But the truth was, I had no place in his world. It was just as it had been all my life. I was a meteor in a universe of floating stars as bright and beautiful as diamonds, secure in their function and place while I zoomed by.
A noise from the living room alerted me to Sinclair’s movements towards the bedroom so I scrambled back into bed and tried to breath calmly through my clattering heart. I knew I had to talk to him even though I had no idea what I would say but I kept my eyes closed when he came into the bedroom and paused just beside the bed, looking down on me.
His fingers brushed a few stray hairs away from my face and lingered against my parted lips. I wondered if he knew I was faking sleep but I kept my breathing even just in case and a minute later, he turned, padding softly into the bathroom. The light spilled into the room from the open door and I opened my eyes as I listened for the sound of his movements. When I heard nothing, I got up to investigate.
He stood with his arms braced on the sink, his chest bare and his head dipped so that long strands of glossy mahogany hair obscured his face. I hovered in the door for a moment until I was sure he could sense me by the slight shiver that rippled through his stiff shoulders. Slowly, he tilted his head to the side to look at me. When our eyes met, I gasped. I felt our connection painfully as if an anchor had rooted its sharp, sure hooks deep in my heart linking our two souls with thick, unyielding chain. It was not a delicate hold or a whimsical emotion. Love gripped me tightly, wrung me out until I wasn’t sure I breathed.
Sinclair’s eyes were large but his expression was guarded as I took the few steps necessary to reach him, to bring my hand to his face and trace the sharp angle of his cheekbone. After a second, he let out a short, sharp breath and turned his head to press a kiss into my palm. The gesture almost undid my fragile state, unzipping what would surely be a sloppy mess of emotions but the sight of his raw, bleeding knuckles distracted me.
I tsk-ed as I took one of his strong fingered hands in my own and turned on the tap to wet a washcloth resting on the marble counter. He watched me carefully as I gently pressed the hot cloth to his scrapes.
“No chastisement?” he asked.
“Disappointed?”
“No, surprised. I assumed you would be a pacifist.”
My eyebrows rose and I purposefully placed my tongue between my teeth after reminding him, “I bit the bastard’s tongue.”
He held the corner of his smile back so that it was adorably lopsided. “That you did. I hope you don’t mind that I added a few… touches to your masterpiece.”
“Oh?”
“Just a black eye, maybe some purple near the jaw.” He shrugged. “Black and blue are really his colors, you know.”
It was my turn to fight my smile, laughter bubbling up and escaping before I could help it. Sinclair being uncharacteristically playful was impossible to resist. “I agree.”
We grinned at each other like idiots, my hands now holding each of his. I looked down when he did to see his fingers twine slowly with mine and when I met his gaze again, those electric eyes were bright.
“Will you do something with me?”
My belly fluttered with desire despite myself but he laughed and shook his head. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Elle, and help me with the blankets.”
Curious, I dutifully followed his orders as we deconstructed the bed, pulling off the heavy blanket and pillows to move them out onto the balcony. He pushed the two lounge chairs together and set up our makeshift bed, presenting it to me with twinkling eyes.
“Bored of the bedroom?”
He walked around to me and ran his knuckles down my cheek before pushing my hair over my shoulder. “Would you like to know the first thing I noticed about you?”
I was oddly breathless so I just nodded.
“It was all this creamy skin. I imagined what it would smell like.” He leaned down and ran his nose along my jaw line. “Lavender and honey. What it would taste like under my tongue.” His tongue smoothed over the shell of my ear before he nipped the lobe. “Even though you were ill, I could imagine how it would look in the sun, under water. I had all these fantasies.”
He tipped my chin up and rubbed a thumb over my pouting bottom lip. “I wanted you under the stars.”
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered.
Something flickered across his eyes and was gone. He cocked his head in question.
“Why are you making it impossible for me to walk away with a whole heart?”
A light shudder ran down his spine and I knew it wasn’t from the balmy sea breeze.
“I told you I would hurt you,” he murmured.
I flinched and his hands slid down to my arms so that I wouldn’t turn away. “You did. I guess I’m the villain in this love story then.”
His eyes blazed in the low light. “You are not a villain for caring. I gave you no choice.”
I snorted and tugged my arms from his grip, needing space.
“There is always a choice. And I’m not mad at myself for making it.” Anger flared through the heartache and I stepped so close I was almost standing on his toes. “I would make it again.”
I could see the insecurity in the quirk of his unsmiling mouth and I badly wanted to eradicate it, to burn away all of his considerable self-hatred and replace it with my love.
“Let me love you tonight.” I took his frozen face in my hands and tried to smooth away the distress. “Let me pretend that I’m allowed to love you, that I’m yours. That tomorrow instead of getting on a plane alone, I’ll go back to a life that we share.”
My boldness left me shaky but strangely confident. I could feel my old dull and sensible skin slide away completely, leaving me raw and new and shiny. Even if he rebuffed me, told me to leave right now and never see him again, I would have this – the new me – and that would be enough.
I listened to the breath of the sea on the shore and of Sinclair’s against mine for an interminable time until he sighed deeply and pulled me against him, one hand pressed to my lower back and the other cradling the back of my head, his fingers threaded through my damp hair. It was only a hug and I still had no idea how he really felt about me but somehow it was enough.
I pulled away and pressed a hand to his chest to let him know I wanted him to stay there. When I was sure he understood, I began to slowly undress him, tugging off his expensive scuffed shoes and deftly undoing the catch to his pants that had so eluded me the first night in his bed. When he was gloriously naked, I started to pull my own clothes off but he caught my wrist in his hand and shook his head.
“I like you in my clothes,” he said, taking the hem of his t-shirt in his hands, “but it covers too much of this skin.”
I let him pull the fabric over my head and tried not to quiver when he took a step back to stare at me with burning eyes. I could feel his gaze all over my body, caressing the generous curve of my breasts and tickling the gentle slope of skin down to my heated core. The power of his appreciation bubbled in my blood until I felt woozy like I had imbibed too much champagne.
He groaned and reached for me, tugging my body into his arms with a strong pull that robbed me of breath. It was my turn to moan when he fused his lips to mine, stoking me with hot strikes of his talented tongue. I was ready for a rough fuck, something dirty that would make me flush with embarrassment and lust but he changed the angle of the kiss, pulling back to suck lightly at my bottom lip, then the top. His hands held me delicately, as if I weighed nothing, and when he pressed a knee onto the makeshift bed to lay me down, my descent was so gentle I felt like I landed on a cloud.
I had wanted to show him how much I loved him but he was on top of me, sweeping long strokes of his broad fingers up and down my skin, planting gentle sucking kisses next to my aching core, my heavy breasts. He was worshipping me with his body, playing mine like the finest instrument and I wondered if this was his way of telling me how he felt. If he was loving me with his body in the only way he knew how. When he finally place
d an open-mouthed kiss on my pulsing center, I unraveled, long and slow like a ball of yarn rolling across the floor.
When I opened my eyes a minute later, he was looking down at me with an inscrutable expression and mildly frantic eyes. I didn’t know what was bothering him but I knew how to help him. Grabbing his ears to pull him in for a long tangling kiss, I opened my legs and wrapped them around his pelvis, tipping my hips in order to open myself to him. He pulled back when he was poised at my entrance, panting slightly, his eyes unfocused but intent on mine. Only then did he slowly push inside me, not stopping until he was as deep as I could take him.
“Tell me,” he ordered softly, pressing his forehead to mine as he rolled his hips.
I gasped.
“Tell me,” he repeated, withdrawing from me completely, leaving me achingly empty.
I arched my spine to bring him back to me but his pained expression made me realize what he wanted from me. Still, I waited until he thrust into me again, all the way. He waited for me to speak, keeping me on the edge with those long, smooth strokes until finally, when I was quivering and whimpering with need, I whispered, “I love you.”
He slammed back into me with a guttural moan, triggering my orgasm and his own. I clutched him to me, unwilling to relinquish the feel of his body against my own. He murmured something against my hair and pulled me into his arms as he rolled over. I wrapped one leg between his and tucked my head under his chin, bringing as much of my body into contact with his as I could. Because I already knew that in a few hours, as soon as the sun rose, I would be walking away from Sinclair forever.
****
Thank you for reading The Affair! If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment to leave a review at your favorite retailer and on Goodreads!
Love,
Giana Darling
Read on for an excerpt of The Secret, the second book in The Evolution of Sin.
The Secret: Chapter One.
The waiting area in front of the arrival gates was crowded with people waiting for loved ones and before I was even fully past the sliding glass doors, a wonderful voice, rich and decadent like a spoonful of chocolate ganache, called out to me.
“Giselle, mi amore!”
Cosima Lombardi was one of the lucky ones. Easily the most beautiful person I had ever seen, she crossed the crowded space on strong strides, her waist-length onyx hair floating behind her and attracting the glances of everyone in the terminal. Oblivious to it, she enveloped me in her long, thin arms and pressed me close to her body, so that I was flush against her famous curves. This was the way a woman like Cosima Lombardi hugged, no boundaries, and no embarrassment, just passion.
She pulled away only enough to regard me with startlingly long-lashed eyes the colour of melted butter. “I’ve missed you, mi amore.”
It was still hard to believe a woman like this could be my sister.
“I missed you too, Cosi.” I dragged in a deep breath of her spicy scent and instantly felt at ease. “But you didn’t have to pick me up, I thought you had some work thing tonight?”
As one of the hottest young models on the fashion scene since Karl Lagerfeld championed Cara Delevingne, she was constantly working.
She swished one caramel hand through the air, the gold bangles on her wrist just as musical as her mild Italian accent. “My sister comes before work, Gigi, you should know that. I haven’t seen you in seven months and two weeks.” Her frown was fierce, and it was obvious to me why photographers loved her face as devotedly as they did.
“Excuse me.” A teenage girl, no older than fifteen, approached us with barely concealed excitement, dragging her embarrassed father behind her. “Are you Cosima Lombardi?”
My sister smiled genuinely at them and extended her long fingered hand. “Hello darling.”
She winked at the awkward father and leaned over to give the strange girl a kiss on each cheek.
“Wow,” the teenager gushed, and I smiled as my sister obligingly took a picture with both father and daughter.
There was no one in the world I loved more than my sister, and it felt good to watch her interact with the people who approached her for her face and fame become enchanted with her warmth.
I was still smiling when she returned to my side and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I’m sorry about that. Now, tell me absolutely everything I’ve missed in the last seven and a half months.”
The shadow of Christopher crossed my thoughts but I stubbornly refused to acknowledge it. There were only two other people in the world who knew the truth about why I was returning to New York after years abroad, and I intended to keep it that way, no mater how much I loved my sister.
“Your life is much more interesting, Ms. Sports Illustrated.”
Cosima laughed at my teasing and it felt good when she took my arm in hers to march me over to the baggage claim.
Still, I found myself casting my gaze about the airport in search of a certain man with electric blue eyes. I knew that my own were probably still red from crying on the plane but Cosima was too excited to see me to notice the telling signs.
“It was very weird,” Cosima was saying. “The fact that people pay me just to pose for a camera is still strange to me. Do you know how much I got paid for that shoot?”
“Do I want to?” I winced, thinking about how much my studies at L'École des Beaux-Arts cost. Though I had been slowly climbing my way to success in the Parisian art scene, uprooting my life cross continents was bound to take its toll and I was reluctant to rely once again on my sibling’s generous financial support.
“Probably not,” she agreed cheerfully and casually reached out to smooth my wayward hair. “Let’s just say it was enough to put a down payment on an apartment!”
It still surprised her, I knew, that her face could buy such an opulent life for herself and our family. I would never understand what it had been like for her, running away to Milan from our small town in Southern Italy in order to raise enough money for us to leave our impoverished life behind. Sometimes there was sadness in her eyes that I knew no one would ever reach.
“That’s amazing but you know I’m not surprised. You work so hard.”
She made an unattractive sound and easily swept my luggage from the carousal. “Modeling isn’t work. At least compared to what you do. I loved the print you sent me for my birthday, it’s in the office of my new apartment.”
We pushed out into the parking lot and I was hit with a burst of bracing air. Greedily, I gulped in deep breaths because I knew the quality of the city air would be far from this clean, far from the pastry scented, Seine flavored breeze of my beloved Paris.
“I’m thrilled that you’re home, Gigi, but I think I should warn you.” Cosima peeked at me from the corner of her eye as she handed my bags to a cab driver. He was an older, East Indian man with a particular smell and lovely brown eyes who stared at my gorgeous sister with nervous appreciation. “Elena is going to come down on you like the hammer of God for not coming home in four years.”
“I saw her two years ago,” I protested weakly but I couldn’t meet her eyes as we got into the yellow cab because I knew that was a lame excuse and so did she.
“I know you two have…” Cosima struggled for diplomatic words, but they did not come easily. “A distance between you, but you are sisters and it hurts her that you never come home.”
“I’m home now.” But I leaned my head against her thin shoulder and sighed because I knew though she was talking about Elena, she was really speaking on behave of the whole family. Four years was far too long, especially for a family as close as ours. “And I brought Elena her only vice, Bonnet chocolates.”
Our eldest sister was one of those women whose work was their life, which was the main reason, I think, that she liked America so much more than our native Italy. She had enrolled in law school as soon as the twins had enough money to bring her over from the motherland and now, only four years later, she was articling for one of the top firms in the countr
y. For her to take time out of work for a man was a pretty big deal.
“So I guess she and this guy are pretty serious.” I said with a massive yawn.
Cosima clucked and took my hand in her bronze one. We looked so dissimilar that no one ever believed we were related. The twins, Cosima and Sebastian, were mirror images of each other while Elena hovered somewhere in the middle with deep red brown hair and stormy gray eyes similar to my own.
Cosima snorted inelegantly. “They’ve been together for nearly the entire time you’ve been gone. Elena wants them to adopt a baby.”
“What about marriage?” I sat up, startled.
Marriage was a huge thing for our very traditional Italian mother; I couldn’t imagine her reaction to a baby born out of wedlock.
“Daniel doesn’t believe in marriage.” She shrugged but the sadness flashed in her eyes and I wondered what she knew about the mysterious Daniel. “Mama might not understand that, but she loves Daniel enough to forgive him for it. Besides, it’s already hard enough for Elena. You weren’t here but she had a melt down when they realized she couldn’t have children.”
I pursed my lips and looked out the window at the passing blur of lights in the night. Elena had always wanted to be a mother; of all of us, she was the most traditionally Italian, lusting after the family life at the cornerstone of the culture. It was ironic, I had always found, that she was the least maternal person I knew. Despite my reservations about my older sister, I felt deeply ashamed that I hadn’t been there for her.
“Ah the city.” Cosima tugged my hand. “She won’t welcome you, bambina, but I promise you, in time you’ll come to love her.”
I sighed and rested my head against the stale smelling headrest to watch the vibrant lights of New York City come at me. I had the feeling that Cosima was talking about more than the city, I hadn’t realized until now how much I had missed in the past four years, and maybe, how hard it would be for me to come home.
The Affair (The Evolution Of Sin #1) Page 17