Chapter 11 #2
The roughness of his voice sends heat through me. “Yes,” I whisper. “Please.”
He lowers the zipper. The dress slips to my waist, leaving me in my bra and the stage makeup I still haven't washed off. His gaze drops, and the hunger in his face makes me feel seen, not taken.
“I missed you,” he says.
“Then touch me.”
He does. His mouth closes over my breast, and pleasure shoots through me so sharply I gasp. He is still on his knees, one hand at my back, the other sliding beneath my dress. His fingers skim my thigh, higher, then stop at the edge of my underwear.
“Still with me?”
“Yes.”
He draws them down slowly, watching my face the whole time. Then he spreads my thighs and lowers his mouth to me. The first touch of his tongue makes me grab his hair.
“Oh, God.”
He groans against me, and the vibration rolls through my body.
He licks me slowly at first, then with more purpose when my hips lift.
His hands hold my thighs open, firm but not forcing, and the carefulness of it makes the pleasure sharper.
He knows me. He knows the rhythm, the pressure, and the place that makes my breath turn thin and helpless. I try to stay quiet, but I fail.
“Sebastian.”
He looks up, mouth wet, eyes dark. The sight of him between my legs nearly finishes me.
Then he slides two fingers inside me and seals his mouth over my clit.
I come hard, shaking against him, one hand clamped over my mouth too late to hide the sound.
He stays with me through it, gentle when I break, kissing my thigh as my body trembles.
When he rises, I pull him into a kiss. I taste myself on him, and the intimacy of it steals what little breath I have left.
“I want you,” I whisper.
He freezes. “Chloe.”
“I want you inside me.”
“You don't owe me that.”
“I know.”
“If this is grief, or adrenaline, or tonight?—”
“It's all of that,” I say. “And it's me wanting my husband.”
He stands, and undresses only enough to be inside me. There is something almost devastating about the practicality of it. There's no fantasy and no accident. It's just choice. When he comes back to me, he stops again.
“Last chance,” he says.
I reach for him. “I need you to stop talking.”
A broken sound leaves him, almost a laugh, then he kisses me and lowers me back onto the sofa.
He enters me slowly, and my mouth falls open against his.
It's too much and exactly enough. It's a familiar heat, a familiar stretch, and the intimate shock of being known by someone who has broken my heart and still holds pieces of it I can't cut free.
He stops halfway. “Okay?”
I wrap my legs around his hips. “Yes.”
He sinks deeper, and we both groan. For a moment, neither of us moves. His forehead rests against mine, his shirt is open beneath my hands, and his body shakes with the effort of holding back. Then I lift my hips.
His control snaps.
He moves in me with a rough, careful hunger, each thrust dragging pleasure through the ache. The sofa creaks beneath us, my dress twists around my waist, and his mouth finds mine, then my neck, then the place beneath my ear that makes me clench around him. His hand slides between us.
“That’s it,” he breathes. “Come for me again. Please, Chloe.”
The please undoes me. I come moaning his name, my body tightening around him until he follows, burying his face in my neck with a broken sound.
For a while, there is only breathing. Then the world returns: the lamp, the old sofa, the distant noise downstairs, my dress bunched around my hips, and Sebastian’s arms around me like he is afraid I might vanish if he lets go.
And then I start to cry.
He stills immediately. “Can I hold you?”
That makes it worse. “Yes.”
He gathers me into his lap, and I go because I want to, because his chest is still the place my body believes in, even when my heart knows better.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into my hair. “I’m so sorry.”
I cry until my throat hurts, and he holds me through all of it. There's no fixing and no pretty speech. There are just his arms, his hand at the back of my head, and his mouth pressed to my temple. When I finally pull back, my face is wet and his is not much better.
“This doesn't fix it,” I say.
“I know.”
“I’m not coming home tonight because we did this.”
His eyes close once, then he nods. “Okay.”
“My heart is still broken.”
“I know.”
“And I need to know I will never walk into what I walked into the other night again. I need to never see you leaving another woman’s hotel suite after midnight, and never walk into our house and find someone standing there like she could replace me.”
“She couldn't,” he says fiercely. “No one could replace you. Not Katrina, and not anyone my mother thinks photographs better. There is no version of my life where another woman becomes you.”
I look down at my bare hand. He looks too, but he doesn't touch it.
“I don't know how to believe that yet,” I whisper.
“Then don't believe words.” He brushes his thumb beneath my eye. “Watch what I do.”
“I’m scared you’ll make it beautiful for a week, and then the next crisis will come. And I’ll be the thing you love privately while everything else gets handled first.”
His face goes pale. “No,” he says. “Never again.”
The force of it quiets me.
“I will prove it to you,” he says. “Somehow.
Some way. I don't know what it will take, and I don't know how long. But I will prove that you are the most important person in my life. Not the company, not the launch, and not my mother. You.” My breath shakes.
“And I will prove I never stopped loving you,” he says.
“Even when I loved you badly. Even when I loved you too quietly. Even when I mistook private devotion for enough.”
Downstairs, someone calls my name. It's probably Jessica, deciding whether enough time has passed to justify a rescue. I laugh once through my tears.
Sebastian’s mouth curves sadly. “Your sister?”
“Probably preparing a search party.”
He brushes my hair back from my face, and I let myself lean into it for one second.
Only one. Then I stand and fix my dress.
He turns away while I zip it, and the courtesy hurts almost as much as the tenderness.
When I’m covered, he faces me again. His shirt is buttoned wrong, his tie hangs loose, and his hair is ruined from my hands.
“May I walk you down?” he asks.
I think of Jessica, the cast, the flowers, and the night that belongs to me. “No,” I say gently.
Pain moves through his face, but he nods. “Okay.”
“I need a minute.”
“I’ll go first.”
He reaches for the door, then stops. “Chloe?”
I look at him.
“I'm so proud of you. You amaze me."
The ache in my chest opens wide. “Thank you,” I whisper.
He leaves without asking for more.
When the door closes, I stand alone in the old donor lounge with one hand pressed to my heart. My marriage is still broken, there are answers I don't have, and I am not healed because he touched me like he loved me. But downstairs, people are waiting for me.
I wipe my face, smooth my dress, and then I go back to my opening night.