“I didn’t mean to make you frown,” Sinclair said. “Santiago is a very rich man, with many things to take his mind off of it.”
Money couldn’t erase heartache, I wanted to say but didn’t. I had the feeling Sinclair would have argued with me and I was too curious about why he had brought me to this room to fight with him.
“Enough of that,” he said, somehow sensing the change of direction in my thoughts. “I have something much more enticing in mind at the moment. We only have a few minutes so do as I say.” He looked at me sternly but I could tell he was amused, aroused. “Stand against the wall.”
My belly was already fluttering with anticipation and I hastened to do as he asked.
“Spread your legs and clasp your hands behind your back.” His voice was like a physical caress. “Don’t move.”
He admired me for a moment.
“You really are the sexiest woman, Elle.” Swiftly, he moved to stand in front of me but, frustratingly, he didn’t touch me. “I’ve been hard all night thinking about what you are going to let me do to this sinful body of yours.”
My nipples beaded against the thin material of my dress and I arched forward slightly, willing him to notice. His lips twitched in acknowledgment but he ignored them.
“Have you been thinking about it too?”
I nodded, wishing my legs were together so I could alleviate the throbbing at my core.
“What did you imagine me doing?” Finally, he touched me. He ran a finger down my chest, between my breasts. “Touching you here?”
Lazily, he circled one breast with his finger, narrowing in closer and closer to my furled peak. My chest felt heavy with sensation and even though he had only just started caressing me, I was panting. I jolted when his fingers found both aching nipples and pinched. The flare of painful pleasure made me moan. Sinclair shifted on his feet uncomfortably and I was grateful to find evidence of his own arousal.
“Or maybe here?” he murmured, running one hand up the inside of my left leg. His fingertips trailed like fire up my sensitive skin and I whimpered slightly, begging him to touch me properly.
Heeding my silent plea, he crouched to his knees before me and lifted the front of my skirt to gaze at my lace-covered sex. I trembled when he pressed an open mouthed kiss to the skin just to the left of my heat.
“We were interrupted last time.” His hot breath fanned over me, making me shiver. “I was going to wait until we got back to the resort but I have to taste you.”
His mouth closed over my clit through the flimsy cloth and suckled. I gasped and pressed my hands against the wall to support my shaking knees. Pulling aside my panties, his fingers slicked across my wet flesh. He groaned against me, heightening the sensation of his tongue against my sensitive nub.
“You want this badly, don’t you?” he questioned, sitting back on his haunches to look at me. “You want to give yourself up to me.”
“Yes,” I breathed, nudging my hips into the fingers circling my entrance. “Please.”
I felt no embarrassment, only knee weakening lust. In that moment, I would have done anything for the orgasm looming large in the distance.
He smiled triumphantly and lowered his head to me, once again finding my clit but this time without the barrier of lace between us. His tongue laved at my bundle of nerves as two fingers shafted me, twisting to reach my sweet spot. I was so incoherent with lust that it took me a moment to realize that he was pushing something inside me other than his fingers. I looked down abruptly but his dark head blocked my view.
“Trust me,” he ordered hoarsely as a small egg shaped vibrator nestled inside me.
My legs tensed as I hesitated – I had never played with sex toys before – but his ministrations increased, the pace of his fingers devastating against my swollen flesh. The moment I relaxed, the device inside of me switched on, buzzing softly within me. I cried out loudly as my orgasm came crashing down and Sinclair reared up to swallow my loud cries, his fingers still strumming my clit. I had never tasted myself before but I found it surprisingly erotic and when he pulled away, I protested weakly before laying my head against his solid chest.
I squeezed my eyes against the overwhelming sensation and I was grateful for Sinclair’s large body holding me upright when he turned the toy off and my legs turned to noodles. My love life with Mark had never been anything close to as mind blowing as this and Sinclair and I hadn’t even had sex yet.
“Best. Party. I’ve. Ever. Been. To,” I said between shallow breaths as I recovered.
Sinclair’s dark chuckle ruffled my hair and I could feel his solid length pressed to my hip. “I have to agree with you.”
“I’ve never…” I hid my face against his chest and murmured, “I’ve never done that before.”
“Which part?” he asked dryly. “Had a tryst at a party, a man kiss you here,” his fingers gently swept over the curls between my thighs, “an orgasm?”
“All of the above,” I whispered.
Gently, he pulled my face away from him and took my flaming cheeks between his palms. His blue eyes were darkly serious. “You are beautiful. I didn’t realize how inexperienced you are.”
It was a vague probe into the state of my virginity, I knew. I wondered if it would matter to him, if it would make him change his mind. I didn’t take the bait.
“Oh.” I squeezed his arousal in my hand, causing him to hiss loudly. “Do I have time to take care of this?”
He raised a brow and I bit the inside of my cheek, wondering if I was being too bold but he smiled reassuringly and smoothed my hair in a surprisingly tender gesture that seemed so at odds with the in-command man of minutes before.
“Unfortunately, our ten minutes are up though I’m sorely tempted to forget business and whisk you back to my hotel room right now.”
I grinned and interlocked my hands behind his neck, pushing up against his erection. “Why don’t you?”
His eyes were electric with suppressed desire.
“Another thirty minutes, tops, and we will leave.” He pulled his phone out to check the time and grimaced. “We’ve taken too long already.” Swiftly, he leaned down to readjust my underwear and smooth the skirt of my dress. “Come on.”
“But, um.” The sex toy was still inside me. “Aren’t you forgetting about, erm, something?”
One eyebrow rose coolly. “I don’t believe so.”
Oh, okay.
So, he wanted me to walk around the party with a sex toy inside of me?
I thought about arguing with him but his aloof, almost daring expression and my warm glow dissuaded me.
“Okay, we should hurry to your meeting,” I said, taking his hand to lead him out the door.
He might have chuckled but as soon as I opened the door, the sounds of the party reanimated. After a minute of indecision at an oddly shaped corridor, he took the lead from me, gently leading me to the kitchen where he thought we might find Katarina.
“I’ll be in the room next to the library if you need me,” he said as we paused to the side of the kitchen doors, out of the path of the hustling wait staff. At my blank look, his lips twitched. “Kat will know the way.”
I nodded but the idea of being without Sinclair in the twisty-turvy house was unpleasant. Unlike my siblings, I had never been particularly good with large groups of people and outside of art showings and gallery openings I rarely went to parties.
“You’ll be fine,” he assured me, reading my thoughts. “You and Kat will get along brilliantly. Think of me, when I’m gone?”
There was a devastating twinkle in his eye, as if he knew something I didn’t. I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously but he only shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. When he turned to leave, he started to whistle. I watched him move through the crowded room with the grace and power of a wild cat, his broad shoulders straight and his long legs eating up the space. Women turned to watch him but he remained oblivious and I knew almost none of them would approach him, his carefully
controlled expression, almost cruel due to his hard features, would discourage even the most ballsy women.
With a sigh, I turned away from him. Sinclair was the sexiest man I had ever met, the kind of man that only inhabits women’s darkest fantasies and Hollywood movies and yet, here he was with me. It was enough to make any girl feel like a million dollars. Of course, my recent orgasm didn’t hurt either.
Chapter Six.
Santiago’s collection of art was staggeringly comprehensive and outrageously expensive. A room three times the size of my studio apartment in Paris was dedicated to the works of renowned Mexican painters like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo but it also paid tribute to local artists and some contemporary American talents such as Julie Combal.
“I know I’m in the minority, but I find Kahlo’s drawings almost more haunting than her paintings,” I murmured as I took in her 1926 sketch Accident, which depicted the artist bound in a body cast besieged by images of the car accident that had left her with multiple broken bones and life-long pain.
“Honestly?” Katarina had a thicker accent than her brother that made all her words run together like a song. “I prefer the American style.”
I smiled at her, once again struck by her likeness to Cosima. Though Katarina was not particularly attractive, she shared the same effervescent spirit that kept me smiling and laughing.
“My brother is much more interested in the arts than I am.” She shrugged. “I find it hard to understand beauty in living things. Planets are much easier.”
We moved along to another image, this one a satirical reimagining of a Del Montte ad by contemporary Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas.
Kat gave me a sidelong look. “I think we have been friends long enough now – what has it been, ten minutes? – for me to ask you about Sinclair.”
“What about him?”
She laughed at my coyness and shrugged. “If you don’t want to discuss him, I understand. But as I understand it, you are here alone. Sometimes it’s just nice to talk to a fellow woman about a boy, no?”
So true. I had been itching to call Cosima all day but there was no way she could really understand the magnitude of my holiday affair without knowing anything about the gorgeous, composed man that was Sinclair. Kat was a gift really, given to me by the man himself. I wondered if he had thought about just that when he paired us together.
“We met on the plane coming down.” I flushed remembering it. “Planes make me nervous, to say the least, and I was making a fool of myself. Sinclair was nice enough to keep Misery company.”
She looked me up and down clinically, with a critical eye that only women possess. “I would say he was only too happy to help.”
“Trust me, it’s the makeup.” I laughed.
Katarina pursed her lips, a habit that she and her brother shared. “Beautiful and bashful. I can see the appeal.”
“Oh stop embarrassing her, Kat.” Cage Tracy’s familiar French melody had me turning around to face him.
He looked dashing in white silk shirt that contrasted with his developing tan and impenetrable black hair but it was his smile that made him so disarming and I could tell from Katarina’s startled little gasp, that she thought so too. The murmur of voices around us spiked slightly at his arrival, but he was still relatively obscure enough that no one bothered him for autographs and I realized it was his ungodly beauty that drew their attention more than his fame.
Cage gave me a warm kiss on the cheek. “Though she does have a point, you look absolutely edible tonight, Elle.”
I swatted his compliment out of the air but the feel of the toy between my legs was a constant reminder of just how desirable Sinclair found me. “You are such a tease.”
“Me?” He faked horror. “How dare you? Kat, vouch for my character please.”
“I certainly will. Cage only ever acts like a bad boy if someone leads him astray, isn’t that right?”
I looked over my shoulder as the statuesque blonde who had spoken came up beside Cage and took his arm. She was very beautiful but in a sharp, almost menacing way like something from a Grimm fairytale. Her blonde hair was almost white it was so pale and her frosty eyes found mine instantly, regarding me with cool reserve.
“You must be, Elle.” She presented her hand to me as if it were a gift.
I was usually pretty easy going with people but there was something about the studied haughtier of this woman that set my teeth on edge. I didn’t take her hand but I did smile at her, thinly. “I must be.”
Cage guffawed despite her withering look his way. “And this is Margot Silver, Sinclair’s executive assistant.”
She looked too glamorous by far to be someone’s assistant but I let that slide. Katarina cast a furrowed glance at Margot’s slim arm resting possessively on Cage.
“Margot, maybe you would like to look at Diego Rivera’s works with me while we get to know each other better?” I asked, my voice carefully devoid of anything but sugar sweetness.
Her pale eyes widened slightly but she bared her teeth in something like a smile. “Of course.”
I winked at Katarina as we walked away and Cage turned to regale her with a funny story. She seemed surprised but quickly blushed and mouthed “thank you” over his shoulder. I didn’t know what chance the sweet girl had with the rock star, but I was willing to do my part to foster the flames.
“So, Margot.” I smiled demurely at her as we came to a stop out of hearing distance from the others. “Why don’t you say what you have to say?”
Her large eyes widened and my candor exposed a moment of vulnerability. It took her a second to bare her fangs. “Sinclair has a long term partner.”
She waited for me to react but I only blinked at her and crossed my arms. If she had expected Sinclair to lie to me then she didn’t know him as well as she thought.
“Listen.” She sighed sharply and adjusted her stance on her ridiculously high and absurdly lovely heels. “Despite what you may think, I’m not warning you off to be a bitch. I’m doing it because Sinclair, for all his coolness, is still a man and any man’s weakness is a beautiful woman. He’s had a rough life and the last few years have been good to him, he doesn’t need some random strumpet messing that up for him.”
Okay, even though I objected to her use of the word ‘strumpet’, I had to admire her nettle and loyalty. Sinclair deserved people like this in his life and even though Margot Silver was far too beautiful and cold for me to genuinely like, I tipped my hat to her.
“I appreciate that.” I dropped my defensive pose and ran a hand through my hair in frustration. “But I have no designs on Sinclair other than as a friend. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“A friend?” She snorted. “Sure.”
Fair enough.
“Our friendship will end when the vacation does,” I amended.
Margot stared at me for a long minute, seemingly taking note of everything from the color of my hair to the shape of my fingernails. “See that it does. Under other circumstances, we could have been friends.”
I inclined my head even though I didn’t really share her feelings. It wasn’t her fault, I thought as she walked away, that she had touched on those icky feelings within me, on the idea that I was being a whore, a home wrecker.
As I made my way back over to Cage and Katarina, I gasped. The egg inside me began to vibrate, jolting my dozing nerve endings with a burst of electricity.
“Are you okay, Elle?” Cage asked as I came to a sudden stop two feet away.
I nodded, my throat working past the moan in my throat. Surreptitiously, I searched the room for Sinclair but he was nowhere to be found. How was he doing this?
“Did Margot put the fear of God into you?” Cage asked, hiding his smile behind his glass of whiskey. “She can be a fearsome woman.”
“Evidently,” I said dryly. “Thanks for the warning before I wandered off with her.”
He laughed. “I had a feeling you knew what you were doing.”
&nbs
p; I smiled slightly and subtly rubbed my legs together, trying to ease the sensations at my core. The conservative side of me, the one that had always dominated, urged me to go to the bathroom and remove the toy while the other side, the one embraced by my more passionate twin siblings, delighted in the sensation of being teased unbeknownst to the crowd of people milling around the multi-million dollar mansion. It was the cherry on top of an utterly decadent night. The only thing that would have made it complete was Sinclair.
As if summoned by my desire, a warm hand slid over my bare shoulder and down my back possessively. “Have you been thinking about me?” he whispered darkly in my ear as the vibrator ceased its motions.
Cage seemed taken aback by his friend’s grin but he recovered quickly with a wink at me. “It’s a good thing you came when you did, Sin, I was just thinking about asking your date here to leave with me.”
I rolled my eyes but Sinclair remained unmoved, his voice cool. “I should have known you would find her tonight.”
“In that dress? She’s hard to miss.”
I reached out to Kat who had taken a step away from us and lightly tugged her closer to me. “Katarina has been the most wonderful guide.”
“Of course she has.” Cage squeezed her shoulder like a brother would. “Our Kat’s a real gem.”
She blushed but Cage was too oblivious to notice how she reacted to him and when I looked up at Sinclair to see if he noticed his eyes were on mine, twinkling with mirth.
My mouth fell open when the vibrator started again, this time on a higher intensity. I wobbled slightly and Sinclair smoothly tucked me under his arm.
“I think Elle has had too much to drink.” I frowned at him as he spoke – I had only finished two glasses of wine – but he looked down at me with unmasked desire and I bit my lip. “I should be getting her home.”
“How did the meeting go?” Cage asked as he leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek in farewell.
“As can be expected. Santiago assures me the deal will go forward as planned.”
I tuned them out in order to say goodbye to Kat but when I tried to get out from under Sinclair’s arm, he tightened his hold. He did stop the vibrator though and I was grateful when the thick fog of desire cleared slightly from my thoughts.
The Affair (The Evolution Of Sin #1) Page 6
