Page 43 of Sinful Desires
“He’s not a big talker,” she whispered. “His hands do the talking.”
“Love’s not supposed to bruise, Miss Harper.”
She let out a low laugh, bitter and dry. “What would you know about love? I doubt the military was filled with hugs and kisses. Or maybe I’m behind on the times. Navy boys out atsea for months?…?I guess things getconfusing. Men. Women. Whoever’s there.”
Only a woman like Scarlett Harper could look me dead in the eye and joke about me being gay. While every inch of me, every goddamn cell in my body, screamed that I fucking wanted her.
I’d trained myself for years to shut that shit down.
It hadn’t been a problem for the last thirteen years, but here I was, fighting it all over again.
“You know what the military taught me?” I said, moving closer. “Control. You learn to cage everything. Thoughts. Desires. The way your body betrays you, reacting to things it shouldn’t.”
Her eyes lifted to meet mine.
“It teaches you to look at something you want, and act like you don’t.”
She tilted her head, her gaze dropping to my lips. “What’s your biggest desire, soldier?”
After all the blood, the guilt, the weight of every sin I had to carry, the one thing I wanted—no,needed—was a chance to live. To breathe without the screams haunting my every step.
A breath caught in my throat. “To live, Scarlett.”
Her gaze dropped. A tear slipped down her cheek, fragile as glass.
I wanted to reach out, to touch it, but my hands balled into fists, fighting the urge to wipe it away.
She looked down at the water like it was calling her name.
“What if mine is to die, Théo?”
Fuck.
Her voice hit me hard, low and broken, and it knocked the air right out of me.
She meant it. I could fucking hear it. She wanted to die. And she sounded like she’d already made peace with it.
It twisted something deep in my gut, something ugly and familiar that I didn’t want to feel. But then it hit me?…?she’d said my name. Everything else burned away, fast and filthy. Heat slammed through me like a loaded gun.
Théo.
She’d never said it before. Not once. And hearing it now, fromher, felt like getting dragged under by a riptide I didn’t want to fight. Like my body had recognized the sound before my brain had time to react.
It didn’t sound soft. It didn’t sound sweet. It sounded like something meant to break me.
And it fucking did.
It made me want to snap a chain around her throat, pin her down, and force it out of her lips again and again until it was the only fucking word she remembered. Until she forgot every other name but mine.
Please, Théo.
Ragged. Pleading. Mine.
Then she turned and dove into the pool, leaving me in the cold, soaked in silence, while every sinful desire I’d buried dragged their teeth across her name like it belonged to them.
The stillness turned cruel when I realized she wasn’t coming back up.
Chapter
