Page 11 of Forbidden Sins
SEBASTIAN
I should leave.
Every instinct in me, every ounce of self-preservation that I have, shouts at me to tell her that I’ll be right outside if she needs anything—and to leave the room. To spend the night standing guard outside in the hall, as Antony Gallo instructed me to do, until he returns and gives the all-clear.
I know he didn’t intend for me to go into his daughter’s room, to put her to bed, to sit next to her on that bed, and hold her and comfort her. The line was crossed, the boundary broken, when I set foot in Estella’s bedroom.
Now I’m frantically throwing up wall after wall, trying to keep this from going further than it should.
It would be an unthinkable breach of trust to seduce Estella under normal circumstances, to give in to my desires.
To give in now, to let anything happen between us while she’s wracked with grief and vulnerable would be beyond dishonorable.
I might as well put a fucking bullet in my own head, if I took her innocence while she’s in this state.
I swallow hard as her hand wraps around my wrist. It’s not as if she can actually hold me here. But the warmth of her hand, the pressure of her fingertips against my skin, the pleading in her eyes?—
I’ve never seen her like this before. I’ve never seen anyone like this—in the throes of such desperate grief, and I don’t entirely know what to do.
When she launched herself at me in the doorway, when she wrapped her arms around my neck and cried into my chest, I should have disentangled myself from her then. I should have calmly told her that I would be right outside if she needed anything.
Except what she needed was me. And I gave in, because?—
No. Don’t think that. Not right now, of all times. Keep your fucking head on straight, Sinclair.
I hate myself for the fact that I can even think of her in that way right now, that my treacherous body is responding to her touches, to her warmth, to her scent as if the world hadn’t just come crashing down around her.
That when she clung to me, crying, I noticed the weight of her breasts against my chest and how soft her hands felt against the back of my neck, the sweet vanilla and floral scent of her skin, and how good she felt in my arms when I picked her up.
I hate that, when I carried her to her bed, my cock twitched to life at the thought of me setting her down in bed.
I tell myself that it’s a natural response.
That death makes a man want to remember that he’s alive.
I’ve heard it plenty of times from other guys in my line of work, from their days in the military or even just doing high-pressure security jobs or contract gigs.
That after a fight, after a close brush with death, after knowing someone close to them died, all they wanted to do was go fuck, like it was a primal instinct that drove them to consume another person like sustenance.
My body is craving that right now, to remember that I’m still alive.
It would be the same if it was any woman in my arms right now.
Except that’s bullshit, and I know it. It’s Estella that makes me feel this way, and not anyone else. And it makes me feel like an asshole.
When she started to cry again just now, and I climbed fully into her bed to pull her into my arms, I got fucking hard as a rock.
The feeling of her body in my arms when I’ve never touched her before tonight, except for the briefest of brushes of fingertips against skin, the feeling of her hair against my cheek and in my hands?—
Fucking Christ . I shouldn’t have touched her neck like that—like a lover. I felt the way she went stiff when I did, and I figured she was pissed at me. She had every right to be. I should never touch her like that at all, let alone right now. But she didn’t want me to leave.
Right now, she’s trying to get me to stay. And half the reason I haven’t gotten up yet is that I don’t want her to see how fucking hard my cock is right now.
The other half is that I can’t leave her when she looks like this.
She’s a disaster—eyes swollen and red, hair tangled, nose running and face puffy…
and she’s somehow still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever fucking laid eyes on.
I could tell her that I’ll be just outside if she needs anything, but what she needs right now is for me to stay .
I know that, just as I know that there’s nothing I can really do to make any of this better.
“What happened?” she asks in a soft, broken voice, when it seems clear that I’m not getting up and leaving anytime soon. “Dad, he—he didn’t say anything about what happened. How did?—”
I take a slow, deep breath. “Estella, are you sure you want to know any of this? Isn’t it better?—”
It’s not, and I know it before she even speaks to contradict me.
“I think everything in my head right now is worse. All the worst possible scenarios—” Her voice breaks again. “Was it something normal? Like a…a car accident on the way back? Or was it…was it the job…”
Her voice trails off, and I think she sees the confirmation in my eyes. “Oh my god,” she whispers, her hands pressing over her mouth for a moment before dropping back into her lap. “That’s why Dad’s going to…he?—”
I nod. “From what we know, the job at the club went bad in some way. We don’t know how, or why.
That’s the information your father is going to seek out.
That he’s going to get out of them.” Behind the tears, I see a flash of satisfaction in Estella’s eyes, and it startles me just as much as her first vicious reaction.
I’ve never seen this side of her before, and yet…
can I be surprised that it would come out because of her brother’s death?
If someone I loved was taken from me, I’d want to tear those responsible limb from limb myself, rather than letting someone else do it. And I’d be able to, because I’m a man in a world that facilitates men’s rage and demands that women keep it quiet. Buried, like those they love so often are.
Hell, I wanted to go with Antony and the men he took with him to pry answers out of whoever it is responsible for Luis’ death. Not just for Estella’s sake, but for the sake of my own friendship with Luis.
Three years is a long time to live somewhere—day in and day out, for the most part—around people who you see and speak to every day.
Some, like Antony, make it impossible to grow any kind of personal connection.
Trying to form a friendship with Antony Gallo is like trying to be friends with the fucking King of England—he’s someone who always thinks himself above others, and who doesn’t have friends.
He has business associates, colleagues, connections, family.
But Luis, like his sister, was different.
Pretty much from the time I came to work at the Gallo mansion as Estella’s bodyguard, he and I got on as if we’d been friends our whole lives.
When he wasn’t running himself ragged over the tasks his father set for him, in meetings or doing jobs for the mafia, we’d pass each other in the hallways or rooms of the mansion and ask how the other was doing.
When Estella didn’t need me hovering at her side and Luis and I found ourselves with nothing to do, we’d talk like a couple of normal guys.
Baseball, motorcycles, craft beer. He lamented wanting to race sport bikes and not being able to because Antony was too worried that something would happen to him.
That he’d crash, and Antony’s empire would be in danger of crashing, too.
Look what fucking happened, I think bitterly. Luis is dead all the same. Not while doing something he loved, but while doing his duty to the family. Dead far too young, before his life ever really had a chance to begin, and now Antony Gallo’s empire is in the same danger that he always feared.
There’s no one to inherit except Antony’s daughter, and I have some idea of what the don of the Gallo family will think of that idea.
She’ll be even more sheltered now. My chest constricts at that thought, at the idea of how much smaller Estella’s gilded cage will be now. Now that she’s all that Antony has left.
I wish Luis were still alive for his own sake, of course—but also for his sister’s. Because her life is about to change in ways that she could never have anticipated.
Estella moves closer to me, lying on her side on the bed as her hand drops to my knee.
My body tenses at the touch, the muscles of my leg flexing, and I look quickly at her to see if she noticed.
Her gaze is far off, staring across the room at nothing, and I grit my teeth against the wave of heat that the simple touch of her hand on my leg sends through me.
It shouldn’t feel this good, having her touch me.
My cock softened a few minutes ago, but now it twitches to life again, and an answering muscle in my jaw ticks as I struggle to control my body’s response to her.
No woman has ever been able to turn me on this easily, in a circumstance where it’s definitely uncalled for.
Now isn’t the time, and it never will be. There will never be a moment when it’s appropriate for me to be aroused by Estella Gallo.
The sooner I remember that, the better off I’ll be.
I swallow hard, wrapping my fingers around her hand and gently shifting it away from my leg, onto the duvet next to it.
Her eyes flick up to mine, and I think I see a hint of hurt in them, but what else am I supposed to do?
These kinds of casual touches—they can’t go beyond tonight.
There’s no world in which it can become so easy for us to touch each other like this that we might forget and do it in public one day, in front of her father, in front of someone who would notice and speak up.
“There’s nothing you can do about any of it but wait, princess,” I murmur softly, brushing the back of her hand with my fingers.
Estella’s eyes flutter closed, and she lets out a soft whimpering sound, the sound of someone who has cried themselves out, who has nothing left.
It sounds almost like a coo, like a bird’s cry. Like a mourning dove.
“You should try to sleep,” I encourage her. “I know it’s hard—but the time will pass faster, if you can. You’ll wake up in the morning, and maybe there will be answers. At the very least, you’ll be rested, and?—”
“Don’t say it’ll be easier, then.” Estella’s eyes open, dark pools of grief meeting mine. “Please don’t say that.”
“I won’t.” I brush my thumb over her knuckles, resisting the urge to touch her face.
To wipe away the tears still slowly trickling down her cheeks.
If we were something different to each other, I’d get up and go get a warm washcloth, wipe off her face and dry it afterwards.
But I’m not her lover. I’m not her boyfriend or her husband.
I’m her fucking bodyguard—and for the first time in three years, it doesn’t feel like enough.
It feels like I’m rattling the bars of my own cage, desperate to get closer to her. To be able to take her grief in some meaningful way, to comfort her without the gulf of who we are to each other dividing us.
But that’s impossible.
“Just sleep,” I say quietly. “Just try.”
Estella presses her lips together, blinking her damp eyelashes rapidly for a moment before looking up at me again. “Will you stay?” she pleads softly. “I don’t want to be alone. Please, Sebastian?—”
My entire body tightens again at the thought of sharing a bed with her. No , I think instinctively. That’s a step too far, and we both know it. Estella and I glance across the room at the same moment, and I see the armchair next to the fireplace on the wall facing her bed.
“I can sleep there,” I suggest, grateful for a way to both give her what she’s asking for and keep the distance that I desperately need.
Her father won’t be happy if he comes back early in the morning and finds me in her room at all, and if any of the staff come into the room they’ll talk, but it’s better than finding me in bed with Estella, even clothed.
I’ll be in the armchair, clothed and shoes on, far enough away from her that it’ll be clear nothing happened between us.
I can talk my way out of that, at least.
There’s no excuse for sharing a bed with her.
I think I see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes, but she nods.
She knows as well as I do that what she wants right now is impossible.
“Okay,” she says softly, reaching to tug down the covers.
She slips under them, letting them rest in the dip of her waist, and something about seeing her like this—vulnerable, soft, lying in her bed when I’ve never seen her like this before—sends a flood of conflicting emotions through me at once.
I want to both comfort and ravish her all at once, hold her in my arms and trace every inch of her with my mouth, lie next to her all night and make her moan my name until dawn.
The rush of both tenderness and desire is too much, seizing all of the muscles in my body for a moment, my chest clenching and my cock throbbing with the warring feelings that are all entirely wrong.
Everything about this is wrong. There’s nothing innocent about how I feel about her right now, not even in my desire to comfort her.
Clenching my jaw, I reach out, gently stroking a hand over her hair as I will my arousal to recede.
“Sleep,” I say gently, and I stand up, twisting my body awkwardly so that I’m mostly turned away from her before I get up, in an effort to keep her from seeing my arousal.
I walk to the light switch on the wall, glancing back just once at Estella before I flick it off.
She’s still watching me, her red-rimmed dark eyes fixed on me, and I can feel her grief from here, thickening the air of the room until it’s hard to breathe.
There’s nothing more I can do for her, I tell myself. I can stay here and make sure she’s not alone in the room, but beyond that…
I glance at the armchair that’s going to be my bed for the evening, and the cashmere throw blanket tossed across the back. I look once more at Estella, and this time, her eyes are closed.
I flick the switch and plunge the room into darkness.