Page 37 of Sin

It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen Laurel in person. It’s better this way. Or so I keep telling myself. It sounds reasonable when I say it in my head. Responsible, even. The kind of decision a married man makes when he knows he’s standing too close to the edge of something he has no business wanting.

So I avoid her office. I send notes by email. Have Owen route policy questions through the proper channels. Let Jack handle anything that can’t wait, even though putting him anywhere near her still makes something ugly twist in my chest.

Better this way.

I repeat it enough that it almost starts to sound true.

I’m in the lab late, working on a side project that has nothing to do with Laurel Cross, which is exactly why I picked it. Then I hear something behind me. I glance over my shoulder and make eye contact with the very person I’ve been avoiding. Laurel stops just inside the lab, one hand still on the door, her expression shifting from surprise to something more guarded.

“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

If I had known she was going to walk in with her long, blonde hair in a high ponytail wearing black slacks and a dark red sweater that clings softly to her body and reminds me of cherries, wine, and several other things I have no right to think about, I would have gone home.

Her lips are pink, her cheeks slightly flushed.

She shifts her weight. “I can leave, if you want.”

I should say yes.

“There are plenty of stations,” I hear myself say instead.

Her eyes hold mine for one second too long. Then she nods and steps fully into the room. She crosses the lab, putting two workstations between us. It’s not enough.

“Working late?” I ask.

The question is pointless. Obviously she is. She’s here, carrying a stack of sketches and her laptop bag, looking like she came prepared to spend hours building something from nothing.

Still, I need to hear her voice.

“Yeah. I wanted to get a jump start on the next toy in the Seven Deadly Sins line.” She holds up a sketch. “Meet Envy.”

I take the page from her because she offers it. Not because I need to. Definitely not because it gives me an excuse to close some of the distance.

The design is different from Lust. Where Lust was sleek and direct, Envy is more elegant. More intricate. A little cruel in the best possible way. It’s aimed solely at a female audience, with dual stimulators built into a curved frame and a tension system that looks deceptively simple until I realize exactly what she’s done.

“You’ll need to adjust the angle here.” I tap the bottom curve of the sketch. “Otherwise the second stimulator won’t maintain consistent contact.”

She steps closer despite herself, looking down at the page. I feel her beside me before I see her. The soft scent of her perfume. Something sweet and warm beneath it. She leans in, studying where I’m pointing.

My fingers tighten around the paper.

“Not if I make this piece flexible,” she says.

I glance at her. “It’ll weaken the frame.”

“Not if I use the same material we tested on Lust.”

I look back at the sketch. Damn it. She’s right.

“It might work,” I say.

Her mouth curves. “Careful, Mr. Sinclair. That almost sounded like approval.”

“It was.”

Her eyes meet mine, and for a second, the lab disappears around us. The steel tables. The tools. The half-built prototypes. The two weeks I spent pretending distance could fix whatever this is. It didn’t. If anything, it made it worse.

I set the sketch down on the station between us. “You’ve been busy.”