The Love Campaign (Romantic Revelations Series Book 1)

by Laura Marquez Diamond

  Jaya. He looked at his watch. “Not tonight, though. I gotta finish up and meet Jaya at five.”

  “Travis said she’s not talking to you right now.”

  “Does that guy have verbal diarrhea about everything I tell him?”

  Carlos smirked. “Nah, I asked about Jaya. Sounds like she’s single now, so…”

  Raw anger took Sebastian by surprise. “She’s not,” he growled.

  His housemate’s smirk turned to a full belly laugh. “I know, BB. Just messing with you.”

  “Fuck would you do that for?” he asked, shoving the last of his dress shirts in the luggage.

  “Because someone needs to tell you what’s taking you so damn long to figure out.”

  “What?”

  “You never really needed to fake date,” Carlos said, shrugging casually.

  Shaking his head, Sebastian said, “That’s what my agent said. That whatever way it helped the campaign won’t matter now. Maybe we never really needed to do it.”

  Carlos snorted. “That’s not what I mean, stupid.”

  “Well?” Sebastian urged him on, getting anxious about what he would say when he saw Jaya. “Spit it out.” He turned cranky when he was nervous. Sweat trickled down his back. He might need another shower before he left.

  “I mean,” Carlos said patiently as he put a hand on Sebastian’s back. “It was never fucking fake.”

  ***

  Jaya walked out of the community center just after five, flanked by two teenage girls who were laughing at something she said. She was beautiful, as always.

  They stood outside the entrance for a few minutes, and he didn’t want to disturb their huddle. Even from this distance, he could tell that she was deeply engaged in the conversation. Whatever these kids were talking about was important to her. In her body language and facial expressions, Jaya was fully leaning into what the girls were saying. She might have stayed there all night, listening and helping, if they needed her to.

  Not tonight though, to his relief. The girls skipped away, more chatter in their wake. Before she turned in the direction of her house, he opened his car door.

  Their eyes met across the parking lot and she walked over. There was a moment that made his heart stop. Jaya stubbed her toe on something and looked like she was going to topple over. How this woman made it through the day, he would never know. She managed to straighten out and pushed her shoulders back as if to rebalance. Her expression, a little embarrassed and lots indignant, was adorable.

  Up close, Sebastian managed to say, “Can I drive you home? Before you topple over for good?”

  “I didn’t topple over!” she said, but a laugh was at the edge of her outcry.

  The laugh never came though. Instead, Jaya bit her plump lower lip and looked at the ground as if deep in thought. A gust of wind lifted the edges of her thick hair and aggressively whipped strands across her face. She pushed her head back to get the wayward strands out of her eyes, but the swirling wind made it impossible to get her wild mane under control.

  The vision of Jaya pushing unruly hair out of her face and opening her neck to him, and the way she giggled at the effort, made Sebastian ache. Though he managed to keep his hands at his sides, every cell in his body screamed to close the gap. To cradle her sweet chin and tilt that beautiful face towards him. To have Jaya so close, her wild hair would whip across both their faces.

  “Need some help with that?” he asked in as composed a voice as he could muster.

  She scrunched her nose and said, “My hair is hopeless.”

  “Your hair is beautiful,” he stated. Before she could respond, he declared, “It’s cold. I’ll drive you.”

  She nodded while managing to tie her hair in a loose bun.

  They drove in silence for those few minutes from her work to her driveway. She spoke first. “I know you’re busy, getting ready and all. But do you want to come in for a bit?”

  “Jaya,” he grinned, happy that she invited him but not able to stop himself from ribbing, “I didn’t come here to drive you five blocks.”

  Instead of offering the sarcastic response he expected, she was uncharacteristically grave. “Why are you here, Sebastian?”

  Her voice, unsure and gloomy, alarmed him. Before she could change her mind about inviting him in, Sebastian walked to her side to help her out of the car. As they strode to the door, his hand rested on her lower back. He did it so lightly, she probably couldn’t feel him through the thick winter jacket. But the gesture was automatic for him. Nothing was more natural than slipping behind her and reaching out to connect in any way she would let him.

  “I think Patrick left some beers from the weekend if you’d like one?” she asked when he walked in and she closed the door behind them.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Jaya, but now that I finally have you alone the last person I want to think about is Patrick from the weekend.” He didn’t mean to sound harsh but having the beer of some guy who bragged about sharing a bed with Jaya was not at all appealing.

  One of her perfectly arched brows raised and he felt that familiar pull to watch all the dynamic expressions of her face. But he resisted it because, well, he wanted a lot more than look at her tonight. Sebastian had some things to say, dammit. And although his urgency did not exactly manifest itself in actual coherent words, he knew he wanted to do more than look at her. Because despite the undeniable fact that he could look at her all night, she needed to know why they couldn’t be done and he wouldn’t be free. He didn’t want to be free of her. Not even a little.

  “What you said on the phone…” he started to say, “made me realize something that maybe I was too distracted or too cocky to see.”

  She was looking at him with what might even be tenderness. Though her reaction to his last few words included a teasing glimmer in her eyes. “You? Cocky?”

  “I’m sure I deserve that,” he said lightly and realized he should have planned his speech better. He never had to do this sort of thing so, yeah, another consequence of being cocky was not being sufficiently prepared when the opportunity presented itself.

  “No you don’t, Sebastian,” she said warmly. “I’m sorry. I can’t help being snarky. Please continue. What were you going to say?”

  “I…” his phone’s sharp ring made them both jump. “Sorry, Jaya. Let me just silence this.”

  “No, don’t! What if it’s the team? You’re playing for Buffalo this weekend, right? Take it. It might be important.”

  “It’s not,” he said and silenced the ring. “Can we sit down?” he asked, rubbing his sweaty palms on jeans.

  “Of course.”

  She led him to the sofa but before he could sit down, his phone emitted three pings in quick succession.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. He looked at the screen and saw the contact info of Chris, Travis, and another number he didn’t recognize. Tired of the interruptions, Sebastian shut his phone and put it face down on her coffee table.

  “Maybe you should go,” she said softly. “I don’t want to keep you.” Something about the way she said it, sad and resigned, sprung him into action.

  He took a step closer and the energy between them crackled like live wires. “Jaya, what if I want you to keep me?”

  Her eyes widened in response. He could almost see the wheels in her brain turning. He would do anything to know what was inside that beautiful mind. Was it too much, what he said? Was it not enough to convey these strange feelings and the powerful pull she had over him?

  Sebastian decided that even if he got the words wrong a hundred times, he would keep trying. Maybe he would end up saying more than she wanted to hear. Or maybe not enough. But he didn’t want to wait for some kind of perfect speech when he was running out of time. Sebastian stilled his heart till she gave him a slight nod. A wordless invitation to continue.

  “Jaya, since…since the night I carried you because of your ankle, I’ve spent every day wanting to be with you,” he started to say. He kept goi
ng so he wouldn’t lose his nerve. “And honestly, even before that, I couldn’t walk into a room and not know, almost immediately, if you were in there. Like, how? How am I drawn straight to you? Every time.”

  She was quiet but her brows were no longer posed in that arch of distant assessment. They gently framed eyes that were deeply focused. It was intoxicating, all that attention she gave him. He kept going.

  “I find myself wondering what you’re doing at the weirdest times. Like when I’m cooking, or taking a shower, or checking into a hotel. Even when I’m in the middle of a hockey game! Jaya, you’re a hockey player. You can appreciate how seriously fucking inconvenient that is.” He might be rambling. Was he rambling?

  “You think of me in the shower?” she remarked, smiling and taking a step forward so they were length to length, her breasts almost grazing his chest when she took a deep breath. He could not hold back a nearly animal growl at the sight of her chest rising.

  “That’s your takeaway?” he joked in order to catch his breath and to enjoy her blush.

  He had so much more to say. If she let him, he would tell her that everything about her captivated him. Her generosity, her kindness, her smile, her aroma, her softness, her everything. Even her hard edges were beautiful to him. That biting sarcasm and dry wit made every interaction more interesting, more memorable. She made him feel alive. Each minute with her was a gift he didn’t deserve.

  Before he found the right words, she spoke first. “What would it mean to…to keep you?” she ventured.

  God, she was adorable. Even now, her cluelessness enchanted him. “Do you need me to spell it out for you, Jaya?”

  The contradiction in her expression—vulnerability in her eyes and stiffness of her jaw—was killing him. How could she stir up his frustration and adoration and exhaustion and exaltation and a hundred other feelings all at once? Well, if he had to spell it out, that’s exactly what he would do.

  “Jaya, if you ask me to stay. Fuck that. If you let me stay, I’ll never want to leave.” He felt so good about what he said. He felt like a fucking champ because for the first time it wasn’t about what he was thinking or how he was feeling. He got to say what he wanted.

  Except. Except she didn’t react the way he thought she would. Jaya looked at him with so much wretchedness, something in him cracked. “Oh, Sebastian,” she said and reached out to touch his face. “Don’t say that. You know you’ll have to leave eventually.”

  She was about to drop her hand but he trapped it in his grasp, pressing her palm to his lips. She moaned at the contact. The sound went straight to his cock and he knew he would do anything to hear that sound all night. But he remained still, afraid to break the spell of her touch.

  He held her gaze. “Jaya, we could still be together. And Buffalo is a quick flight. I’ll do anything to make this work. You have no idea how much I want this to work.”

  “Stop, you’re being crazy,” she claimed although she took a step closer anyway. Finally, her lush body pressed against him and he was in heaven. He wrapped his arms around her waist and confirmed what he knew from the first moment he saw her. They fit. They fit perfectly.

  “It’s not crazy. We can do this. Just give me a chance, Jaya. I know I don’t deserve it, but I don’t want to go to Buffalo without…without telling you how I feel. And I’m not crazy. Far from it. I’ve never felt this sane in my life.”

  She laughed affectionately. “I’m not sure that’s an endorsement of anything except your bad judgment in general.”

  He laughed too. “There’s only one thing I’d stake my life on, sweetheart. It’s that nothing about being with you could be bad judgment. Now, being with me—I get that I’m asking you to take a chance. Look, you don’t have to decide right now. You don’t have to say anything tonight.”

  He must have stumbled onto the right thing to say because almost immediately, her hands massaged up his shoulders. Jaya ran fingers through his hair. “I don’t have to say anything tonight?” she asked while tilting her face upward and staring at his mouth.

  Deep and gravelly words came out of his hungry lips. “Except yes.”

  She smiled and everything he knew about smiles evaporated because maybe this was the only smile that mattered.

  “In that case,” she paused while tracing the side of his face with a sensual touch. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Yes. The word sprang from Jaya’s mouth and propelled her body to him. To this man whose voice and presence and charm occupied her every thought for weeks.

  She was warned against him by friends. Perhaps more precisely, she was warned against him by common sense. A man this attractive couldn’t possibly be good for her. If he’s irresistible to every woman, how could he be satisfied with just one woman, right? Right?

  But at every turn, Sebastian surprised her. He was nothing like what she was told to expect. Nothing like she herself was prejudiced to assume. The Sebastian in front of her was sweet and caring and weirdly, impossibly, undeniably serious.

  Sure, he was always ready for a laugh and a party. Yet, he was just as ready to help a stranded kid or support a community project. Sebastian wanted to help, wanted to make the world a better place.

  And when he looked at her like that, with hunger in his eyes and determination on his chiseled features, it was as if this mattered more to him than anything ever did. It was as if this—the swirl of feelings between them— was serious. And if she was being honest, she maybe wanted it to be serious.

  How could she not give in to her desires, warnings be damned?

  They kissed, finally. The rational part of her brain was trying to understand what was happening. She had been kissed before, but not like this. Was it possible that she had forgotten what it was to be kissed?

  Because when Sebastian touched her lips to his, the sensations he unleashed were so surprising, she almost halted everything in confusion. Almost. Because once she said yes, there was no stopping the tide of passion.

  He grazed her mouth at first, their full bottom lips snagging at the contact and eliciting the most erotic sound from deep in his chest. Then, he nipped, teeth grazing just enough to make her gasp. A gasp that opened her mouth. It was sweet taste and searching tongue after that. Delicious depths and scorching passion. She welcomed all of it. Sebastian could take from her whatever he wanted. And in return, she knew he would give the sensual devouring she so desperately needed.

  Clutching each other, this was so much more than a kiss. It was a dance to the rhythm of their plunging tongues, ecstatic moans creating a soundtrack that filled her head. The kiss was taste and smell and force all at once. One of his hands grasped the back of her neck to crush her into him. The power of his hands, restrained yet undeniable, sent hot lava through every part of her body, from its core to its ends. Warming her insides, tingling her fingers, raising goosebumps. Jaya tilted her head so she could be filled deeper and harder.

  Sebastian’s other hand roamed. Kneaded and grabbed and pulled in ways she didn’t realize she needed. When he grabbed her ample bottom, he practically lifted her with one hand. The heavenly entrapment between his grip and his cock was unbelievable.

  Closer. She couldn’t get close enough. Jaya pressed her body against his chest. With each passing moment, their kiss got hotter, wetter, heavier. Everything was hotter, wetter, heavier. Their bodies ground against each other and seared. Her breasts were so achy, relief only came when he slid both his hands down her back, around her waist, and then up to cup their roundness. The sound he made was such a primal growl, it elicited her own moans of appreciation. Jaya’s vagina was soaked through with pleasure given and pleasure promised. Each point of contact between them made her feel alive and alight.

  Somehow, they stumbled deeper into the living room. Sebastian found her sofa and pulled her down so she straddled him. Jaya knew she wasn’t a small woman. Her copious hips filled his hands and her thick thighs encased his lap.

  But Sebastian was a big man. Even in a
sport played by Vikings, he loomed large. Wide and hard and thick. She clung to his chiseled planes and masculine anatomy, while he grasped her softness with perfect pressure, her core throbbed with anticipation of what else he would touch that night.

  Jaya finally dropped lower and gave in to the need to press her vibrating sex to his steely rod. Loud groans escaped both their lips. His jeans were rough against her satin panties. She welcomed the rigid roughness. She wanted that roughness to tear into her wet seam. Rip into her body then fill her in every possible way.

  “Jaya, sweetheart,” he moaned.

  “Sebastian,” she managed to say, seeking out more of that roughness on his jaw against her lips.

  “Is this what you want? Tell me this is what you want,” he asked while pushing upwards with his groin and making her see stars.

  “Um-hm,” was her response. She buried her face deeper into his strong neck.

  “I want this too, but are you, are you sure? I…I came to talk.” His words emerged in stops and starts. “I didn’t come here for this,” he said hoarsely although the way he grabbed her hips and pulled her down towards his circling thrusts made his words jumble in her head.

  “Sebastian,” she groaned into his ear. “If you didn’t come here to fuck me hard, I’m gonna have to do it for you.”

  The man gave a sexy-as-hell growl before he flipped her over. Jaya’s back splayed on the sofa and his glorious weight grounded her. “You want it hard, Jaya? Is that it?”

  She meowled her assent and began to wiggle out of her long-sleeved shirt. Sebastian sat up for purchase, grabbed the neck of her ratty old shirt, and fucking ripped it. Holy shit. Her heart was beating so hard because who the hell has that kind of strength?

  And that look. Oh my god, the look on his face when her breasts were exposed with just the flimsy lace of a bra to push them together. She panted because now that her shirt was off, she wanted everything off. She couldn’t wait to take it all off. Quickly, she unclasped her bra and flung it away.