‘Please.’
She looked at him. His mouth was tense.
‘I’m not leaving till you agree to talk to me. We can do it here, or at my apartment in Mayfair.’
Edie knew very well she was no match for Sebastio’s determination. Something gave way inside her. ‘Okay, your apartment. But I’m not staying for long.’
He inclined his head. ‘Of course. You can leave whenever you wish.’
He stood back and a driver jumped out of the vehicle behind Sebastio to open the door. Edie took a breath and stepped forward, getting in with her shopping bags. Sebastio got in on the other side, immediately dwarfing the space. His scent wound around Edie like a siren call. A male siren call.
The vehicle pulled into the street and Edie absorbed the shock still reverberating through her body.
Sebastio asked, ‘You were shopping?’
She looked at the plastic bags she was still clutching like shields and put them down at her feet. ‘Just some supplies for the next couple of days, when the shops are shut.’ The kind of thing a man like Sebastio wouldn’t have to worry about with the world at his beck and call 24/7.
‘You’re not going home for Christmas?’
She shook her head. ‘My parents are away. I bought them a Caribbean cruise as a gift for Christmas.’
‘With the money I paid you?’
Edie looked at Sebastio. ‘Does it matter?’
‘No... You can do what you want with the money. So,’ he continued, ‘you are going to be spending Christmas alone?’
‘Yes.’
There was a long moment of silence before Sebastio said, ‘You could spend Christmas with me.’
Edie looked at him as something helpless flowed through her. A sense of inevitability. ‘Sebastio...no.’
Sebastio merely pushed a button in the partition between the front and the back of the car and the privacy window slid up with a slight hiss. The tinted windows lent the back of the car a cocoon-like aspect.
He moved closer and Edie was rooted to the seat. She could see the dark flecks of grey in his eyes. The line of stubble on his jaw. The thick luxuriousness of his hair.
He had taken her woollen cap off her head before she could stop him, and he threw it somewhere behind him.
‘Hey...’ she said, but it sounded weak. Ineffectual.
‘Spend Christmas with me.’
He was bending towards her, giving her time to pull back. To say no. But she couldn’t form the words. All she could see was his mouth, and she felt so hungry to taste him again. He stopped a few inches away. Torturously. Testing her will. And Edie knew then that she didn’t have the strength to deny this man. No matter what the cost.
She reached out and put her hands on his coat, pulled him forward. Their mouths crashed together and Sebastio reached all the way around her to pull her to his body. She was ravenous for him. Desperate.
After long minutes of re-tasting and relearning, Sebastio pulled back. Edie was barely aware that the car was moving and London was passing by outside. They could have been on the moon.
He shook his head. ‘Why would you deny yourself this?’
At that precise moment Edie was wondering exactly the same thing. This was vital to her well-being. A life-force coursing through her veins and arteries. Right now she thought she’d die without it. Even if it would kill her in the end—emotionally.
Edie wasn’t unaware of the irony. She knew that falling for Sebastio and continuing the affair when she knew it was bad for her wasn’t a million miles away from taking chemotherapy—which had been as toxic as it had been beneficial.
A little giggle escaped her as a kind of euphoric hysteria gripped her for a minute. Then she stopped and reached up to touch his jaw, tracing the hard line.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll spend Christmas with you.’