling and crawling over the partition into the back with Adam and Savannah. They were both on the short side of the L-shaped seating, which gave me room to sink to my knees in front of them and wrap both hands around each of their necks to haul them in close.
I kissed Savannah first, plundering her mouth like I owned it.
Like it was due to me. My right to take it as her…
Lover?
It didn’t matter. It was my right to take it because I was hers and she was mine .
I felt as if they’d drugged me with their proprietary affection. The slide of Savvy’s tongue against mine had never felt sweeter, the grip of Adam’s hand on the back of my neck never more claiming.
It was so easy to close my eyes and pretend all my dreams were reality just for this sliver of time in the back of the town car that had become the setting of so many pivotal moments in my life.
I slid my hand into the pocket of my jeans and flicked the switch on the vibrator remote I’d been toying with all night. The soft buzz of the toy filled the car’s interior along with Savannah’s soft gasp of pleasure.
“Did you change gowns because the other was ruined by the wetness seeping down your thighs all night?” I asked her, taking a more aggressive role with her than I ever had before.
Without ceremony, I pushed her thighs wide apart with my leather-gloved hands. I remembered wanting to touch her sweet pussy wearing the driving gloves the first time I laid eyes on her and marvelled briefly that I was able to do so now.
The only thing separating me from doing it right that moment was a thin wedge of cream lace hiding her from view.
I pulled her to the edge of the leather seat, ignoring her little squeak of alarm, and shuck off her panties in one pull. Leaving her thighs thrown over my shoulders so I was wedged between her legs, close to her pink folds, I used my thumbs to gently pull her open like the petals of a tightly furled rose.
My nostrils flared as the honey and musk scent of her assailed my senses, and I fixated on the pretty sight of her glistening pussy.
“She had to excuse herself twice during the party to clean up a bit in the toilet,” Adam told me, his voice rubbed raw by desire.
I didn’t look at him, but his gaze was sun hot against my cheek. “Good.”
Rubbing my thumb along the inside seam of her thigh, I dipped it inside her to test the grasp of her greedy entrance and grinned when she moaned at the loss as soon as I moved away.
“You kept me waiting all night, but I’ve kept you wanting, so I guess it’s a fair trade,” I mused, dragging my supple leather fingers over the folds of her pussy, watching as moisture pooled at her entrance and started to leak down to her ass.
“Show me how much you missed me,” she whispered, and the edge of desperation in her tone had me looking up to catch her expression.
It was… bruised. A tender, aching kind of softness that made her seem young and confused.
Good , I thought. I hoped that confusion was because she was falling in love with me despite everything between us.
I bent my head closer to her sex and blew lightly over her clit until she shivered. “Everything tastes like ash compared to the taste of you.”
She gave a breathy little exhalation and moved both hands into the longer strands of hair at the top of my head as I bent to eat at her properly.
It was true.
She was fucking sublime on my tongue, sweet and tart and warm like fresh bread. I sucked at her labia, at her clit, and the sides of her tender-skinned inner thighs until she was pink everywhere and writhing.
Only then did I push two fingertips into her clutching pussy and prod at the little toy lodged inside her, vibrating away.
With my other hand, I handed the remote to Adam, who sat patiently beside us.
“Let’s see how many times we can make her come before she’s as limp as a rag doll,” I suggested, hoping that he would continue to let me take the lead.
I knew it wasn’t in his nature to follow second, but I needed the control tonight. Something about watching them exist in their public lives without a trace of me on them left me feeling primal and angsty. I’d only be satisfied if they both let me fuck them and mark them up as I saw fit.
If they both let me in enough to be vulnerable to my attentions with the barrier of their control between us.
Adam’s face was flushed, lids low over darkly green eyes, but otherwise, he seemed almost unaffected sitting like a king on his throne in the back of a town car in a tuxedo that cost more than I’d ever paid in rent. When he tipped his chin just slightly to me, I felt every inch his proxy, filled with God-given power, except my only deity was him .
The rush of authority carbonated my blood and made my head swim.
“Turn it up,” I ordered him. “See what she can handle. Are you going to be a good girl for us, Savvy? I want you so swollen, Adam will have to work extra hard to wedge that thick cock of his inside you, capisci ?”
“Yes,” she hissed as I bent once more to lave my tongue over her clit, my fingers nudging the toy as Adam cranked the intensity up so that it slid just a little in and out of her tight walls. “ Fuck .”
“I love it when you curse for us,” I praised. “The lady becoming the whore just for her men.”
“My men,” she echoed, fingers tightening in my hair before one slid, almost hesitantly, over to palm Adam’s rigid length behind his zipper.
This time, he hissed.
“Take him out and play with him. Just the tip,” I warned. “He likes it when you tease the head and dip your fingertip into his leaking hole.”
I watched as a full-body shudder wracked Adam’s big frame. Savannah’s small hand fished his dick out from behind his zipper. The sight of the thick erection, fleshy and flushed dark red at the tip like an overripe plum, made my mouth water.
After all these weeks of sex and games, I still hadn’t taken that shaft in my mouth. Maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked any longer by my desire for this man, but I was momentarily bowled over by it.
Reining in my impulses, I dipped my head and fastened my lips over Savvy’s cunt again, slurping up the juices leaking fast from her entrance.
Her first orgasm hit with a sharp cry that pierced the interior of the car like a scream. Adam leaned over to muffle it with his mouth.
The second was muffled by his cock as he pulled her head down into his lap and slotted that fat shaft into her mouth and straight to the back of her throat. He pinned her there, hand on the back of her mussed hair while I pinned her quaking hips to the seat.
She was so wet that she slipped against the upholstery.
Which gave me an ingenious idea for keeping her still.
“Let’s test both of your control,” I suggested darkly and pulled away from Savannah, licking my lips as I drew the vibrating toy out of her and nodded to Adam to turn it off.
Her head lolled back against the seat as she blinked at me a little dazedly. With a wicked grin, I picked her up and lifted her over Adam’s lap. He picked up the thread of my intent and held the base of his dick so I could slowly lower Savannah’s swollen pussy over top of him.
She sank down with a trembly sigh, sinking onto it like she’d been aching for the stretch of a thick cock inside her.
I told her so, and she shivered.
Pinching her chin so she had to look down at me, I asked her for the words because I loved the sound of her dulcet tones speaking utter filth. “Do you love being stretched on your husband’s big dick, Savvy?”
“I love it,” she agreed. “I’m so swollen. It’s almost too much.”
“No, not yet. But let’s see if we can get you there,” I mused, then looked over her shoulder at Adam, whose jaw was ticking with the restraint of staying still. “Can you let her sit pretty on your lap while I make her come a few times all over you?”
He swallowed thickly and then nodded tersely.
“Adam,” I coaxed, getting up on my knees to reach for his throat, cupping it in my hand to feel the rapid thrum of his pulse behind his placid facade. “If you keep her nice and still for me, I’ll let you come inside her and then eat all that delicious fucking cum of yours right out of her stuffed cunt before I fuck her and add my own cum to that beautiful cunt.”
“Jesus Christ,” he growled, grinding Savvy a little on his lap so she groaned with him. “Just get on with it.”
A mean little chuckle escaped my lips, and I felt like I understood how Adam must have felt dominating us in the bedroom like this. It was a power and privilege that made every atom of my body thrum in time with their heartbeats.
When I rested back on my heels to suck Savannah’s swollen, deeply pink pussy again, it was stuffed with Adam’s cock so naturally, I tended to both.
The second my tongue hit the silky skin over his shaft, he groaned so long and deep, it was almost a muted roar.
A lightning strike of arousal hit the base of my spine and burst through every inch of my body.
The little voice in the back of my head that still insisted I wasn’t into men, that kissing and touching Adam while he was inside or touching Savannah didn’t count, snuffed out in the bright heat of lust exploding behind my eyes.
I let myself drift away in it.
I let myself love it.
Sensing my desire, maybe, or encouraging me to explore more because he wanted it as badly as I did, Adam lifted Savannah slowly off his cock.
I licked up the juices that had leaked all over his shaft on the way up and then sucked and lashed at Savannah’s clit on the way down.
Back and forth.
Salt and honey.
Him and her.
I was honestly dizzy with desire, losing myself to the rhythm of tasting them both.
Drugged, I barely noticed when Adam finally lifted her clear off his cock. Without thinking, I gripped his shaft before it could slap back against his belly and took it into my mouth.
He tasted like her.
The concoction of Savannah’s wetness and Adam’s precum made me moan so long, I couldn’t breathe.
Vaguely, I was aware of Savannah’s hands in my hair, tugging me back to her messy pussy as she sank back down on his cock.
Back and forth.
Tick-tock.
I lost sense of time and space, even my own raging erection was leaking copiously into my trousers.
Savannah came again on a rough, broken cry and went limp in Adam’s lap.
It was my cue to give my sweet duchessa a break, so I leaned back on my heels and jerked my chin at Adam, whose eyes were blown to black with barely restrained lust.
“Fuck her hard,” I told him. “She can take it, can’t you, mia bella ?”
Savannah tucked her head back against Adam’s shoulder. “I can take anything either of you want to give me, and I’ll love it.”
Adam and I both groaned as he started to move. His grip was punishing around her hips as he lifted and lowered her, the beads on her dress clinking musically. I pulled down the bodice of the dress to play with her sensitive little breasts and then finally gave in to the pressure and freed my own cock. It throbbed just at the sensation of the warm arm against my shaft, and I knew when I finally buried myself in Savannah’s used pussy, I’d fill her up far too quickly.
Just the thought of fucking into Adam’s cum inside her had me a hair’s breath away from shooting prematurely.
“I love having two gorgeous men like this,” Savannah panted as she ground down on Adam’s cock, clearly reinvigorated by his brutal thrusts. “I love being the center of your attention.”
I laughed, the sound so husky I barely recognized it. My duchessa loved being prized, and I knew having us like this, lavishing her, using her, filled with no thoughts but ones of her was her ultimate aphrodisiac.
Just as she was mine.
Just as this , fucking this gorgeous married couple, was mine.
I’d never known to fantasize about such a thing, but now I wasn’t sure I’d ever be complete without it.
“Fuck,” Adam ground out, and a moment later, his hand was lashing forward to grip my shirt, tugging me forward.
I fell into them, catching myself with one hand on the seat by Adam’s head. Instantly, Savannah turned her face into my neck, fixing her lips on my pulse point.
And Adam moved his big hand to my throat in a facsimile of how I’d recently held him and used his grip to bring me in for a crushing kiss.
His tongue forced my lips open without courtesy, plundering my mouth almost viciously.
When he came, I ate the shout of pleasure out of his mouth and twisted Savvy’s nipple so cruelly, she joined him seconds later.
Without hesitation, I pulled away from them both only enough to fist my own cock, pressing the head up against Savvy’s entrance, still stuffed with Adam’s cock. She gasped as I applied just a little pressure, snugging the head of my cock just at the mouth of her entrance right up against Adam’s shaft.
The tight heat, the wet of her cum, and his cum against me was enough to blow the top off my control.
I came with a glorious shout like a marauder securing new territory for his own and splashed my hot seed all over them both. Inside her, against him, on both their spent, swollen sexes.
It was the most beautiful experience of my life.
And when I collapsed on the floor of the car, my head cushioned by Adam’s furred thigh, my sight filled with the messy Pollock painting of cum I’d made of them, I let myself trail a finger in the cum leaking from Savannah and then stuffed it back inside her alongside his softening member.
“ Mozzafiato ,” I murmured heedlessly, almost dreamily.
Savannah’s hand softened in my hair, stroking against my scalp with her short, manicured nail. “ Breathtaking ,” she echoed in English, remembering, no doubt, the first time I told her that.
Adam hummed his agreement, and I felt his hand join his wife’s in my hair.
“Feeling better?” he murmured after a few long moments of companionable silence.
It was my turn to hum, my mind still drifting like I was in a waking dream. In Italian, we called it vivere nel mondo della luna , waking in the land of the moon.
It occurred to me that we had so many expressions revolving around the moon in my language. Fitting, given that I’d often equated Adam and Savannah to celestial beings.
I whispered, “ Voglio chiedere la luna .”
Because it was as ironic as it was true.
“What does that mean?” Savannah asked, her voice still throaty with residual passion.
“I want to ask for the moon,” I admitted in English. “I want to wish for things I know I can never have.”
In tandem, their hands stilled in my hair.
“Who says you can’t have what you want?” Savannah asked, a new edge worked into her tone.
I shrugged inelegantly. “Life, maybe? It’s taught me this lesson before.”
“How do you know if you don’t ask?” she rebutted. “Your incredible film is in preproduction, and you’re about to tell your mother and sister you have enough money to send them to the States. The world is yours for the taking and ours for the giving if it’s in our power.”
Adam was silent, a Greek statue looming enigmatically over us both.
And even though Savannah asked the question, it was Adam I knew I had to ask to grant my wishes. He was the moon in my sky, the one who quietly ruled me in elemental ways I’d never known existed.
“I want to be allowed to fall in love with you,” I told them, twisting fully between Savannah’s legs, my hands clasping her thighs like she was a life raft in a stormy sea. “I want to be allowed to tell you I’m in love with you, and not saying the words is breaking my heart every day.”
“Sebastian,” Adam said. It was a warning and an entreaty all in one.
Love less, he demanded.
Love me more, he whispered.
“No, Adam,” I said, clear and strong. Shaking off the nerves and the fear of rejection I knew was coming. Pretending for one crystal moment that they could be mine and want me to be theirs in a way that mattered.
In a way that could be forever.
“You don’t need to be jealous of anyone else because I love you both more than I ever understood the human heart could love before meeting you. I know it doesn’t make sense, and it goes against the rules of our arrangement, but I don’t care. I don’t want an arrangement, anymore. I want a life . A life where someone like me is allowed to love two people as celestial as you.”
“Sebastian,” Savannah murmured, cupping my jaw in one of her small, cool hands. “Why are you speaking like we’ve already broken your heart and cast you out on the streets?”
Because that’s where this ends , I wanted to cry out in desperation, pound my chest and gnash my teeth in impotent rage. Don’t be foolish, bella amora mia , this was always how it would end .
She seemed to read it in my face and made a soft, broken noise in the back of her throat before surging forward to kiss me, lips gentle and clinging. When she pulled away, her eyes were the palest blue, so translucent I could see through to the bottom of her soul.
“I love you, too,” she whispered so quietly, the words were mostly mouthed. “I love you, and I don’t know what that means except that you make me feel like the best version of myself. You make us feel complete.”
The noise that rose from my chest was choked, hope cut off at the pass.
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” I warned. “I know I’m not––”
“Stop,” she ordered fiercely, grabbing my face in both her hands. “I’ve never said something so honest in my life. I love you in all its terrifying and awe-inspiring glory.”
My heart beat so strong and heavy in my chest it felt like a battering ram threatening to eradicate the walls.
“ La donna dei miei sogni ,” I murmured against her lips, cradling her face like the gift it was. “You are the woman of my dreams.”
“And the man of mine,” she agreed without hesitation, sealing her statement with the sweetest kiss I’d ever received.
The Patek Philippe watch was gorgeous, but it had nothing on that moment there with a woman I’d loved for weeks and never thought in my wildest hopes might love me too.
My gaze sought Adam over Savvy’s shoulder to find him glaring at me with palpable frustration.
His jaw ticked as I waited.
And waited.
Not for a declaration of love like Savannah, but something…
A stray hope to cling to the way I clung to Savvy’s face as she kissed me.
But the moon had always been elusive, and instead of participating in our joy, he watched, quiet and sullen as I brought Savannah even closer and kissed all the love right out of her sweet mouth.
Only, no matter how much I ate, there was a bottomless hunger in my heart I was worried would never be quenched.