Page 65 of Ruthless Sin
I pick up the coffee.
I have never brought a woman here. This place is not casual. Dante brought Cassia when he’d already decided she was his. Renzo brought Isabella the same way. I am not thinking about what it means that I’m here now.
I heard about both from Marco, who thought it was the funniest thing he’d seen in years. A man sitting on a boutique settee while a woman tries on dresses Marguerite picked. Marco did the impression for a week.
I’m sitting here now.
Mila is behind that curtain and Marguerite is in there with her and Marguerite’s voice comes through the curtain, soft instruction in pieces, and the small sounds of fabric, and Icannot breathe. My cock has been half-hard since she came through the door and I watched her eyes go to the exits.
Now she’s in a room I paid for putting on a dress I haven’t seen yet and I’m gripping the coffee cup so hard the ceramic is warm against my palm and I am one breath from standing up.
Don’t stand.
She is behind a curtain in a room I paid for and that is not an invitation and I know that.
I drink the coffee.
“Hooks on the wall on your left. Curtain on your right. No one comes through that curtain until you call me back. Sleeves first. Yes. Like that. No,ma chère, I am not going to look. I am at the door of the closet picking up the second one in case this is wrong. Tell me when you are zipped.”
The curtain holds.
“Brava,” Marguerite says through the curtain.
Well done.
The curtain opens.
Marguerite comes out first. She crosses to the three-panel mirror and adjusts the angle of the side-mirror a hair.
She turns.
“Come,ma chère.”
Mila comes out.
The dress is the color of raw ochre. The color I reach for when I want something to look alive. The color I have been chasing in paint for years.
Cristo.
My cock goes hard against my zipper before I’ve had time to look at her properly, before I can name the color or the cut or anything about it, and then I do look, and three years of keeping my hands to myself goes thin as paper.
The ochre sits against her skin like it was ground for her specifically. Warm amber-gold at her throat, catching light ather collarbone, following the line of her shoulders down to where the fabric skims her waist.
Her waist.
I have been keeping my eyes on the road for weeks because I didn’t trust what I’d see if I stopped. I know now. The line of her from shoulder to hip, the waist I didn’t let myself look at. I can’t unknow it and I don’t want to. My cock is fully hard against my zipper and I am not moving.
Her throat is bare above the collar, the chain at the hollow, and I want my mouth there. I want my hands on that waist. I want to follow the line from her throat to her collarbone and keep going and I am gripping the armrest hard enough to feel the wood grain.
I am halfway off the settee before I catch myself.Fuck.Sit. Sit down. Do not walk across this room.
Mila looks at the mirror.
Her chin lifts. Her shoulders don’t flinch. Her hands at her sides are open, which I have watched at the gearshift, at the thermos, pulling the bow across a violin, and her right hand rises slow and spreads flat against her own collarbone and fuck I am off the settee before I know it.
I sit back down.
Her hand drops.
