So, she’d made her decision.
Rina’s heart sank. The very fact that her sister had tried so often to reach her meant that she must have made up her mind. Sara had never known restraint. One message would never be enough.
With shaking hands, she started to dial her voice mail, only to nearly drop her phone when it vibrated in her hand. She gathered her startled thoughts together and hit the talk button.
“Sara?”
“Oh, thank goodness I got you this time. Where have you been? Actually, never mind about that. I just wanted to let you know, I’m coming back today—”
Sara’s voice faded out on a burst of static.
“Back today? What time?” Rina asked, the weight of guilt in her chest warring with looking forward to seeing her twin again.
“…so excited… I’ve been so silly but I reached my decision…coming to talk to Rey…getting married…can’t wait to see you—”
Rina’s heart dropped straight to her feet. She tried to pull words from her mind but nothing would cooperate, and then, on another burst of static, her link to her sister was gone. Rina’s legs turned to water and she sank onto the nearest piece of furniture, a wooden straight-backed chair. The cool of the wood seeped through the light material of her robe and into her skin and a shiver ran through her body. The phone fell from her hand to the tiled floor, the back cover bursting off and the battery scattering a short distance away.
Sara was coming back to marry Rey. She’d made her decision without knowing that her sister, her twin, had betrayed her in the worst way possible. Rina began to feel her hold on reality slip away. Not only had she done the worst thing imaginable by sleeping with her sister’s fiancé, she would now irrevocably lose them both.
It was time to come clean. First with Rey, then with Sara when she arrived. What she’d done was monstrous, and she could only hold onto the thin reed of hope that her sister could one day find it in her heart to forgive her for what she’d done. Sara had been clear that she hadn’t loved Rey, but that didn’t make what Rina had done last night any less despicable. Reynard had given her the choice to send him away. She’d chosen not to. Everything—every touch, every sigh, every starburst of pleasure—it was all her fault and it was time she became accountable.
She forced herself to her feet and went to the kitchen, gathering two mugs and pouring coffee for each of them. It was time to face the music.
Rey was sprawled over the bed on his stomach, his dark hair endearingly rumpled, his tanned skin a dark contrast to the white sheet that curved lovingly across his buttocks and obscured his legs from view. The fingers of one hand splayed across her pillow, much as they’d splayed across her body in those moments when they’d slept last night. A painful tug in her chest reminded her that he wasn’t hers to view.
She put both coffees on the bedside table and reached out a hand to wake him. The instant her fingers touched his shoulder, they tingled. Even now, knowing he was forbidden to her, knowing she had to deliver to him the painful truth about what she’d done—how she’d deceived him—her body still responded on an instinctual level.
She leaned over the bed and gave him a little shake. “Rey? Wake up, I need to talk to you.”
His dark lashes flickered on his cheek before he opened his eyes, lifted his head and rolled onto his side. The instant his gaze met hers, his eyes began to burn with the hunger she recognized, and couldn’t help but share. He reached out one hand to touch her face, his fingers stroking her cheek and coming to rest on her lips, still swollen from last night’s feverish kisses.
“Buenos dias.” He smiled and slid his hand around to cup the back of her head and pull her down for a kiss.
At the tenderness of his touch upon her lips, the burning sting of tears pricked at the back of Rina’s eyes. She squeezed her eyelids shut. She couldn’t cry in front of him. Not now. Somehow she found the strength to pull away and stand at the edge of the bed.
“Already tired of me?” Rey teased from within the untidy evidence of last night’s passion.
“No, it’s not that.” She grabbed his mug off the nightstand and passed it to him. “Here, have this.”