Page 62 of Sinful Desires (Sinful #4)

Chapter

Forty-Six

“I don’t do fashion, I AM fashion.”

― Coco Chanel

Scarlett

“I think the emerald one suits your hair better. Plus, it’ll make everyone else green with envy,” Victoria said, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

Nicholas dropped onto the bed and threw a popcorn kernel into the air, catching it in his mouth. “I agree with Victoria. Definitely the emerald. I’ll wear a matching pocket square with my white suit. We’ll look like a power couple.”

She clapped her hands excitedly. “I’m so excited to be working with Oscar De La Renta on this one. Girl, don’t you dare even think of firing me. I’ll sew myself to your skin. Permanently . Like emotional couture.”

I laughed as she unzipped the dress. I wrapped my robe around myself again, kicked off the custom YSL heels I’d been balancing on for hours, and collapsed onto the bed.

Nicholas moved over with a grunt to give me more space.

“When are we flying to LA again?” I yawned, already half asleep.

He lobbed a piece of popcorn at my face.

I didn’t dodge it fast enough.

“Tomorrow morning. Then the white party at your dad’s. Then the actual Oscars the day after,” he said, glancing at me sideways. “You’ve been yawning all week since we got back from France. What’s going on with you? Insomnia? Secrets?”

I reached for the bowl and stuffed a few kernels into my mouth. Victoria was still in full stylist mode, folding gowns like she was defusing bombs.

My cheeks flushed.

Oh, I didn’t know. Maybe it had something to do with a certain French bodyguard sneaking into my room every night and absolutely wrecking me.

Eleven nights straight. I hadn’t slept.

I’d just been face down, drooling, legs shaking, pussy raw from getting used until I cried.

“I’ve been rewatching Outlander . You know how I get when Jamie Fraser shows up. I lose hours. It’s unhealthy.”

After that night on the cliff, after the striptease and Théo making love to me under the stars, the next four days had blurred into this rhythm of pretending.

During the day, we kept our distance. I swam, I wrote, I painted.

Meanwhile, he worked out shirtless for hours, glared at his laptop like it had insulted me, and left every afternoon to visit his father.

That part made me happy in a way I hadn’t expected.

And then there were the nights.

When the villa went quiet, when the air turned thick and still. When Liya and Pierre were tucked away in the guest rooms and Nicholas was asleep across the hall.

I’d lie in the dark waiting, already aching, already wet, already wired for him.

Then I’d hear it. His door creaking open. Then mine.

He never knocked. He didn’t need to.

He’d slip inside. I’d already be on my knees on the bed, arms stretched around his neck before he even reached me. He’d lift me, kiss me, and pin me to the mattress like he couldn’t breathe unless he was buried inside me.

Then he’d fuck me. Hard. Slowly. Deeply . His mouth hot at my neck, his hands bruising my hips.

And when I got too loud, when I couldn’t help the whimpers and moans slipping past my lips, he’d shove his hand over my mouth and keep going, his rhythm never breaking. His eyes locked on mine while my screams turned to muffled cries under his palm, my whole body trembling as I came around him.

Sometimes it was sweet. Mostly it wasn’t.

Sometimes he’d leave marks. Sometimes I begged him to.

I loved the weight of him.

The way he whispered filth in French against my throat. The way he used me like he was trying to erase every man who had ever touched me before him.

The way we both knew it had to stay secret. Quiet. Untouched by daylight.

He never stayed the night, always gone before sunrise.

Gone before Nicholas knocked on my door with fresh orange juice and a smile, like nothing unholy had happened just hours earlier.

I’d sit at breakfast, pretending I wasn’t still full of him.

Before we left France, I visited his mother one last time. She hugged me so tightly it nearly cracked my ribs. She thanked me for employing her son, kissed both my cheeks, and handed me a tiny, heart-shaped keychain with an inscription— à bient?t .

Then she’d said something I hadn’t been able to forget.

“Thank you for helping my son find his way back to his father. You’ll never know what that means to me, Scarlett. I saw something in his eyes I hadn’t seen in years. You gave that back to him. You gave him back to us.”

And somehow, that made me happier than anything else.

When we got back, we’d slipped into a little filthy and perfect routine. The kind that only two people obsessed with each other could survive.

That was the beauty of living under the same roof as the man who fucked you like he owned your soul. We didn’t have to sneak around. No lies. No clothes half the time.

We made love everywhere .

Bent over the kitchen counter, legs spread on the living room rug, up against the hallway wall. In my bed. His bed. His shower, where he’d fucked me until my knees had given out.

He whimpered the filthiest things in my ear.

We hardly ever left the condo except for when we hit the gun range. He taught me how to shoot all types of different guns, and honestly? I got way better than I’d ever expected.

We lived on takeout and orgasms.

He told me what it was like being buried in submarines for months, what it had felt like to miss the sun, the sound of whales scraping the hull, sharks circling while you tried not to lose your mind.

I told him how I sang to survive. Why music was the only way I could scream without being punished.

One night, wrapped around each other and half drunk on sex and sweat, he told me he loved French poetry. I told him to prove it.

Three nights later, after he’d fucked me so slowly I came sobbing against his mouth, we lay tangled up in his bed, his fingers tracing my spine.

Then he’d leaned close and whispered the poem in my ear.

Tu es venue: comme une étoile filante

traverser ma nuit vide

et depuis

je vis les yeux levés.

Tu es celle

qui brille le plus

et qui est maintenant

à ma portée: ma lumière tombée du ciel.

Je ne fais plus de v?ux

Tu es là

Dans mes bras

l’étoile que je croyais

ne jamais pouvoir toucher.

Ta peau a le go?t: de l’éternité brève

Et j’ai l’ame en feu

chaque fois

que tu respires contre moi.

Dans ton c?ur, je br?le d’y exister.

“What does that mean, soldier?”

He smiled down at me, his eyes never leaving mine. Then he pushed me onto the bed and was on top of me, thrusting inside as I yelped.

“You appeared,” he said low, voice broken, “a shooting star crossing the silence of my night?…?and since then, I live with my eyes raised to you.”

He whispered it against my throat, cock buried deep inside me, eyes locked on mine.

I gasped when he slammed deeper.

“You are the brightest star. The one who glows beyond all others. And now?…?now you’re near. A light the sky gave back to me.”

Thrust.

He gripped my thighs and pulled me closer, his chest over mine, his mouth hot and rough at my ear.

“I make no more wishes. You are here. In my arms. The one I thought would never fall for me.”

Thrust .

“Your skin tastes like brief eternity.”

Thrust .

“And my soul catches fire with your breath on me.”

Thrust .

“Inside your heart, I ache to be.”

My pussy clenched around him so tightly it dragged a groan straight from his chest. Then everything went dark. I had blacked out from mind-blowing dick and dirty French sonnets.

Multilingual orgasms were definitely not for the weak.

I cleared my throat as the fog of my dirty little secret faded before my eyes.

“Excited for the Oscars, Nic?”

“Honestly? Yeah. Last time I won for Supporting Actor. Now it’s Best Actor, and I’m up against Joaquin Phoenix and Brad Pitt. I’m so nervous, I’ve been rehearsing losing with grace in the mirror.”

Victoria flopped onto the bed beside us and grabbed a handful of popcorn.

“Have you already written your winning speech?” she asked.

“I’ve got three. Humble. Cocky. One where I cry and thank my babies.”

By babies he meant Tia and Tamera, his twin cats who had more attitude than most actors nominated that year.

He let out a quiet sigh, the kind that hung in the air a little too long.

“I wish I could mention Matthew in my speech. He deserves it. Without him, I don’t think I ever would’ve made it this far.”

My heart cracked for him.

I knew now what it meant to love in silence, to ache for someone you couldn’t touch in daylight. And the thought of never being able to claim it, never being able to say it out loud, felt unbearable.

“He is the love of my life, and I can’t even?…”

He let out a heavier sigh, and I threw my arms around him and hugged him tightly.

Victoria followed, and together we crushed him until he laughed and shoved us off.

We crashed on the couch, watched trashy TV, and gossiped like teenagers.

Théo stayed in the kitchen, working on his laptop.

Every now and then, his eyes found me and softened when I let out some stupid laugh.

They left, but not before Nicholas said he’d prefer to sleep at Victoria’s place because her guest room was comfier.

I went straight to Théo’s room and found him already asleep, shirtless, stretched out on his back, my gold necklace flat against his chest.

I opened a drawer to grab one of his shirts, but instead, I found a shrine.

My red satin scarf. A photo of me as a kid after an equestrian competition, still blonde, standing next to Spirit. The star-shaped pasties I wore at my dad’s mansion dinner, and the mic I’d used to?…?I blushed when I saw it.

And at the very bottom, my thong. The one I’d given him in that club, the night he’d kissed me.

He’d kept everything .

Some might call it stalking. I called it devotion. Quiet, relentless, a kind of love that never needed to be seen to be real.

And honestly? I liked it a little too much.

This was the kind of obsession people whispered about in warnings, in cautionary tales wrapped in fear.

But my heart didn’t race from fear. It ached.

There was something devastating about being loved like this, so completely, so silently, for so long. And something even more devastating about how much I needed it.

I had begged the universe to heal me from my loneliness, but I never truly was alone.

He had been there for me, always.

I closed the drawer, heart pounding like I’d touched something sacred.I stripped, leaving my clothes in a trail and slid beneath the sheets, the warmth of his skin already drawing me in.

He didn’t wake up.

But his arms wrapped around me, like they’d been waiting all night long.