The Consequence (The Evolution of Sin 3)

He sighed gustily. “There, that is better already. Tell me what you are doing so that I can pretend I am with you, were I am supposed to be, instead of here in the office.”

“Emma and I are still shopping. I thought it would be overwhelming to furnish an entire, massive, house but Emma has this system where she catalogues everything we’ve bought into folders on her iPad so that we can always refer back to them and make sure everything is copasetic.”

“Excellent,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to live in a mismatched house. I cannot think of a worse fate.”

“You’re teasing me.”

“I am.”

“You miss me.”

“If you only knew how much, you would be here as quick as a cab could carry you.”

I bit my lip. “I’ve been desperate to do just that but I worried that I would be distracting you.”

Another sigh, this one short and punctuated with irritation. “You would. Especially as it has been three interminable days since I had you. No, the next time I lock eyes on you, Elle, it will be in a private place where I can take you properly.”

A little shiver shot down my spine as I sighed in longing.

“That little gasp you make when I’ve been teasing you and I finally dip between those sweet thighs,” Sinclair continued, in a voice that pebbled my skin and drew my nipples tight like a sluice of cool water. “I crave those little sighs and moans you make when you try to keep yourself still under my fingers. Such a good girl.”

“Sin,” I breathed, my thighs pressed together as I stood, helplessly turned on, in the middle of a furniture warehouse.

“Are you wearing a skirt today?”

I looked down at the dark grey of the raw silk dress I was wearing. It was a cold but snowless winter day in New York, so I paired it with thick black hold ups and knee high black leather boots.

“Yes.”

“Good, when you get off the phone I want you to go into the restroom, take off your panties and put them in your purse. Then you are going to touch yourself until you make those little noises I like so much but because I am not there to hear them, you will not come. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

“I have to go but I promise that I’ll be back tonight. Wait for me naked, on your knees by the door at seven o’clock, d’accord?”

Emma chose that moment to return. “Giselle, I need you to look at this gorgeous love seat they have. Neoclassical French. You’ll die. And I know you wanted to wait to pick out the bed with Sinclair but there is this huge back wrought iron affair that I know you would both love.”

“Ugh, Sin, I have to go,” I said into the phone.

“Get the bed.”

“Excuse me?”

There was a smile in his voice when he said, “Get the bed, Elle. I love the sound of wrought iron, it will be easy to tie you to the headboard that way.”

I swallowed thickly as his disconnection cut off his smoky chuckle.

“I have to use the restroom but when I come back, take me to the bed,” I told Emma. “And is there anyway we could put a rush on delivery?”

It was early evening before I got the chance to visit Cosima in the hospital, later than I usually went, so I wasn’t surprised that someone else was there to visit here. I was surprised, unpleasantly so, by whom it was though.

Elena sat in a chair pulled up beside the bed with Beau, her best and only friend. I hadn’t seen him since my welcome back party in the fall but previously, we had always enjoyed a amicable friendship. He was very beautiful, proudly gay and had an insane sense of fashion. I didn’t know what he made as a lawyer’s assistant but it was enough to keep him in Boss, Prada and, on the rare occasion that he dressed ‘down’, Lactose.

My lips were smiling before my brain could register that he was glowering at me. Actually, glowering was probably not a strong enough word to describe the absolute hatred that he emitted. It thrummed and throbbed through the room, making me somehow motion sick.

“What are you doing here?” he snarled, even though Beau was a smart man and it was obvious I was there to visit my potentially dying sister.

“Cosima,” I murmured.

“Get out.” That was Elena, her eyes still focused on our sister in the hospital bed. “You aren’t welcome here.”

I wanted to get out. I wanted to run out of the room, out of the hospital, out of the state and across the Atlantic back to France because if I let myself be propelled by the sheer force of her hatred, that is where I would have ended up. Far away from her.