Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(51)

“I will. I am. Oh God, please.”

As he f*cked her like that, slow and unhurried, she moved with him, shifting her hips, aligning her body, sliding against him. He cupped her tits, squeezing, then pinched the nipples.

She gasped as he tugged at them, and that drove him. Burying himself deeper in her, he gripped her hair in his hand.

“Yes,” she said, urging him on, and he knew she meant both the f*cking and the tugging. He wrapped those gorgeous red strands around his fist. “Hard. Pull hard.”

Yanking her hair, he pulled her head back, raising it off the pillow.

“Oh God, yes, like that, like that.”

“You like it rough?”

“With you, I do. So rough.”

He gave it to her the way she wanted. Driving in deep. Gripping her hard. Fucking her relentlessly.

With each thrust, she cried in pleasure. With each pinch, she groaned his name. With every nip of his teeth, she gushed.

And he was consumed. Utterly consumed.

Sex with her was a revelation. It was as if he’d discovered life on another planet, to know that it was possible to have this kind of sex. Savage yet tender. Cruel but gentle. To know she wanted it the same way. Her sounds told him she wanted to feel it everywhere. In her body. On her skin. In her heart. Oh God, he f*cking hoped she wanted him in her heart. So deep in her heart that he could never be removed. Always. Like he was the end of the line for her. Just like she was for him.

Love me, he wanted to say. Just f*cking love me.

But he couldn’t say that. Not now. Not yet. Instead, with her hair tight in his hand, and her throat exposed, he gripped her shoulder, digging his thumb into her collarbone.

“Like that, just like that,” she cried out, this time in French, in that heated way she spoke when she was close to the edge. Her * clenched around his shaft, so tight, so f*cking perfect.

“And this?” he asked, biting down on her shoulder. Love me.

“Oh God.”

He thrust harder. Brought his lips to the shell of her ear. Spoke harshly. “Do you want me to leave marks? Ones that say you’re mine? You’re f*cking mine. I want to f*ck you till you’re mine.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” she urged, and he let himself believe she was answering his greatest wish. I’m yours.

He pressed his lips hard to her neck, his teeth biting down, digging in as she went crazy beneath him, rocking and thrusting and losing all control as she cried out and came undone in a fevered frenzy.

Then his balls tightened, and his vision blurred. The rarest pleasure, the kind that came from total carnal bliss, surged in his bones, igniting him until he came long and deep inside the woman he loved.

He just f*cking loved her.

And it was so goddamn hard not to tell her, in her language or his. He tried to swallow the words, to choke them down, but the moment got the better of him. “I’m so mad about you. So completely crazy for you. All the time. I can’t stop this feeling,” he whispered, barely scratching the surface of how he felt.

She tensed all over. Then she scooted out from under him, her hands on his chest, her eyes meeting his. “You speak French. You speak perfect French.”

Fuck.

He hadn’t meant to say it in French. He hadn’t meant to let on he’d understood everything he’d heard her say in her native tongue.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


Sixteen years ago

As he rounded the corner of the long hallway in the languages building, he opened the note yet again. The one he’d found scattered in his driveway, wreckage from his father’s wallet. Like a treasure hunter, Michael had salvaged it, clutched it in his hand, gripped it tight that night, like a precious thing. And it was. He’d held onto it ever since. He probably always would.

He folded the note and tucked it back into his wallet when he reached room 403.

Freshman year French.

He wrapped his hand around the knob, opened the door, and roamed his eyes across the sea of desks. Nerves whipped through him. He wasn’t a natural at languages. He was good at business, at strategy. Those were his skills. But he’d taken a night class during his senior year of high school, and he was committed to seeing this through. He wasn’t so romantic that he believed his father had left a dying wish. His dad had no notion that he was going to be killed and surely if he had, he wouldn’t have left such a practical note.

Michael was wise enough to understand what the note was—one of the many reminders his father had left for himself. Get milk. Pick up Shannon at 6:15. Remind Michael to study for math.

But even so, this reminder was bigger. More important than a day-to-day item on the to-do list. This note was part of the plan—the plan he’d discussed and hatched with his dad. The plan to apply to school in France, to be with Annalise, to make a life with her.

He hadn’t been able to get into college in France, and she’d had no luck in the United States.

But he could keep trying. Because…there was always a someday.

“Reminder: Tell Michael he’s signed up for French classes in the evening. A gift to him. He needs to learn the language for when he goes to school there. He needs to learn French for Annalise. So he can find his way back to her.”

That was it. That was all. But that was enough. His father’s wish for him. Dead or alive, it didn’t matter. Michael would fulfill it.