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“Just hold me, Sebastian,” she whispered, and he swore he heard a note of sadness in her voice. “Right here, right now, just hold me.”
Holding her was easy; he had a feeling letting her go was going to be rather more difficult.
WEEK THREE
There were few things Alyssa enjoyed more than a day at the spa, until now.
Making her way back to the apartment from the spa Gia had told her about the week before, Alyssa grinned at the thought. Once she would have lingered for hours at the spa. A massage, highlights in her hair, facial, the complete wax, a manicure and pedicure. It could take most of the day for a full treatment. Today, she’d limited herself to the wax, manicure, and pedicure. The rest could wait, she decided.
She had exactly an hour before Shane and Sebastian were due to pick her up and take her to the private beach they’d told her about. Sun and sand, Shane and Sebastian, and no one to see her sunbathing nude but the men who were consuming more and more of her thoughts. Not to mention making it impossible to remember there was no way they would fit if they took her fully. Well, perhaps it wasn’t that she didn’t remember so much as she was becoming desperate for the possession herself.
They were dangerous to her common sense, she decided as she neared her borrowed apartment.
Sitting on the wide stone stoop smoking a cigarette, Gregory, the neighbor directly below her, lounged on the step. He was twenty-one and living with his girlfriend, a university student from Madrid who was currently vacationing in Barcelona as well.
“Hello, Alyssa,” he greeted her, his heavily accented tone open and friendly as he disposed of the cigarette and rose to his feet.
Clad in low, loose jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt and with bare feet, he smiled at her brightly.
“Hello, Gregory.” She smiled, pausing before stepping up to make her way down the narrow walk to the back of the building and the steps leading to the deck. “Is Marissa returning today?”
His girlfriend had gone home for a few days to attend her brother’s birthday party.
“Thankfully, any moment now.” Anticipation filled his dark brown eyes. “I thought to meet her. I expect every time she goes home that her poppa will lock her in the cellar and refuse to let her return to me.”
Gregory might be smiling, but there was just a hint of serious uncertainty in his voice.
“She’s crazy about you, Gregory,” she assured him, tucking her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “She would never let her father lock her up anywhere to keep her from you.”
“Eh, fathers, you don’t know how they are here.” Lifting his hands at his sides to emphasis the claim, he gave a brief little roll of his eyes. “And Marissa’s poppa, he is crazy.”
Alyssa laughed at the declaration. “Gregory, every girl’s poppa that loves her is crazy when it comes to her leaving the nest. That never changes, either.”
Gregory grimaced at the sound of Sebastian’s car purring to the curve and parking.
“Ah, your friends have arrived,” Gregory announced. “Which one is yours?”
She gave him an innocent look. “They’re both friends.”
Gregory blinked back at her, a knowing light in his dark eyes.
“Ah, I see,” he murmured.
As Shane and Sebastian stepped to the sidewalk she turned to them with a smile. “Hi there. I’d like you to meet my neighbor…”
Shane’s expression was so hard she paused for a second. Just a second. “Shane, Sebastian, this is Gregory—”
“I’m in a hurry Alyssa,” Shane announced, gripping her arm and pulling her up the stoop. “Let’s get your things.”
Behind her, she heard Sebastian greet the young man, his voice a bit amused. Evidently he wasn’t surprised by his cousin’s behavior.
“Excuse me!” She jerked her arm from Shane’s grip, obviously catching him by surprise, because he actually let her go.
“You heard me.…”
The pain that struck at her chest surprised her. They had the power to hurt her now. A power only one person in her life had ever used in the same way, and she swore she’
d never tolerate it from anyone else.
