Page 31 of Forbidden Sins

There’s a fierce determination in his eyes, behind the pain and longing, that makes my breath catch. “I know,” I whisper.

“Do you?” He searches my face. “I mean it, Estella. Through all of this—everything your father has planned, everything that comes next, I’ll stay by your side. I’ll never leave you. Do you understand me?”

His touch burns against my lip, like a brand, like the kiss that I wish he’d give me. Like everything I’ve imagined and can’t have. I can feel the weight of his words—an oath, a promise of a knight to his princess. My champion.

My Sebastian.

A vow, sworn in the shadowed hallway, for only our ears to hear.

“I understand,” I whisper, and I feel that fissure in my heart widen, because Ido. I understand everything he’s not saying—that he won’t leave me, no matter what, that even if my fatheror my future husband wants him gone, he’ll find a way to come back to me. To protect me, however he can.

That he’s making this promise because it’s the only one he can ever make me, even if he might want to make one that would be so much more.

He nods, and I feel his thumb brush against my lip, the briefest, faintest of touches before he steps back. I can feel that something’s shifted between us, some barrier that’s fallen tonight, and as Sebastian turns and vanishes into the shadows that lead down the stairs, I can’t help but feel that nothing is going to be the same again.

In the darkness of my bedroom, under the covers as the moonlight streams in and illuminates the chair where Sebastian spent night after night sleeping near me, I replay what he said in the hall. I replay everything tonight—his smiles, his laughter, the touch of his fingers against mine. I feel the ache of desire sweep through me, and I let my hand drift down between my thighs, settling over the slick, hot flesh there as I close my eyes and imagine everything that I wish he could give me.

I imagine that it’s his mouth on my lips, instead of his fingers, his hand where mine is. I imagine that he’s my first, instead of a stranger that I don’t know and don’t want. I imagine a world where duty can be replaced with desire, and where I’m not Estella Gallo, but just Estella…a woman that Sebastian could want. A woman that he could love.

I imagine him moving over me in the dark, teaching me every secret I’ve ever wanted to uncover about my body and his. I imagine his mouth on me, my hands drifting over the lines of his body in the darkness, and I let my other hand drift down, circling my entrance as I imagine him there, pushing into me for the first time.

I feel the pleasure ripple through me, tightening my muscles, arching my back, and my mouth makes the soundless shapeof his name as I come, shuddering with pleasure as I feel my arousal, hot and slick against my fingers.

For a moment, I think I hear the sound of footsteps outside my door, and I wonder if Sebastian is out there, making his rounds, hovering just outside of my room as torn by desire as I am.

I imagine, for the briefest moment, him opening the door and coming into the room, seeing me flushed and breathless, my fingers still wet from my orgasm—and I banish the thought as quickly as it enters my mind, closing my eyes as I roll over.

Some things are too dangerous to imagine, even alone in the dark.

11

SEBASTIAN

Ilean against the wall near the French doors that lead out to the gardens, wishing I had something to do with my hands as I watch Estella from across the ballroom. I’d give anything for a drink right now—maybe a glass of the whiskey I see a nearby guest sipping from a cut-crystal tumbler—but I can’t drink on the job. I imagine the burn of it sliding down my throat, but I know it would do nothing to ease the tightness in my chest. The room is swirling with light from the chandeliers and laughter and the warmth of mingled bodies, the cream of mafia and billionaire society from at least three different large cities here tonight, but I feel as if I’m under a cold, gray cloud.

Antony was calling this a ‘small, intimate gathering,’ from what Estella told me, but she and I are both aware of what this really is. It’s a parade of suitors for her, each one wealthier and more well-connected than the one before.

It’s been a week since our ill-advised night out for her friend’s birthday. The way it ended, with my finger brushing her lip and the sound of my voice murmuring promises that I’ve thought over and over but should never have said to her outloud, was enough to tell me that I shouldn’t have encouraged it. That, and everything else that happened in between.

I press my lips together, catching sight of her in the crowd. She’s wearing dark blue silk tonight, a gorgeous evening gown that drapes over her perfect body and splits up one leg, sapphires shimmering at her ears and neck, and wrist, her thick dark hair piled up on her head. Just looking at her makes me fucking ache. I see the sapphire pendant glimmering from where it rests just below the dip of her collarbone, and my lips tingle with the desire to press them against her skin there—to find out how warm she would feel against my mouth, how sweet she would taste if I ran my tongue over her skin.

My cock twitches, and I grit my teeth. Here I am, in a room surrounded by men hoping to get their chance to court her, and I’m getting a fucking hard-on for a woman I can’t touch. It would be pathetic, if not for the fact that a week ago, Estella Gallo, perfect mafia princess, had an orgasm on the back of my motorcycle.

Don’t think about it,I warn myself, but it’s impossible not to. I’m not one hundred percent sure, of course. But I felt the way she grabbed me suddenly, felt her back arch, felt her gasping against the back of my neck. I’d thought she was just scared, and I’d felt like shit for not going back and getting my car instead of talking her into riding with me on the bike.

But then I’d helped her down, and saw her face.

God help me, but I know what a woman looks like right after she comes. I knew that soft, heavy-lidded look, that slight part to her lips, that glazed expression in her eyes. I would have sworn on any book I was asked to that Estella had just had an orgasm while clinging to me on my motorcycle.

My cock was so hard in that instant it could have fucking snapped in two. It took everything in me not to tear her clothes off and fuck her right there in the parking lot. I’d felt like afucking animal for an instant, looking at her, primal and feral and like there was nothing I could do but take what I wanted. For a moment, looking at her, I’d thought I knew what it must feel like to drown.

But I’ve been drowning in her for a long time now.

I stopped myself, of course. I grit my teeth, resisting the urge to reach down and adjust myself, because I’m now well on the way to being rock-fucking-hard in the middle of this goddamn party. Estella is still standing there, talking to some woman I don’t know, and I can’t stop tracing the creamy line of her throat with my eyes, the curve of her shoulder where that fucking asshole at the bowling alley touched her and where I touched her later, desperate for her to feel my hand there instead.

Maybe I could sneak off for a few minutes. Just long enough to get some relief.I could slip off to the bathroom, claim that I needed to take a piss. There’s enough security here tonight that no one would probably even notice?—

“Admiring the view, Sinclair?”

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