The Consequence Read online

  “I don’t want to see you for a while but I don’t see why we can’t be amicable about this. You’ve become a fixture with my family and friends,” - I fought the urge to wince - “and I can accept that sometimes, people just grow apart.”

  “They do.”

  She nodded curtly and dropped my hand. I watched her pick up her bag, carefully cross her coat over one arm and begin the slow walk to the door. It was the most surreal moment of my life to watch my former partner walk out of the same space she unwittingly shared with my new lover. If it hadn’t been so fucked up, it might have been a little poetic.

  So, it took me a second too long to realize that Elena had tripped on something and was bending over to examine the purple scrap of lace caught on the sharp edge of her high heel. It then took me a half-second more than that to register the aberrant look of horror on her habitually placid features and the venomous bite of her words as she whispered, “you fucking cheating bastard.”

  Chapter One.

  I was the picture of a well-loved woman.

  My skin was still flushed and naked beneath the plush hotel covers, my red hair a chaotic mass of just-fucked glory. I had just enjoyed the most glorious sex with the most glorious man I had ever laid eyes on and in the morning, after what should have been a night of continued sex and very minimal sleep, I was set to travel to the most romantic city in the world with the love of my life.

  But happily-ever-afters were for princesses with hearts of gold and white knights in shining armor, not disloyal Italian artists who got off on being spanked or the morally ambiguous men who introduced them to said fetishisms.

  So, it shouldn’t have surprised me that Elena had arrived at our door to remind me that this impure princess and tarnished knight did not deserve a happy ending, at least not that easily.

  The moment I heard her perfectly enunciated English, I bit my lip so hard the skin broke and the metallic taste of blood replaced the flavor of Sinclair on my tongue.

  It felt too soon after our reunion to ask Sinclair to fight any battles for us. Despite our recent lovemaking and his continued declarations of love and devotion it was hard not to doubt the man given the inception of our relationship and his initial unwillingness to end things with my sister and his girlfriend, Elena.

  Despite my qualms, Sinclair handled the situation with the kind of aloof control that I had come to expect from him. He spoke bluntly, skirting the line between brutality and honesty. I could picture him reclined in a chair, a glass of whiskey dangling from two fingers as he regarded Elena, lazy but powerful like a crocodile waiting in the weeds.

  It was harder to imagine Elena’s reaction. I didn’t know her as well as I should have and when she responded to Sin’s clear dismissals, it was with English words as smooth and emotionless as plastic.

  I winced when he spoke about giving her the house, sunk further beneath the covers in cringing sympathy when he declared their love platonic, but my empathy felt displaced because Elena didn’t seemed perturbed by him. They conducted their breakup like the dissolution of a business agreement.

  Like most things that seemed too good to be true at first glance, it all went to hell in a hand basket.

  “You fucking cheating bastard,” I heard Elena seethe after a long moment of silence.

  My mind immediately flashed to my discarded clothes. Before I could consciously assimilate what her words meant, I was hopping up and out of the bed. I hovered behind the partially closed door to the main room of the suite, my skin rippled with goose flesh. My body was aflame with the impulse to flee but there was no place to go.

  “Elena,” Sinclair began.

  “Shut up!” she hissed. “Don’t open your lying mouth, Daniel Sinclair. What the fuck have you done?”

  I heard movement in the other room and darted towards the bathroom. There was no place to hide in the palatial room so I hurried back into the bedroom.

  “Did you seriously cheat on me? Who the hell is she?” Elena was saying, her voice saturated with the sounds of Napoli.

  There was no gap to wiggle under beneath the bed. My heart thumped in my ears, pumping so forcibly that my limbs shook with each beat. What would happen if she came into the bedroom and saw me?

  “Is she still here?” Elena’s voice was just outside the bedroom, high and hard with infuriated disgust.

  The door began to swing open just as I dove through the door to the closet. Happily, the walk-in was filled with rows of Sinclair’s clothes. I separated the lower level of button-up shirts so that I could nestle between the fabric and the wall. Pulling the hangers back together, I tried to slow my ragged breathing. I hugged my knees to my chest and tucked my chin into the space between my knees; reminded of the times I had hidden as a child back in Naples. I would have taken hiding from the Camorra over my sister any day.

  The door to the closet cracked loudly against the wall as it was flung open and Elena stormed into the room.

  “She isn’t here, Elena,” Sinclair said calmly as Elena stared to rifle through the clothes on the other side of the closet from where I sat.

  “Fuck you,” she spat. “Like I would believe anything that comes out of your disgusting, deceitful mouth.”

  Sinclair’s sigh echoed throughout the room. “She left just before you got here. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

  My sister snorted so hard, it sounded as if it hurt. “Because there is a good way to find out my fiancée is fucking a puttana.”

  “She isn’t a whore, and I am not just fucking her.”

  There was a long pause.

  I shifted slightly to peer between a gap in the hanging fabric, unable to curb my curiosity. Elena was in profile, her muscles wound tightly around her nuclear core. I could practically hear the tick of her jaw clenching. It was only a matter of time before she exploded.

  So, of course, Sinclair lit the fuse.

  “And we were never engaged.”

  My gasp was covered by the horrified, pained noise that those words forced from her. She whirled around to face Sinclair and shoved him so hard that he took a step back. I watched as she advanced on him, pressing him against the wall by the door with both fists clutching his shirt. When she spoke, her mouth was so close to his that for a moment, I thought they were kissing and my stomach clenched.

  “We were going to adopt a baby. We were going to be a family, Daniel. Don’t stand there and tell me we weren’t engaged. We were partners in every way that matters.”

  Sinclair stared calmly down into her face, his hands coming up to cup her elbows gently. “We were partners, you are right. We made plans together, supported each other and navigated our careers together. But we were never partners in the only way that matters.” He paused. “I don’t believe that we were ever in love with each other.”

  Elena’s hands fell away from his rumpled shirt as she took a shocked step back. Even though it wasn’t my nightmare that I was watching unfold, I was acutely aware that our roles could have been reversed. The combination of empathy and relief ran salty, wet tracks down my cheeks.

  “Speak for yourself,” she whispered.

  “I know I’m being,” Sinclair searched for the words and went to tug at his hair in frustration only to realize he had cut it off at Elena’s behest weeks ago, “cruel. But if you will think about it for a while, I know that you will see the truth instead of the brutality.”

  “Just because I am not demonstrative, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” she said, her voice weak, fading like the last notes from a wind-up music box.

  I wondered if it was because she believed him or if the shock and horror of it all was killing her.

  “Tell me, Elena, do you think about me in the spaces between each thought? Do you feel me in your chest like a second beating heart? Do you need me more than your next breath?” Sinclair pounded his fist against his chest and spread his fingers out over his heart. “That is what it is to be in love.”

  “You are in love with the whore
,” Elena said, her voice once again accent-less and monotone. “My God, you actually think you’re in love with her.”

  Sinclair tilted his chin and stared at her coolly. “I am very much in love with her. That doesn’t excuse my infidelity and it doesn’t make this easier to do. But it’s the truth.”

  Elena’s pale lips trembled as she pressed both palms to her thighs and smoothed down her trousers. She did it carefully three or four times in a row, her gaze fixed on the movement of her hands over the cloth. Finally, she looked up at Sinclair and stepped forward once more.

  “You are the worst kind of bastard, Daniel, because you pretend to be a gentleman. I want you to understand that I won’t ever forgive you.” She smiled thinly, her face sliced in half by the sharp edges of her mouth.

  Sinclair nodded. “I can’t expect you to.”

  “I don’t want to speak with you again unless it is through a lawyer,” she added.

  I understood the spiteful game she was playing, throwing things at him to see how much he could take. I felt sorry for her because I knew he would accept every ounce of bitterness she doled out; no one felt more deserving of hatred than Sinclair.

  She was only going to grow angrier when she realized it.

  “I understand.”

  “And I want you to stay away from my family,” she snarled, stepping forward to press a finger into his chest. “From now on you no longer fish with Sebastian, you no longer eat at Mama’s restaurant and you sure a hell stop being friends with Cosima. If I see you with them again, I’ll rip your fucking eyes out.”

  The mass of emotions clogging my throat made it hard to breath and I choked on them when I realized that she hadn’t even bothered to put a moratorium on a relationship with me.

  I knew by the way Sin’s jaw hardened that he heard the slight too.

  “I was friends with Cosima before I even knew you, Elena,” he tried to reason.

  “I was your partner before you even knew the whore you’ve been sleeping with, Daniel,” she mocked. “Deal with it. She won’t want to be friends with you anymore, regardless. I don’t think this is too much to ask for.”

  For the first time all night, Sinclair softened, stepping forward to lift a tentative hand and place it on her shoulder. She stiffened under his touch but allowed it.

  “I am so sorry for hurting you, Elena, and I will do anything to make this easier for you. But I can’t promise to stay away from your family. They are my family now too.”

  A loud crack echoed through the room as Elena slapped him hard across the face. “Stop pretending to be reasonable, stop making me feel like the bad guy here. You cheated on me, Daniel! If you can’t seem to get that through your head, I’ll make sure everyone you know understands what a bastard you are so that you don’t forget it.”

  I swallowed a sob, curling my knees into my chest and hugging them, as Elena stormed out of the room. The door to the suite slammed shut with an angry bang behind her.

  Sin stood rooted to the spot, his head turned slightly from the impact of Elena’s slap. I couldn’t breathe without sobbing so I swallowed convulsively and held my breath. After a long minute, he unfroze, rolling his shoulders back and swiveling on his heel so that he faced my hiding spot. He crossed the space in two huge strides and crouched before me, parting the clothes and lifting my curled form effortlessly into his arms. I was sobbing by the time my cheek hit the overheated skin of his chest.

  “I love you, I’m sorry,” he whispered, over and over again.

  I tried to take comfort from his words, especially because I had yearned for them for so long, but they were only a drop in the ocean of my pain and I knew I deserved to wallow in it.

  Chapter Two.

  I woke up disorientated and disgusting. I remembered slowly that Sinclair had ushered me from the tainted suite and onto the private plane that would take us to Paris. It was the company plane, an extravagant yet practical purchase given how often he had to travel now that the business was becoming an international entity.

  I had been delirious and dehydrated when he had gently buckled me into one of the deep cream-colored leather seats and before we could take off, I’d fallen asleep.

  Now, my body ached from the hours I had spent crying, my eyes felt like dried olives and I knew my breath was disgusting by the gritty texture on my gums. Yet, when I turned my head to look over at Sinclair, he was staring at me with uncharacteristic warmth over the pages of the New York Times.

  “Hi,” I said softly.

  “Hi.”

  “Why are you smiling like that at me?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are too. It is all in the eyes with you.”

  He lowered the paper slightly to reveal his small grin and I laughed quietly in delight.

  “I was smiling because you are beautiful but mostly, because you are here with me. It reminds me of the first time I saw you, sick and scared on the plane to Los Cabos. The sight of you punched the breath from my lungs.”

  “I was barfing into a courtesy bag,” I reminded him drily.

  He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Most women never look so alluring.”

  I laughed at him. He was being playful with me to make me feel better, to ease the pain of betrayal I felt like a stab wound in my chest. The agony was worse, I thought, because the wound was self-inflicted. Sin’s good humor was like pressure on the damage, staunching the blood flow, but I knew the relief couldn’t last forever and that there was a very real possibility that the pain would.

  “Come here,” he ordered softly.

  Immediately, I was up and out of my chair. My legs were shaky as I stepped across the small space between us to where he sat on a leather sofa but I wasn’t sure if it was from my flight phobia or the way that he ordered me around.

  I knew it wasn’t very feminist of me, but I loved my bossy Frenchman.

  I folded myself in his lap and sighed heavily when his arms cradled me closer to his chest. We were silent for a few moments, luxuriating in our closeness.

  “I want to get this out of the way before I move on to more entertaining ways to distract you.” He inhaled deeply, steeling himself. “I have made you miserable these past few months and I hate myself for it. You were always the right decision, the only decision. It is almost inexcusable that it took me so long to commit to it.”

  I made a noise of complaint but he ignored me.

  “Now that I have you, I don’t plan to let you go. I mean it, Elle. In a sense, we barely know each other, we haven’t even had the time to date yet, but I want you to know that the heavy things, the serious questions and answers that usually accompany a long-term relationship, they are on the horizon for us. I’m not a patient man and I meant what I said about tying myself to you in every conceivable way. I never want to wake up again like that morning in Mexico, knowing I had let you slip through my fingers.”

  The ragged edges fluttered and settled around my heart. I let out a heavy sigh and replaced the grief with the deep, pleasurable smell of Sin.

  “We need this vacation,” I murmured.

  “We do. I will need to do some work but I’m sure you will have people to catch up with and I will make as much time as possible to be with you.”

  “Honestly? I didn’t have many friends in Paris, only my university mentor, Odile Claremont and Brenna.” My stomach clenched at the thought of my AWOL friend. I hadn’t heard from her since I had returned from Mexico and her lack of communication was alarming.

  “Candy, Robert, Duncan and Richard are already in the city and Cage will be there in a few days.”

  I instantly brightened. “That’s great, it will be like a little Mexico reunion!”

  Sinclair smiled down at me tenderly. “I shouldn’t have been surprised that you made such a good impression on them. By the time we left, you had them wrapped around your pinky finger almost as tightly as you did me.”

  I strained up to nip his chin between my teeth. “I thought it was a little weird t
hat they were so accepting of our affair, given that they know Elena.”

  He sighed into my hair. “The only one that ever liked her was Margot, and even then I think it’s because they are so similar.”

  “Sin?” I asked quietly, after a moment of silence.

  “Yes, my siren?”

  “I love you.”

  His arms constricted around me. “I will never tire of hearing you say that.”

  “I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.”

  The plane chose that moment to dip and tremble, which wrenched an anxious whimper from me before I could help it.

  “We touch down in under two hours,” Sinclair said, his voice transitioning to its deeper, steelier tones. “Until then, I expect you to be naked.”

  Warmth sluiced through my veins as I immediately lifted my dress over my head. It turned me on to know that my body reacted to his words even before my mind could.

  It was awkward to disrobe on his lap so I slipped to the ground between his knees as I tossed the dress onto my abandoned chair and tugged off my underwear. When I looked up at him through my eyelashes, he was all I could see.

  “I want to watch you to take my cock down your throat.”

  I shivered, goose bumps rolling across my skin. My hands fumbled slightly as I undid his belt and tugged the zipper over the straining bulge in his pants. His eyes tracked every detail as I freed his erection, dragging my tongue from the base of him to the tip. His musky flavor exploded on my tongue.

  I wrapped my hand firmly around the bottom of his shaft and squeezed, watching the veins pulse. My eyes stayed on his as I flicked my tongue on the underside of his crown and placed him in my mouth before taking him as slowly as I could to the back of my throat.

  “You look so sexy like this,” he practically growled, his hand sliding through my hair before wrapping the strands in his fists. He didn’t try to control my pace but the firm tug was just enough to remind me who was in control.

  “Are you wet, my siren?”