Chapter Ten
EMERY
My head pounds, pulling me out of sleep, but my mind is too fuzzy to figure anything out other than the fact I’m wrapped around a hard body. A hand moves slowly over my back whilst the steady beat of a heart sounds beneath my ear, and the rhythm almost sends me back to sleep. If it weren’t for the pounding in my head, it probably would have, but along with the migraine, foggy memories are also trying to push their way to the surface.
Instinctively, my arms tighten around Sebastian, and the hand tracing soft patterns on my back pauses before starting again. “How are you feeling?” Sebastian asks.
“I—” My voice comes out as a croak, and I try to clear my throat. “My head hurts,” I say, but the words are still raspy, and I cough at the scratchiness in my throat.
“I’ll get you something for it,” he says.
Even though my head is killing me, I also don’t want him to leave.
I’m only wearing my T-shirt from yesterday and underwear, and the heat radiating from Sebastian’s body has me trying to burrow further into him. “Not yet,” I say, and I realise he’s in nothing but a pair of tight briefs.
“Do you remember what happened?” he asks, and the fuzzy memories start slotting into place. But, for the most part, they remain unclear, like looking through a dirty glass window.
“I had a nightmare,” I say, lifting my head off his chest so I can look at him in the dim light flitting through the room. “Was it bad?” I ask. If it’s anything like the picture being painted in my mind, it was awful.
He doesn’t answer straight away, but I already know. I haven’t had one like that in years. “It was bad, Grace,” he says eventually. “I had to hold you down. You were going to hurt yourself.” That explains why my body aches.
With that and what happened last night, my body feels nearly at a breaking point. Not literally because I know exactly what that is like, and it wasn’t this. But whilst my body does ache with some pain, my mental state concerns me the most. The last time I felt so unstable, I nearly ended everything.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I can feel the worry in the tension Sebastian’s body holds and hear it in his voice.
“Don’t be sorry,” he says firmly. “You did nothing wrong. Last night was my fault.”
“No, Sebastian.”
“Yes, Grace, if something had happened to you…” he says, and I’ve never heard him like this before. “Easton might have done the wrong thing, and he’ll pay for it, trust me. But I never wanted you to see me like that.”
“Like what?”
“A monster.”
I might feel mixed emotions about last night, and seeing Sebastianlike thatwas hard, but I would never categorise him as a monster. With effort, I push myself up to look into his face. “Sebastian, you’re not a monster.”
“You don’t kn—”
“Sebastian… just listen,” I say, making sure he’s looking at me before I continue, “Last night was hard, one of the hardest I’ve had in a long time, but I still don’t think you’re a monster. I lived with a monster for seven years… it’s not… you’re not that,” I say, reaching for his face, and he leans into my touch. “What you did might bequestionable…but it doesn’t make you a monster. Not after what he took from you.”
I press my lips to his, hoping it reinforces what I said. The kiss is soft yet full of emotion, but I find myself wanting more. I touch my tongue to the seam of his lips, and he opens immediately, letting me in with no hesitation. Sebastian lets me lead, and it’s not something I’ve done before. Usually, I use him as a guide, not quite sure what I’m doing. This time, letting go of my doubts, I just do what feels right. My movements are slow, but it allows me to explore every inch of him, and he lets me. When he groans into my mouth, it only adds to my growing confidence.
Sebastian slides a hand up the outside of my thigh and under my T-shirt, resting it on my waist. His thumb brushes the underside of my breast, tracing a pattern over my ribs. With every pass, my need for him builds.
As much as I’m enjoying the slow exploration, it’s not enough, and I deepen the kiss.
“Grace… we shouldn’t,” he says, breaking away from me.
“I’mokay, Sebastian,” I say, but as the words leave my mouth, a thought dawns on me. What if it’s not aboutme. Last night surely had to be hard on him also. He confronted his parents’ killer.
He did more than that.
Regardless, I can’t imagine what he’s going through right now. “Unless you don’t want to—”
“Grace, it’s not that. You’re injured and exhausted.”
“This is what I want,” I say before taking his mouth again. Then, with another deep lick of my tongue against his, I pull away. “I need you.”