Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)

Until he spun around and drank in her living room for the first time.

Her husband was all he saw. A framed photo on her built-in bookcase of him holding a handful of maps under his arm. Wincing, Michael connected the dots. In the picture, Julien stood outside the map shop they’d passed last night.

Another image showed him drinking coffee, looking studious. Another everyday moment.

Michael’s eyes roamed to the low table that held a frame of her husband riffling through postcards at a sidewalk dealer. Cringing, Michael realized he’d walked along the Seine with her yesterday, maybe even past that dealer.

Her hand ran up his arm. It was warm and comforting, but right now he didn’t want it.

His reaction was emotional, not rational. It was passionate, not thoughtful. He could have devised a million logical explanations to settle his brain and cool his nerves. Instead, raw emotions pricked at him.

“There’s nothing I can do with you that you haven’t done,” he bit out.

“Don’t say that,” she said gently.

He gestured broadly. “He’s everywhere. His imprint is everywhere,” he said, and he felt like an ass. He turned around, his eyes narrowed. “And I feel like a complete fucking schmuck for saying that and feeling that.”

“You’re not,” she said, shaking her head, her voice soft. “But your imprint is everywhere too. I have an entire photo album of our year together in Las Vegas. I’ve held on it. I took it to university. I even looked at it the other day before you came here, along with the photos I took of you at Caesars. One of those photos is on my desktop right now as I decide how I want to frame it or crop it.”

He dragged a hand through his hair, and for the first time wondered if Julien had felt this way too. If he’d been crazed enough to want to have this woman all to himself, to erase her history, and mark her only with him. Michael would have wholly understood. Because this intense need to be her only, as selfish and single-minded as it was, gnawed at him.

“Doesn’t that matter to you?” she asked, frustration in her rising voice. “Knowing how much you mattered to me? I carried you with me in the only way I could. But Michael, this is unfair. This is where I have lived for the last several years. Do you want me to pretend I didn’t have a life when we were apart? Should I have hidden all the photos? Tucked them away in a drawer and whitewashed my home?” She tapped her chest. “This is me. This is who I am. I’ve been married, and I don’t want to have to apologize for it over and over.”

Ah hell. He was a complete fucking jerk for feeling this way. He lowered his gaze to the cranberry red carpet with geometric patterns, poised to grovel, embarrassed at his ragged jealousy. But then a thought crashed unbidden into his mind, and he couldn't help but wonder if Julien had fucked her on this carpet. A wave of self-loathing slammed into him. He was envious of a dead man. He was eaten up by the fact that she’d had a husband. Who. Had. Died.

Michael was alive.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, though he knew that wasn’t enough.

She placed a hand on his arm. “Just because I cared for him, doesn't mean I can’t feel for you. You seem to forget that I was in love with you before I met him, and yet I was still able to love him and be happy. So I wish you would stop thinking I’m incapable of this. That I can’t feel so much for you. It’s not fair.”

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was too stubborn. Too narrow. But this woman – she was it for him. She was all for him. And that feeling inside him, of never wanting to be without her, made him rash.

“Do you still love him?” His throat was raw as he gave voice to his darkest fear.

“Michael,” she said, “a part of me always will. But I’m falling in love with you now.”

He swallowed, collecting himself. He drew a deep breath, trying to let it out while taking in what she’d just said. But his chest churned with black and white and gray emotions, and he didn’t know how to wrestle them to the ground and have them make sense. Instead, he spoke carefully. “Your home is beautiful. But I can’t be here.”

“But this is where I live. I want to show it to you,” she said, imploring.

He shut his eyes. “I know. But I need to go. And I would like to spend the night with you elsewhere.”

At the hotel he made love to her deep into the evening, letting the sex blot out the blackness in his heart, the ugly jealousy in his soul. For so long he’d been defined by loving her. It was who he was. He didn’t know how to take only half of her heart when she had all of his completely.

He didn’t want to be her second best, and yet he felt like the runner-up. The whole truth of his love for her boiled down to this—she could have chosen him in Marseilles, and she didn’t.

Maybe it was unfair to feel that way, but it was true. He’d put his heart on the line then, and if she’d wanted him, she could have called off the engagement and they could have run away together.