Just a Heartbeat Away

by Cara Bastone

  “Good. Okay, I’m scared that when I’m fifty-eight and settling nicely into my beer gut, you’ll want someone your age. Hip and hot.” This rising feeling was somehow fierce and soft at the same time. He was basically telling her that in some fairly prominent corner of his mind, he was considering an extremely long-term future with her.

  Her eyes grew and she opened her mouth to reply but clapped it back closed. She shook her head at him. “I’m scared you think of me as a child.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re more competent than I am.” He pursed his lips at the look she quirked at him. “Right. Fears. Okay. Here’s a doozy. My biggest one. I’m scared that I’ll die before you do. And you’ll go through what I did when Cora died.”

  She reeled back from him.

  Well, any hope he may have had at playing this thing cool went right out the window with the birds. His heart pistoned in his chest, and his hands went clammy. He couldn’t tell if that look on her face was because he was basically handing her an invitation to be the person who laid him in the ground one day, or because he was saying he wanted to be with her until he died.

  Her hand clapped over her mouth. But then her legs snaked out and wrapped around his waist, drawing him close. “I’m scared of that, too. Of you dying. I’m scared of me dying. Of Matty. Crabby. Fin. Shit, meeting Tyler and Mary made me so sad because I knew they were going to die someday. How fucked up is that?”

  Finally, finally, her arms went around his waist. She was hugging him back. And still the words tripped off her tongue. “I’m scared that I’m too sad for you. I’m an orphan, Seb. I’m defined by grief. Sadness. Loss. Death. I’ve never been the same, it hit me at such a young age. You deserve happiness. You deserve to move on. I don’t want to drag you down.”

  He landed his forehead against hers. “Via, you are not dragging me down. You’re elevating me. You push me toward the light. God, you’ve been doing that even when you don’t mean to.”

  He stepped away from her.

  “Wait here. Don’t move.” Seb ran to his bedroom, opened the nightstand beside his bed and jogged back to her, still on the counter, shakily sipping her tea. He slipped the paper into her hand.

  She was confused as she peered down at the creased, stained paper. Then her eyes widened when she recognized it. The checklist she’d made for him two years ago.

  “You kept it.”

  “Via, I staked my life on it. You dragged me out of the muck. You took my hand. You were so kind.” He couldn’t help but kiss her. “So firm.” Another kiss. “So fucking painfully honest. You told me the truth and I saw it. I understood it. Through your eyes. And I decided I wanted to live. I was dying and taking my son down with me. You made me live, Violetta. And you didn’t even love me then. Now?” He cupped her face and kissed her again. “Now that we’re here, all fucked up over each other? Can you only imagine how good we’ll be for the other? Via, I’ll be here.” He pointed one finger down at the ground, as if to say this house, this earth, this life. “I don’t wear suspenders. I’m not hip. But I’m here. Every day. This house. Matty. I do my job, and I show up. That’s me. No matter if we’re together—if you’re lonely, you come to me. You come to me.”

  She nodded her head, her eyes blurry with tears. “I haven’t had that in a really long time,” she whispered. “A place to go no matter what.”

  “Well, now you have it. You’ve got me. And Matty. We’re not flashy or exciting, but—”

  “You’re perfect,” she gasped out the words. “Exactly what I want.”

  There were more words to say. Of course there were more words to say. But the air had gone all bright around them. His kitchen was no longer his kitchen; it melted away into one amorphous blob. In Seb’s mind, there were now three things: Matty, Via and everything else.

  And it was Via here in front of him that kept his feet on Earth. Her legs were clamped around him, and her fingers were somewhere, everywhere, they were suddenly hugging so hard it hurt. There were the tears and gasps of two people who’d seen the worst there was and were now seconds away from the best.

  He was vaguely aware of lifting her. “Kitchen or bed.”

  The words were gruff and he barely recognized his voice as his own. Colors were blurring and sound was moving slow and fast, in great arcing waves.

  The only thing that was in bright focus was Via’s face. She cocked her head to one side. “Both?”

  A gasping bark of a laugh burst out of Seb as he tumbled backward onto the kitchen floor, holding her tight and shielding her from the impact. They ended up with her on top, and Seb rolled them. He was shocked and thrilled when she continued the roll and pinned him backward again. He saw himself reflected in her eyes. They were both wrecked messes. There were so many emotions on her face, but there was one that was shining through the most.

  He’d inadvertently named it before. And now he came face-to-face with it.

  Love.

  Miss Via DeRosa in love and on top of him. Her body slim and heated in that tight long-sleeved shirt and straight-legged jeans. Oooh Lord. He felt like he’d been holding his breath for years, and she was the first breath of air he gulped down.

  She was still pinning him down by the shoulders, so Seb reached his hands down and popped the button on her jeans, then made quick work of the zipper. He slid her pants down the crouched curve of her ass, and he loved the awkward tug and pull of it. This wasn’t porn. This wasn’t perfect. This was him trying to get as close to this woman as physically possible. It was for pleasure, yes. But it was also because there was just so fucking much to say and language could only take them so far.

  She let him shimmy her out of her pants and then she reached down and yanked his shirt off of him. They both laughed when the collar caught on his chin.

  What are we doing? This is crazy. We need to talk.

  All of that was loud and on the air. But they ignored it. Cast it outside like a stray cat. There wasn’t room for anything in this bright, warm kitchen except for the two of them. He grabbed her by the hips and dragged her forward. He needed to inspect these panties.

  Yowza. They were rose pink and everything. “I could eat these with a knife and fork,” he informed her, sliding his hands up her thighs.

  She laughed. “And you said I was weird.”

  Sebastian’s breath caught as he watched her eyes drop to his chest. As long as he lived he’d never forget Via looking at his chest for the first time. She looked stunned, wild.

  “This,” she whispered, dragging one finger over the dips and planes of his chest and stomach. “This. This can’t be for me. You’re too beautiful.”

  He let out a strained laugh and looked down at himself, almost expecting to see something different. But he was just the same. Wide and substantial, plenty of chest hair and flat nipples. He shrugged. “Just me.”

  “My turn,” she told him and gripped the bottom of her shirt in her crossed hands. His hands chased hers as they rolled up her body, tracing over every inch of skin she exposed. When she tore the shirt off of herself and tossed it to the side, the noise that came out of Sebastian was akin to pain.

  She wore a rose-colored bra, lacy and sheer, but it was all that skin that drew his eye. She was perfect to him. The tight little set of her shoulders, the flat plane of her stomach, the toasted color of her Mediterranean skin. She had two knobby little elbows and something about that had a feeling tearing through Seb, bright and tender. He could see her heartbeat banging away behind her ribs, knocking against her body.

  He couldn’t help but raise up and press his lips to that little bang-bang-bang in her chest. It was the most important to him. She was skittery and nervous and turned on and warm and alive. She was alive, and her body had a rhythm that it refused to let go of. All that pain she’d withstood. Twelve years old and alone in the world, terrified and young. And still, bang bang bang, she’d kept o
n living. This was a woman who knew how to be alive, and for that, he wanted to show her every sweet, pleasurable thing he knew how to give. He wanted her to realize that this was her gift for surviving. This. This right here.

  She was straddled in his lap, and he cradled her, one hand at the small of her back and one in her hair. Slowly, carefully, he started leaning her back. She let her weight rest in his arms and a tremor shook them both—where it originated, him or her, he’d never know. Because she was laid out in his arms, and there wasn’t room for anything but this.

  Seb kissed her mouth. His hands clenched on her as he realized that her flavor was beginning to be familiar to him. He could pick that flavor out of a million others. Their tongues found each other and slid, almost chastely. It was like a hug. He had a flashing memory of that day in the farmers market when she’d taken his one hand in both of hers, a hand hug. And now she’d figured out how to hug him this way, too. It had him teasing her lips open farther and taking more of that taste, the slick, secret gateway to her heart.

  She was starting to wiggle against him, on his lap in just her bra and underwear. He tipped her farther back, the weight of her back on his forearms, him leaning over her. He convinced himself to tear his mouth from hers and started to kiss down her neck. He was jealous of every stretch of skin that came next. He wanted to taste, to kiss all of her at once. There was always some golden smoothness that called to him. He pressed his face into her breasts, over the lace of her bra, and growled into the soft heat of her there.

  Seb used his chin to press one of the cups of the bra down and she gasped at his rough stubble over her soft skin. Her legs tightened around his waist as his mouth closed over her exposed nipple. He used teeth first and then tongue. She wiggled more and more, her fingers in his hair, holding him to her as he tongued her.

  Then she reached back and unhooked her bra and tossed it aside, guiding him to her other breast. He growled again, liking this side of her. She raked her hands down his neck and over his shoulders. The movement of her hips became less a hot little wiggle and more a rhythmic ride.

  Sebastian pulled back and looked at her. Her eyes were hooded and fuzzy, her mouth was open and pink, all swollen. There was high color spreading over her skin. He felt like an ancient mortal who’d somehow swindled his way into an encounter with a goddess.

  He rose up with her, his hands at her ass and her legs clamped around his waist. She wasn’t hard to lift, and Seb suddenly felt a swell of protectiveness for this woman in his arms. His jeans were uncomfortably tight, constraining his hardness. He reached down and flicked open the button on his jeans. It didn’t help.

  “Seb,” she whispered as he strode down the hall.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m really nervous.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted as he pushed open his bedroom door and set her on his bed. He flicked on his bedside light, the one that cast the striped pattern of shadow all across the room. She was alternate shades of yellow and blue in the funky lighting as she knelt there, naked down to her underwear. Brooklyn was shut out by the blinds. There was no one but the two of them in the world. He sucked in a breath as he looked at her. Just looked at her kneeling there, waiting for him with her knees spread apart and one hand on the bed.

  “Really?” She looked surprised by his answer and relieved all at once.

  “Of course, Via.” He shucked his jeans down, kicking them off one foot at a time. He wondered what sex with Evan had been like for her. Not in a jealous way, really, but in a sad way. The way she was looking at him made him think that she had some very specific ideas about sex. Maybe some nonrealistic ones. “I’m about to finally touch a woman I’ve been crushing on for so long. That would make anyone nervous.”

  Her eyes were on his underwear, and, he was sure, on his very obvious arousal for her. She glanced up at him and licked her lips, her eyes wide windows.

  “Via.” He waited until he had her gaze, her full attention. But then he found that he didn’t really have anything left to say. Anything left was for their bodies to do.

  Seb knelt in front of her and reached out for her ankles. He brought them forward so her legs hung off the bed. And that’s just where he started. First it was his hands over her feet. He traced her arches, her ankles, he even screwed a finger in between her toes and made her giggle.

  Next, he circled her calves, traced the back of her knee. He used two hands apiece on her thighs and touched every inch of her legs. Then each hip. Her belly button. He laid her back and pressed his hot palms to her breasts, but he didn’t let himself get sidetracked. He laced one arm over her head and then the other. His fingers traced over her armpits, which made her shiver, and up to her elbows. Every one of his fingers touched every one of hers. His hands slicked up her throat before he turned her on her stomach. Sebastian dragged his palms over every slice of her back, tracing the shadows from the lamp. And then down into her rosy underwear and over her ass. When he turned her back to her side and lay on his as well, he buried his fingers in her hair. He touched her entire scalp and then the shells of her ears. Next were her eyebrows, her eyelashes, her eyelids. He walked his fingers down her nose and traced her lips.

  “Sebastian,” she whispered, and her lips trembled.

  But he ducked his head, buried his nose in her underarm, and took a hearty sniff. Nothing, literally nothing, smelled better than a slightly sweaty Via DeRosa. She was still trembling nerves, struggling against her own desires. Her thighs worked against one another and he figured it was time to get them out of their own way. Seb slid down the bed and spread her knees apart. Without preamble or discussion, he landed his mouth between her legs.

  * * *

  VIA’S BACK ARCHED off the bed. Her hands flung out like she was looking for some cosmic handhold to keep her tethered to Earth. Her entire body hummed from his touches. He’d warmed every inch of her, set her buzzing and owned her. She’d know that man’s touch if she were blindfolded, if he wore gloves. She’d never been touched like that in all her life. Like this was the most important thing that would ever happen to either of them. Maybe it was.

  And now his hot mouth was between her legs. She still wore her underwear, and he didn’t seem to mind. He worked her through the fabric, one of his giant hands circling her ankle and the other spread across her stomach, pinning her to the bed.

  His tongue started to work in slow circles, around her clit, and Via’s hips bucked. She wasn’t sure she’d survive this. But then he was sliding upward and it was her nipple in his mouth instead. The hand at her leg started an inexorable slide up her calf and then her thigh as he suckled her. He was rougher there than she’d ever experienced, like he was trying to swallow some ungettable part of her soul. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything much more than grab at his hair.

  He took long pulls at her breast and then moved to the other. She felt each suck from somewhere deep inside. Apparently, all her good parts were connected by some internal, slippery, glossy chain that he was tugging at. His tongue was at her breast but she felt it between her legs. By the time his finger hooked her underwear to one side, Via was swirling with sensation and literally begging for more. She could feel the individual threads of the comforter beneath her, the tickle of his leg hair, the delicious scrape of his stubble.

  And then—yes, God, yes—she felt one of his wide, rough fingers at her entrance. He didn’t press in. Instead he stroked her, playing in her wetness and groaning against her breast. His mouth slicked up to her neck, her ear.

  “I want inside you, baby. I’ve touched you almost everywhere, and now I want inside.”

  She let her knee fall even wider to the side. “Yes. Seb. Please.”

  He pushed that thick digit inside her quickly, and he turned his face into the comforter and said her name into the bed. He was still, but she was electric, riding an internal beat and pushing herself against the heel of his hand.
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br />   A moment passed and he lifted his head, a little smile on his face. “That’s my job,” he told her. He reared back, onto his knees, and tossed that loose leg over his shoulder. One of his hands stilled her hips and the other worked itself even farther inside her. He didn’t tease her. He circled her clit with his thumb insistently, watching her face and increasing the pressure when she could take it.

  “That’s right, baby,” he murmured when she started to gasp, when her eyes started rolling back. “Don’t fight it. Just give it up. Give it to me.”

  It hit her in a long, rolling wave that had no clear beginning and no clear end. Her body was tight and arching as she tried to tame the pleasure that wanted no leash, no master. The pleasure he gave her fully owned her body. Her leg pressed so hard into his shoulder, she couldn’t tell whose skin was whose. She shook with the rolling perfection of it. The tips of her breasts seemed to spark and ache. The best orgasm of her life, and somehow, she needed more.

  Seb, seeming to sense that she needed closeness, stripped off her underwear and fell over her. His mouth came to hers and both thumbs to her breasts. He was gentle on her tender, glittering body, but even his small little teases against her nipples were waking her again. She wrapped her legs around his waist, smashing her heat against his hardness.

  “You’re so pretty when you come. Seriously, I hope it’s the last thing I see before I die.”

  She laughed, surprised, but it ended on a moan when he kicked his hips forward and pressed them together. The only thing that separated them was his underwear. She was ready. She needed him. It was time. Now.

  “Seb,” she said, her hands falling to his hips and pushing at the waistband of his underwear. But he slithered away from her, back down her body until he was face-to-face with her womanhood.

  Via’s heartbeat kicked up another notch, and some of the nerves he’d fully dispelled when he’d first laid her down started to pick their dizzy heads up from the floor. His gaze was penetrating and heated, and she resisted the urge to wiggle.