Page 60 of Art of Sin

My mouth opens and closes. Nothing. There’s nothing inside me but a mindless, soundless mess.

So I do the only thing that seems remotely possible in the moment. I grab him, one hand behind his neck, the other in his hair, and drag his face to mine. He resists for the merest moment—the briefest blip of surprised eyes—before our lips meet and part in a joined gasp.

Climbing his body like a monkey and sealing myself to his front, I kiss him like I’m hell-bent on sucking his soul out through his mouth. My fingers fist in his hair; his hands dig and squeeze into my thighs, my ass. He takes a stumbling, half step back until his spine thuds against the foyer wall.

Need claws through me. More than lust. A fire just as desperate for kindling as it is for water to quench it. Yearning for something—anything—to make sense in this fucking world.

Gideon is that something. He’s the only goddamn thing that makes sense.

He breaks our kiss, moving his head back when I dive forward. I’m close to tears. Close to the point of no return. If I can’t have him right now, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Stop fighting and fade away.

Commit myself.

Possibly drive off a cliff.

“Please,” I whisper, “if I mean anything at all to you, give me this. I need you. Remind me that life can be good.”

“Did you think I was saying no?” he rasps, thrusting forward, grinding his erection against the seam of my slacks.

I tremble, reaching for him again, but he holds me back.

“I stopped because I want to make sure you didn’t take drugs. If I’m breaking my only rule—which I have never fucking done—I want you emotionally and physically sober for it.”

My laughter is shrill; tears threaten. To my horror, my lower lip starts quivering.

Gideon sighs, his forehead dropping gently to mine. “Damnit. I really wanted to break my rule.”

“No, please, don’t reject me,” I blubber, gripping his shoulders as he begins to pull me off him. Devastation rocks me at the loss of his embrace, then quivers uncertainly when he sweeps me up so I’m cradled in his arms.

Walking down the hallway toward the bedrooms, he stares down at me. Eyes soft, unmasked and tender, the look so unexpected and heart-wrenchingly genuine that my tears begin in earnest.

“Deirdre, don’t be ridiculous. I want you. So much I have to jack off three times a day just to take the edge off. But something clearly happened when you left tonight. Right now you need to rest. Let me take care of you.”

Cynical laughter breaks through my tears. No one has ever taken care of me before—not without expectation. I don’t know what that means or feels like.

Pausing on the threshold of the guest bedroom, he strokes damp hair from my temple. His expression darkens, becoming grave.

“Whatever you’ve come from, whatever you’ve lived through, I don’t care. I’m not afraid of your dark.”

Trapped in his gaze, I whisper, “But what if I am? Afraid of the darkness inside me?”

He kisses my forehead, murmuring against my skin, “Then I’ll set the world on fire to bring you light.”

They say you never know the moment you fall in love. That it’s in truth a series of events—some mundane, insignificant—that build into a stunning conviction. Love.

Not so for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been waiting for it as someone ready for an old memory to resurface. Like somewhere inside me is a woman who has always loved him, was born to love him, and has merely been waiting to remember why. Hiding in the dark until he brought her into the light.

Or maybe I’m broken beyond repair, a tower of lies so convoluted I can’t name truth from fiction. My soul too damaged to salvage—born of darkness, as Mama always said.

Maybe this is sickness.

Sin.

Depravity.

Twisted fascination.

But when Gideon lifts his head and looks at me, his eyes startlingly clear, full of everything inside me, I fall—every mismatched, jagged piece of me—into his waiting hands.

---