The Secret (The Evolution Of Sin Book 2) (8 page)

“Eat, Giselle.”

I sighed but did as he told me, watching from the corner of my eye as he cleaned up the kitchen and ate his own rolled crepe standing up.

“How did you become interested in art? It doesn’t seem like your childhood was conducive to frivolity or creativity.”

“No, but I did it anyways. I used sticks and dirt, made rock formations and even got my hand on a canister of spray paint. We only had standard grade lead pencils and printer paper, sometimes something a little nicer if Seamus had done well at the tables. Cosima sent me my first paint set for my nineteenth birthday, this incredibly beautiful box of Sennelier oil paints. It was one of the only things I took with me to
L’École des Beaux-Arts
.”

“That makes me unspeakably sad,” he said simply.

I shrugged because it didn’t matter to me anymore, I wouldn’t let it. “It affected me a lot. I didn’t know who I was or what I was allowed to do when opportunities eventually came my way. I felt unworthy, I think.”

“You know better now.”

“I do,” I agreed. “Whatever else happened in Mexico, good or bad, you helped me lock into place.”

“That makes me unspeakably happy,” he murmured, as if my words weighed heavily in his chest and compressed his lungs.

His phone began to ring but I wasn’t startled or surprised. It only seemed right that our intimacy would be interrupted. I turned away before he could answer it and made my way to the bathroom.

“Elena,” I heard him murmur before I was fully out of earshot.

I braced myself against the sink basin on wobbly arms and scowled at the mess of a redhead in the mirror. After so many years staring at my reflection and seeing only the ways in which I didn’t look like my gorgeous siblings, I was happy to find my own beauty lurking beneath the smudged mascara and sticky hair. It was impossible to view myself as ugly, as average, when a man like Sinclair found me so attractive.

I peeled off my clothes and turned the shower on to scalding hot. The pounding spray further sobered me and I focused on the individual pricks of water against my skin instead of the gorgeous dilemma waiting for me somewhere in the apartment. After scrubbing myself from head to toe in lavender scented product, I stepped from the shower and into the steamy room.

Wiped clean, I felt raw and unprepared to face Sinclair. I desperately wanted to go to him as I was, naked and cooling like an un-iced cake. I wanted him to paint me in his sugary kisses and color me pink with desire.

Standing in the middle of the bathroom, my hand found its way over my breast and down to my sex. I moved my hand through the downy curls and hissed as I found my clit. I braced one hand on the sink and stared at the slowly clearing mirror as I played with myself.

A reel of memories from our Mexican affair played in my mind; flashes of myself spread open and shockingly wet, the taste of his arousal on my tongue, the sharp string of a slap on the thin skin of my ass.

I was slick and throbbing, my breath fogging up the mirror again. I stretched two fingers past my entrance and moaned slightly, taking my lip between my teeth, biting it like Sinclair would do if he were kissing me, demanding me to come for him. My fingers were too small, too gentle on my skin and I ached for the precision of his touch, the painful pinch and sexual pull of his hands on my body. I groaned again, loudly.

“Elle?”

His voice exploded against my skin, showering me with hot shards of desire. My fingers worked faster.

“Elle?” He was closer, just outside the slightly open door to the washroom. “Is everything okay?”

My eyes drooped with the heaviness of my arousal but I forced myself to keep them open and on the door in the mirror. I was rewarded with the sight of him coming into the room, the steam swirling around his legs and kissing his skin with dew. I shuddered violently and pinched my clit hard between my fingers. I was so close.

He stood there, shocked, taking in the view of my pink sex peeking out from under my slightly bent bottom and the hand running over it eagerly. I saw his throat swell and bob as he swallowed hard.

I whimpered.

His burning eyes shot to mine in the mirror and the fierce desire in them almost brought me to my knees.

“Stop.” His voice lashed out across the room and hit me like a whip.

My hand increased its frenzied movements. I was too close to stop now.

“I said,” he repeated in that glacial, exacting voice that never failed to make me wet, “stop.”

My hand trembled as I took it away and placed it on the sink. I panted as I stared at him in the mirror, waiting for him to direct me.

His lips were pursed into a flat line and his fists curled before he put them in his pockets. “Go to bed, Giselle.”

My heart dropped to the wood floor with an audible splat as he turned and left. The steam had disappeared through the open door and the cold apartment air grated goose bumps into my skin. I shivered and pulled a towel from the rack to wrap around my body.

Whatever hope I might have harbored that he would be waiting for me in my bedroom was crushed when I slunk into the dark room and found it cold and empty. Tears of humiliation stung my eyes and made my nose tickle.

I ditched the towel and lay on the duvet, letting the cold air bring my lava filled body back down from its near eruption.

I was an idiot to be caught touching myself with Sinclair in the apartment. Whatever opportunity I may have had to be friends with him had obviously gone out the door with my inappropriate behavior. What had I been expecting? Did I really think he would suddenly succumb to nefarious desire and drag me into the bedroom like a Neanderthal and have his wicked way with me? This wasn’t a romance novel and Sinclair was certainly no caveman.

My eyes shot open at the clack of ice hitting ice in a glass.

Sinclair stood framed in the door and he maintained eye contact with me as he made his way to the high backed chair across from my bed. He sat down, planted one foot a top the opposite knee and took a sip of his whiskey.

I blinked.

He looked entirely comfortable sitting across from me, like a spectator at a movie or, more likely, like a man waiting for the show at a strip club.

“By all means,” his voice was thicker than the steam from the bathroom, warmer than the cold air assaulting my bare skin, “continue.”

My breath streamed out through my slack mouth. Could I do this?
Should
I do this? Touch myself in front of the man who was dating my sister?

But you
have
done this
, the villainous voice inside me reminded,
you’ve done this with Sinclair many, many times before. And besides, you want to
.

Still, I hesitated, my mind whirring louder than my latent desire.

“Don’t make me tell you again.” Sinclair’s voice wrapped firm fingers around my flailing thoughts and carefully bound them, gagged them. “Touch that pretty pussy for me, Giselle. I want to see you come.”

A feathery moan escaped me and my hand found my still damp sex without hesitation. I watched his stern face as I twirled one finger around my clit, not quite touching it, before moving down to my entrance to do the same thing. His jaw ticked and I knew that teasing myself was teasing him even more. I feathered both hands over my inner thighs, tensing at the resulting tingle at my core and sighed deeply.

“Spread your legs wider for me.”

I pushed them further with my palms and ran my fingers over my sex to open myself for him.

“Good girl,” he crooned. “Do you remember the night I spanked you? Your ass was a beautiful shade of pink and you begged me to take you, to ease the throbbing in your sweet little pussy.”

His words sprinted like a brush fire across my skin, lighting the tiny hairs all over my body until I was scorched and completely bare. My eyes fell closed at the intensity.

“Open those eyes, siren. I want to watch my voice make you cum.”

I shuddered and pried my eyes open. His blue gaze still blazed but his mouth was softened by a small smile that warmed my heart.

“Sinclair,” I breathed restlessly, searching for the last component to trigger my release.

He stood up, drained his glass and made his way to my bedside. Placing his cold glass over my bare navel, I shivered at its contrast to my feverish skin and held my breath as he leaned over me, bracing himself on one hand beside my left cheek.

“This is the last time,
ma petite voleuse
.” He spoke just above my lips, the words slipping into my mouth on his warm breath. “So make it a good one.”

I opened my mouth wider, maybe to protest or to beg, but his lips captured mine in a sweet open mouth kiss. Two fingers trailed down my cheek and rested against my fluttering pulse.

“Come for me,” he ordered softly as he pulled away.

And I did, in an explosion of sensation so deep that every muscle in my body contracted hard, so hard that I thought I was seizing. A scream ripped from my throat and my legs scissored, trapping my hand between my thighs.

When I finally came down enough to open my eyes and release my hand, he was gone. The only sign of him was the empty tumbler on the bedside table and the feel of his control and desire still lingering in my spent muscles. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt the tears come before I was even aware I was crying.

I’d wanted some kind of closure, fantasized about a sexual ‘farewell’ and now that I’d had one, wrung from his voice and my hand, I felt despair deeper than any I had known before. Sinclair may have been in my life, a friend now, at least, but knowing I would never have his heart had never been so clear to me.

Chapter Seven.

“Really?”

I laughed loudly but the lunch hour traffic on the busy terrace of the restaurant drowned out my lack of class. “Yes, really.”

“I don’t think I understand this.” Mama’s beautiful almond shaped eyes squinted at me, a habit she had when English confounded her. “
Si vuole dipingere le persone aver fatto sesso
?”

Cosima too was squinting, a thinner, younger look-alike. “No, Mama, it’s Giselle.”

I frowned at my family as they all nodded in agreement. They must be wrong they thought, because sweet innocent Giselle would never do anything morally ambiguous and definitely not something so crude.

“I’m serious.” I took a deep breath and slid my damp palms nervously over the soft jersey fabric of my dress. “I want to do a series depicting private sexual moments, a study of individual sexuality.”

Elena blinked at me owlishly before laughing. I took a second to notice how light it was, tinkling like glass wind chimes. I almost winced at the comparison to my own brassy chuckle from a few minutes ago.

“You can’t be serious? Who would even want to pose for you like that?”

I cleared my throat because this was part of the pitch that I really needed to nail. “I was hoping you would, for starters.”

The second of shocked silence made me fidget. I reached out for my wine glass, almost tipped it over in my haste and slipped my sweating palm back within the other.

“I can’t believe you are asking your own family to pose nude for you.” Elena’s pretty feature scrunched up in horror.

The shame I constantly felt in her presence threatened to overwhelm me but I swallowed back the bile and forced myself to breath.

“It’s
art
, Elena, not porn for fuck’s sake,” Sebastian snapped at her before turning to me with an arrogant grin. “How do you want me? I can give you a few phone numbers if you’d like a woman’s opinion.”

His wink made me snort but Elena shook her head. “You are so crass.”

“Which one of us is the more American, then, Elena? The crass one or the prude?”

He had a good point, but I covered my smile behind my hand.

“I’d be happy to do it,” Cosima said softly. “But you might not like what you get.”

I frowned at her. “You model swimsuits and lingerie, Cosi. Honestly, I didn’t think this would be a tough sell for you.”

She lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “It is still enough clothing to cover secrets, no?”

“You don’t want me. This body is old.”

I turned sideways to face my beautiful Mama. Caprice Lombardi was the kind of woman you dreamed up for an Italian centerfold; lushly curved under swathes of silky olive toned skin gently creased like pleats at the corners of her light brown eyes, with hair too long for a woman her age in America but exactly right for an Italian, older but everlastingly sexy. She tugged at the end of her thick black braid now and stared at me with worried eyes, as if she was letting me down for not being younger or prettier.

“You’ve been in America too long, Mama,” Sebastian scolded, reaching across the table to take her hands. “A beautiful older woman is a delicacy.”

Elena snorted softly and received a glare from both of the twins but otherwise the remark went uncontested. It reminded me what Elena had said when I had first arrived, about Sebastian’s affair with an older married woman. I resolved to ask him more about it but he had been so busy since I’d arrived that I had barely seen him.

“He’s right. You are gorgeous, Mama,” I said and watched her beam at me.

She turned to Elena and pursed her lips, an indication that she was going to scold our eldest sister. Elena squirmed under the look.

“Of course, you will do this for Giselle too?”

It wasn’t really a question and I could see the darkness descend across Elena’s features like a coming tempest.

“Really, Elena, if you don’t want to do it –“ I began.

“Of course she does!” Mama cried, her hands wildly punctuating the words. “We are a family, we do things, always, for each other,
si?
”

“Si, Mama
,” we chorused diligently.

The twins shared a look and Elena glared at me.

I sighed and played with the stem of my glass. Despite a few hiccoughs in our past, I still wasn’t exactly sure why Elena hated me so much. It would have been awesome to have her on my side. We could have been a team of two like the twins, who were so close that it was easy to feel ostracized from them despite the wealth of their love for the rest of the family.

It had become impossible to think about Elena without Sinclair and I wondered, in a growing series of what-ifs, whether I would still lust after, love after, Sinclair if Elena and I were closer.

“I’m sorry that I’m late.” As if my thoughts had conjured him, Sinclair appeared beside Elena, bending down to paste a kiss on her cheek.

He was wearing a perfectly tailored grey herringbone suit jacket with silvery grey flannel pants and a matching vest over a black button up. His chestnut hair had been cut in the hours since I had last seen him and it was now stylishly cropped short at the sides and longer at the top, softly waving back from his strong features. It softened and refined him but I missed the length, it spoke of the slice of rebellion in his soul.

“It was my fault,” Cage explained, coming up behind him with a wide grin. He took off his mirrored aviator sunglasses with a flourish and tossed them on the table. “The ladies couldn’t get enough of me out front.”

“I think it was Ryan Gosling they were after,” Sinclair corrected dryly as he finished kissing Mama and Cosima’s cheek, shaking Sebastian’s hand.

He was before me now and I held my breath to see what he would do. Would he kiss me on both cheeks or could we get away with a casual hello? He leaned down without hesitation, barely brushing his cool lips against my overheated skin.

“Hello, Giselle,” he said, and I wondered if anyone else could hear the husky timber in his voice.

“Ah,
ma belle cherie
.” Cage swooped in to give me a slightly too long kiss on the mouth. His delicious scent, something like leather and pure masculine sex, wafted over me and my lips softened under his firm pressure.

Sinclair cleared his throat loudly and thumped Cage on the back. “Sit down, Casanova.”

Cage winked at me and sat down in the empty chair to my right, tugging my seat closer to his with a broad grin. He leaned over me to say to Mama, “You make gorgeous children, Caprice.”

To my delight, Mama blushed. “You are very dangerous.”

He barked with laughter, jutting his chin at Elena, the only person at the table not delighted with his presence. “Me? I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Pfft, a fly, maybe no, but a woman’s heart?” Mama shook her head somberly. “No chance.”

We laughed at their banter and everyone settled in to order their meals and catch up on small talk. I was glad for the reprieve. Being in Sinclair’s presence after my embarrassing display of wantonness last night was awkward, to say the least, and I couldn’t stop tugging anxiously on a lock of hair.

“Relax, Elle,” Cage spoke with his head angled down at his menu, his full red lips unmoving. “You are acting like a thief in the police station.”

I consciously slowed my darting gaze and looked over at him again to find his generous smile beaming back at me.

“I’m hopeless.”

“Yes, but those in love normally are.”

I sighed and rolled my shoulders back, determined to get over my own self-imposed discomfort.

“Much better,” Cage murmured.

“You shouldn’t have left me with him last night.”

It wasn’t his fault, not really. If Sinclair had wanted me, he would have succeeded with or without Cage’s protests. In fact, I was about eighty-five percent sure that he had paid that guy to start a fight with my cute dance partner just to get him off me.

“
You
shouldn’t have left him that last night.”

My head jerked sharply over to him, my mouth slack.

Was he really bringing up Mexico in front of my entire family?

A quick look of the table confirmed that no one was listening, and that Elena was affectionately fixing Sinclair’s tie, but I still lowered my voice when I hissed, “You have no idea what you are talking about.”

Cage ceased pretending to care about the menu and looked me straight in the eye. “It is you who has no idea what you could have had.”

Before I could question him further, the waiter arrived to take our orders.

“Giselle wants to paint the family nude,” Elena said before the server was even out of earshot.

My eyes were hot with embarrassment but I tilted my chin up and tried to pretend she didn’t make me feel like some kind of pervert.

“Oh?”

Oh?
I glared at Sinclair. Really? All I get from the art connoisseur and ex-lover is a stupid, oh?

“Can I preorder those?” Cage asked innocently, speaking to me but looking at my older sister.

“Well, at least you know Cage will pose for you,” she sneered.

“Yes, you might not believe it, but I look even better naked.”

Sebastian leaned forward to pound fists with him, the movie star and the rock star bonding over their mutual self-love. It was almost adorable.

“I want to showcase sexuality,” I tried to explain the idea that had come to me, fully formed, last night in the dirty wake of passion I had wallowed in after Sinclair left. “Those stolen, private moments that people are the most afraid to share.”

“Interesting,” Sinclair said. “Could you give us some examples?”

Elena frowned at him but I continued on, “Okay. An older woman propping her breasts up nostalgically, the press of a foot against an erection and the fetishism of it, or maybe a woman alone in a bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror as she masturbates.”

Sinclair’s eyes were on me. I could feel them roll off my face to the flushed skin of my chest like cold marbles.

“It will be tasteful, obviously,” I hastened to add. “The point isn’t the nudity or the sex, it’s the vulnerability and the shame that stems from a person’s most private desires.”

I knew all too well the shame of desire. I could feel it like a punching glove to the heart every time I looked at Sinclair.

Everyone waited, looking at Sinclair, the man who owned a prestigious art gallery, a man whose opinion they would trust implicitly. I realized for the first time that I should have been anxious about impressing him because he was, in a sense, my
boss
in addition to my clandestine paramour.

I looked up, ready to face judgment, and our eyes locked with an audible
click
.

“Have you heard of Aleah Chapin? We hosted her at the gallery and her work explores mature women in the nude. It’s an interesting take, definitely a feminist one, and it has stirred a lot of interest in the art world.” He paused and a flicker of something like a smile teased the corners of his mouth. “I believe your show would stir a lot more than ‘interest’. In fact, I believe you will have people lusting after your paintings faster than you can possibly produce them.”

I smiled so hard that my cheeks hurt. “You really think so?”

He nodded curtly. “Without doubt.”

Cosima clapped her hands together. “Of course, they will! Our
bambina
is beautiful and talented.”

Sebastian nodded thoughtfully. “You know, if you want to paint the family, would you be interested in including other famous people? I know a few actors who would be interested in posing for something like this.”

My mouth dropped open in shock and he laughed at me. “Close your mouth,
bambina
, it is no sure thing.”

“I think we need a bottle of Prosecco,
si
?” Mama smiled at the server and called him over. “We must have Prosecco, please.”

“I’m afraid we only have champagne,” he began to apologize but Sinclair interrupted him.

“A bottle of Dom 2007, if you have it.”

The young man nodded gratefully. “Excellent, sir. May I ask what the special occasion is?”

Mama beamed up at him. “My daughter is going to paint the naked people.”

He blinked down owlishly at her before stuttering a nonsensical reply and scurrying off to get the champagne.

As soon as he was gone, we all dissolved into laughter. I giggled so hard that my belly ached and Cosima was in tears. I caught Sinclair’s eyes mid-laugh and saw him smiling at me, the rare soft and wide smile that I loved so much. We stared at each other for what seemed like a long time, safe amid the raucous laughter to indulge for a second. I tried to convey my thanks for his approval, my guilty apology for my behavior the previous night and the bitter sweetness of sitting at my family table with him sharing a laugh with the people I loved most.

After a moment, he nodded at me as if he had understood every word in my gaze. Then he slowly dismantled the smile on his face so that when the others finally tuned back in, his features were once again perfect and impassive.