Chapter 14 #2
Sin lifts me enough that I gasp and cling to him, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carries me away from the door.
“Bedroom?” he asks against my mouth.
I point blindly down the hall.
“Last door.”
He carries me there like he already knows the way.
Which is impossible. He’s never been here before.
He’s never seen my bedroom, with its soft gray walls and too many books stacked on the nightstand.
He’s never seen the throw blanket at the foot of my bed or the candle on my dresser or the framed print above my headboard that I bought because it made the room feel less lonely.
But when Sin walks in with me wrapped around him, it feels like he belongs there.
That might be the most dangerous thing of all.
He sets me down on the bed, but he doesn’t come over me right away. For one second, he just stands there looking at me and I look at him. Dark coat gone. Shirt wrinkled. Hair a mess from my hands. Mouth still damp from mine. He looks ruined. And beautiful.
And married.
The thought hits like it always does.
I sit up on my elbows, breathing too fast. “You can still leave.”
His eyes hold mine. “I know.”
“You should.”
“I know that too.”
Neither of us moves. Then he reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head.
My mouth goes dry. Then his hands go to his belt. The sound of the buckle coming undone is obscenely loud in my quiet, lonely, ordinary bedroom.
Sin pushes his pants down and steps out of them, leaving him in black boxer briefs and nothing else. He is all hard lines and restraint, broad shoulders and muscle and the kind of body that makes me want to write an apology letter to every rational thought I’ve ever had.
Then he looks down at his hand and the room changes. Not enough to kill the heat. Enough to remind us what the heat is burning through.
I watch his thumb slide over the gold band once like a habit. Or a wound.
“Sin,” I say quietly.
His jaw tightens. He removes the ring and sets it on my dresser.
I swallow.
“You don’t have to do that.”
His gaze comes back to mine. “I do if I’m touching you.”
That should make me feel better. It doesn’t. It makes me ache. Because there’s no accident in this. Just a wedding ring sitting on my dresser while we decide, again, to be terrible.
He comes to the bed. I expect him to climb over me, to kiss me hard, to let the lust carry us the rest of the way. Instead, he kneels between my legs and puts his hands on my knees.
“Tell me yes,” he says.
My throat tightens. He could have made this filthy or a demand. Instead, he makes it a choice. My choice.
“Yes,” I whisper.
His hands slide up my thighs. Then his mouth is on mine. And there is no more talking for a while.
The first time in my bed is desperate.
His mouth is everywhere. My hands are everywhere. He knocks a book off my nightstand, and I laugh into his shoulder because it is either laugh or fall apart completely. He looks down at me when he’s finally inside me. And whatever thin thread was holding us to the world snaps.
After, I expect him to leave. I tell myself he will. That he should. That he’ll pull on his clothes and put the ring back on and kiss my forehead like a man who regrets me.
Instead, he stays.
He stays through the night. He stays through the morning. He stays when pale winter light creeps through my curtains and turns my bedroom soft and honest and much too real.
I wake with him beside me, one heavy arm around my waist, his breath warm against the back of my neck.
For a moment, I don’t move and let myself have it. The weight of him. The quiet. The impossible comfort of waking up with someone who makes the loneliness in my apartment feel like a thing that happened to someone else.
Then guilt stirs and I start to pull away.
Sin tightens his arm around me. “Don’t.” His voice is rough with sleep.
“You’re awake.”
“Unfortunately.”
“You should go.”
“I know.” He kisses the back of my shoulder.
“Sin.”
“Tell me to leave, then.”
I don’t. Of course I don’t.
That becomes the shape of the weekend. A thousand chances to stop and neither of us taking them.
Saturday passes in pieces.
Coffee in my kitchen, where he leans against the counter wearing only his pants from the night before while I pretend seeing Mason Sinclair barefoot in my apartment doesn’t permanently alter my brain chemistry.
A shower that starts as practical and ends with my hands braced against the tile while he kneels behind me, proving there are worse things than hell and all of them involve his mouth.
Breakfast delivery we barely eat because he says something about syrup on my thumb, and then breakfast becomes irrelevant.
A nap tangled together on my couch, which is absolutely not comfortable enough for two people but somehow holds us anyway.
At some point, I realize he hasn’t reached for his ring. It still sits on my dresser. A small circle of gold in a room full of sin. I hate it, but I also hate the part of me that feels relieved every time I see his hand bare against my skin.
By Saturday night, my apartment no longer feels like mine.
His coat is over the chair. His shirt is on my bedroom floor.
His phone charger is plugged in beside my bed.
He knows where the coffee mugs are. He knows the left side of my mattress dips slightly.
He knows exactly how to touch me when I’m trying to be quiet.
I know the sounds he makes when he forgets to be controlled. I know the scar near his ribs. I know he likes his coffee black unless he’s too tired, and then he’ll drink whatever I hand him. I know he avoids looking at his phone when it lights up.
That part is harder to ignore.
It buzzes through dinner. He looks at the screen on the third buzz. His face closes. It’s Jenna. I don’t need to see the name to know.
“I can go into the other room,” I say.
He sets the phone face down on the table. “No.”
“She’s your wife.”
His jaw tightens. “I’m aware.”
“Are you?”
His eyes come to mine. For one second, we aren’t lovers tangled in my kitchen with half-empty takeout containers between us.
We are what we actually are.
A married man and the woman he shouldn’t be with.
The truth sits there, ugly and heavy.
Then he stands and I think he’s going to leave. Instead, he walks around the table, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me. It’s not gentle or sweet. A kiss that tastes like guilt and hunger and anger at himself.
I shove at his chest. “Sin.”
He stops immediately.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The apology hurts more than the kiss.
Instead, I touch his wrist. “I know.”
His phone buzzes again and we both look at it. He reaches for it and turns it off.
I stare at him.
“That doesn’t make it disappear,” I whisper.
“No,” he says. “It doesn’t.”
“Then why?”
His eyes are dark when they come back to mine.
“Because I don’t want to be anywhere else tonight.”
That’s the worst thing he could have said. Because it makes me step into him even though I know better. Because when his mouth comes down on mine again, I let it.
Sunday is worse. Not because the lust fades.
Because it doesn’t. Because it starts to become something else.
He reads beside me in bed while I answer emails.
He makes a comment about my terrible organizational system, and I threaten to evict him.
He smiles. A real smile. A devastating, unfair, soft thing I want to keep and have no right to.
I make pasta badly, and he eats it anyway.
He washes the dishes. Mason Sinclair, billionaire CEO, stands in my kitchen washing my chipped plates with the sleeves of his black shirt rolled to his elbows. I watch him from the doorway and feel something inside me shift. Not lust. Something more dangerous.
Something that has no place in an affair.
He glances over his shoulder. “You’re staring.”
“I’m making sure you don’t break anything.”
“I own a company that designs precision motors.”
“And yet my favorite mug is irreplaceable.”
He dries his hands and turns. His gaze moves over my face, and something softens. I hate when he looks at me like that.
That’s when the phone rings again. The sound slices through the apartment and her name glows between us. I expect him to reach for it. Instead, his eyes lift to mine.
“Tell me to answer it,” he says.
My breath catches.
I should say, Answer your wife.
I should walk out of the kitchen.
I should grab his ring from my dresser and press it into his palm.
Instead, I whisper, “Do you want to?”
His jaw flexes. “No.”
The confession is quiet. Terrible. Enough to make my knees weak. The phone keeps ringing and I take one step toward him. Then another.
“Then don’t.”
His control breaks visibly.
One second he is across the kitchen, still as stone.
The next he is on me. His hands catch my waist, lifting me onto the counter like I weigh nothing.
The phone rings beside my thigh, Jenna’s name bright and relentless, and Sin kisses me like he wants to drown out every sound in the world except the one I make when his hands slide under my shirt.
“Sin,” I gasp.
“I know.”
“You should—”
“I know.”