It was thrilling. At least, it should have been, because taking all these jobs meant she’d never have to worry about her mother again. But twenty-four hours a day wouldn’t be enough time to create all of these designs. Already she was doing rapid-fire calculations in her head to figure out what she could give up to make it work.

Worse, she couldn’t shake the thought that Sebastian’s peers were offering her commissions simply to make points with him.

“Are you okay?” Sebastian asked when they finally had a few seconds to themselves.

She couldn’t admit she was panicking again. Not when he’d handed her everything on a silver platter. She couldn’t fathom how he did it—be on like this for hours, schmoozing, prowling, moving, talking, constantly at attention. It seemed to energize him. But it would drive her insane.

“Everyone is being so complimentary and friendly.” She lifted one foot to take the pressure off for one precious moment. “I’m just not used to wearing heels.”

He tangled his fingers in the hair at her nape. “I should have been paying better attention to you.”

“You have been.” She smiled at him. “No one has ever been so attentive.”

“I can do even better,” he promised as he slid a finger seductively along the waist of her skirt, sliding down to caress the sensitive skin of her lower back as they slipped away from the group. “Let’s start by getting you another glass of champagne and some food.” Sebastian picked up a plate, his lips close to her ear as he whispered, “Tell me what you want.”

His arms molded her tightly to his body, and she felt every muscle, every ridge against her more delicate frame. She was hot, liquid, and crazy for him. And one desire after another whizzed through her head.

A great big bite of you.

A long sip of your lips.

Your heat against me.

Inside of me.

She’d worried earlier about people thinking their attraction was the reason Sebastian supported her art. Now, though she heard voices, the clink of plates, the splash of drinks into glasses, she simply didn’t care what anyone else thought. In this moment, there was only Sebastian’s arms around her, his sweet breath in her ear, his soft hair beneath her fingers.

She knew him in ways the people at this party never would, saw things in him other people could never understand. They felt his charisma, but she recognized his inner beauty, the man who cared, the little boy who still needed to help in any way he could.

Charlie had never wanted anything as badly as she wanted Sebastian. More than teaching. More than the money for her mother. More than her art. She wanted all of him. Now. Tonight. No matter what happened after she finished work on the chariot and they went back to their normal lives. Even if it turned out that he preferred the shiny, glittering Charlie she’d unearthed tonight to the dusty, junkyard woman she’d been until this moment.

Tonight, it was time to give in to the recklessness. Time to finally look into his eyes and say, “You. All I want is you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Sebastian grabbed Charlie’s hand and all but dragged her to the elevators. The moment the doors closed behind them, he pushed her up against the wall. Imprisoning her wrists above her head in one hand, he took her lips hungrily, devouring her until she moaned and wrapped her leg around his calf.

“I’ve been dreaming about doing this all night.” He roamed her body with his free hand, stroking her smooth, warm skin. Then he dipped his head to lick along her collarbone. “Tasting you. Touching you.”

“Kiss me again. I love how you kiss me.”

God, he was dying to kiss her. Every inch of her skin. But first he needed to know— “Do you believe?” His mouth was drawn to hers like a magnet and he had to taste her even though he hadn’t finished his question. “Do you believe I want you as much—no, a hell of a lot more than I want your art?”

“Yes.” The word came out more breath than sound. “Yes.”

Then her mouth crushed his and, sweet Lord, how he loved the taste of her and the soft purr in her throat as she consumed him with a ferocity equaling his own.

Love. The word he’d always been so wary of. Now it rolled around in his mind as though it belonged. Charlie made him believe that love didn’t have to be the way it had been for his parents.

Love could be like this. Love could fill him up from the inside out. Love could make him crazy with need and crazy with awe.

Tonight had been everything he’d wanted for Charlie—the crowd fawning over her, acknowledging her work as brilliant. She’d stepped into his world, conquered it completely, and was the toast of Silicon Valley.

Best of all? Now she would finally be his.

The elevator doors opened to the penthouse and they spilled out together, lips locked, arms tangled.

Charlie fumbled with the buttons of his tux jacket. “I want you, Sebastian. All of you. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

“No more waiting,” he agreed in a voice made raw with both need and emotion. “Considering that I wanted you from the first moment I saw you in your face shield...it’s been a hell of a wait.”

She laughed, and he drank in the sexy, throaty sound. He loved her humor. Loved her independence. Loved her art. Hell, he loved her everything.

“My face shield and those thick welding gloves weren’t sexy,” she scoffed.

He framed her face in his hands. “Whatever you’ve got on, it all drives me crazy. Especially—” He reached behind to undo the slippery zipper on her top. “—this dress.”

He pulled the spaghetti straps of her bodice down her arms at the same time as she tugged off his cummerbund and tore at the fastenings of his shirt. Buttons popped and rolled across the marble entry floor. Then she twined her arms around his neck, and he hauled her up, his hands cupping her hips as she locked her ankles behind him. Bare chest to bare chest, her lips on his, her mouth, her tongue, he held her tightly as he strode across the suite’s thick carpet to the bedroom, and fell onto the bed with her.

Her hair lay in ringlets on the gold comforter, red and gold like the sun. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, and her nipples were a dusky rose that beckoned to him. He drank in her beauty, his heart beating hard. Beating true. Beating as if it were finally full for the very first time in his life.

“I’ve never seen anything as magnificent as you, Charlie.”

She flushed beneath him, her skin drawing his mouth and hands to her body’s beautiful contours. “I thought you said my dragon was magnificent,” she teased.

“There are levels of magnificence,” he murmured as he lowered his lips to the curve of one breast. “And you are way above the dragon.”

Her laughter got lost in a pleasured gasp as he laved one taut peak slowly with his tongue. “Sebastian.”

The sound of his name falling from her lips notched up his need to an epic ache. “I’ve waited so long for you, Charlie.”

It wasn’t just the weeks since he’d first walked into her yard. It wasn’t even since the moment he’d seen her dragon and felt a kinship with her as an artist.

No, the truth was that he’d been waiting forever to find her. He’d never thought there would be someone like Charlie—a woman he wanted so badly that his insides felt like they were coming apart even as he was filled with pure emotion for her.

“I’ve waited for you too.” She put her hand to the back of his head and pulled his lips to hers. “Kiss me again. Kiss me everywhere,” she whispered before she took him to heaven with her mouth.

She toyed with him, sipped his lips, took his tongue, kissed him hard, then soft, twisted her head to come at him from a different angle. Playing. Tormenting. Seducing. They rolled together until she drew up her knees and straddled him. Leaning over, she licked his skin, ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, tugged gently. Then she sucked his nipple between her lips. She licked, suckled, teased, and finally bit him, just enough to send a shaft of pleasure-pain straight to his core.