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His husky command brushed against Callie’s sensitised skin as if he had actually touched her. She stepped away slightly, swallowing, her hands trembling as she reached for her buttons. Sebastian’s gaze was firmly locked on their action and her stomach clenched, her nipples tightening to painful points, rubbing erotically against her bra as she fumbled with the top button beneath Sebastian’s stare.
She faltered for a moment. She wasn’t ashamed of her body. Being the tallest female by far growing up may have been a fault to focus on for a normal girl in a normal family, but things had been so far from normal at home that Callie had never had the luxury of worrying about what other people thought about her.
Including lovers.
But, undressing before his intent gaze, she felt a moment of doubt. She wasn’t twenty years old and stick thin. Not that she’d ever been stick thin. Unfortunately her large-boned genetics and size eleven feet would never put her in the waif group.
Nor could she claim to be curvy. She was more straight up and down. Long, strong limbs and athletic torso.
She’d bet anything he had curvy women throwing themselves at him on a daily basis.
He frowned at her sudden cessation. ‘Callie?’
She looked at him, all honed perfect male, then down at herself, avoiding his gaze. ‘I’m...’ Her voice cracked a little and she shook herself.
This had never mattered before. She was a busy professional woman who was confident in her abilities, sexual and otherwise. She had no problems in asking for - and getting - what she wanted in bed. More than that, she was a take-it-or-leave-it kind of a girl. What you saw was what you got.
But this felt...different. Something about him, even after such short acquaintance, felt different and that gave her pause. She’d never gone to bed with someone after knowing them for less than a day. How could a man who was essentially a stranger have had such a cataclysmic affect on her?
For someone who was used to being in control, that was more than a little scary. But perversely she also felt...safe.
She moistened her lips. ‘I’m not twenty any more, you know?’
‘Well, thank goodness for that.’ He smiled. ‘Twenty-year-olds are vastly overrated.’
She gave a half-smile. ‘Still...’
‘Callie?’ he said softly. ‘Does it look like I care?’
Callie’s gaze dropped to the large bulge in his underwear and she practically salivated. However...‘If you don’t mind me saying so, those things are not known for their fussiness.’
He gave a half laugh. ‘That’s true but this one is.’ And when Callie hesitated further he asked, ‘Do you need a hand with that?’
Callie heard the silky challenge and knew she was doomed. She lifted her chin. ‘I think I can manage.’
Her fingers were sure, now, as they popped each button and then quickly dispensed of her shirt. She wiggled out of her trousers in record time, thankful for the presence of the nearby wall. And then she was standing before him in her underwear, burning up from the heat in the slow, steady sweep of his appreciative gaze.
He lifted his hand and pointed to her bra. ‘That too.’
Callie’s eyes locked with his as she reached behind her back for the clasp. Did she push her chest out a little more than necessary? Damn straight she did. The satisfying suck of his harshly indrawn breath made it worthwhile as her breasts swung free. The bottom of her silver pendant brushed the swell of her cleavage as large moonlight-kissed nipples scrunched into tight berries beneath the intensity of his gaze.
‘Oh, my,’ Sebastian mimicked, pushing out of the doorway and prowling forward the two paces separating them, his eyes glued to her breasts.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and Callie shivered, her nipples scrunching harder. Then he turned her slightly, walking her back a pace until she bumped against the wall.
She gasped a little as the cold paintwork hit her heated flesh but then his mouth descended and latched on to hers and all coherent thought was lost as Callie opened to the demands of his lips. Moaning against his mouth she wound her arms around his neck, revelling in the hard press of the wall behind that sandwiched her against the lean, hard press of his front.
Callie whimpered in protest as his lips left hers but it died in her throat when his hot mouth closed over one of her nipples a second later. She flung her head back against the wall, dragging in fiery air, twining her fingers into his hair, holding him there.
Another moan escaped as he sucked hard on the sensitive peak but then he was gone and she mewed her frustration, her eyes seeking his.
‘You’re beautiful.’
The ragged whisper brushed sticky tentacles across her pelvic floor and Callie’s breath hitched. ‘Don’t stop,’ she muttered, yanking him back, her knees almost crumbling when he complied, lavishing attention on her other breast.
She gripped his shoulders, warm and solid beneath her palms, the action pressing her closer, close enough to feel the virile thickness of his erection.
God...She had to touch him.
Callie’s hand drifted lower as he reclaimed her lips with neck-snapping passion. The muscles in his back rippled in response to her touch and when her fingers breeched the band of his underwear to grasp his very fine ass, the muscles there clenched tight.
And when her hand sought and found the long hard length of him, his groan was soul-deep satisfying. He tore his mouth away, placing his forehead on hers, grabbing in air. Callie squeezed his cock and he growled, ‘I think we need to lie down now.’
Catching her hand he dragged her towards the bed, somehow managing to step out of his underwear as well. And then they were tumbling onto the mattress and Callie’s underwear was gone until all she was wearing was a silver necklace and two hoop earrings.
He was on her then, lapping at every inch of her skin like she was covered in honey and he hadn’t eaten for days.
‘Now,’ Callie cried, her hips rising off the bed. ‘Condom.’
He didn’t argue or try to negotiate her out of something that was non-negotiable, just rolled away and Callie watched him roaming around in the buff very efficiently finding his jeans then his wallet. He extracted a condom, rolled it on and was back by her side in twenty seconds flat.
Callie was liking him more and more.
Dropping a string of kisses around the base of her throat, his tongue traced the line of her necklace. ‘Now,” he murmured. “Where were we?’
Heat licked rivers of fire through her veins which all converged at a point between her legs. ‘Here,’ she said, grasping the firm globes of his ass and rubbing herself against his erection.
He didn’t need any further invitation. He just slid inside, filling her up so damn good it ripped the breath from her lungs. And when she asked for more, he gave it, and when she wanted it faster, he picked up the pace, and when she cried out, his voice joined hers.
And when she went over the edge, he went with her.
––––––––
It was quite some hours later before they finally lay sated in a post-coital drowse among tangled sheets. Callie lay on her back angled across the bed, Sebastian’s shoulder a perfect pillow. His arm, heavy across her chest was warm and vital and his fingers trailing up and down her bicep kept the hum in her cells, the thrum in her blood on a steady burn.
‘So. The bridge?’
Callie’s eyes snapped open, the malaise invading her bones and infecting her thought processes evaporating in a heartbeat. The hum and the buzz snuffed out.
‘Sebastian.’
‘Come on, Callie.’ He ran a finger down her arm but he stopped when she flinched. ‘Something happened back at the restaurant. If Geri’s to be believed, I think it has something to do with what happened on the bridge this morning.’
Callie vaulted up, pulling the sheet with her and leaving Sebastian exposed — not that she cared. She squirmed to the side of the bed, her feet finding the floor. The only person who knew the story was Geri and her heart somersaulted in her chest at the mere thought of confiding in anyone else.
‘Geri should mind her own damn business.’
She heard the slide of limbs against the sheets behind her and was conscious of him coming closer. She should get up and leave but, perversely, she wanted to stay.
It had been so nice here in Sebastian’s bed.
So, when his fingers tentatively touched the small of her back, she didn’t flinch and he grew bolder, running his palm up her spine to her shoulder blade. ‘Maybe Geri knows that sometimes talking to someone that you don’t know very well is easier.’
Callie snorted. ‘That’s a nice euphemism for virtual stranger.’
He ignored her sarcasm, giving her shoulder a squeeze before dropping his hand to the bed. ‘Okay. How about I guess?’
Callie shut her eyes. ‘Just leave it, Sebastian.’
‘I’m thinking that you lost a client on that bridge. Maybe recently? Maybe someone you were negotiating with at the time who decided to end it all anyway?’
Sudden tears pricked at her eyes, hot and scalding, as a flash of her brother’s anguished face flickered like an old movie reel in her head.
‘Someone you couldn’t help no matter how hard you tried.’
Callie heard Zack’s little voice asking for his daddy and sucked in a breath. She had tried. So hard.
‘We can’t be all things to all people, Callie. It wasn’t your fault.’
She knew that. She did know it. And there was something about the gentle understanding in his voice that told her he knew it, too.
On a deeply personal level, not just occupationally.
A familiar pain grew in her chest and the pressure build-up behind her eyes was almost unbearable. A tear trekked down her face as the urge to unburden grew to overwhelming force.
For God’s sake, she’d just shared the most intimate thing two human beings could share. She’d been as physically vulnerable as it was possible to be with a man. But to feel such an emotional connection? This compulsion to open up was a whole new level of intimacy. So much so her hands trembled.
‘Callie?’ he whispered, stroking her back again. ‘Talk to me.’
His silky tone was so inviting. So soft. So understanding. If she didn’t say something, say what was on her mind, she was going to burst. And in some strange way Callie couldn’t understand, she trusted him. It was bizarre. She barely knew him but she knew she could tell him this.
The stroke of Sebastian’s palm both soothed and encouraged and somehow it seemed easier to spill her emotional baggage to a stranger in the dark.
‘It was...my brother. Not a client. My brother committed suicide from that bridge eight years ago yesterday. I was there, talking to him, trying to talk him down, but...’
His hand stilled and Callie opened her eyes. She could only imagine the red flags her admission had raised. Could he separate out Sebastian the psychologist from Seb the lover? The mattress gave then and suddenly he was behind her, opening his legs wide and snuggling her into the V between his thighs, his powerful quads bracketing hers.
Wrapping both arms around her waist, he pulled her in, his front to her back. ‘I’m sorry.’
Callie sagged against him as if she’d just had a ten-tonne block of concrete lifted from her shoulders. ‘It was a long time ago.’
He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘What was his name?’
‘An...’ Callie faltered, a thickness rising in her throat.
Nobody involved in the case back then had ever been particularly interested in his name. He had just been a system failure. A chart number. And people who knew she’d been Zack’s aunt and guardian had been too embarrassed or polite to ask. She was curiously touched by the way he’d just humanised her brother.
‘Andrew.’
He rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘Did Andrew have problems or...?’
‘He was a schizophrenic.’
‘Ah.’
Callie drew in a ragged breath. It still hurt to talk about him. But it was nice to acknowledge his existence after years of avoiding the topic.
‘He’d been in and out of psych wards from the age of sixteen. He was non-compliant with his meds and...transient... homeless for the last few years...’
She wondered if the ugly scene at the restaurant was now making more sense for Sebastian.
‘That must have been difficult.’
Callie remembered those years of trying to help, trying to save him, trying to get him to see reason. Trying to be sister, mother and health professional, and failing at all of them. Learning the hard way that you just couldn’t help someone who didn’t want to be helped.
‘The voices just got too much for him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again and the empathy in his voice was thick and tangible.
They were quiet for a while, sitting in what felt a strange kind of solidarity. After a while he shuffled back and she followed him, lying down with him again, turning into his side and draping an arm over his chest.
‘Is that why you became a psych nurse?’ he asked into the silence that stretched between them that already felt scarily natural.
Callie flipped over so she was lying on her stomach, her chin propped on one of his very fine pectoral muscles. ‘My mother was bipolar and Andy was diagnosed at sixteen. I didn’t seem to be able to help either of them but I wanted to be able to do something. To try and help others. To...I don’t know, understand, maybe.’
She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Any of it.
It just felt right. As right as Sebastian’s forefinger felt pushing back a lock of her hair.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Why’d you decide to become a psychologist?’
He searched her face like he, too, had demons and he didn’t know where to start. ‘My father was a Vietnam vet. He was a prisoner of war for a brief time. He suffered severe PTSD. My mother was clinically depressed most of her life. Because of Dad mostly. Their marriage was certainly no bed of roses. So...’ he shrugged ‘I guess for the same reasons as you. To help. To understand.’
Callie nodded, liking the openness of his pale green eyes and the fact that he was some kind of kindred spirit. She shot him a slow smile. ‘And what on earth are you doing in this neck of the woods? Community mental health is a little lowbrow for such a hotshot, surely?’
––––––––
Sebastian chuckled but his gut tensed. The answer to that one was complicated and a lot closer to home than the ancient history that was his family.
He played with a lock of her hair. ‘I just needed a change of pace.’ Callie was looking at him intently and he averted his gaze to the silky slide of her hair through his fingers. ‘To try something different.’
She arched an eyebrow at his evasive answer but didn’t say anything. For damn sure she knew that he was evading her question, though. She was just choosing to let it go.
For now.
Instead, she leaned forward and kissed him, lingering over it, her tongue stroking his lips. Desire squirmed in Sebastian’s belly but she kept it light, easing away far too soon and cuddling into his side again.
‘So,’ Sebastian murmured after he realised the silence had gone on for an eternity. He’d been too wrapped up in the press of her breasts against his ribs and the slow, steady fan of her breath against his chest to make conversation. ‘What I want to know is, how come you aren’t married with a swag of kids by now?’
She laughed. ‘You have to ask that? With my gene pool? Inflict that on some poor innocent child? No way. Absolutely not. And there’s not a lot of guys around who are comfortable with my no-kids stance. Also...I raised Andy’s kid from two through to ten so I’ve done my mothering.’
Sebastian blinked at the ceiling. Well that he hadn’t expected. ‘Raised?’ he asked tentatively because he might have only known her for a day but he was already coming to know she buried her hurts deep. ‘Past tense? Where is he now?’
She rolled to her back and Sebastian felt her absence acutely. She was only a couple of hand spans away but the distance between them felt like a gaping chasm.
‘Back with his mother,’ she said, her voice a monotone as she stared at the ceiling.
‘But she wasn’t always around?’ he clarified wondering how far he could push.
‘No.’ She rolled her head from side to side. ‘Zack’s mother was a drug addict. And my brother wasn’t capable of looking after him either. Aleisha’s parents raised Zack until Andrew died and then...they couldn’t cope any more. They didn’t know if their daughter was dead or alive from one minute to the next and they were getting older. Too old to cope with an energetic two-year-old-boy. So I took him in.’
The depth of emotion in Callie’s husky voice made Sebastian ache for her. He glanced over to find her eyes were closed. ‘But he’s back with her now?’
‘Yes.’ Her throat bobbed. ‘She’s clean. Has been for two years. She’s married to a good guy. Very stable with a great extended family. And she has a great job. She – ’Callie cleared her throat. ‘Wanted her son back.’
The ache grew bigger. Sebastian didn’t have to ask to know that giving her nephew up had been gut-wrenching for Callie. Her soft, tremulous voice said it all. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, rolling up on his elbow and dropping a kiss on her shoulder.
She nodded, squeezing her eyes together tight. ‘It was the right thing to do.’ She drew in a ragged breath. ‘And it’s working really well. He lives nearby, goes to the same school, has the same friends. He adores his stepfather. He’s happy, that’s all that matters.’
Sebastian kissed her shoulder again.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, staring directly into his. ‘What about you? Do you have kids? This, by the way, would be a very bad time to tell me you have three. And a wife waiting for you back in Melbourne.’
He chuckled. ‘Oh, no, not me. No wife. No kids. Same reasons as you, really. Another bad gene pool and my parents’ train wreck of a marriage led to my own no-kids policy.’
And he’d seen so much in his life, particularly this last year — so much violence and hate and suffering — he wasn’t sure he wanted to bring an innocent child into such a screwed-up world.
‘And let me tell you there aren’t any women out there comfortable with that.’ Except for maybe her...‘Women, or at last the ones I’ve been involved with anyway, think you’re going to change your mind. That they’ll be the ones to make you see that you actually really do want babies. But...I don’t think some people were meant to have children, you know? Me included.’
‘Amen to that,’ she said vehemently, rolling onto her side and kissing him - hard and deep - for long cataclysmic moments before she pulled abruptly away. ‘I gotta go.’ She sat and scooted to the side of the bed. ‘I’ve got to work tomorrow.’
––––––––
The screw and run manoeuvre was a well practised one for Callie. She never stayed the night. It was a rule she’d adopted early in her dating life - a product of a chaotic and unsettled upbringing - and had been cemented when an impressionable child came into her care. And even though Zack was gone, sleeping with a man was an intimacy she didn’t want to invite.
Especially not with Sebastian.
Still, as she rose and searched for her clothes, she was surprised at how hard it was this time. Normally she walked away without a backward glance. But with Sebastian watching her every move through half-open lids as she dressed in the moonlight, the temptation to stay was intense.
He didn’t protest. Or insist. He just watched her and by the time she was dressed she felt thoroughly examined and one hundred per cent ready to get back into bed and go again. She looked at him lying amidst the tangle of bedclothes all rumpled and sexy, the sheet just covering his modesty and exposing everything else.
His eyes, hooded in the gloom, followed her actions like a big old jungle cat, ready to pounce. ‘You sure I couldn’t tempt you to stay a little longer?’
Throwing the sheet back, he grinned when her eyes widened at his readiness. How was he even capable of going again? Callie shut her eyes briefly before opening them again and piercing him with her best no-nonsense look. ‘Some of us have to work.’
He sighed and covered himself again. ‘You’re regretting it, aren’t you?’
Callie looked at him and frowned. Was he joking? If she lived to be a hundred she’d never regret this night. Sure, she knew for sure she was going to regret baring her soul to him, but the sex? Never.
‘No.’ Her gaze swept the floor again.
He propped himself up on his elbow. ‘Callie, you can’t even look at me.’
Callie almost laughed out loud as she lifted her eyes. ‘I’ve lost my earring, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ He chuckled. ‘Sorry.’ His gaze fanned over the bed and then he reached forward plucking something from the top sheet. ‘Here it is.’ He held the hoop up.
Callie grinned. ‘Thank you,’ she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and relieving him of it, blindly attempting to hook it in.
‘So...how do you want to handle this from here?’ he asked.
Concentrating hard on finding the hole in her lobe she frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well...we are going to be colleagues as of next week...’
The earring finally found its home and Callie turned to face him. ‘We’re not forty-year-old virgins, Sebastian, swept away by a night of fantastic sex. Was sleeping together the wisest course of action? Probably not. But we’re both professionals. I can keep my work life and my private life separate. Can you?’
He nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘We can’t do it again, of course, not while we’re working together. I don’t think colleagues being sexually involved ever really works.’
‘Yup. Usually totally disastrous.’
‘Especially when you’re only here for a year.’
He nodded again. ‘Doesn’t make any sense.’
“Good,” she said, satisfied they were both on the same page. But then she made the mistake of following Sebastian’s movements as he rubbed at the stubble on his chin and her gaze dropped to his mouth, then lower.
Rising from the bed, she dragged that damn sheet back in place, ignoring his low, knowing chuckle.
‘I’ll see you next week,’ she said briskly, picking up her bag and striding out the door.
It was done. He was out of her system. Now, they could work together.