My Sinful Love (Sinful Men Book 4) Read online

  His lips quirked up as he took a drink. “That one,” he said dryly, tapping the air with his index finger.

  “Which one, Michael?”

  He made a rolling gesture with his hand. “All of them. Every. Single. One.” Then he scratched his chin. “Question though. What on earth is a cheektini?”

  I lowered my arm to my hip, shifted my pose, and drew a line mid-cheek across the denim of my jeans. “They go right here.”

  Heat flashed in his gaze as he stared at my ass. “Right there, you say?”

  “Yes.” I traced the line once more across my rear. “The panties cut across, so your cheeks hang out.”

  His eyes stayed on me the whole time, darkening. I hadn’t expected the intensity of his stare. Nor had I expected the rush it sent through me. It had been so long since I’d felt like this. “Yes. And the one I’m wearing right now is red with lace trim.”

  I shocked myself when I said that. I hadn’t expected to be so bold. But it felt easy and right and so damn good.

  Perhaps I’d surprised him too, because he licked his lips, then groaned softly as he uttered, “Red.”

  Like it had six syllables. Like it was the sexiest word in the world.

  Before the conversation could turn naughtier, the music shifted, and the lead singer tapped the microphone, said hello, and launched into the first song.

  “More champagne and then we go stage dive?”

  “Absolutely. Let’s start a mosh pit.”

  We did neither, but a few minutes later, we were watching the band, listening to the music, and drinking another round. Someone bumped into me, and I moved closer to Michael. Before I knew it, we were shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, swaying to the music.

  By the time the band finished, we’d polished off another glass or two. The buzz was headier, and so was the intoxication from the music, the low lights, the energy, and this whole night that felt like a cocoon of possibility.

  I wiped a hand over my brow. The club was hot.

  “Let’s step outside,” he said, “where it’s cooler.”

  I nodded, and once again, his hand was on my back. He guided me to the tall glass doors that spilled onto a terrace attached to the club. As he opened the door, he reached for my hand, holding it as we walked to a bench and sat down. Groups of club-goers were scattered at nearby tables.

  He traced my palm lightly with the pad of his thumb, and my heart sped up. That barest touch was bursting with heat. Electricity flared between us. We could power the lights at this club, the billboards down the street. I barely understood how it was possible to be like this with someone I hadn’t seen since that unexpected and heartbreaking day when we were both twenty-four. I’d been going one way in life; he’d been heading in another. Seeing him then had been as close as I’d ever come to the fire of temptation. I hadn’t given in.

  Now, we were both thirty-four, and my heart stuttered just from being near him. This torch might have flickered to a soft, ashen glow in years past, but it could turn fiery and bright in an instant. “I’m glad you were free tonight,” I said. “I’m glad you asked me to the show. I’ve had an amazing time. Most of all, I’m glad you said yes. I’ve been thinking of you.”

  “You have?” His voice sounded stretched full of hope, like he was holding all the world in that two-word question.

  Like my answer had more power than I would have ever suspected.

  7

  Michael

  This was what I’d wanted, but knowing she’d been thinking of me barely scratched the surface of my curiosity.

  My voice was low, rough. “What do you think about?”

  “How you are,” she said, her gaze locked on mine. “What you’re doing. What your life is like now.”

  I licked my lips. “And that’s why you wanted to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  My skin was hot. My bones vibrated. Want sounded damn good to me. After feeling like she’d slipped through my fingers in Marseilles—my head had understood, but my heart had rebelled when she’d walked away from me—I liked being wanted by her.

  “So, were you wondering if I’d gone gray? Or bald maybe?” I teased, running my hand through my thick hair. Now that she’d revealed a modicum of truth about tonight, I could return to this zone, where the terrain wasn’t rocky and fraught with so many jagged ridges.

  She laughed with her mouth wide open, her white teeth straight and gleaming. How I’d adored that smile of hers, the way she quirked up the corner of her lips when something was particularly funny. “I see you’ve held on to it all,” she said.

  “And yours is even redder.” I gestured to her long, lush locks. Then I figured, Fuck it. She’d said the words I most wanted to hear—that she was thinking of me. I touched the end of a wave of her hair. It had been auburn before—now it was almost a dark cherry red, and so soft.

  I let go.

  “So is that what you wanted? To check out my hair color? Maybe to see if I grew wider?” I asked, patting my flat stomach.

  “Looks like you’ve maintained your boyish figure,” she said.

  Perhaps that was all tonight was. A check-in with the past. I was worn so thin with wanting something, anything from her, but I had to remind myself this was only one night, only drinks. I was the one who was investing this moment with too much importance. Hunting for a deep, meaningful reason—one like Michael, I had to tell you I never stopped loving you—was pointless.

  I scoffed. She wasn’t here to say that, even if she had been thinking of me. Thinking was nothing. She was here for the class-reunion effect. To say hello, to check me out, and to breeze back out of town when she was done shooting skinny models in skimpy clothes. I needed to get the fuck over her. More importantly, I needed to get out of my own head, and stop thinking that a letter that smelled like rain meant Annalise Delacroix wanted to curl up on my lap and tell me she hadn’t forgotten me either.

  We’d been torn apart by time and distance, not by hurt or anger or falling out of love. No one had cheated. No one had said unforgivable words. No invectives were lobbed, and no terrible secret had come between us. Our biggest foe when we were younger was miles. Thousands and thousands of uncrossable miles. We’d tried to fight it with letters, a seemingly endless stream of them. But after a few years of letters and phone calls, we were in college and too far away from each other. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t have enough money to fly to see her, nor did she have the funds or her family’s permission to return to see her beau. The flames turned to flickers, then to low embers in the ash.

  But the fire burned again tonight.

  I couldn’t resist. “And you look as beautiful as I remember.”

  Music from inside the club seeped out to the terrace. She lowered her forehead and whispered “Thanks” at the same time a lock of hair slid over her eyes. My opportunity. I slipped my index finger under those strands and brushed them off her forehead.

  She raised her lashes and looked up at me. “So . . .”

  I ran my finger along the side of her temple. My pulse thundered under my skin. “Ask me what else I haven’t forgotten.”

  Her green eyes shone with a hint of something, a flash of desire. She tilted her head curiously, taking the bait. “What else haven’t you forgotten?”

  All the world around me slowed and stilled to this moment. The music seemed to emanate from another dimension. The waitress walking past us operated in a parallel universe. I threaded my fingers into her soft hair, letting it fall like silk over my skin.

  One more taste and I could stop longing for her. Stop lingering. I could finally put to rest the arguments my ex-girlfriends had waged over the years, insisting I was hung up on someone else. I was going to take the one thing that had strung me up all these years and get it out of my system. One kiss and I could say goodbye to my first love.

  “How you like to be kissed,” I said, my fingers curling around her head. She gasped quietly, arching her back.

&nb
sp; Her voice was soft as the question ghosted across her lips. “How?”

  “Like this.”

  Gently at first, I pressed my lips to hers. My heart stopped, and my blood stilled, as if it simply had to make sense of this new input before it could reengage. Kissing Annalise again. It was as if a new map were being written, a new route sketched out. So this was what it was like to kiss her once more.

  Sublime.

  My heart ticked again, catching up as I swept my tongue over her lower lip. She murmured. Soft, like a purr. That sound was new from her. She’d always been quiet.

  And she’d once liked lingering kisses that were like melting chocolate, like the rising sun. Our kisses had been easy and carefree. They’d turned me on, riled me up, and made me want so much more of her. They were tongues and lips and mouths and heat.

  But now, there were teeth.

  Hers.

  She pressed her teeth against my lower lip and drew it into her mouth like she was trying to suck on it, and with that, whatever wisp of apprehension she’d seemed to feel moments ago must have evaporated. My thoughts spun out of control, slipping into darker, more urgent territory. I moved my hand from her hair, held her face, and angled my mouth over hers, resuming control of the kiss and devouring her lips.

  I drew the corner of her mouth into mine and nipped her. Her murmurs intensified. Louder. Hotter.

  She’d never been like this before, but now she demanded more. Her own hungry lips slanted over mine, saying Mark me.

  “Oh God,” she gasped, her eyes squeezed closed.

  I broke the kiss, whispering, “You okay?”

  She nodded against me. “Yes. So okay.”

  “Good.” I quickly moved my mouth to her jawline, kissing a trail there as I traveled along her skin. Each press brought out a tiny little growl from Annalise, a sexy sigh, a needy gasp. It made me want to rip off her clothes, push her against the wall, and see how rough she liked it. I bent my head to her collarbone and grazed the exposed flesh with my teeth. Her hands shot up, roping through my hair as she moaned. Annalise was under some kind of spell, her body moving and flowing against mine. She clutched my skull tighter, her nails digging in as I kissed her shoulder then returned to her mouth. That gorgeous red mouth. The lips I’d been obsessed with. The ones I’d memorized.

  The lips I’d missed for so many years.

  Like a persistent, aching hole in my chest, the missing had defined me. Propelled me. Given me a focus when I’d needed one. Now, the missing disintegrated and turned into a white-hot desire to have her. To have all of her, as I never had before. Now. Tonight. No more goddamn waiting. I pressed my forehead to hers and ran my thumb over her mouth. “It’s different now.”

  She nodded. “Yes. But so good,” she said, breathless.

  “Not good. It’s better.”

  “It is,” she said, her eyes wild.

  “Think everyone’s watching?”

  She shook her head against me. “It’s Vegas. No one cares.”

  “Do you care?” I whispered as I traced her lips, the sweetness of her breath on my fingertips.

  “That you’re kissing me like crazy on the terrace of a nightclub in a hotel?”

  “Yes.” I dragged my thumb along her teeth.

  “No. I don’t care where we are,” she said, darting out the tip of her tongue to meet my thumb. Then she bit down.

  My mouth twitched in a knowing grin. “No, you don’t care at all,” I said, then crushed my lips to hers, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and kissing her with everything I had. Greedy kisses that promised red swollen lips tomorrow.

  This kiss was dizzying. It was a rush of blood to the head, then everywhere else. When we were younger, we’d held back because we were sixteen and foolish romantics. We’d done plenty below the waist with hands, but hadn’t come close to going all the way. Tonight, we seemed to be charging in that direction. Good. I was no fool anymore, and I was hardly romantic. I had the distinct impression life had hardened her too.

  And that tonight she wanted hardness from me.

  The sound of clinking glasses echoed from many feet away. The noise jarred me, and I pulled away from her briefly. I swept her hair away from her face, then bent my head to her ear. “Where are you staying?”

  “Across the street. The Cosmopolitan,” she said, her voice like a torch song.

  “Do you want to leave? With me?”

  Her lips parted, and I felt her soft breath on my neck. I pulled back to look into her green eyes. In them, I saw a lust that matched mine, but a fear too.

  “Yes,” she said, but a second later, she shook her head. Then she nodded and said, “No.”

  Opposites. Okay, maybe she didn’t want the same thing.

  She sighed. “I mean . . .”

  I pressed my finger to her lips. No way was I pushing her into this. I wanted Annalise with a fierceness I hadn’t felt in ages, but she was either in all the way or not at all. “It’s okay. It’s good to see you.”

  “Is that it? You’re just leaving?” she asked, her voice angry.

  I pretended to look around. “Did I say I was leaving? Did I get up to go? I’m still here.”

  “I’m sorry. This is just . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain anything.”

  “I know. But I don’t want you to think I don’t want to.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes, but it’s been a . . .” She didn’t finish her thought, and I didn’t push. Changing gears, she said, “It’s late. I’m shooting tomorrow. Do you want to come by?”

  “Visit you at a lingerie shoot?”

  “You always used to come by my shoots.”

  “You shot bands. The soccer team. The pep rallies,” I said, reminding her of her days as a yearbook photographer.

  “And now I shoot beautiful women. Do you like beautiful women?”

  My lips twitched, and I eyed her from head to toe. “Very much.”

  “Come by,” she said, her fingers darting out quickly to touch my cheek for a moment. “I want to see you again before I go.”

  I swallowed dryly, but didn’t ask when she was leaving. I’d rather linger on the feeling of her hand on my face instead.

  “Give me the time and place.”

  She told me where, then added, “Tomorrow at one. You can see the end of the shoot, and maybe we can . . .”

  Her words went unfinished.

  Whatever she meant, I wasn’t in the business of filling in her thoughts. All I knew was one taste wasn’t nearly enough to forget her.

  8

  Annalise

  The elevator was too loud, too bright, too full of people.

  As the couple in the far corner waxed on about their dinner of small plates and the fratty guys by the number keypad debated how many more shots they could plow through, I asked myself how long I could wait.

  I’d been on ice, cryogenically frozen in a state of suspended animation for two years. My body was still working, going through the motions, one foot in front of the other.

  But inside? Beneath my skin?

  All those parts had been dormant.

  Turned off.

  Now, I was turned all the way on. I was like one of those blow-up balloons in an old cartoon, shooting through the air, ready to pop. I was sure everyone in the elevator saw the desire written all over my skin. But as the car shot up past the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth floors, they remained in their own worlds.

  I wanted my own world now. I wanted to live in the bubble of lust.

  The elevator stopped on the fourteenth floor, and the couple exited. Only the guys were left, and the tall one in the crew once again stabbed the silver button for the penthouse. “They’ll be here soon. C’mon.”

  Hookers?

  I almost breathed it aloud.

  Instead, I covered my mouth with my hand, my fingers touching my greedy lips. But that was stupid. Because that only made me want to touch myself more. I couldn’t help it. I dragged my in
dex finger once across my top lip.

  Like a match to a flame, it reignited me. My God, those kisses. My lips were bruised from Michael’s mouth. He’d imprinted himself on me, and I felt him everywhere—on my skin, inside my organs, and deep in the dark, protected corners of my heart.

  And yes, most exquisitely, between my legs.

  If I’d stayed a moment longer at the club, I would’ve grabbed his hand and dragged him to the restroom. Even the return to my hotel had felt terribly long, a new and cruel sort of torture as I’d walked with a wet, needy ache between my thighs.

  For so long, I hadn’t let myself feel a thing. Now, I was nothing but nerve endings rubbed raw, cells crying out for relief.

  The elevator dinged at the seventeenth floor. I practically vaulted out of the open doors and down the hall in a mad dash for my room. I reached it, fumbled for my key card from the back pocket of my jeans, slid open the door, and stepped inside.

  My room was dark and cool, and the lights from the Strip winked through the windows. The door shut behind me with a heavy groan.

  My breath was hot and fast, my hands even faster. I dropped my purse to the floor, unbuttoned my jeans, and dipped my hand into my panties.

  I groaned, my fingertips slipping through my wetness.

  This was what happened when you banished sex, what happened when you extradited it from your life, your heart, your bed. When you told yourself you weren’t ready, that you’re better off without it. I hadn’t wanted anyone to touch me, and I hadn’t even touched myself in a long time.

  I couldn’t stop now. I was a rocket, flying to the atmosphere, hell-bent on a jet-fueled trip to the stars. The floodgates were unleashed, and I stroked myself, riding my own hand urgently as a flash of images sparked before my closed eyes. Michael’s kisses. Michael’s lips. His voice in my ear. His teeth. He hadn’t kissed me like that before. Like he wanted to consume me. Bite me. Fuck me hard.

  “Michael.”

  I moaned his name, feeling its familiarity yet utter newness on my tongue as my fingers flew faster. There, standing against my hotel room door, breath tumbling rapidly from my lungs, sex on my brain, I made myself come for the first time in two years.