Page 3 of My Beautiful Sin

I hadn’t feared death; I’d danced with it, tempting it to claim me the way it had my entire family.

Now, though, I understand fear.

Now, I have something to lose. It’s been a while since I’ve been tested, and the thought that I might pass something horrible on to him haunts me.

But from Devlin’s perspective … well, he probably assumed I didn’t press last night because we’re truly, finally together. So what must he think it means for me to ask now?

He says none of that, though. Instead, he sheaths himself then flashes me a humor-filled grin as he says, “Take two.”

I laugh—probably more than the joke really called for—and hook my arms around his neck. “Kiss me,” I murmur. “Make love to me.”

“Baby, that’s exactly what I have in mind.”

We’re both beyond ready, as if our naked limbs tangled in sleep had been foreplay enough. I arch up, silently begging him to enter me, wanting nothing more than this man, his hands on me, his cock inside me. It’s fast and urgent, both of us spiraling upward in a frenzy of heat and need.

Soon, I’m gasping, on the cusp of going completely over.

“Now,” he says. “Come for me now, baby.”

It’s a command I can’t disobey, and my body breaks apart, my core tightening around him, taking him over the cliff with me as we fall off into space, tumbling over and over until we are spent and gasping, locked in each other’s arms as sunshine fills the room, welcoming us to the day.

I stretch languorously as he moves off of me and deals with the condom. “That was so much better than an alarm clock,” I say.

“Such high praise.” I hear the tease in his voice as his fingers stroke my hair. “Do you want coffee?”

I start to sit up, “Always,” I say. “I’ll go start some.”

He shakes his head, then bends over to kiss me lightly on the lips. “No, stay where you are. I like the thought of you staying in my bed as long as possible.”

I lift a brow and lean back. “Waiting on me? I could get used to this.”

“That’s the idea.” He winks, and I laugh. Then I simply sit there and enjoy the view as he gets out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants that he’d left hanging over the back of the chair.

He turns from me as he heads to the door, and I watch that perfect ass move away from me. I sigh happily. I never thought that he would be mine again, not after all we’d lost when we were young.

A fist tightens around my heart, and I can’t hold back the swell of fear that once again it’s not going to last. That what we found isn’t permanent. That all the dark shadows of our youth are going to swarm back in to haunt us, and that all my qualms about returning to Laguna Cortez are finally going to come true.

I’d left Manhattan and returned to my hometown with an assignment to write an article about the Devlin Saint Foundation and my own plan to research the circumstances surrounding the murder of my Uncle Peter a decade ago. But though I’d grown up here, returning was like coming home to hell.

This town held so much loss for me. My mother died in a car wreck, my father was brutally murdered in the line of duty. And then my guardian, Peter, had been assassinated by a single shot to the head, leaving me lost and alone.

The night that he died had been the first time that his assistant, Alex Leto, and I had made love, both of us surrendering to grief and loss and lust.

I’d been seventeen, he’d been almost twenty, and the heat that had been burning between us had finally reached a boiling point. He’d filled me up and sent me reeling. He’d helped me forget about the horror of my uncle’s death, at least for a few precious moments.

He’d soothed me, and he’d told me with words and his body how much he loved me.

Then he ripped me to shreds. Because that was the last time I ever saw Alex Leto.

When I came back to Laguna Cortez ten years later to research those two stories, it wasn’t Alex I found, but Devlin Saint. A new man, a different man.

A man who swore he would have nothing to do with me because of his dangerous past. And yet here I am in his bed, exactly where I intend to stay.

You’re in over your head. Find the truth. Don’t trust anyone.

The vile words fill my head once again, and I reach for my phone, determined to see them in black and white. To change the memory from emotion to nothing more than evidence.

Whoever sent these words hadn’t broken into my home or assaulted me on the street, and yet the message seems just as invasive. It was sent with the intention to wound me, and the arrow has undeniably hit home.