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"Where are we going? We need to get back to the kids."
No one had been in or out of the shed all day. The door wasn't locked and he pulled her into the bare, clean space inside. The lone window was too high in the peak for anyone to see through.
"The drawers can wait." He pushed the latch shut on the shed door. "This can't."
*
Charlie had loved everything about today. There'd been no need for all the schmoozing required by the crowded, impersonal galas Sebastian loved. If she fell asleep exhausted tonight, it would be due to a hard day's work using her hands, not because she'd worn herself out with small talk. The Mavericks welcomed and accepted her. It didn't matter that they were all wealthier than Saudi princes. She fit with them, like Susan and Bob or Harper and Jeremy, or even Paige.
If only Sebastian hadn't asked her about her classes. But she'd started it by poking at his past, asking about why he had to make everything perfect. She shouldn't have brought that up, because it had only led to his questions. And now her insides were all twisted up. There were all the letters from the college in the drawer at the bungalow. She had to make a decision. After Labor Day, the kids would start signing up for classes, and hers would either be in the catalog or they wouldn't. She had to do something.
She knew what Sebastian wanted--he'd opened the doors to a bona fide art career and clearly thought she should step through, reaching for the success right at her fingertips. Charlie had never been foolish enough to think she could do everything. She understood you had to make choices about what you could and couldn't do, and that if you took on more than you could handle, you'd fail. Yet her heart wrenched at the thought of telling her dean she wasn't coming back. Lord knew she'd far rather give up all the parties, the endless schmoozing, being on, on, on all the time.
Any way she looked at it--and sometimes she felt that was all she did, examine the situation from every possible angle--she couldn't do that to Sebastian. Not when it would be ungrateful, and worse, it would seem as though she'd chosen teaching over him.
Something had to give--either teaching or the parties. But there was one thing she absolutely would not give up. Not for anything in the world.
Sebastian.
She wanted him with a need that scared her sometimes. Her fear abated when he touched her, looked at her, when he loved her late at night in his big bed until she was boneless with pleasure. And she knew he was in as deep as she was.
But then a new day dawned, and alone in her workshop all those bigger, heavier storm clouds still gathered above her. If she couldn't figure out how to survive in his world of important parties and even more important people, did she stand to lose everything? She honestly wasn't sure how long she could keep on being that perfect celebrity. One day--and she could feel it coming soon--she'd slip up. She'd snarl instead of smile. She'd snap instead of laugh. She might even scream.
"You want to talk yet?"
Despite the heat in his eyes, he was giving her another chance to open up to him. But she was so knotted inside. Too twisted up to talk anything through right now.
"Not yet." His arms were open and she stepped right into them. "But I need this. I need you."
Thankfully, less than a heartbeat later his mouth crushed hers and he hauled her up to wrap her legs around his waist. Backing her up to the counter, he set her down, so thick and hard between her legs that she whimpered.
He yanked her tank top up, then pushed aside her bra and closed his lips over her nipple.
She writhed against him, holding him tightly in the vee of her thighs. "Sebastian." There was such need in her voice, such desperation.
"You make me nuts." He kissed her lips, her neck, the hollow of her throat, while his fingers worked the button and zipper on her jeans. Faster than should have been possible, her pants and boots hit the floor, then her panties. He trailed his lips down her body, licking, tasting, his eyes dark with desire. "I need to taste you." He nipped her thigh, kissed her belly, circling ever closer. "I need to feel you come apart and hear you cry out my name."
He covered her with his lips and there was no more talking. There was just his mouth on her, his fingers inside her. Charlie curled her hand in his hair, holding him close as he took her. There was such sweetness in letting him take over, and the moan in her throat becoming a cry of pure pleasure.
His touch eased all the knots in her stomach, made her forget everything she was supposed to think about. She could only make little sounds, leaning back on her hands, opening herself to him. He was gorgeous, sensual, always needing to please as much as to take his own pleasure.
He held her hips in his hands, forcing her to take everything he had to give. Sensation spiraled up inside her, deep, into her core. Her stomach muscles clenched as the first swell of her climax hit. She panted, then lost it all, falling back on the counter, writhing wildly, crying out his name in broken syllables through wave after wave of ecstasy.
She'd barely come down before he'd rolled on protection and entered her, so deep, so fast, so exquisitely, that she lost what was left of her breath. Holding her tightly, melding their bodies, he forced her higher, pushed her limits. Then he catapulted them over the edge together and she flung her arms around him, kissing him so deeply she tasted pleasure. She tasted reckless abandon.
And, most of all, she tasted love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
"Isn't the garden lovely?" Francine sighed blissfully a couple of days later.
Sebastian was seated with her at a cafe table, having just finished a lap around the Magnolia Gardens walkways. "There's some nice shade under this tree."
"Yes, and the breeze truly makes it an idyllic spot."
Francine was radiant. Despite her infirmities, she always looked to the brighter side of things, even if it was just the weather. Sebastian had learned a long time ago that there were two ways to consider life--choosing to see the negative or the positive. Your choice was what defined you, and Francine was a happy person.
Sebastian tried his best to be happy too. Unfortunately, since working on the group home in San Jose, his frustration had been building. All right, it had been building longer than that, for weeks, since Francine had first brought up Charlie's fall classes. Yet Charlie still wouldn't talk to him. If he so much as hinted at her decision about teaching this fall, she completely shut down on him.
