Page 47 of Sinful Desires (Sinful #4)

Chapter

Thirty-Six

“I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.”

― Sylvia Plath

Théo

My palms burned against the sand.

Muscles locked, lungs tight, arms shaking as I lowered again, chest to the ground, teeth clenched so hard I thought I’d crack a molar. I didn’t count anymore.

Numbers were for discipline. This was fucking punishment.

Salt crusted my lips. Sweat slid down my spine in thick, stinging lines. Every push felt like digging into my own grave.

The shore was too quiet. Waves broke in the distance, soft and steady, but they couldn’t drown the sound of her voice in my head. Couldn’t stop seeing her flinch, couldn’t unsee that smug fuck with his hand on her waist.

I fucking hated those paparazzi. The ones who touched her. The ones who took. The ones who saw her light and decided it was theirs to devour.

Hated that I hadn’t ripped that man’s spine out when I saw her body jolt from the hit. Hated that she’d let Nicholas hold her. Hated that I’d fucking let it happen.

Hated that she’d dragged me back here . To this place. To this past. To this beach where the ghosts never fucking left.

And most of all, I hated the way I’d come anyway. And worse, I’d come willingly . Back to the gates of the only hell I’d never meant to see again.

Because she was here.

Where she goes, my heart follows .

Always has.

Scarlett Harper didn’t know what she’d done to me. She didn’t know that I would burn down oceans to keep her safe. That I would keep crawling back to her flame, even as it scorched through every bone in my body.

I still hated it though.

Hated the way she made me feel. That raw, chaotic thing inside my chest that I couldn’t cage. Couldn’t silence.

Not when she was near.

Not when I could still taste her name in the back of my throat.

Her gold necklace sat heavily against my skin tonight. Heavier than usual. Pressed to my collarbone, like it wanted to crush the breath out of me.

Four years ago, the night we’d met, I had a gun and nothing left to lose. I thought I was done. Ready to be smoke. Dust.

Then she’d stumbled into my night, drunk and divine, eyes glazed and glowing, mouth asking questions I never wanted answered.

Mon étoile dans l’obscurité.

The only light in a city that never ran out of darkness.

She still burned. Still blinded me.

And I let her.

With her bratty tone, her frostbite glares, the spoiled little tilt of her chin when she didn’t get her way.

The pretty girl was born to rule and burn, and I’d drop to my knees without a second thought if it meant she’d look at me when she did it.

“I still don’t know why you do this to yourself. I think an eight-pack is enough. What are you trying to be? The Hulk?”

Speaking of my favorite little devil.

The corner of my mouth tugged up, a breath of something close to amusement slipping through the heat. I stood, sweat slicking down my naked chest and back, and turned the chain so the star fell against my spine, out of sight.

She couldn’t see it. Not yet.

“That’s my punishment. For saying yes to working for you.”

She pouted. Her eyes drifted down my chest.

And then she touched me.

Her fingertip traced each ridge of muscle, slow and soft, as if she didn’t know she was handling a man barely holding himself together.

I let her. Because her touch was a drug I couldn’t quit, and pain was the only high I trusted.

“Am I that horrible of a client, soldier?”

I exhaled, rough and ragged, as her hand slid lower, brushing the edge of my abs. My cock stirred.

“The worst,” I said, voice wrecked.

Her hand dropped away, leaving heat behind. She looked up at me, lashes thick, lips parted. That white silk dress clung to her hips, her hair twisted into a braid, cardigan slipping off one shoulder. No makeup.

Just her. Bare. Painfully beautiful.

The girl who had once asked if I’d let her drown. The girl who I was supposed to protect but who had ended up saving me.

The girl my dead heart had chosen to fucking wake up for.

“Why?” she whispered.

Because I’d do anything for you .

I looked at her. At the mess she’d made of me. At the ruin I’d become just by breathing her air.

My eyes drifted to the sea. “What do you want, Miss Harper?”

She tilted her head. “Why do you hate Nice?”

“Who says I hate it?”

She crossed her arms, lips twitching like she already knew the answer.

“Your body did. I speak fluent asshole, and yours was screaming. The fists, the murder brows, the way you looked at that plane, like it owed you blood and dared to breathe.”

When she told me we were coming here for four weeks, I had almost set her condo on fire, dragged her to my underground range, and locked her in.

It took every last thread of restraint I had to come back here a year ago. I’d barely lasted two days. I wasn’t supposed to come here again.

But she wanted it.

A break, she’d said. Peace. Somewhere quiet.

And I had followed.

My brain had run in crisis mode the entire eight-hour flight.

I’d sat there, spread out and silent, staring at her like she was the only thing keeping me sane.

She’d ignored it, flipped through her books, and scrolled her phone like she didn’t feel the heat of my eyes locked on every fucking inch of her.

Creepy? Maybe. But I didn’t give a fuck.

Her lavender shampoo had been the only thing in that cabin keeping my fists unclenched.

And now we were here. On cursed soil. The same old ghosts gnawing at my spine.

I’d run for two hours. Done a hundred pushups in the sand until sweat had blinded me. It hadn’t helped. Nothing did.

Not until I saw her again.

And now my chest felt fucking lighter.

“It’s a cursed place.”

She turned, squinting into the pink-gold sunset bleeding over the horizon, mouth twisted in amusement. “Cursed? Please. It’s giving honeymoon brochure. I could rot here in peace.”

I grabbed the bottle of water that I’d left on the sand and took a long swig.

“Palm trees, warm sand, and an endless sea.” She turned to me smugly. “We’ve been here two days and I’m already picturing myself retired. Silk robe, tan lines, maybe a little French boyfriend who isn’t paid to babysit me.”

My fingers tightened around the bottle until the plastic groaned.

She’d spent the last two days half naked, drinking fruit juice with umbrellas in it, and moaning about tan lines while some poor maid rubbed sunscreen on her back.

“I still don’t get why you’d leave all this for New York.”

“Same reason you run away here from a stage that’s bleeding you dry.”

Our eyes met.

Blue and grey. Fire and smoke.

Both of us burning for different reasons.

“Sometimes we don’t run because we want to,” I said. “We run because what we love is the very thing that ruins us.”

She stepped in closer, her finger drifting back to my chest, tracing the ink etched into my skin. Symbols. Numbers. Faces. Flowers.

She paused over my ribs, right where the bouquet of lavender was freshly inked.

Her brows pulled tight.

I saw the exact second she recognized it.

The same bouquet I used to leave on her nightstand. Every Thursday.

For a whole year .

“What are you running from, soldier?”

My breath became shallow as she leaned in. Her mouth brushed the tattoo, soft and warm and completely fucking undoing me. Then her arms slipped around my waist, and her forehead pressed to my bare skin.

“My mistakes.”

She looked up, her chin brushing against my ribs. “What mistakes?”

“The kind I can’t fucking forgive myself for.”

She hummed as her mouth grazed over me again. “Angelo said you saved his life?…?how?”

My lips pressed to the top of her head. “That bastard’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut.”

She smiled. “And you’ve never been good at letting anyone in.”

I tugged her braid roughly enough to tilt her head. Yanking the tie loose, I wrapped it around my wrist and ran my fingers through that red mess of hair, undoing it until it spilled down her chest.

“James Greg thought he could turn Lazzio’s legacy into ashes.

Planted twenty-two micro-bombs inside the museum, tucked under ancient stones, embedded into ventilation shafts, masked as sensor triggers beneath the glass.

Lazzio called me the night before the exhibit opened.

Said his system flagged a breach and needed my help. ”

I paused. Watched her fingers still against me.

“Three men placed them during daytime hours, dressed like tourists. I spent seven hours in front of a screen, scrubbing footage frame by frame. I disarmed them all alone through my system, sweating through every line of code, every bypass, every override, knowing one wrong move and they’d find Angelo’s body in pieces beneath the ruins of his own fucking legacy. ”

I kissed her forehead.

“He offered me two hundred million as a thank you. But I wanted something else.”

She tilted her head, smirking. “What’s worth more than that, soldier?”

“You.”

“And?…?cut. Break time. Lunch is in the tents. If anyone needs makeup, Céline’s in the trailer. You’ve got an hour.”

The director’s voice snapped through the air, clipped and disinterested. He was an older Asian man with a mop of grey hair and ridiculous green glasses that looked like they belonged in a cartoon. No one questioned him.

Everyone scattered the second the words left his mouth.

The rain shut off. The fake garden dimmed. The set was a joke—plastic peonies, white gazebo, artificial mist pumped from metal rigs overhead. Nicholas stepped out first, followed by his co-star, an Ethiopian actress with a trained smile and soaked dress clinging to her ribs.

Scarlett watched them from the sidelines, arms crossed.

She’d said she wanted to “observe” today. See what actors did. How films got made. Said she was bored of tanning and mocktails.

We were in èze now. A town carved into rock, rotting quietly above the sea. Close enough to Nice that you could still smell money, but isolated enough that a treaty had been signed—no paparazzi, no press, no leaks. Locals were paid to stay quiet. Millions funneled into silence.