Chapter 6 Sebastian #2
They weren’t hiding, but he let it go for the moment and concentrated on her question.
“We spend time together. We talk about what is important to you, what is important to me. We get to know each other again…” Remember what drew them together in the first place because, though his feelings were far from waning, maybe hers had.
It kicked him square in the gut to consider the possibility, but she lived an entire life he wasn’t part of—a career she was proud of and work she thrived on. Loosening his grip, he coaxed her to turn. “Maybe you could even explain your last paper to me, the one on class polynomials.”
“The research was only released last month.” Disbelief warred with surprise and she gave him a wondering look. “How did you know about my paper?”
“I have every paper you’ve ever published and subscriptions to all the major journals.” Needing to prove the point, he kissed the tip of her nose and took her hand, tugging her gently. “Come.”
His briefcase was downstairs in the office he used when he was on the island.
He hadn’t planned to do any work whatsoever, but with Meredith in tow, he led the way down the staircase, past the open drawing room and reception hall, to a private hallway.
Armand’s office was also located in the same section and, though another was reserved for George, his youngest brother never darkened the doorway of his.
At the entrance to the dark-wood paneled room, Bastian had to release her in order to open the double doors.
Inside, he was gratified when she not only let him take her hand again, but threaded her fingers through his.
Guiding her across the room, he paused at the oversized cherry wood desk and unlocked his briefcase with a three-digit combination.
“913.” Meredith’s little gasp dragged his attention to her. Tears shimmered in her eyes.
“Yes.” He gave her a small smile. “I told you, I remember everything.” 913 was his suite number. He’d discovered the best woman in the world behind those doors. Sentimental perhaps, but he considered it his lucky number.
She sniffed then gave him a smile that threatened to stop his heart. When she leaned into him, her breasts brushed his arm and her fingers tightened against his. “Okay,” she whispered, her voice husky and soft. “I am pretty sure this isn’t what you dragged me down here to see.”
It took him a moment to even remember why they’d come to his office.
Dropping his gaze to her lips, he gave into temptation and bent his head to kiss her.
The moment their mouths brushed, electricity sizzled in his nervous system and threatened to short-circuit his brain.
Leashing the raging desire firing in his blood, he lifted his head and stared into her eyes.
“No, the briefcase isn’t what I wanted to show you. ”
The corners of her eyes crinkled and she laughed. “You take my breath away.”
“Ditto,” he told her solemnly and forced himself to open the case and pull out the journal of the American Mathematical Society. He held it up for her inspection. “See, I read everything you do.”
Her mouth went slack and her earlier tears threatened again, one splashing down her cheek. “Why?”
“Why what, darling?” He hated her tears, hated them. He wanted to make them go away.
“If you—this…why do you read everything I write?”
Did she truly not understand?
Sebastian slid into a chair and tugged her into his lap, giving into the desire he’d been struggling with since he’d seen her again to enfold her close. He wanted her near always. “Because you wrote it. You.” It really summed up everything for him.
Meredith stared down at the journal and then up at him. She was wavering.
“Say yes, Meredith.” It was a calculated risk, ordering her. She could still tell him no. “Say you’ll stay. Say you’ll give me these few days. I know we can make this work.”
Closing her eyes, she bowed her head, but she didn’t pull away. If anything she moved closer and fisted his shirt in her hand. “Do you really think we can?” Hope and longing so mirroring his own twined in her question.
“I know we can,” he told her, resolved. “Say. Yes.”
She opened her eyes, brought her face to his and kissed him. He welcomed the slow, tentative invasion of her tongue and tangled his hand in her hair. Kissing her was an erotic pleasure. He indulged his senses, lapping up the taste of her sweetness while reveling in how she bloomed to his touch.
“Say yes,” he told her between long, strokes of his tongue against hers. When she finally broke the kiss and lifted her head, he experienced the weight of her study all the way to his bones.
Whatever she’d seen must have satisfied her because she exhaled with a beaming smile. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Relief flooded him.
“Yes,” she repeated and then laughed when he crushed her close. “Yes, Bastian. Yes.”
Time. She’d given him time. Thank God.
MEREDITH
Still in his lap, she shifted to claim the journal issue, which had included the title of her research on the cover.
Sebastian rested one hand on her hip and massaged her nape with the other.
First his insistence they could work this out, then the combination lock to his briefcase—the number of the suite where they’d ended up spending three hedonistic days in total lust with each other—then the journal.
Her emotions seesawed all over the place.
“Where did you go?” Sebastian’s quiet question tugged her from the memory of their first weekend.
“Vienna,” she smiled. “I was thinking about the conference. The dinner. What happened after the dinner.”
Wickedness deepened his smile. “I still think they could have given us a better wine selection.”
Laughter erupted through her and she shook her head. “You harangued our poor waiter until he went and brought you a bottle.”
“I was trying to impress a lady,” he admitted. “Cheap wine was not going to cut it.”
“You were not.” She tried to laugh it off, but when he lifted his brows and stared at her with utter sobriety, her amusement faded.
“I most certainly was.” He slid his fingers up into her hair and began to massage her scalp. The touch was downright hypnotic and the tension beading her muscles since she’d walked in to shower began to ease.
“Why?” The man commanded attention when he walked into a room.
She’d only seen him in passing, following a panel where she’d engaged in a heated disagreement with an economist. The man cited her dissertation in his presentation and misrepresented her findings.
She’d been livid by the time he finished.
She’d intended to address the situation privately—and then he’d called on her.
Sebastian’s brows climbed. “Because you were the most beautiful woman in the room—and the most intelligent—and even after bribing someone to switch out the dining cards so I could be seated next to you, you barely noticed I was there.”
It was her turn to gape. “Of course I knew you were there. Everyone at the table stood and Doctor Ramanijun nearly had a heart attack when I didn’t stand along with everyone else. Wait—you bribed someone to sit at our table?”
He continued to massage her scalp and, even as she leaned into the touch, he traced the shell of her ear with his lips.
The lightest of kisses, it sent heat radiating along every nerve.
“Oh, yes. I’d seen this vibrant, passionate woman argue quite brilliantly earlier in the day and I wanted to meet her.
They’d seated you too far away for my liking.
Then you were more interested in the septuagenarian than me. I had to do something.”
Uncertain whether she was more shocked he’d been trying to impress her or the fact he’d bribed his way onto her table, Meredith fumbled for words. She settled for a helpless, “But why?” Why go to all that trouble? For her? Because she’d gotten angry with someone?
Sebastian caught her earlobe and tugged on it.
A pulse in her belly echoed his touch. She drowned in sensation whenever they were together.
He really was the only man she’d ever met who could get her mind to shut down.
In fact, after all their years together, she’d learned his nearness greatly impeded her ability to puzzle through a problem.
It took her a moment to realize he’d stopped and considered her with a frown. Her system was so haywire, she floundered for what put the dark look on his face.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
The disbelief in his voice brought her back to earth. “No,” she admitted, even though her face flamed. “I’m nobody.”
His mouth compressed into a thin line and his expression hardened.
Even his black eyes seemed to glaze over with a fierce kind of ice.
“Don’t ever talk about yourself in those terms again.
You are more than somebody. You’re the most beautiful, vibrant, alive woman I’ve ever met.
You are not coy about pleasure or dislike and you take such joy out of the simplest things.
You are also brilliant and your mind fascinates me like no other.
” He tapped the journal still in her hands.
“I read these because I want to comprehend all the facets. I want to be a part of it even in some small way. Do not ever call yourself nothing. You are somebody, Meredith Blake. You’re a professor, a teacher, a researcher, a gifted doctor of mathematics, a daughter, a friend—and you’re mine. ”
If his statement hadn’t already robbed her of speech, he claimed her mouth in a kiss that branded her all the way to her soul.
The journal slipped out of her hands and she gripped his shoulders.
He sought entry to her mouth with his tongue and she welcomed him.
Emotions detonated inside of her and his fierce declaration left her defenseless.
He cupped her breast and her nipples tightened even as her belly went low and taut. Digging her fingers into his shirt, she’d barely pulled two buttons open when a knock sounded at the door.