The Secret (The Evolution of Sin 2)

“I don’t resent the twins, I never have and I never could. They did everything to get us out of there, things that I don’t know and probably never should.” I hesitated, unsure if I should tell him the truth.

He flipped the completed crepe onto a waiting plate, moving with machine-like efficiency. His silence was a gift. I knew he wouldn’t judge me because when it came down to the two of us, Sinclair was my musician, skillfully plucking and strumming until I produced just the right tune. I may make the sound, but how could he blame me when he had orchestrated it?

“I resent Elena and Mama sometimes.”

Flip, slip, and the sizzle as butter landed in the pan.

“Mama for staying with Seamus for so long, for loving him when she should have left him. And Elena… We stopped being sisters when the twins left.”

I wanted to tell him about Christopher, about what had happened between the three of us, how Elena had never forgiven me. But it wasn’t really my story to tell, at least not to Elena’s present partner, whatever he may have meant to me.

Sinclair sprinkled brown sugar over a perfectly cooked crepe, folded it and squeezed a sliced lemon easily in his fist over the top. He placed the plate in front of me but snagged my wrist before I could pick up the fork. With nimble fingers, he plucked the elastic off my wrist and moved behind me to gently gather my messy, still slightly damp hair between his hands. I shivered when cool fingers dragged over my heavy pulse. When my hair was secure in a ponytail, he still lingered and the only sound in the entire apartment was my heavy breathing. My head spun and I realized that I was still pretty intoxicated.

“Eat, Giselle.”

I sighed but did as he told me, watching from the corner of my eye as he cleaned up the kitchen and ate his own rolled crepe standing up.

“How did you become interested in art? It doesn’t seem like your childhood was conducive to frivolity or creativity.”

“No, but I did it anyways. I used sticks and dirt, made rock formations and even got my hand on a canister of spray paint. We only had standard grade lead pencils and printer paper, sometimes something a little nicer if Seamus had done well at the tables. Cosima sent me my first paint set for my nineteenth birthday, this incredibly beautiful box of Sennelier oil paints. It was one of the only things I took with me to L’École des Beaux-Arts.”

“That makes me unspeakably sad,” he said simply.

I shrugged because it didn’t matter to me anymore, I wouldn’t let it. “It affected me a lot. I didn’t know who I was or what I was allowed to do when opportunities eventually came my way. I felt unworthy, I think.”

“You know better now.”

“I do,” I agreed.

“Whatever else happened in Mexico, good or bad, you helped me lock into place.”

“That makes me unspeakably happy,” he murmured, as if my words weighed heavily in his chest and compressed his lungs.

His phone began to ring but I wasn’t startled or surprised. It only seemed right that our intimacy would be interrupted. I turned away before he could answer it and made my way to the bathroom.

“Elena,” I heard him murmur before I was fully out of earshot.

I braced myself against the sink basin on wobbly arms and scowled at the mess of a redhead in the mirror. After so many years staring at my reflection and seeing only the ways in which I didn’t look like my gorgeous siblings, I was happy to find my own beauty lurking beneath the smudged mascara and sticky hair. It was impossible to view myself as ugly, as average, when a man like Sinclair found me so attractive.

I peeled off my clothes and turned the shower on to scalding hot. The pounding spray further sobered me and I focused on the individual pricks of water against my skin instead of the gorgeous dilemma waiting for me somewhere in the apartment. After scrubbing myself from head to toe in lavender scented product, I stepped from the shower and into the steamy room.

Wiped clean, I felt raw and unprepared to face Sinclair. I desperately wanted to go to him as I was, naked and cooling like an un-iced cake. I wanted him to paint me in his sugary kisses and color me pink with desire.

Standing in the middle of the bathroom, my hand found its way over my breast and down to my sex. I moved my hand through the downy curls and hissed as I found my clit. I braced one hand on the sink and stared at the slowly clearing mirror as I played with myself.

A reel of memories from our Mexican affair played in my mind; flashes of myself spread open and shockingly wet, the taste of his arousal on my tongue, the sharp string of a slap on the thin skin of my ass.

I was slick and throbbing, my breath fogging up the mirror again. I stretched two fingers past my entrance and moaned slightly, taking my lip between my teeth, biting it like Sinclair would do if he were kissing me, demanding me to come for him. My fingers were too small, too gentle on my skin and I ached for the precision of his touch, the painful pinch and sexual pull of his hands on my body. I groaned again, loudly.

“Elle?”

His voice exploded against my skin, showering me with hot shards of desire. My fingers worked faster.

“Elle?” He was closer, just outside the slightly open door to the washroom. “Is everything okay?”

My eyes drooped with the heaviness of my arousal but I forced myself to keep them open and on the door in the mirror. I was rewarded with the sight of him coming into the room, the steam swirling around his legs and kissing his skin with dew. I shuddered violently and pinched my clit hard between my fingers. I was so close.

He stood there, shocked, taking in the view of my pink sex peeking out from under my slightly bent bottom and the hand running over it eagerly. I saw his throat swell and bob as he swallowed hard.