Sweeter Than Sin

by Shiloh Walker

  He pumped his hips, watched her eyes go opaque. Letting go of her hips, he took the few seconds needed to strip her jeans away, but when he would have reached for her she evaded him and reached for the hem of his shirt. “Naked, you said,” she reminded him. Obliging, he ducked his head and let her strip his shirt off.

  He went to join her, but her hands against his chest stopped him.

  “The dates—”

  A ragged gasp escaped her lips and he looked down as she traced her finger over the first series of numbers inked onto his flesh. “Adam,” she whispered, her voice a choked murmur. “That was when—”

  He caught her hand, pressed it to his flesh.

  “That was when you left me.” He dipped his head and pressed his mouth to her neck. “I want to get another now. At the bottom, marking when you came back.”

  A shudder rippled through her and he lifted up, cupped her face in his hands. “Don’t cry,” he murmured, even as the tears were already rolling down her cheeks. “Don’t.”

  “You marked yourself over me.”

  He rubbed the tears away with his thumb, rubbed his lips over hers and leaned in. “I did a lot of things because of you, and many of them were stupid. Drinking, stupid-ass fights just to keep myself from thinking about all the shit I didn’t want to think about. I did this after I finally started to pull myself back together,” he said, lifting his head and catching her gaze. “That was the date you left. The next date the day my parents died.”

  He guided her hand to the phoenix and the date beneath it. “And this when I’d been sober a year. I marked myself because I needed to, not because of anything you made me do.”

  Lana twisted her hand away and he let her, held still as she ran her fingers along the wings of the winged, flaming bird. “Why the phoenix? Were you ready to rise from the ashes?”

  “Not until I saw you from the river.” He braced his hands over her head, watching her, hunger and want and need blistering inside his blood while love ripped at his heart. “I crawled out of the bottle, but I needed other ways to forget. I couldn’t be alone in my head and stay sane, so I fucked every woman I could get my hands on.”

  Her lids flickered, her gaze falling away.

  “No secrets, Lana. You called me a man-whore.” He grimaced while she winced. Reaching down, he fisted a hand in her hair, guiding her gaze back to his. “It’s nothing but the truth. I couldn’t escape my demons so I tried to fuck them away.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No. Not until I put my hands on you.” He pressed his brow to hers. “The only time I’ve felt any kind of peace in the past twenty years was with you.”

  “Peace.” A slow, reluctant smile curled her lips. “That’s just what a woman wants to hear from a Lothario. She makes him feel all nice and peaceful.”

  “Well, you also make my dick hurt.”

  A bubble of laughter gurgled out of her. “That’s better.” Then she sighed and leaned against him, looping her arms around him. “Peace is good, though. I haven’t felt that in years. Haven’t felt safe, either. I do here. With you.”

  They stood there, like that, for a moment. Then he slid his hands down, cupped her hips. “Let’s not forget that part where you make my dick hurt.”

  She leaned back and caught the hem of her shirt. “How silly of me.”

  “Let me.” He guided her hands down.

  Adam stripped her shirt away, and in moments they stood naked in the doorway that joined his hallway to the kitchen. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever been naked in this part of my house,” he whispered, pulling her back against him.

  “We should christen each room.”

  “Later.” He lifted her and groaned as she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Now, this.”

  “This.” She shuddered as he pushed against her.

  And he swore as she yielded, then opened for him. Words trembled inside him. He wanted to beg her to stay. Wanted to tell her everything he’d kept trapped inside for longer than he could remember.

  Instead, he hooked an arm around her neck and arched her head back, taking her mouth hungrily.

  She groaned against him, her sleek, strong body arching against his. Sweat formed between them and he could feel the muscles in her belly flex. He shuddered as she tightened around him. Her eyes locked on his, the grey almost black. Need and hunger shimmered in her eyes. And maybe, he thought, maybe the beginning of something more.

  More … fuck more.

  He wanted everything.

  Flexing his hand, he tugged, watched the mist clear from her eyes. “Tell me you won’t leave,” he murmured.

  “Adam.” The word was a broken plea and she clutched at him, the demand clear.

  The lazy, almost gentle moment passed as desperation settled in. “Tell me,” he urged. He caught her lower lip between his, bit her lightly. “I fucking waited for twenty years. I … Fuck, I can’t lose—”

  The truth of it slipped out, hung there.

  And she stared at him. She reached up, touched his cheek. “I waited twenty years to come home. This is where I want to be.”

  It wasn’t enough.

  But for now, it would have to work.

  Slanting his mouth over hers, he clutched her tight … and lost himself in her.

  * * *

  “You waited, Adam?”

  She felt him tense against her late that night.

  He’d had to leave for a couple of hours and she’d quietly roamed the house, feeling like a caged bird while she waited.

  When he came back, she’d taken one look at him, thinking they should talk.

  But one look had led to one kiss and one kiss had led to her jerking at his clothes and him ripping at hers, and they had ended up christening the carpet on the living-room floor.

  Nearly five hours had passed since he’d dropped that rather startling announcement.

  And she needed more.

  I waited.…

  She’d eaten a sandwich while he was gone. He’d had supper while he was out—after all, rehearsal dinners usually involved dinners.

  He had to be up early. The wedding was a simple affair, but they did plan on having a best man, a ring bearer.

  Adam had come home with an invitation.

  For Lana.

  She’d read it.

  She hadn’t said anything, but they both knew she’d go.

  Now they lay in bed and she waited for an answer.

  A sigh escaped, the puff of air teasing her hair. He skimmed his fingers down her hair and she shivered a little as goose bumps popped up in the wake of his touch.

  “You should go visit your dad again. Things are … well, not settling, but you can at least let him know it’s working out some, right?”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t know if that’s what this is, but it’s not going to hell in a handbasket yet. I’ll go tomorrow. After the wedding.”

  “He’ll be there. Noah stayed in touch with him.”

  She smiled sadly. “That sounds like Noah.”

  “You still love him.”

  “The girl I was a long time ago still exists inside me, somewhere. She still loves him. The woman I am now? I don’t really know him. But neither of us are the people we used to be. I can’t love a man I don’t know. And he is in love with a woman who makes him happy.” Lana sat up, turned to stare at Adam. “I want him to be happy, Adam. He deserves it.”

  Then she reached out, touched the tip of her finger to Adam’s lower lip. “I didn’t spend twenty years pining for him. Maybe that makes me a terrible person, but I was too busy trying to just forget things … then I was trying to get my life back together. I spent a long time trying to destroy myself. I had no room left to pine after the boy I loved.”

  Adam curved his arm around her waist. “He spent a lot of time pining after you.”

  “He spent a lot of time worrying … grieving. I knew he was okay. It was easier to let go, knowing that. I didn’t give him any closure. It’s har
der that way.”

  Adam stared at her, his eyes turbulent. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m sorry for what I did, what I put you through.”

  Something unhappy shifted through her and she looked away. Noah had spent years grieving—that was what had made it harder for him to let go. Something about the way Adam watched her had an awful, wonderful, terrible thought forming in her mind, but she didn’t know if she wanted to give voice to it.

  Looking away, she focused on the wall. “What do you mean, you spent twenty years waiting?”

  “What do you think?”

  Unable to put it into words, she just waited.

  He moved then, shifting around and tucking her under him. “You know, your dad never liked me.”

  She frowned, thrown off.

  Adam didn’t seem to notice. Catching a lock of hair in his hand, he rubbed his thumb across it, lifted it to his nose, like he wanted to breathe her in. “I think he knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  Adam looked back at her, then. “That I’d fallen you, almost from the beginning.”

  The words hit her with hammer strength and her heart started to race, pounding against her heart, brutal and fast.

  “I started to realize what, and why, in high school. You were too young for me, and it was crazy and wrong and I knew it. I was in ninth grade when I realized you were growing breasts.” He skimmed his thumb across the curve and she felt heat crash through her. “You’d been my friend, this funny kid … and all of a sudden, you were a girl.”

  “You stopped talking to me!”

  “And why do you think that happened?” he said, shrugging. “The older I got, the older you got, the worse it became. And the worse I felt about it. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t such an issue. Maybe you were fifteen and I was eighteen, but that’s not such an issue, right? Except Noah was there. And he was…” Adam trailed off, staring at her while the feelings of inadequacy raged inside him. “Noah was everything I’m not. He made you laugh and I’d been an ass for the past few years. He had scholarships lined up. I was going to be taking over my parents’ place and I’d barely gotten through school with Bs and Cs. You two fit. And I was just…”

  She closed her eyes.

  The sting of rejection settled in.

  But before he could turn away, she slid her arms around him, pulled him down.

  “We might not have fit … then.” She turned her face into his neck. “But we’ve established I’m not who I used to be. I can never fit with him now. This, though … this feels like a fit.”

  Maybe she hadn’t said, Adam, I’ve been in love with you all my life.…

  But she clung to him like she needed him.

  And that mattered.

  Gripping her to him, he settled down in the bed.

  “It’s a fit,” he whispered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was a simple wedding.

  Set along the banks of the Ohio with the water glimmering like a ribbon of silver at their back, Trinity Ewing walked away from her old life and began a new one with Noah Benningfield.

  And she didn’t walk down the aisle alone.

  Noah had said he was taking them both and he wanted both of them to join him.

  So Micah was there with her, for that first walk.

  He held his mother’s hand as she walked to join the man who had become their everything.

  Adam stood at Noah’s side, ready with the ring, watching … waiting. He felt like he perched on a razor’s edge, the events of the past few weeks all piling up to some climactic event that was just going to set the entire town ablaze.

  Not here, he thought, the closest he’d come to praying in a long time. Please don’t let it happen here.

  Maybe it worked.

  More likely, the guy upstairs was just fond of Noah and wasn’t going to let anything rain on his parade. The wedding passed without a hitch.

  Caine—no, it was David—came in quietly.

  Adam was going to have to undo fifteen years of thinking. The man hadn’t really started mingling around town until five years after David’s “disappearance” and he’d changed a lot.

  David didn’t talk to anybody, and so far nobody was paying him much attention. Adam suspected the town gossips hadn’t heard the news yet, but that wouldn’t last long.

  David sat in the back, close to Lana, and the two of them didn’t once look at each other.

  They both watched the wedding, like they were determined to see it through.

  The same as Adam.

  He didn’t know if they somewhat expected Layla to show her face or the cops or what.

  He just knew he’d feel better once that line I now pronounce you man and wife was said.

  As Noah pulled Trinity against him, almost everybody there started to clap. There was laughter and wet eyes, but under it all the happiness had a sharp edge.

  Adam caught David’s eye as he moved off to the back of the crowd.

  And they both knew.

  It wasn’t over.

  Nowhere near.

  As the crowd gathered around, wishing the couple well, Lana moved in close to Adam, slipped her hand into his.

  “You look grim.”

  He looked down, pressed his lips to hers. “You should be the one looking grim. Judging by all the sidelong looks you’re getting, word is out. People will start rushing you soon.”

  She shrugged. “It’s going to happen. I’d rather it not be here.” Then she rested her head against his arm. “Why the heavy look?”

  “Because it’s not over.”

  Lana squeezed his hand. “No. I don’t think it is. How can it be? No answers about Max. Still too many of the men from Cronus out there. But today isn’t the day for this sort of talk.” Then she tugged on him. “Come on. I heard there’s going to be dancing. It’s been twenty years since I danced, big guy. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Maybe if I stay busy, people will leave me alone … at least for a day.”

  “So you’re using me, huh?”

  “No. I’m thinking more along the lines of … keeping you.” She paused and smiled at him. “Is that okay?”

  He caught her up against him, pressed his mouth to hers. “Since that’s kind of what I planned, yeah. More than okay.”

  * * *

  Not everybody was at the wedding.

  He’d gone over the information for the murder and attempted murder of the Shepherds. Heads would roll over that one, and if Max survived—and it looked like he was going to pull through—the murderer wasn’t going to be pleased. Whoever shot Max should have made sure he was dead, because he wouldn’t rest until he saw justice for his Mary.

  That was just one of the cases he had to handle. He was walking through a damn minefield these days. Just then, he was focused on what little information he had on the events from twenty years ago. He had his own notes and he’d have to interview everybody, all over again. Now, at least, he had two witnesses to question.

  Tugging on his lip, he studied the mitochondrial DNA report. David Sutter had agreed to give a DNA sample when he’d given his statement. He had more questions for that man, that was for certain.

  He’d threatened every single soul in the station, and for now they were all keeping it quiet.

  That wouldn’t last, though.

  He couldn’t control Layla, and even if she didn’t talk, word would get out.

  If everything added up the way Lana and David claimed, then what he had here was an epic clusterfuck and the whole town was going to be shaken. They’d spent twenty years with the Sutter family on a pedestal.

  That pedestal had to come down.

  No.

  Not come down.

  Be shattered, completely.

  And it was going to take David Sutter being willing to do what he couldn’t do before—tell the truth about what his father had done to him and possibly countless other boys. David had no names, just a few
suspicions, but those suspicions gave him a starting point.

  Reaching across the desk, he picked up a picture, stared at it.

  Then he rose and crossed the room, pinned the picture to the fresh board he’d started.

  It was time to start thinking this through all over again, from the ground up.

  * * *

  They danced.

  Flowers and lights and music filled the air, and laughter rang out.

  There was one person who didn’t laugh, though. No reason to laugh. No reason to smile.

  Only watch.

  As they danced.

  The laughter was like a needle to the ear, a scrape against the soul, a knife in the side.

  No way to escape it, though.

  How could they all be so happy?

  How could they all be so full of smiles and cheer?

  Especially him.

  Didn’t he understand?

  Didn’t he know?

  They should all be shaken and hopeless inside. Desperate and needy.

  Broken.

  A soft, desperate sound filled the air. But it was lost under the sound of a love song, lost under the music and the laughter.

  Read on for an excerpt from the next romantic suspense novel by Shiloh Walker

  DARKER THAN DESIRE

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  It was a slow, mostly silent walk, especially the first twenty minutes. They stopped at a cross street and David looked at Sybil for the first time when she pulled her hand from his.

  She gave him a rueful grin as she tugged something from her coat pocket. “It’s a good thing I know you.”

  That didn’t click until he saw her pull out a narrow pair of slipper-like shoes from a pouch that she swapped out in place of her heels. She put the stilt-like shoes in one hand and then took his hand, sighing a little in relief.

  “We could have taken your car,” he said as something he recognized as guilt worked through him.

  “Difficult.” She slid him a sideways smile. “I caught a ride with Trinity and Noah. I…” Her words trailed off and she shrugged. “Well, I figured you’d be there and I wanted to be with you in case you needed me.”

  This time, he was the one to stop.