Page 50 of Sinful Desires (Sinful #4)

His jaw clenched hard, the muscle jumping like he was biting back filth. The kind of filth I wanted to hear. The kind he used to whisper in my ear with his mouth on my throat and his cock buried so deep inside me I couldn’t fucking breathe.

And God, I still remembered every second.

Every sound.

The way he’d whimpered when I clenched around him. The way his breath broke when I’d scratched down his back and begged for more. The way he used to fuck me slowly at first, then lose control and ruin me completely.

A year hadn’t touched it. Not a single day had diluted it.

It was still carved into me, into my skin, my nerves, my bones.

I like a lot of things I shouldn’t .

Am I one of them?

My favorite one .

I wanted to leap across that fire and fall into his arms.

To bury my face in his neck and feel his arms around me again, holding me like he used to—tightly, like he was scared I’d leave. I wanted to bury my face in his chest and breathe him in until the noise in my head stopped.

Until everything that wasn’t him disappeared.

Because there was no place in the world that felt safer than when he wrapped himself around me.

Nicholas handed out fresh beers, clinking bottles without grace before dropping back onto the sand beside me.

“All right,” he said, voice thick with mischief. “Never have I ever fantasized about someone I shouldn’t.”

Everyone drank. Laughter crackled along with the fire, low and lazy. The scent of burning sugar clung to the air, marshmallows half melted in the embers. Wind kissed the edges of the beach, soft and cold.

“Okay, my turn,” Liya said, adjusting the white silk scarf tied around her long braids. It fluttered in the breeze behind her like ribbon. “Never have I ever fallen in love.”

Pierre groaned and set his beer down without a word. Liya followed, giggling, a faint flush warming her cheeks. Nicholas knocked his drink back.

I hesitated, then my gaze met Théo’s.

There was a pause, just one heartbeat too long.

And then, we sipped in silence, still caught in each other’s gaze.

A flutter rose in my stomach. My fingers curled tighter around the neck of the bottle.

“That was a dumb one,” Liya laughed, hiccupping, eyes glossy. “I forgot you two are dating.”

Her words made my skin crawl. Not because they weren’t true. They were. Technically .

But it wasn’t Nicholas I’d just drunk for.

It was for the only man my heart had ever ached for. The only one it had ever felt safe with. Close to.

The only one who never even had to touch me to leave his name on every part of me.

“My turn,” I said, throat tight, bottle cold in my hand.

“Never have I ever made a promise I didn’t keep?…

and hurt someone who waited for me. Someone who prayed I meant every word.

Someone I left in the dark . And then watched from the shadows for a year without ever telling them I was still there. ”

Silence .

Blank stares. Blinking. Like I’d just confessed to a murder no one knew had happened.

I took a breath. Way too deep. Way too shaky.

Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “Jesus. That was?…?oddly specific.”

He snatched the bottle from my hand.

“Did you spike this with something? Tequila? Existential dread?”

He took a sip and winced. “Yup. Definitely trauma flavored.”

Liya and Pierre laughed as Nicholas stood up, leaned over the pit, and blew on the fire to revive it. Sparks jumped. The flames licked higher, casting shadows across his face as he speared another marshmallow onto his stick.

The conversation twisted toward LA therapists.

Pierre launched into some unhinged story about how his old shrink told him he needed an exorcism after admitting he once hid a one-night stand’s car keys to keep him from leaving.

More laughter. More noise.

But it all blurred.

Because across the fire, Théo lifted his bottle and took a slow drink, eyes never leaving mine.

And in the flicker of flame and silence, that stare said everything his mouth never would.

Every word I still ached for.

It all got too loud, too bright, too much.

“I’m heading to the bathroom,” I muttered, already on my feet.

No one questioned it. I walked fast, bare feet sinking into the sand as I made my way back toward the villa. Truth was, I didn’t need the bathroom.

I needed a bed and a blanket pulled over my head like I was ten again and the world wasn’t chewing me up.

I reached for the glass handle on the back door, but I never made it inside.

A hand slammed over my mouth. Another wrapped around my waist and yanked me backward, my feet lifting clean off the ground.

I thrashed. Fought. Elbowed whatever I could reach. My heartbeat roared in my chest until I heard his voice, low and rough in my ear.

“It’s me.”

I kept struggling, but he didn’t let go.

He carried me like I weighed nothing, dragging us into the shadows behind the villa. Past the hedges. Past the edge of the pool. Toward the old garden shed where no one could see. He set me down, my feet hitting warm sand.

The night air wrapped around us.

In the distance, I could still hear Nicholas yelling something about Marlon Brando.

I turned on Théo, lungs burning.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Cut the shit.”

His voice wasn’t calm. It was venom dragged through gravel.

I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

“This. All of it. You wanna scream? Do it. You wanna break something? Break it. Say every filthy fucking thing you’ve buried inside that pretty little mouth while I was gone.”

He stepped forward, eyes locked on mine.

“Say you hate me. That you want me dead. That you wish our paths never crossed.”

Another step.

I moved back until my spine met the shed wall. The wood pressed warmly against my skin. My lungs forgot what air was supposed to feel like.

His eyes didn’t rage. They burned slowly. Like something sacred was breaking inside him, and he wanted me to see all of it. The hunger. The ache. The sadness.

The unbearable silence he’d swallowed alone.

“You want me to lie and say I didn’t know what my absence was doing to you? That I didn’t hear every goddamn sob through the fucking walls?”

He came closer, breath punching between his teeth.

“Go ahead. Say I ruined you. Say I broke you on purpose. Say I’m a sick bastard who gets hard knowing I’ll never be good enough for you.”

He didn’t blink.

“Say it,” he breathed. “Say it, Scarlett.”

My throat tightened. I almost wanted to, but I laughed instead. Dry and low, with no joy left in it.

“I have nothing left to say to you, Théo.” My chest rose shakily. “I’ve heard enough. Or maybe I haven’t. Maybe I never will. But your silence did the talking for you. And I listened. I heard every hour you weren’t there.”

I could barely look at him.

“I’m over you. You’ve never let me in. I barely know anything about you.”

His stare didn’t waver.

“I’m done chasing a ghost who never even wanted to be real for me.”

His jaw clenched. His voice came low, frayed at the edges.

“I was a ghost, yeah. But I never fucking left.”

What?

I laughed once, bitterly.

“I never stopped watching you,” he went on. “Every fucking day. Every night. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t earn that right. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t deserve a second of your time.”

He stepped closer, like he couldn’t stop himself.

“I don’t deserve you, Scarlett. Because it’s my fault. All of it. It’s my fault he had the chance to drag you away. It’s my fault I wasn’t there to tear his fucking hands off when he did it.”

A tear slid down my face.

“You think silence means I did nothing,” he said. “But you didn’t see it. What I did. What I gave up. What I bled out behind closed doors to keep you breathing. You never noticed the way my hands were always there even when you thought you were alone.”

My eyes flicked up.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means everything you thought you survived by yourself, every time you thought you were about to break, I was there. You didn’t see it. But I was the reason you got home. The reason no one touched you again. The reason you’re still fucking standing.”

He leaned in closer.

“I have always been there for you.”

My brows furrowed as I tried to make sense of his words.

He didn’t explain.

He cornered me, his hands planting hard against the wall, caging me in without a single touch. Not yet. Not until the silence between us was choking on everything we never said out loud.

His chest hovered close, heat rolling off him, his breath hitting my cheek. Then his hand rose. His fingers gripped my chin, not gentle, not cruel, just desperate.

He tilted my face up until there was nowhere left to look but him. “Say it.”

My voice trembled, but I didn’t hide. “I hate you, Théo.”

The words sliced out of me, raw and burning.

“And I am in love with you, Scarlett.”

He said it like it ruined him.

Like it had been sitting in his mouth for a year, rotting everything else inside.

It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t safe.

It was a confession soaked in blood.

And he meant every fucking word of it.

Then he snapped.

His mouth crashed onto mine, rough and furious, all teeth and desperation.

My arms curled around his neck as he shoved me back, pressing me so hard into the wall I could barely breathe.

His hands slid down, gripping the backs of my thighs. He lifted me without asking, without warning, like he’d been dying to.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, clinging as he pressed forward, grinding into me, like he needed to feel every inch, every heat-soaked second of this.

There was nothing soft in the way he touched me. Nothing gentle in the way he kissed.

It was punishment. It was possession.

It was everything I needed.

He dragged my tank top down until my tits bounced free. His mouth dropped straight to one, teeth grazing before his tongue lashed over the peak, wet and brutal. He sucked hard, groaning against my skin, while his free hand mauled the other, fingers squeezing until I whimpered.

Laughter rang out a few yards away—Nicholas, drunk, singing loudly.