She turned away. Took a step or two back towards her bed and then stopped again. Completely indecisive. Her gut was telling her to seek him out. Her head was telling her to stay put.
And then fate interfered. A loud knock rattled the door and her heart leapt in her rib cage. She turned and walked slowly, almost in a trance. She knew who it was even before confirming Sebastian’s presence through the peephole. Callie placed her forehead and the flat of her palm on the door for a moment, gathering her nerve.
Then she pulled the door open, a smile plastered on her face. ‘Sebastian.’
She faltered. He was lounging against the doorjamb, his jacket and tie removed and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. His sleeves were rolled up and he had bare feet. He looked tired. Exhausted. And she had an overwhelming urge to step into his arms and lay her cheek against a broad pectoral.
He held up two long-necked beers with wedges of lime jammed into their openings. ‘I felt like a beer.’
Callie hesitated again, tempted beyond belief. She shouldn’t. She really, really shouldn’t. Being alone in her room with him would really blur the professional boundaries they’d both worked so hard at keeping in place.
Her gaze dropped from his earnest expression, centring on a tempting stretch of throat where the knot of his tie should have been.
‘I think you have a better view than I do.’
Callie swallowed. She certainly did now!
Knowing she didn’t have it in her power to deny him, not when he looked so worn-out, she reached for her beer then stood back. ‘Come through.’
Sebastian exhaled and pushed his lime wedge into the bottle neck with his thumb. He took a swig and pushed off the shoulder shoved against the doorframe. His arm brushed hers and a heat wave rippled outwards from the point of contact, down his arm and up to his shoulder and chest.
He made a beeline for the balcony. The king-size bed taunted him as he went past it. A brief image of tumbling Callie onto it mingled with the fragrance she wore and he sucked in a perfume-laden breath. For a second he even felt a little dizzy.
This was crazy. He didn’t know why he was there. But she’d made it perfectly clear last night from her Cinderella act that she wanted to keep the status quo so he needed to push any images of her and him and the king-size bed firmly out of his mind.
He felt restless after the unexpected emotion of his presentation, that was all. He hadn’t expected to feel so drained. And after a couple of hours of being with people who all wanted a piece of him, wanted him to be the Sebastian Walker, it was bliss to be with someone who had gone to great pains to not be with him.
Even if it was just sharing a beer and talking.
And when she’d opened the door and his gaze had taken in her silky, electric-blue blouse, the one she’d worn while presenting her paper earlier that day, he’d been lost.
His steps faltered as his gaze fell on another item of clothing. The purple dress was draped over the arm of a plush old-fashioned winged chair placed near the sliding door.
Bloody hell, was the woman trying to kill him?
With clothes?
Unable to help himself, he ran his finger over it as he passed. It wasn’t quite how he’d imagined getting his hands on the dress but it felt cool and glossy against the pads of his fingers.
And beggars could not be choosers.
Watching him, Callie felt as if he’d stroked that finger along her belly and she too touched the chair as she passed to steady wobbly legs.
They sat at the small table on the balcony and for a few moments allowed the sights and the sounds of the river absorb them. The Yarra looked like mercury in the afternoon light, the setting sun throwing dark shadows and gilding the water silvery black.
Callie shifted her gaze to his profile, watching the bob of his throat as he tipped his head back and swallowed a mouthful of beer. She knew how he smelt there, how the spike of his stubble felt against her tongue.
She cleared her throat. ‘I wanted to congratulate you on your paper,’ she said. ‘You were…It was magnificent. It was very well received. I couldn’t get near you earlier to tell you…’
Sebastian had taken question after question and been swamped with colleagues afterwards.
Sebastian regarded her for a moment. He had known Callie long enough to know she was nervous?her gaze was everywhere but on him. Which was just as well as he tried to distract himself from thoughts of how soft her blouse would feel beneath his fingers.
‘Thanks. You were pretty good yourself.’
Now, that got her attention. Callie’s heart performed a little leap inside her chest as their gazes met and held. ‘You were there?’
She heard the breathless note in her voice.
She should probably have cared.
She didn’t.
Sebastian nodded. ‘Of course.’
She’d been marvellous. And, of course, the way her silky blouse had caressed the thrust of her breasts had been pretty damn good too.
It took Callie a few seconds to realise she was staring at him as his pale green gaze held her enthralled.
‘So,’ he said, breaking their connection, which seemed to be getting steamier by the second, ‘which sessions are you down to see tomorrow?’
Callie breathed again as Sebastian steered the conversation to a safe subject. They chatted about the merits of the different sessions on offer the next day for quite a while as the late afternoon sky passed into the muted hues of twilight around them.
She actually relaxed as their chatter was kept strictly on track—business only. It didn’t stray into personal territory but stuck to conference-related topics only. She even went to her bar fridge and got them both a second beer.
‘What time’s the dinner tonight?’ Sebastian asked, looking at his watch, surprised to find it was nudging six-thirty.
Callie consulted her own watch. ‘Seven-thirty.’
Except she didn’t want to go. She wanted to sit on this balcony overlooking the Yarra, talking to Sebastian, for ever. Her initial misgivings had been unfounded and after two months of ignoring him it was bliss to be far away from work, cocooned in this little bubble, and be able to relax and enjoy his company.
Listening to him give his paper today had given her insight into the man behind the person on the bridge in the bulletproof vest. Had shown her a glimpse of the unhappy little boy.
The unhappy little girl in her, the one who had also lived through constant upheaval, was grateful to just be with someone who truly understood how she ticked.
Sebastian watched as Callie raised the long-necked bottle to her mouth and pressed it against her lips. He almost groaned out loud. Watching her drink was torture. There was something exceedingly sexual about it and despite the fact that this was just supposed to be two work colleagues enjoying some downtime, the catch in his groin every time she sipped had started a fever pounding through his blood.
She was staring out over the river in quiet contemplation and he was afraid that if conversation didn’t continue between them soon, he might just haul her into his lap and start kissing her. ‘What are you thinking about?’
Callie dragged her eyes back from the lights dancing on the darkening river. ‘Your father.’
Sebastian paused, the bottle halfway to his mouth. ‘My father?’
Callie turned to look at him. ‘Your paper…I couldn’t help but feel it was deeply personal for you. I know what its like to grow up with mental illness and I was listening to you talk and…’She shrugged. And what? What was she trying to say? ‘I felt for you. I wondered if you were ever as scared and confused and worried as I used to be. I wondered if he was…violent.’
Sebastian placed his beer on the table between them. Like the lights reflected in the polished glass surface of the Yarra he could see the empathy shining in her eyes. It wasn’t a subject he often talked about. People didn’t really understand. But he knew she did. And after talking about it already today, albeit in an abstract kind
of way, he felt strangely compelled to tell her more.
‘No,’ he murmured. ‘He wasn’t violent, just…dysfunctional. He had bouts of crippling depression and suffered from night terrors. He was severely agoraphobic. He couldn’t work. He had chronic indigestion. He smoked and drank too much. But he wasn’t a nasty drunk. If anything, I was probably…ignored. It was as if I was…invisible a lot of the time.’
Callie grimaced. ‘I’m sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘It could have been worse. And my mother did the best she could but she didn’t know how to cope with any of it.’
Callie nodded. Why would she? No one handed out manuals at weddings, and wedding vows just didn’t cover the prisoner-of-war contingency. ‘I notice you didn’t draw any parallels in your paper between the Vietnam experience and your own more recent experience overseas.’
Sebastian dropped his gaze. ‘I didn’t want to dilute the paper’s focus. But rest assured, PTSD is alive and kicking among our military personnel.’
He picked up his beer and turned back to face the river as he took a deep pull. The skin on his scalp and at the back of his neck crawled as an image of an explosion flashed in his mind’s eye.
He gripped the bottle tighter.
Callie watched Sebastian’s profile, saw his jaw clench and his knuckles whiten. Being right in the thick of things had obviously affected him.
‘Don’t the defence forces have their own psychs? I didn’t think they outsourced.’
Sebastian kept his gaze firmly planted on the Yarra. ‘They do.’ His lips twisted into a bitter smile. ‘But my reputation preceded me.’
Callie frowned. ‘Sebastian?’ She reached out her hand and covered his. ‘Are you okay?’
Sebastian shut his eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ he dismissed.
‘You know,’ Callie said as she absently rubbed her thumb over his knuckles, ‘someone very wise once told me that sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone you don’t know that well.’
He looked down at her hand. A hand that had touched every part of his body. A hand that knew him pretty well. Each pass of her thumb felt like a stroke to his belly. ‘Really. I’m okay.’
Callie didn’t think so but she let it go. ‘It must be a bit of an anticlimax, working at Jambalyn, after all that adrenaline.’
Sebastian felt his breath grown thicker as her touch continued. Working at Jambalyn had been a godsend. Just what the doctor had ordered.
‘Jambalyn has been a fantastic experience. After the Gulf I needed…I wanted…to be somewhere where positive outcomes were tangible. To see that mental illness can be managed and people can go about their lives. I didn’t want to be the Sebastian Walker, PTSD guru. I wanted to get back to the basics.’
Callie nodded. It seemed like a very reasonable aspiration to her and the yearning in his voice was real. But something told her there was more to it. ‘It isn’t always a picnic in the community,’ she murmured.
Sebastian was mesmerised by the circular motion of her finger against his skin, his gaze glued to the action. ‘No, I know that. But it’s good to see, to know that there is hope.’
Where he’d just come from, hope just hadn’t existed.
She nodded, absently stroking the pad of her thumb down his fingers now. ‘It can be very rewarding,’ she agreed.
Sebastian almost groaned out loud. He was trying really hard here but a man had limits. ‘Callie…’
The thick plea in Sebastian’s half whisper, half groan scorched right through to her womb and brought her attention to the liberties her thumb was taking.
What the hell was she doing? She’d moved this into personal territory. Sebastian had been perfectly content talking about the conference and she’d gone and dragged them in to murky waters.
Talking about his father and then his stint overseas.
She was touching him, for God’s sake!
Callie withdrew her hand as if she’d been rapped on the knuckles. She stood abruptly. ‘You better go.’
Sebastian stood too. ‘No. Wait.’
‘No, really,’ she said as she reached the door. ‘I have to get ready for tonight. Wash my hair. Do my…’She stepped inside the room, faltering momentarily as the bed beckoned. ‘Nails.’
‘Callie:
She headed towards the door, desperate to get him out. ‘I guess I’ll see you there,’ she threw over her shoulder as she flayed herself mentally for such a serious lapse in judgement.
Just because she could empathise with him, it didn’t negate the facts of their non-relationship.
Sebastian lengthened his stride and caught up with her at the bar fridge. He snagged her arm and spun her round to face him, dragging her up hard against his body.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he said, before swooping his mouth down to claim hers.
Callie was stunned for two seconds before her body ignited and she opened her lips to him on a strangled moan, clinging to his sleeves for dear life.
Sebastian pulled away and looked into her flushed face, her amber eyes glittering with reckless desire. ‘I want to stay. I want you.’
He didn’t wait for her consent, returning to ravage her mouth. He groaned deep in the back of his throat when she opened to his hot, demanding tongue, matching his intensity with her own.
His hands found her waistband, tugging at her blouse, uncaring now how silky it felt in his rush to get it off. And then he was lifting it over her head and off, his hands cupping her breasts, his head lowering to suck her nipple through the smooth see-through fabric of her bra. And when she whimpered his name he yanked her bra aside and took her breast into his mouth.
Callie’s head spun as she was sucked into the wild tumult of their desire. As her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt his hands were at her waist, pulling at her button and zip, pushing at her trousers and knickers, pushing them down, pushing them off.
She tore her mouth from his as his smooth chest was finally bared to her hands, pressing kisses down his throat, across his pecs, against a flat male nipple. Her hands roved over the tautness of his belly and grabbed at his belt, unhooking it with fingers that shook in her eagerness to touch the thick erection pressing against her.
He groaned when she finally freed him and she smiled triumphantly as she palmed the length of him. So hard. Like a rod of steel packaged in the finest silk.
Sebastian shut his eyes as she explored him, stars exploding. When her hand crept lower and cupped him he growled, ‘Callie,’ before claiming her mouth again, bending her head back, one hand buried in her hair, the other unclipping her bra.
How he managed that one-handed he had no idea. It must have been primal instinct. Because the rasp of her breath was in his ears and the smell of her hair, her skin was in his nostrils and her lips tasted like sugar, her mouth like beer and lime, and he couldn’t think of anything else other than being buried in her, making her moan.
Callie let go of him to shrug out of her bra and then he was walking her backwards as she reached for him again, their mouths still attached as he fumbled in his pocket for his wallet, kicked out of his trousers, ditched his shirt. And then he was pushing her down, following her as they landed on the bed and his mouth was at one breast, teasing the nipple and then the other, and she was gasping for breath, for mercy, for more.
‘Sebastian, please,’ she cried. ‘I need you in—’
Sebastian cut her off with a kiss that had her whimpering, clinging to his shoulders. ‘I’d forgotten how great you tasted,’ he murmured, nuzzling her neck, his hand stroking over her hip.
‘I want to taste you all over.’ He moved lower, his tongue trekking to her breast, his hand straying to her inner thighs, his knuckles brushing ever so lightly against where she tingled and burned for him most.
‘And then I want to start again,’ he said against her puckered nipple, before sucking it into his mouth and stroking a finger between her legs.
Callie almost arched off the bed as she cried his name. But the gentle teasi
ng of his finger was stoking a fierce need. She pulled at his head, her nipple impossibly peaked, engorged from his attention and sensitive to the sudden rush of cool air.
‘Later. If you’re not inside me in the next five seconds I think I’m going to die.’
Sebastian chuckled and kissed his way back up to her. ‘Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?’
He reached for his wallet, discarded on the sheet nearby.
‘Hurry,’ she urged.
Sebastian laughed again as he pulled the foil packet out. ‘Patience, patience.’
Callie glared at him as he teased her with a leisurely fingering of the packet. She reached down, grasped his erection in her hand and squeezed. Sebastian groaned and his eyes practically rolled back in his head. She was satisfied to see him rip open the packet with his teeth and sheath himself in a matter of seconds.
And then he was lifting her leg, propping it on his shoulder then leaning over her on his elbows and pushing deep into her, so deep she almost screamed it was that good.
‘Oh, God, yes,’ she cried as he pulled out and pushed back in again.
‘Callie!’ He shut his eyes as her tightness gripped him, caressed him, massaged him. She was so hot and smooth and right, so right.
‘More,’ she gasped. ‘More.’
And he gave her more and more and more until she was moaning and yelling and scratching at his back as she came, and when he joined her, shuddering and jerking, his fingers branding her hips, she wrapped her legs around him, gathering him closer as she came again.
‘So,’ Sebastian said, the tray in front of him littered with the debris of his meal. ‘What say you and I keep this thing going?’
Callie raised an eyebrow, trying to play it cool. They hadn’t talked about what happened next. They hadn’t really had time.
Was it a thing?
He’d left her room in the wee small hours and returned early with room service for two. And had then persuaded her that a day in bed was much more preferable to anything the conference programme had to offer.
In fact, so thorough was he in his persuasion that they’d nearly missed their plane. After a mad dash to the airport they’d just managed to make their flight.
Rescued by the Dreamy Doc / Navy Officer to Family Man Page 9
