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“Too late.” Sebastian reached around me to grab Florian by the upper arm.
Florian sputtered. “Signore Diamanti, I was only—”
“You were only what?” Sebastian’s accent thickened, his English crisp but edged with the dangerous cadence of his native tongue. “Touching my wife?”
Heat flared low in my abdomen at the possessive claim, even as indignation burned through me.
I placed my hands on my hips, chin tilted up defiantly. “Wife? I’m not your wife.”
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.”
His lips thinned into a hard line. “Sabrina, don’t fucking start with me. Not now.”
Realizing I was making the situation worse for Florian, who looked like he wished the floor would swallow him whole, I relented.
I shimmied between the two men, close enough to absorb the heat radiating from Sebastian.
I placed my hands on his chest, the wall of muscle beneath the fine Egyptian cotton hard beneath my palms. The steady, too-calm beat of his heart was somehow more frightening than if it had been racing.
“He was just calming me down,” I said. “Please let him go.”
His gaze softened slightly as he looked at my upturned face before dropping to my hands splayed across his chest.
I pulled my hands away as if burned.
It was the first time I’d touched him in weeks.
Where I was pressed against him, his cock hardened against my stomach. A forbidden thrill raced through me, pooling heat between my thighs even as my mind railed against the betrayal of my own body.
I stepped back, just as Sebastian released Florian, who uttered a quick apology.
“Sono in ritardo per una riunione,” he said, racing out of the room, but first making prayer hands and mouthing, “I’m sorry” to me behind Sebastian’s back.
Sebastian waited for Florian to close the door behind him.
His eyes never left me. “I heard shouting.”
I placed my desk between us and made a show of shuffling papers. “It was just me venting to Florian.”
“About what.” Not a question. A demand.
“None of your concern.”
“Was it about business?”
“Yes.” I drew invisible patterns on my desk with my fingertip, unable to meet his eyes.
He moved then, circling the desk with deliberate steps until he stood beside me.
He placed a hand over mine to still my nervous paper shuffling, his palm engulfing the back of it. “Then it is my business. Tell me.”
“Adrian and I had a difference of opinion. That is all.”
Sebastian cupped my chin in his other hand. “Explain.”
I shifted my head to the side, breaking his grasp. “I don’t need you to interfere. I can handle it.”
