Page 6 of Forbidden Sins

She’s so utterly beautiful that it almost hurts to look at her. Desire burns through my veins, and I breathe in deeply, trying to master it. To remind myself that wanting her would only result in losing her entirely.

“That’s beautiful,” I say quietly as I walk toward her, my footsteps firm enough to let her know that I’m approaching and not startle her. “Is it a new painting?”

Estella glances up at me as if she’s just now realizing I’m there, pulled out of whatever world she was in temporarily. “I’ve been working on it for a few weeks.” She glances at the wall to her right, where several of her other paintings are hanging, gallery-style. This sunroom is mostly Estella’s domain—no one else really ever uses it. Certainly not her father, who spends most of his time in his office or private study.

“Is it of the gardens?” I step closer, looking at the painting. I don’t know much about the finer points of art, but I don’t have to in order to know that Estella is incredibly talented. The textures of the painting are beautifully varied, from the rough layers of paint built up to show grasses and the thick lines of shrubbery and various flower textures, to the smooth, shaded expanse of the sky.

“This is part of them.” Estella nods. “See? There are the climbing roses.” She points at a spot on the left side of the painting, and then gestures out to the corresponding spot in the garden, where climbing roses in red, white, and yellow cover a latticework surrounding an iron bench.

“And who are they?” I motion to the shadowed figures of two people near the fountain, their shapes suggesting that it’s a man and a woman. “Anyone in particular?”

Estella shrugs, but her gaze flicks nervously away from mine. “Just people,” she says, picking up her brush dismissively.

I study her for a moment, noticing how she isn’t meeting my eyes—her attention returning once more to the painting. There’s a flush on her throat, and I can feel the nervousness suddenly radiating off of her. I might need to keep my distance from her both emotionally and physically, will never actually touch her, but after three years, I’m as attuned to her as a lover.

I glance at the two figures in the painting again. I picture the woman as her and the man as myself… but of course, that couldn’t be true. Estella wouldn’t paint her bodyguard into a piece of art with her, surely. Except…

Her sudden caginess, the flush on her neck, the way she won’t look at me—something tells me that I’ve come very close to unearthing some secret of hers, something that she doesn’t want to tell even me.

Something that maybe she doesn’t want to admit even to herself.

I cross the room, going to look at the other paintings. There’s one of the pastures with the estate’s horses, depicting them running across a field. Another is of the woods at the edge of the estate at sunset, yet another of the mansion itself. And in every painting, there are those same two figures—a shadowy man and woman, without defining features or anything but the way they stand close together to indicate anything about them.

I glance back at Estella, who is focused entirely on her painting again, her eyes narrowed in concentration, the blush on her skin gone.What would it mean if it were us in those paintings?I wonder, and the answer comes to me easily, with a swoop of disappointment that I know is in my best interest to ignore.

It would mean nothing. Nothing at all.

3

ESTELLA

Igo upstairs at five to start getting ready for the party, a small hum of excitement in my chest despite myself. I know the party isn’t going to be what I would have chosen for myself, but still—I’m not immune to the fun of a new dress and jewelry, of getting dressed up and eating a fine dinner with champagne and seeing at least one of my friends. Even if the party itself will be overwhelming, there’s a small part of me that can’t help but look forward to it, all the same.

I didn’t see much of Sebastian for the rest of the afternoon, after he came by the sunroom. I imagine he was probably busy with Brick, working out security concerns for tonight. I’ll see him later, and that thought makes my heart leap in a way that I know it shouldn’t.

There’s no justifiable reason for me to feel a shivery kind of anticipation at the thought of seeing him, or for me to wonder what he’ll think of the dress I chose for tonight. He’s my bodyguard, and my friend, but the way I’m feeling tonight is a kind of anticipatory excitement that I know belongs to a different kind of relationship altogether. One that I know is inappropriate…and impossible.

The image of him getting out of the pool flashes into my mind again, and a shiver runs down my spine as I bite my lip. I’ve never seen anything as devastatingly sexy as that…not in person, notanywhere. I can’t stop thinking about how it might have felt to run my hands over the slick, damp contours of his inked, muscled body—of how hard those muscles might have felt under my hands. I can’t stop thinking about those deep cuts of muscle near his hips, the way they led down to the thick bulge in his swim trunks. I try to picture what he would have looked like with those trunksoff, but I can’t quite make the image fit, as badly as I want to know.

And why do you want to know?I ask myself sternly as I get into the shower, dipping my hair under the hot spray to wash it. It’s not as if I can do anything about it. Sebastian Sinclair is one man who is completely off-limits to me. My father would have a heart attack if he had the slightest inclination that I was fantasizing about my bodyguard.

He would also fire Sebastian, and that thought is a bucket of ice water dropped onto my fantasy.

I bite my lip, washing my hair quickly. The fact is, I’m nervous about tonight for more than one reason. My father has brought up marriage a handful of times recently over dinner, and each time I’ve tried to avoid the conversation and steer it elsewhere. But he keeps bringing it up, and that can only mean one thing—that he’s thinking about when he might want me to get married, and to whom.

I swallow hard. I don’t want to marry out of duty, for the improvement of our family’s wealth and power. Luis will have to, and I feel sorry for him, but I don’t know why it extends to me.

Our father still thinks like the older patriarchs of the families, like the elders in Sicily. Arranged marriages, family ties, alliances that are more at home in those fantasy novels and historical romances that I read than here in the modern world. Imight dream about a world where I’m a princess with a devoted knight, but I don’t want to end up engaged to a man my father chooses, someone who I might find unattractive or unpleasant, or who might be cruel to me. I don’t think my father would willingly choose someone who would be cruel, but I also think men are good at hiding their cruelty—particularly when it can get them something they want.

He’s been lenient with me, so far. I went to college and got a degree in fine arts, studying exactly what I pleased in person at the campus. I would be allowed to go and spend time with my friends from college if I wanted to—I just often don’t, since it feels awkward. When we were all in college, classes and homework, and finals served as enough of a common thread to make the differences in our families and futures fade into the background, but that’s no longer the case. While those friends are dating and starting first jobs and getting their own apartments, I’m whiling away my hours working out and reading and painting, having a party thrown for me that probably cost as much as a year or more’s rent for one of them, and generally living the life of a spoiled socialite.

That thin thread of commonality was broken when we graduated, and I don’t know how to mend it—so I haven’t tried as hard as I probably should.

And now, I’m worried that my father is going to call in the debt of his leniency, and demand that I do my duty. That I marry someone to help bolster our family’s wealth and power, and be the good mafia princess that I was born to be.

I just don’t understand why I need to, when my brother is the one who is going to inherit. I don’t see why I can’t do as I please, since I don’t need to shoulder the responsibility of carrying on the family.

Not that I think I could do anything as insane as actually carrying on some kind of relationship with my bodyguard. Butsurely there would besomeonewhoIwould want, someone I would choose for myself, in time. I want to be able to explore that, to fall in love in my own time, and not on my father’s timetable.

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