Page 32 of Sinful Desires (Sinful #4)

Chapter

Twenty-Four

“Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

Théo

“Studio’s only booked for the morning, Miss Harper. It’s two now. Any minute, someone could walk in and catch you gagging on my cock.”

She giggled and licked the tip clean. Then she climbed onto my lap, soft thighs parting over me, hands locked around my neck, her mouth dragging against mine.

“We better hurry then,” she whispered. “Wouldn’t want anyone finding out about our dirty little secret.”

“Dirty, huh?” I murmured, my lips brushing her throat. “That’s not how the press will spin it. The headline will read: ‘ Superstar Scarlett Harper getting fucked like a whore by her bodyguard and loving every second of it .’”

Something twisted in my chest. I didn’t want to be her fucking secret. I didn’t want to be the man she only touched behind locked doors and blackout curtains.

No.

I wanted the world to know.

Every goddamn one of them. The press, the strangers, the vultures with their pens and polite grins. I wanted them to see what she’d done to me. How she’d brought me to my knees. How she’d reached inside the corpse of who I was and forced my heart to beat again.

She wasn’t just some superstar with a mouth that could kill. She was the ache I couldn’t silence. The obsession I couldn’t starve.

Scarlett Stella Harper Lazzio.

The one woman I was never meant to touch, but would tear the world apart to keep.

Three years ago, when I had been drowning in my own darkness, she saved my life without even knowing it. She was the one sinking in a fountain. I was the one already lost in the ocean of my own ruin.

I had told myself to forget her. Tried to hate her. Tried to stay away. But I was already hers. Every brutal second. Every filthy thought. Every last inch of my rotting soul.

I loved her in a way no one should be loved—violently, obsessively, without a way out. Three years of silence had done nothing. Now I had broken the one fucking promise I’d made thirteen years ago. I was never supposed to let anyone that close again.

I realized it hadn’t healed anything. It’d only made everything worse. I was at her mercy completely. I would do anything to keep her.

Anything.

Even if it meant destroying myself in the process.

Even if it meant dying just to make sure she stayed mine.

Because the truth was, I already had. The part of me that could survive without her was long gone.

Her tongue dragged up my neck, slow and teasing, while my hands dug into her ass, pulling her tighter against me. She moaned into my skin.

“Well, you just fucked me so well, Théo,” she whispered, voice raw and breathless, “I almost wish I’d filmed it. Send them the whole thing. Let them see exactly how much I loved it.” She licked my lips, and a low groan left my throat.

I should’ve pulled away. But I wanted her to be mine. And I didn’t care how much of myself I had to burn to get it.

“I can’t believe you haven’t had sex in thirteen years.”

“I can’t fucking believe I just did.”

I had taken a vow of celibacy thirteen years ago.No sex, no closeness. I didn’t fucking deserve it.

Then she had come in and ruined everything.

I should care, but I didn’t. I was living the one fantasy I never let come to life, and it was a thousand times dirtier and better than I’d ever fucking imagined.

She hummed, low and dangerous, and dragged her finger along the edge of the ink carved into my skin.

à la vie, à la mort.

“What happened to you, soldier?”

“Life.”

“Why did you join the military?” she breathed out with a frown.

“Out of guilt.”

She tilted her head. Her lips were swollen from my mouth, her eyes still glassy with lust and something else, something raw. I grabbed the back of her neck, pulled her in, and kissed her again.

She leaned back, fingers splayed across the front of my vest. “Why?”

I stared at her face, at that fire-red hair tangled around her shoulders, at the ice blue of her eyes.

She’d once said I looked like an angel, but she was the one who had fallen. Dropped straight from the clouds. So beautiful it felt cruel. So radiant it hurt to breathe.

Sometimes I thought God had made her just to fuck with me. Built her perfectly, dropped her in front of me, and watched me lose my mind over something I could never have without bleeding for it.

I shook my head, like that could drive the madness out. But it didn’t.

“Tell me, soldier.”

Tout ca est de ta faute, Théo.

Tu as détruit notre vie.

On ne te pardonnera jamais.

I looked down at her, legs open, lips parted. “I’m not telling you about my fucked-up past while your pussy’s dripping on my pants, beauté . That story can wait.”

I kissed her once more, hard enough to bruise, like a final taste before losing my mind. Then I pushed her back onto the couch, stood up, and walked out without looking back.

“I’ll wait outside,” I said, closing the door.

The door clicked shut. And just like that, the weight came back.

All of it.

“Théo?”

I brought the phone to my ear and stepped barefoot into the dead quiet of the penthouse. The city was alive outside, lights twitching like a dying pulse. I walked to the window, shoved it open, and stepped onto the balcony. Wind hit my chest like a slap.

“ Salut, Maman .”

She laughed on the other end, dry and amused.

“I’m surprised. You don’t usually call this late.

What is it in New York, two in the morning?

Normally at this hour you’re either passed out or physically punishing yourself in silence.

Not calling your old maman , who’s sitting here with one foot in the grave, still hoping her son remembers her. ”

I scoffed. “Maybe I’m closer to the grave than you are.”

She didn’t answer right away.

Just that brief silence. Barely a second. I clenched my jaw, tongue pressing against my teeth.

Putain. I hadn’t meant to say it like that.

“How is he doing?”

She let out a breath, slow and hollow. On the other end, I heard the creak of that old chair—the one no one had dared to throw out. The one that still faced the television like he might walk back in and sit down again.

“You’d know if you came home once in a while.”

Her voice wasn’t angry. That would’ve been fucking easier. It was tired. Frayed at the edges. Like something old that had been stretched too thin.

“It’s been four years since you visited, Théo.

You ran off to the military like it would erase everything behind you.

Then you buried yourself in that city, in that high-rise life.

Haven’t you punished yourself enough? Haven’t you bled enough for it?

We forgave you. A long time ago.” She paused.

And that pause cracked louder than anything she said.

“You’re the only one who hasn’t, mon coeur . ”

Another silence. Longer.

“I want you home, Théo. Before there’s nothing left of it to come back to.”

Before there’s nothing left of it to come back to.

That sentence alone did the impossible. Made my eyes fucking burn. Made my jaw crack.

They say guilt is a poison. It doesn’t kill you immediately.

At first, it sits quietly in your chest, small and harmless, like something you can control.

But it spreads. Slowly, then all at once.

It slips into your bloodstream, into your breath, into the spaces between your thoughts.

And by the time you notice, it’s everywhere.

It’s taken the color from your days, the warmth from your skin, the life from your eyes. It doesn’t scream. It just stays.

And rots you from the inside out.

I’d been dragging this guilt around for damn near a fucking decade. There was no amount of time, no bullshit prayer that could scrape it off me. It was in my blood now.

And I didn’t think it was ever leaving.

Because when you’re the one who killed your own father, you don’t get to ask for mercy.

You don’t deserve forgiveness. You don’t deserve shit.

“I will try.”

“Promise me.”

“ Je te promets, Maman. ”

“Okay. On t’aime, Théo . à la vie, à la mort.”