Page 102 of Just a Heartbeat Away

He made a face but sighed. “Okay.”

And then he leaned forward, a pucker on his lips. Via gave him a light peck, her heart nearly exploding, before she set him on his feet and he padded out, Crabby following behind.

A few minutes later, she was zipping the bag closed.

“I didn’t actually mean for you to do all the packing,” Seb said from the doorway. “I thought it would be an excuse to get you used to being in my bedroom.”

Via turned and rose up. “I don’t think I could ever get used to being in here, Seb. It’s so...sexy. So intense.”

“Really?” He looked around in confusion at his room. “I think it’s really calming.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Of course you would. You’re sexy and intense, too.”

“Is that so?” he asked, stepping into the room and gently kicking the door closed.

Her eyes widened. This was a turn she hadn’t been expecting.

“Matty’s asleep already,” he said, seeming to read her thoughts. “But I’m not going to ravish you. I just wanna see something.”

Two steps forward and he lifted her up into his arms. He turned and tossed her through the air. Via yelped as she landed on his bed, bouncing and laughing.

“Yup. I was right.”

“About what?” she asked, gasping, perfectly flustered.

“That you look absolutely stunning all mussed up and lying across my bed.”

She straightened her blouse and smoothed her hair. “I’m not mussed.”

“You’re mussed.” He prowled toward her and crooked her blouse again, tangled his hands in her hair. “And I like that I’m the one who made you that way.”

Seb kissed her again. He stood; she kneeled at the edge of the bed. His hand smoothed around to the top of her ass and she had the suspicion he was lacing his fingers into her belt loop again.

Via’s arms went around the barrel of his chest and up to press against his shoulders. “God, you’re big,” she whispered. “I can barely touch my own fingers behind you. How much do you weigh?”

“Excuse me?” he chuckled against her lips, and the hand at her ass deftly untucked her blouse. His thumb traced a circle on her bare skin, electrifying and melting her all at once.

“You’re just, I don’t know, built like an animal. So big. So sturdy. I feel like if I could unzip you from here—” she pressed on the bottom of his throat “—to here—” and down to his navel “—I could probably fit all the way inside you.”

“That is very weird. And really sexy somehow.” He chuckled again; this time his other hand got in on the untucked shirt action as well.

Suddenly, Seb used his considerable weight and leaned her backward, her back hitting the bed. He crouched over her, one hand at her back, one holding himself up and one knee on the bed.

“We won’t have sex,” he gasped, practically into her mouth. “I just have to touch you a little bit.”

“Yes,” she whispered, incapable of more than that small amount of speech at the moment.

Seb’s mouth fell to her neck and the hand at her back circled forward. He tugged her shirt all the way from her belt and let his hand trace over the hot skin of her belly, up to her ribs. He wasn’t letting his weight down onto her and Via was pretty sure that was because if he did, there’d be no telling where all this led. He held himself just a few inches away from her.

She gasped when his thumb made a firm line at the underside of her breast. She wore a silk bra, but even that liquid fabric felt too coarse against her nipples; they were tall and begging to meet Sebastian. His hand was so big that she felt like he was touching her everywhere at once, and she shivered when his mouth fell to the hollow between her collarbones.

Seb slid backward, planting both knees on the floor. His hands rested on her hips as he eyed her, spread across his bed, her shins pressing into his chest. With his eyes on hers, he slowly lifted her shirt, an inch, another inch, until the golden expanse of her stomach was exposed, her hip bones jutting out above the waist of her pants.

Finally, Seb let his eyes drop.

“MotherFUCKER,” he groaned as his eyes fell to the tattoo at her hip. A stylized line drawing of a rosebud. One of his rough fingers outlined it. “DeRosa,” he whispered, tracing the rose.

She nodded. He’d understood immediately. Even though it was perhaps an overdone thing to get tattooed on one’s body, Via had done it for personal reasons. It was her family’s name in that tattoo. Her heritage. An image to remind her who she was and where she came from.

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