“Stop distracting me,” he growls.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His mouth parts, and the internal struggle I sense in him—strong enough to ignite the surrounding air—shoots straight to my sex. I think about pressing my thighs together, but he wedges a knee between them, as if he knows my next move before I do.
“I bet you’re turned on right now.” He lowers his head, almost touching his lips to mine. “Are you, Novalee? Hot and wet and throbbing with need?”
Boldly returning his stare, I refuse to back down. “Does the thought make your cock hard?”
“When it comes to you, my cock’s always hard.” Balancing his knee on the cushion, he palms my cheek and rubs his thumb across my mouth. This is definitely against the rules, but I can’t bring myself to care.
“Sebastian.” His name is a prayer on my lips, a plea for the ache in my chest to disappear. He teases my tongue with the pad of his thumb, and it’s a warm and salty temptation I don’t want to give in to, but he has a way of breaking me down every time. I suck his thumb into my mouth.
He groans. “Are you trying to get me into trouble?”
I nibble on his flesh before letting his digit slip from my lips. “Why would I do such a thing?”
“So you can marry the chancellor.”
“What if I do want to marry him?” The question’s a challenge. A test. “Does that bother you?”
“Do you seriously have to ask that?”
A laugh springs free at this merry-go-round of twenty questions we’re riding. “You haven’t been forthcoming so far.” I hold his gaze, letting this moment of significance build between us. “Why did you give Vance permission to go after Lilith?”
“He told you?”
“Yes, but I don’t get why you did it. The night of the ball, you said—”
“We both said things.” Standing, he drags a hand through his hair. “I said things I didn’t mean.”
“What didn’t you mean?”
“I implied I had feelings for Lilith.”
“Are you saying you don’t?” I hold my breath, afraid to hear the answer, and yet…hoping for the only answer my heart yearns to hear.
“I have too much history with her not to feel anything, but it’s more in line with hatred than anything else.”
“Why do you hate her?”
“Because she’s a goddess at head games, and I’m her favorite pastime.”
“So you hate her, but you…want her?” Dread steals my vocal cords, causing me to choke on the words. But no matter how upsetting this conversation is, or how much I don’t want to hear about the goddess of head games that broke his heart at some point, I need to know where I stand with him.
And that’s when I’m reminded it goes both ways, and maybe he feels the same way about Liam.
He leans over me again, his muscular arms caging me in, and our eyes lock. “I used to want her,” he murmurs, dipping his head until the corner of his mouth grazes mine. “Then I saw you in the hall that first day and something just fucking clicked.” He breathes in, a tiny moan rumbling in the back of his throat, then exhales against my neck. A shiver travels down my shoulder. “I know you feel it too, and that’s why I gave Vance what he’s been after for so long.”
“What if she doesn’t want him?”
He snickers. “Lilith always wants what she can’t have. He’s been the ultimate prize on her radar for years.”
The fact that he’s opening up to me, if only the slightest bit, fills my soul with hope. “That first day in the hall…that’s not the first time I felt it,” I confess.
“You’re talking about the day we met.” He pulls back, searching my face. “You were only twelve. So damn innocent.”
“I didn’t understand it at the time, or where your anger was coming from, but you intrigued me, even back then.”
Something dark and painful passes over his features. “I was so fucking angry…Jesus, Novalee. You saw me when no one else did.” Sliding to the floor, he kneels between my feet and rests his head in my lap, hands gripping my hips. The urge to sink my fingers into his hair is almost more than I can stand. I fist my hands at my sides, remaining as still as a rock.
“I still see you, Sebastian.”
We stay like that for I don’t know how long, and eventually, I can’t hold back. With a sigh, I rake my fingers through his thick, disheveled hair, my heart pounding in my chest as his rapid breaths heat the material covering my thigh.
“The way you look at the chancellor brings out the worst in me.”
I swallow hard. “You must not see the way I look at you.”
He tilts his head, sea-blue eyes meeting mine again. “But you chose him.”