EXCERPT
Beautiful Sin by Jennilynn Wyer, copyright 2023
“Can I ask you a question?”
He twists around and looks up at me. “Depends on the question. It’s a definite yes if you want to massage lower.”
My eye roll is intentional.
“Do you always have to ruin a moment with a jerk response—Don’t,” I quickly say when I see his eyes alight with humor, and I realize my verbal faux pas.
“I didn’t know we were having a moment.”
He flips fully over, taking me by surprise, and I collapse backward onto the soft ground with Tristan braced above me. Without thinking, I flatten my palms to his chest. I can feel the solid thump of his heartbeat beneath my fingertips. My gaze gravitates to his mouth. He’s not smiling anymore.
“Are you involved in organized crime? Like the son of a don or something?”
He bursts out laughing, and the sight is wondrous.
“Was that the question you wanted to ask?”
I nod, feeling foolish, but it was the only thing I could come up with to explain everything that has happened. I’m trying to make sense of things that are way outside my realm of comprehension. Guns. Violence. His abusive father. Aleksander. Why Tristan thinks my life may be in danger from the latter two.
“No, Red. Just because my family is Italian—”
Shit. Not what I meant.
“I swear that’s not what I was implying. It’s just…”
Flustered, I turn my head and look at the red bell flowers hanging down in clusters on the nearby bush, but he takes my face and forces me to look at him.
“Who are you?” I whisper, afraid to find out the real answer.
I want him to lie to me. Make up a story. Anything to maintain the illusion.
“Who are you, Synthia Carmichael?” he counters.
“I am no one.”
The effect those words have on Tristan is the same as Hendrix when I say it. He takes my throat and leans in. But unlike with Hendrix that night at the top of the stairs, Tristan’s touch is enticingly provocative, not punishing. Seems I like both.
“Don’t ever say that again.”
He moves his hand from my throat to my mouth and pulls at my bottom lip, then shoves his finger inside. Some innate instinct takes over, and I suck, stroking my tongue up his thumb. Black eclipses his irises, hiding the golden brown.
His voice is husky when he warns, “Careful, Red. I won’t ask for your permission. I’ll just take what I fucking want.”
I’m barraged with lurid promises of what it would be like to be taken by a man like him. Hendrix in the pantry had stoked those embers, but Tristan is the gasoline that will ignite those sparks into a wildfire.
And I would burn once again.
Which is why I push him off me and scramble to my feet, then run back inside the house and up the stairs to my room.
I’m good at running away. I’ve been doing it my entire life.
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