First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter twenty-four

Sabrina pressed the foot pedal and the pottery wheel whirred to life. She hadn’t intended to throw on the wheel today, but after the night before, after waking up alone with a hastily scribbled note that Sebastian had gone into work early, she had to do something . She could not spend the entire day in the condo she’d begun to think of as theirs with nothing to do but replay the hottest night of her life with a man who couldn’t have gotten away from her faster this morning if he’d tried. She’d arrived at the studio intending to hang the vinyl letters on the window that would announce to Aster Bay that Get Clayed was open and ready for business, but she knew there was only one thing that steadied her when she was feeling shaken up like this.

She worked the clay, drawing it up and flattening it out in an endless cycle. It had been too long since she’d had her hands in the clay, the greyish brown coating her skin in familiar ways, the hum of the wheel, the rhythm of the clay taking shape and dissolving back into shapelessness. The movements became meditative, but even this, even the place she felt most herself, wasn’t enough to calm the voices in her head.

You will not read into anything that happened last night. Or this morning. You will not confuse oxytocin and dopamine and whatever other feel-good sex chemicals for actual feelings.

Her hands moved of their own accord as she tried to convince herself that nothing had changed. It was a trick of biology, an evolutionary impulse that had long outlived its usefulness. She was confusing friendship and lust for other things she didn’t dare name, emotions that left her vulnerable and ripe for heartbreak. She’d had quite enough of that already, thank you very much.

And there was that other pesky piece of the puzzle to consider. If there were actual feelings involved, if the way he’d looked at her when he’d pulled her close in the middle of the night for rounds two and three was about something other than hormones and proximity, then she’d have to face all the ways she’d fucked up yet again. All the ways she wasn’t going to be enough for him. Like you weren’t enough for Jordan.

She froze at the thought and in that moment of hesitation, her clay became uncentered, the fragile walls she’d been building crumbling in dramatic fashion into a heap of mutilated clay on the wheel. The wheel slowed to a stop and she cursed under her breath, using the heel of her hand to move a loose wisp of hair off her forehead.

Of course, Sebastian chose that moment to appear, as if summoned by her incessant thoughts about the ways he used his fingers and tongue and cock—

“What’s that look about?” Sebastian asked with a knowing twitch of his lip as he rounded the worktable at the front of the studio and made his way to Sabrina where she sat at the wheel.

She blinked, shaking her head and starting up the wheel again. “Nothing. I’m trying to get back in the habit. For Kyla’s friend’s party.”

“The penis party,” he said casually as he leaned against the worktable.

“The break-up party.”

She gathered the clay back together in the center of her wheel and started working it again. If she focused on the clay then she couldn’t notice how out of place he looked in his three-piece suit in her studio, nor could she notice how that thought stung, how much she wanted him to fit here with her. But Sebastian fit with the Sabrina that wore silk blouses and pencil skirts, not the Sabrina who wore leggings and an oversized t-shirt knotted up at her waist, hands coated in clay.

“I thought you’d done these a hundred times before.”

“I have. But Kyla wants…something different.” The messages she’d woken to from Kyla that morning had been enthusiastic, bursting with excitement for the two-evening party she was hosting for her friend. And they’d contained a very specific request, courtesy of Tessa.

“She doesn’t want to smash a clay dick?” he asked.

“She does. But she also wants to make a second piece. One she can keep.” Heat rushed to her cheeks, which was stupid considering she’d had Sebastian’s piece inside her repeatedly the night before.

“Will you show me?”

Sabrina glanced up from the clay, meeting Sebastian’s eyes long enough to clock the challenge lingering there.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she asked.

“Being self-employed has its perks.”

He braced his hands on the worktable behind him, affecting a casual pose that belied the tension in his jaw, and Sabrina had the distinct impression that he was a predator toying with his prey, coiled anticipatory strength waiting for the most opportune moment to pounce. And there was that fizzy, shaken up feeling again, coursing through her limbs and gathering in a deep ache between her legs.

Sabrina began shaping the clay, keeping her eyes on her work. “Did you know Tessa painted a mural in the baby’s room?” she asked, eager for a distraction from the fact that he was watching her with those ice blue eyes .

“No.”

Some distraction.

“She told me all about it at the carnival. One whole wall is some kind of fairytale forest theme. Kyla helped. And her friends Jo and Molly too. Jo’s the one we’re having the party for. Tessa found a picture in a children’s book and they painted it on the wall. Life size trees and fairies and a unicorn. Well, I guess who knows if the fairies and unicorn are life size, right? Since they’re not real. I mean, the painting’s real. You know what I mean.”

“Oh, yeah. I vaguely remember Jamie talking about that.”

“She showed me a picture. It looks incredible. That baby is going to be so lucky. To have a mom who’s that artistic.”

Baz’s eyes narrowed as he studied her. When he spoke, she got the sense that he was picking his words carefully, almost as though he wasn’t sure they were what he actually wanted to say. “Is that something you would want someday?”

“I can’t paint. Not like that. Not trees and fairies and a whole freakin’ unicorn. Glazing pottery is as far as my painting skills go. And what if you painted a forest and later you wished it was a castle or a beach or a jungle? I guess a jungle is a kind of forest. But you wouldn’t put unicorns in a jungle. Or fairies. Not that fairies couldn’t be in a jungle if they wanted to be. But it doesn’t seem like a fairy place. Jungles, I mean.” She hazarded a glance and found herself unable to look away from him as she cataloged the deep crease between his brows, the intensity of his focus on her. Her mouth was suddenly dry when she asked. “Is that something you want?”

“A mural?” he asked with an arch of his eyebrow. She shrugged. He scraped his hand over his face and did that word-picking thing again. “Maybe someday. With the right person.”

She forced a chuckle that felt wrong even to her own ears. Of course he wanted murals someday—dark-haired, blue-eyed murals. Why shouldn’t he ?

“Right, you wouldn’t want to do something as permanent as paint a mural with the wrong person. You could end up with purple trees or—or—or a unicorn without a horn. Which I guess is basically a horse.”

“Why are you doing your nervous babbling thing?” he asked.

“My what? I’m not babbling.”

“You are.” He pushed off from the worktable and moved towards her. “What’s making you nervous? Me or the conversation?”

“I’m not nervous talking about murals,” she scoffed. As if that’s what we were actually talking about.

“So, it’s me, then.”

She could feel him moving behind her, the heat of his eyes on her back. “I’m not nervous. I’m just not used to someone watching me when I’m…sculpting.”

“You teach classes. I’d think you’d be quite used to being watched.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because my clients are sculpting too. Not watching me work.”

She heard the scrape of metal across the tile floor as Sebastian pulled a chair up behind her stool.

Please drop it. Please pretend with me for a little longer.

When he sat, his knees bracketed her hips. He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck and she nearly destroyed the clay she’d been carefully shaping as electricity sparked across her skin.

“I like watching you,” he said in that low, resonant way she could feel in her bones. Another kiss, more electricity. “But if you want me to go, I will.”

“No. Stay.”

He hummed in approval and moved closer to her, pressing himself flush against her back as she continued to work. For a while he watched in silence as she shaped the clay, the way she changed the pressure of her thumb to create the flared tip, the way she smoothed the ridge.

“Is this one for keeping or smashing?” he asked.

“Keeping.” She’d need to test the firing and glazing to be sure she could deliver what Kyla and her friends were looking for, after all. Making a tester only made sense.

That hum again, another kiss below her ear.

“What will you use it for?” he asked as he snaked an arm around her waist.

“I’m…not sure.” Sabrina stopped the wheel, the perfectly shaped clay dick staring back at her. She carefully marked the depression in the center of the tip, smoothing the clay as she went and gathering her courage. “Maybe I’ll use it. Could be fun.”

His fingers teased along the waistband of her leggings, and for a moment she was lost in their movement, in the heat of his body at her back. She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, that fizzy, shaken up feeling pressing at the back of her lips.

“You left so early this morning,” she said quietly.

His eyes found hers, holding her captive, but his words were unusually hesitant. “I wanted to let you sleep.”

“Did you? Or did you want to sneak out before I woke up?”

He swallowed, wetting his lips with a flash of his tongue, and her heart fell to her stomach.

“I didn’t want it to be awkward.” She narrowed her eyes in confusion, and he blew out a breath as he searched for his explanation. “I’m not used to waking up with someone. I panicked. It won’t happen again.”

Warmth washed over her at his matter-of-fact promise. Maybe it didn’t matter if she didn’t want to paint murals—maybe he was indifferent to murals and nurseries and all the soft, fragile beings that belonged there. And maybe she was getting way ahead of herself. They’d only been married a few weeks. It was far too soon to even be thinking about murals. Right?

She pressed her lips tentatively to his. He tasted like his morning coffee. It didn’t take long for him to deepen the kiss, to slide his tongue along hers as his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her leggings. He pulled back to meet her gaze as his fingers continued to stroke the skin below her bellybutton, a question posed in his eyes.

She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew deep in the marrow of her bones that if he asked that question, if he spoke whatever words were dancing behind his eyes, it would change everything. And she wasn’t ready for things to change again. They’d only just gotten here —to nights full of the most delicious sex, to heated glances, to promises that made her feel warm all over. Couldn’t they enjoy this for a while before they were confronted with whatever question haunted his ice blue eyes?

She let her knees fall to the side, resting against his powerful thighs behind her, and guided his hand lower as she kissed him again, bringing them back to something safer. At the first brush of his finger over her clit, she melted back against him, relief washing over her to have his touch exactly where she wanted it. He played with her in slow glides of his finger as he kissed her like he had all the time in the world. She made to turn towards him, to pull him closer, but remembered her clay coated hands and stopped herself with a groan.

Baz pulled back, chuckling, his eyes affectionate. He nuzzled into her hair, his lips at her ear. “Keep working on your sculpture, wildflower.”

With shaky hands, she reached for the clay phallus, smoothing out the flare at the crown, adjusting her pressure to add the more lifelike ridges and veining, and all the while, he stroked her clit in too-gentle strokes that never quite got her where she wanted to be.

“Sebastian,” she grumbled, squirming on her stool.

He chuckled and slid his other hand up the front of her t-shirt, pinning her against him fully. He pulled down the cup of her bra and pinched her nipple, but still the hand in her pants remained gentle. Her eyes flitted to the door on the other side of the shop. True, they were mostly hidden behind the shelving unit at the front of the studio, and the brown butcher paper still covered the windows of the storefront, but the door was unlocked. Anyone could come in and find them like this, find her like this, being slowly tortured for want of an orgasm.

“Will you fuck that cock when it’s done, baby? Will you use it to get yourself off and pretend it’s me?” he asked. Her breathing hitched, and, as if in reward for being turned on by the idea, Baz slid two fingers inside her, slowly pumping against the spot on her front wall that drove her wild. “It won’t be enough for you. You’ll need more, isn’t that right? But it could be a good warm up. Get you ready for the real thing.”

He rocked his hips against her, the unmistakable weight of his erection pressing against her backside as he continued to work her beneath her clothes. She whimpered at the idea of it, and her hands stilled on the clay.

“I didn’t say you were done, Sabrina,” he tsked in her ear. “You stop, I stop.” With a frustrated sound low in her throat, she went back to work on the clay. “There’s my good wife.” He rewarded her with increased pressure on her clit, winding her up as little shock waves of pleasure radiated out from her center, curling her spine in on itself, shooting down to her toes. “Tell me what you need.”

“I need to come,” she moaned, rocking her hips against his hand.

“I know you do, baby.” He nipped at her neck, left sucking kisses along her throat. “You finish making your toy and I’ll make you come, just like you’ll come all over that clay cock when it’s ready.”

“I am finished,” she protested.

“Not yet,” he growled .

She turned to meet his eyes, searched the intensity she found there as her thighs quivered under his renewed ministrations. She was so close and he knew it, the bastard. He was keeping her on that knife’s edge until she figured out whatever he thought was missing—

Reaching into the tray of tools at her side, she withdrew a long, thin metal rod. “We’ll have to wait until it’s fired to add the barbell,” she said. Then she stuck the rod through the head of the clay penis, piercing it the way he was pierced, making the toy a replica for the man behind her. He hummed his approval and kissed her deeply. Finally he brought her to climax, holding her against him as she rode out her orgasm, her vision going white around the edges as she shuddered against his hand.

She’d hardly stopped shaking when he pulled his hands from her clothing and stood. As she watched, he sucked her wetness from his fingers, then bent down and kissed her again.

“See you at home, wife.”