“Things were getting a little out of control in there.” He shook his head, letting it fall back against the seat. “I was about to lose my head.”
A small smile teased her lips. “Me too.” She moved so that she was straddling his hips. He groaned at the feel of her pressed against him like that. “Mmm.” She tossed her head back in pleasure. “God, you feel like steel.”
His hands caught her hips, forcing her to remain still. “Damn, baby. You are killing me, and I haven’t even kissed you yet.”
“So, kiss me.” She laughed, and it went through him like an electrical current. She leaned forward until her breasts rubbed against his chest and lowered her head enough so he felt her breath on his lips. “Kiss me, Sebastian,” she whispered huskily.
“No,” he breathed. “Not yet. First, answer something for me.”
She pulled back just a little. “Okay.”
He stroked a hand through her hair, loving the silky texture that smelled like warm strawberries. “Are you a virgin, Eve?” He had to know. His father had kept her pretty sheltered, but that didn’t mean anything. She was nearly twenty years old, and she hadn’t exactly been living in a convent. She had friends, some of them male… He wasn’t jealous.
He wasn’t, damn it!
Eve leaned back, blushing. “Yeah… Yes, I am a virgin.” She sighed. “But don’t think that I am completely repressed.”
“Oh, yeah?” He continued to play with her hair, almost unable to stop himself. “Tell me.” The thrill he felt at her answer was nothing, he told himself. He wasn’t happy that she was still untouched. Really, it should have turned him off. So why was he growing harder at just the idea of being the first—only—man to claim her sweet innocence?
“I…” She dropped her eyes for a moment and sucked in a deep breath before meeting his gaze boldly. “I have wanted you for a long time, Sebastian. When the wanting got too much to handle, I had to…” She blushed. “I…”
“You touched yourself?”
She nodded, causing pictures to run through his mind, and a groan escaped him. “You would touch yourself and think of me? Imagine it was me sliding my fingers up into you? Playing with that beautiful, wet little pussy? Pinching that throbbing clit?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
He couldn’t stop himself after that. Sebastian thrust his hands into her hair and pulled her head down for a kiss that curled his spine. She moaned, her lips opening ever so slightly to let out the passionate little sound. He took complete advantage of it and thrust his tongue inside to taste her. She was like warm honey and fresh berries on his tongue. He had never tasted anything so divine in his life.
She kissed him back, innocently but passionately nonetheless. He could feel the heat of her through her panties, and it was driving him insane. He broke the kiss to trail a path down her neck, and his hands eased from her hair to skim across her breasts.
“Ah,” she gasped when he touched her nipples. Her back arched, silently begging for more.
“Like that?” he murmured, kissing her collarbone. “Do you want more?”
“More!”
With fingers that surprisingly trembled, he reached for the hem of her sweater and pulled it over her head. When his eyes landed on what he had uncovered, he was left speechless. Her light blue bra was transparent and showcased a set of breasts that were beyond flawless. Just looking at them, he knew they would fit his hands perfectly. They were high and firm, the tips rosy pink and begging for his mouth.
“So beautiful,” he murmured, letting his fingers trace around each areola. Good Lord, she was so beautiful. “Do you want me to taste you?” She made a whimpering sound that he took as a valid “yes.”
Sebastian pushed the cups away and took her left nipple into his mouth. She cried out and stabbed her fingers into his hair to hold him to her. She tasted clean and pure, his tongue rubbing back and forth across the distended nipple, causing her to whimper again and again.
He pulled back enough to turn his attention to her other breast and worship it with his mouth as well. “Bastian!” she cried in a whispery breath.
His right hand went to the hem of her skirt and trailed up the inside of her thighs. When he came to the little triangle of fabric that was her panties, he found her drenched, and that was just the undergarment. He could only imagine how wet her pussy was and had to bite back a curse.
His body was throbbing, pleading with him to put an end to his pain. But their first time—her first time ever—was not going to happen in the back seat of a car, even if it was a limo. Eve was special, and she deserved a hell of a lot better than this for her first foray into lovemaking.
That thought made him catch his breath. He had never thought of it as lovemaking before. In the past, it had just been sex to him. Fucking on most occasions. The women in his bed hadn’t really been more than that. A quick fuck, some good sex. Most hadn’t lasted past the first night, others no longer than a week or two. But this was Eve. The only female to make him ache to the point of madness from simply looking at her. Eve, who made his heart race from the first addictive taste of her sweet lips.
“Bastian?” She was frowning at him, obviously not understanding his sudden withdrawal.
He gave her one more kiss, this one tender and precious compared to how he wanted to devour her lips. When he pulled back, he gave her the sweater. “Not like this, babe. We need to go slow. I want you to the point of mind-numbing madness. But that is not the way this is going to happen. Not when you are innocent. It will happen, Eve. Just not here like this.”
six
The next day was Christmas Eve. She took her time wrapping the last of her gifts then carried them down to put under the tree.
On the last trip down with an arm full of presents, it was to find Cameron in the family room unloading his own presents from a large box. She sat down on the floor and began helping him. In truth, she was worried about her stepbrother. They had always been friends. Maybe not as close as she and Quinn were, but still good friends.
Eve positioned a present front Cameron to Garth, trying to find a way to ask what needed asking. Finally, she just went for broke. “So, are you in love, or what?”
He didn’t laugh at her like she had imagined he might. Instead, he frowned at the Christmas tree for a while before shrugging. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
Eve blinked. “Wow! I wasn’t expecting you to admit to it, but hey, that’s wonderful. It’s that French chick, right? I have actually met her before. She seemed nice.”
Cameron grunted. “Ami is a stubborn pain in the ass.”
“O-kay.” She sat there, expecting him to go on if she was just tenacious enough. She wasn’t wrong.
“She got it into her pretty head that I love my job more than her. She said that she wanted to come first with me…just once.” He glared at the tree, like he couldn’t understand anything about what he had just said.
Eve raised a brow at him. He sounded as if he really couldn’t figure out what Ami’s problem was. “Well, you are a slave to your camera, Cameron. And before you bite my head off, just let me tell you something,” she said quickly when he started to protest. “Yes, I know you are an artist. You like to work when you see something that inspires you. I even know that your camera is like another appendage to you, just as if it were another arm or leg. But I also know that you, who could cause world hunger all on your own by eating anything in sight, would give up a meal to take ‘the picture.’”
He had been glaring at her while she spoke, but slowly the glare turned into a frown and he groaned. “Am I really that bad?”
“To me, you are perfect, Cameron Savage. But to someone like Ami, who would expect you to put her first, I can see you coming off as a bit of a jerk.” She finished arranging the last of the Christmas presents under the tree. “You could always call her. Say how sorry you are, and ask her to pretty please join us for Christmas.”
“Do you think she will forgive me?”
Eve l
aughed. “As sexy as you are? She would have to be crazy not to.”
Cameron jumped to his feet, bent to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, and with a whoop, practically ran from the room.
As he was leaving the family room, Garth was entering it. His blue eyes were surprised as he watched his son. “What’s with you?” he called after him.
“Love,” Cameron called back, laughing.
The older man sat down in the chair closest to where Eve was still seated by the tree, shaking his graying head. “Who is the boy supposed to be in love with?”
She shrugged. “I’m sure you will find out soon enough.” She scooted over and pressed her back against his legs. “Rub my head?” She gave him a little pout. “Please?”
“Spoiled,” he grumbled, but there was a smile in his voice. He started running his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp just like her mother used to do, and her eyes drifted shut.
She felt exhausted. The last few nights, she had been finding it hard to sleep. Nightmares from the robbery continued to haunt her dreams. That was when she could actually fall asleep. Last night, she had tossed and turned for hours, her body aching for Sebastian. When she had finally drifted off to sleep, she hadn’t gotten more than an hour or so before she awoke in a pool of sweat, with the room smelling distinctly of fear.
Her fear.
“So what did you get me for Christmas, angel?” Garth asked, continuing to stroke his long fingers through her hair just the way she loved.
“Not telling,” she informed him, her eyes still closed.
“Did I say spoiled?” He tugged playfully on a lock of her hair. “More like a brat.”
She smiled. “All true. But you love me anyway.” She rested her head back on one of his knees and sighed. There was something she had been meaning to talk to him about all morning. “I received a Christmas card this morning,” she confided.
“Oh? Was it a nice one?”
She bit her bottom lip, torturing the delicate tissue. “I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet… It had a postmark from another country.” She felt him stiffen, and she finally opened her eyes and turned to face him. “It was from my grandfather.”
Her mother’s father was a very well-known French ambassador to some foreign country which she knew little to nothing about. She had never met the man who had helped give her mother life. As Giselle’s mother had been his second wife, and an arranged marriage in an effort to get him into a certain dignitary’s good graces, Giselle had been overlooked in favor of wife number three and the subsequent children born thereafter. As far as Eve knew, her mother had only ever met her father—Eve’s grandfather—a few times in her entire life.
Therefore, Eve had never met the man personally, nor ever had the desire to look him up. Not even after the death of her mother. She supposed that, with her grandmother no longer living, her grandfather and what children and grandchildren he had with his current wife were all the family she now had. But to her, they didn’t really matter.
She did, however, know that her grandfather was considered a powerful man on the little island on which he was the ambassador. The island, which was under the rule of a king that had recently been in several English-language newspapers, was one of the richer kingdoms. Her grandfather was in tight with the old king who had recently stepped down in favor of his son’s rule, or so the papers said.
The Christmas card had been bothering her all morning. Ever since the housekeeper had handed it to her, Eve had this terrible feeling of dread. She wanted nothing more than to tear it up and burn each tiny piece without even looking inside. But another part wanted to know what the old man wanted. Because that could be the only reason he would dare contact her now.
“Okay.” Garth gave her a small but encouraging smile. “Maybe you should open it.”
Grimacing, she pulled the envelope from her back jeans pocket. After only a small hesitation in which Garth nudged her with his foot, she tore it open. There was a nice picture on the front of the card that she recognized as the island country where he now lived. The island was inside a snow globe with glittery snow falling.
Flipping the card open, she began to read aloud.
“Dearest Granddaughter,
It is with great hope that this card finds you in good health this so celebrated holiday. I was hurt to find that your darling mother had passed from this world. I trust that her husband has treated you kindly. However, I see fit to inform you…”
She trailed off as she read the rest of the letter silently. Then, with an outraged cry, she jumped to her feet, dropping the offending card as she began to pace angrily. How dare he!
Garth sat forward. “What?” he demanded, sounding worried. “What is it? What does he want?” He reached for the card that had landed at his feet. “Eve, you are really starting to scare me.”
Fury, pure and uncontrollable fury was rushing through her veins. “He…” Words failed her, and she turned away, ready to scream her rage at a man who wasn’t there. A man she so desperately wanted to slap in the face right then.
But Garth was already reading the card, and she could see the tension gathering in his shoulders with each sentence he read. Eve took a calming breath. “He has arranged for me to marry the newly crowned king of his precious country. That man has practically sold me to some guy I have never met. All he has is sons and grandsons. So now, I have been bartered off.”
***
It took quite a while for her to calm down.
First, she tore the Christmas card with its beautiful picture and so hurtful words into a thousand pieces before tossing them into the fire. Then she went into Garth’s office to find some stationery and a pen.
After taking a few minutes for meditation, she was no longer shaking with rage. She sat behind her stepfather’s desk and put pen to paper. She channeled all of her fury—and yes, hurt—into each sentence she wrote. Instead of English, which was not her grandfather’s native language, she wrote it all in French so that there would be no doubt exactly what she was saying to him.
She told him exactly what she thought of him. His treatment of her mother, his acknowledgment of Eve as his granddaughter only when he needed her for his precious king, were all spelled out in perfect French. She informed the bastard that she wanted nothing to do with either him or the man ruling the country where her grandfather was a powerful dignitary.
Eve refrained from curse words, which were actually burning in her throat from wanting to spit them out at the old man’s feet. But she was better than that. Garth would have been disappointed in her if she were to act in such a childish manner, even if she was sure that he was feeling the same urge to do so as well.
It took nearly three pages for her to express her disgust with the man before she felt she could close the letter. She ended the missive by telling him she wanted nothing to do with him and for him to leave her alone. At the bottom, she put a Merry Christmas! and then scrawled her signature before folding the thick paper and sealing it in an envelope. After addressing the letter, she gave it to the housekeeper and asked her to take it to be mailed right away.
Two hours had passed since she had a complete meltdown over the letter and the horrible man she, unfortunately, shared DNA with. Now she was much calmer and felt better for having addressed the situation in a letter where she could come across as cool and collected, instead of a phone conversation in which she was sure she would have ended up saying things that would have her poor mother turning in her grave.
She returned to the family room to find Garth picking up a gift and shaking it carefully. “Hey!” She laughed, taking the gift from him and replacing it under the tree. It was marked to him from Quinn and was in a medium-sized box wrapped in beautiful silver paper. “Stop that.”
He swatted at her but returned to his favorite chair. “Feeling better?”
Eve shrugged as she sat on the sofa and tucked her feet under her. “A little, I guess. Although he should thank his lucky stars I am no
t in front of him right now. His king would have to find another ambassador.”
“Just don’t fret over it right now, angel. I will take care of it.” He gave her a smile that told her she could trust him, which she did wholeheartedly. But there was something about the glint in his blue eyes that told her he was in a dangerous kind of mood.
Poor old man, she thought with a malicious smile. Her grandfather wouldn’t even see the danger of this Savage man until it was too late.
Eve’s love for Garth swelled in her chest. “I love you.”
“Back at you, sweetheart.”
seven
Christmas Eve night found everyone gathered in the family room. The lights were all off except for those that glowed on the beautiful Christmas tree. The soft light, along with that of the fireplace, was comforting. Garth was relaxing in his favorite chair while Eve and Quinn, both in their pajamas, cuddled under a large throw on the sofa. With Cameron in the only other chair and Sebastian leaning back against the sofa as he sat on the floor closer to the fire, it felt complete to Eve.
Everyone was enjoying big mugs of homemade hot chocolate Eve had made for them. She hid a smile behind her own warm mug as Garth continued to attempt to bribe anyone who would listen to let him open a present. He was worse than any child when it came to Christmas and presents, and he kept glancing at the tree with glittering eyes in anticipation.
Finally, she decided to put him out of his misery and went to the tree. No one could stop at getting each other just one gift, so she had several from which to choose. She found the ones she was looking for and gathered them in her arms.
She passed out one to each of her beloved family members, saving Garth’s for last. She placed it in his hands and perched on the arm of his chair while everyone else tore at the pretty, shiny red wrapping. But even though he was last to receive a present, he was the first to get his opened.