Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)

“How you are,” she said, her gaze locked on his. “What you’re doing. What your life is like now.”

He licked his lips. “And that’s why you wanted to see me?”

“Yes.”

His skin was hot. His bones vibrated. Want sounded damn good to him. After feeling like she’d slipped through his fingers in Marseilles—his head had understood, but his heart had fucking rebelled when she’d walked away from him—he liked being wanted by her.

“So, were you wondering if I’d gone gray? Or bald, maybe?” he teased, running his hand through his thick hair. Now that she’d revealed a modicum of truth about tonight, he could return to this zone, where the terrain wasn’t rocky and fraught with so many jagged ridges.

She laughed with her mouth wide open, her white teeth straight and gleaming. How he’d adored that smile of hers, the way she quirked up the corner of her lips when something was particularly funny. “I see you’ve held onto it all,” she said.

“And you’re redder.” He gestured to her long, lush locks. Then he figured, fuck it. She’d said the words he most wanted to hear—she was thinking of him. He touched the end of a wave of hair—it had been auburn before. Now it was almost a dark cherry red, and so soft.

He let go.

“So is that what you wanted? To check out my hair color? Maybe to see if I grew a paunch?” he said, patting his flat stomach.

“Seems you’ve maintained your boyish figure,” she said.

He was worn thin with wanting something, anything from her, and he wasn’t even sure why. This was only one night, only drinks. He was the one who was investing this moment with too much importance. Hunting for a deep, meaningful reason—one like Michael, I had to tell you I never stopped loving you.

He scoffed. She wasn’t here to say that, even if she had been thinking of him. Thinking was nothing. She was here for the class reunion effect. To say hello, to check him out, and to breeze back out of town when she was done shooting skinny models in skimpy clothes. He needed to get the fuck over her. More importantly, he needed to get out of his own head, and stop thinking that a letter that smelled like rain meant Annalise Delacroix wanted to curl up on his lap and tell him she hadn’t forgotten him, either.

They’d been torn apart by time and distance, not by hurt, or anger, or falling out of love. No one had cheated. No one had said unforgivable words. No invectives were lobbed, and no terrible secret had come between them. Their biggest foe when they were younger was miles. Thousands and thousands of uncrossable miles. They’d tried to fight it with letters, a seemingly endless stream of them. But after a few years of letters and phone calls, they were in college and too far away from each other. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t meant to be. He didn’t have enough money to fly to see her, nor did she have the funds or her family’s permission to return to see her beau. The flames turned to blue flickers, then to low embers in the ash.

But the fire burned again tonight.

He couldn’t resist. “And you look as beautiful as I remember.”

Music from inside the club seeped out to the terrace. She lowered her forehead and whispered thanks at the same time a lock of hair slid over her eyes. His opportunity. He slipped his index finger under those strands and brushed them off her forehead.

She raised her lashes and looked up at him. “So…”

He ran his finger along the side of her temple. His pulse thundered in his throat. “Ask me what else I haven’t forgotten.”

Her green eyes shone with a hint of something, a flash of desire. She tilted her head curiously, taking the bait. “What else haven’t you forgotten?”

The music seemed to emanate from another dimension. The waitress walking past them to a nearby table operated in a parallel universe. All the world around him slowed and stilled to this moment. He threaded his fingers into her soft hair, letting it fall like silk over his skin.

One more taste and he could stop longing for her. Stop lingering. He could finally put to rest the arguments his ex-girlfriends had waged over the years, insisting he was stuck on someone else. Michael Sloan was going to take the one thing that had strung him up over the years and get it out of his system. One kiss and he could say good-bye to his first love.

“How you like to be kissed,” he said, his fingers curling around her head. She gasped quietly, arching her back, her gorgeous breasts pushing closer. His bones thrummed with lust for her.

“You do?” Her voice was soft as the question ghosted across her lips. It was chased by a small smile, and that felt like an invitation.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

She swallowed, the next word so low it was merely an imprint on the air. “How?”

“Like this.”

Gently at first, he pressed his lips to hers. His heart stopped, and his blood stilled, as if it simply had to make sense of this new input before it could reengage. Kissing Annalise again. It was as if a new map were being written, a new route sketched out. So this was what it was like to kiss her once more.