“You are so beautiful, you take my breath away,” Sinclair murmured as he lay on his side in bed beside Remy, his head resting the pillow next to hers. “You have since the moment I saw you again in the hotel earlier.”
He’d inwardly thanked every god there was that she hadn’t faltered in coming back to his bedroom with him. Instead, he’d picked up her bag, and then the two of them had shared a comfortable silence as they walked hand in hand up the stairs to his suite of rooms.
Their gazes had remained locked as they slowly undressed, Sinclair’s cock hard and leaking by the time they were both naked. His gaze had continued to devour her delectable and naked body as he moved to the side of the bed and turned back the duvet in invitation. Again, Remy hadn’t hesitated to step forward and slide in beneath those covers. Sinclair had moved quickly around to the other side of the bed to join her.
“Kiss me, Sinclair. Please,” she encouraged achingly. “I was being truthful earlier when I said you’re everything I want. That you’re all I’ve ever or will ever want,” she added softly.
“You’re killing me,” he acknowledged shakily.
She eyed him quizzically. “Because I’m being honest about my desire for you?”
“Is it only desire?” he prompted gruffly.
She didn’t flinch from admitting, “You know it isn’t.”
Yes, Sinclair knew Remy more than desired him, and he knew that because he had no doubts she never had and never would try to hide a single one of her emotions from him. No matter how vulnerable that might make her.
Even now, he could see her unconditional love for him in the steady glow of her eyes.
Such honesty of emotion was…exhilarating. It made Sinclair feel ten feet tall, with the strength of a superhero. So much so, he could feel the hurt and disillusionment, the emotions that had driven him for so many years, crumbling away until they were nothing but dust at his feet to be blown away with the next soft breeze.
He raised his hand and smoothed the silky dark hair back from Remy’s temple. “I want to kiss you. I’m going to kiss you. I want to make love to you too. I’m going to make love to you.”
She looked at him searchingly for several long minutes. “But…?” she prompted.
He moved his arm beneath the duvet to curve it about her waist and pull her closer. How could he resist when Remy felt so warm and soft? “So intuitive,” he admired.
“Sinclair.”
He nodded acknowledgment of her gentle rebuke. “Before we do any of that, I need to share some things with you. I need you to know what happened. To understand why I am the way I am now. Why—why letting down my barriers and allowing myself to love someone again is hard for me.”
“I assumed it was because of Cathy.”
His nostrils flared. “In a way it is, but not in the way you might think.”
Remy reached up to gently touch his cheek. “I don’t want you to tell me anything if it’s going to hurt you.”
“No, I… I believe telling you the truth is going to finally set me free.”
He’d carried this secret, this burden, in silence and for so long now that even the thought of telling Remy made him feel as if a heavy weight was being lifted off his shoulders.
Although some of the remarks his brothers had made today indicated they might not have been as blind to his circumstances as he had always believed they were.
Remy nodded. “Then you definitely need to tell me.”
Where did he start?
At the beginning, you fool, came the immediate answer.
Remy had no idea what Sinclair was going to share with her, only that he obviously felt a need to do so. “Please, tell me,” she encouraged again.
The strong column of his throat moved as he swallowed. “You probably know that Cathy and I met at university when we were both eighteen. We dated exclusively for a few months before moving on to date other people. We remained friends during the next three years, and occasionally we’d hook up, I believe is the correct phrase.” His mouth twisted self-derisively.
“Yes.” Remy might never have been involved in any casual relationships herself, but she knew a lot of her uni friends had. And there was nothing wrong with that. It just hadn’t been something she was interest in doing herself.
How could it be, when she had been then, and still was now, deeply in love with the man lying beside her?
She couldn’t deny she was inwardly shocked that the subject Sinclair now wanted to talk about was his relationship with Cathy. It had been the last thing she’d been expecting.
He nodded. “We shared an apartment when we left uni. We weren’t living together as a couple, as most people assumed, we just shared the rent, bills, and space. But the close proximity meant we hooked up occasionally, sometimes for several months if neither of us had anyone else in our lives right then.” He shrugged. “It was during one of these times that Cathy became pregnant— Hear me out, please.” His arm tightened about Remy’s waist as she moved her head back in surprise.
She nodded abruptly. “Of course.” But she couldn’t deny she was stunned. She knew for a fact there hadn’t been any children in Sinclair and Cathy’s marriage.
“Cathy hadn’t been with anyone else for months, but we’d been hooking up a couple of times a week, so there wasn’t a single doubt the baby was mine,” Sinclair continued evenly. “We liked each other well enough, maybe even loved each other. The sex was enjoyable, and we’d obviously gotten along well enough to be able to share an apartment. Once we knew about the baby, we decided we should get married.”
This was so not the epic love story Remy had always believed Cathy and Sinclair’s relationship and marriage to be.
“Cathy lost the baby halfway through the second trimester,” he revealed huskily. “She fell down the steps of the subway on her way home from work one evening. They managed to save Cathy’s life, but the specialist told us she wouldn’t be able to have any more children.”
Remy’s bewilderment was increasing with every word Sinclair spoke. He and Cathy had always seemed so…so together as a couple.
“Cathy plummeted into a deep depression, one I feared she wouldn’t ever come out of.” Sinclair frowned. “She did eventually, but it took months of medication and therapy, reassurances from all of us, and a lot of time spent with and holding her gorgeous little niece.” His smile was rueful. “Before Cathy was anywhere near being back to her happy self.”
“You stayed married.” Remy knew that a lot of men in the same situation would have walked away once the reason for the marriage no longer existed.
“Of course I stayed fucking married,” he bit out harshly. “What sort of bastard do you think I am that I would abandon the woman who had carried and then lost my child before falling into a depression it took her months to recover from?”
Remy winced. “I worded that incorrectly. I know exactly what sort of man you are. Honorable. Steadfast. Loyal. Loving.”
He winced. “I sound like someone’s fucking dog.”
“Not at all.” She chuckled before sobering. “What I meant to say was the two of you chose to stay married to each other.”
Sinclair sighed heavily. “For my part, I thought I was doing the right thing. That losing the baby had not only brought us closer together, but forged an unbreakable bond. We still weren’t madly in love with each other, but I believed there was enough affection between us to remain married and make a life together.” He drew in a deep breath. “Our sex life was pretty sporadic during those brief months of Cathy’s pregnancy. It stopped altogether for six months after she lost the baby. It never really recovered, if I’m honest, and the last couple of years, it stopped completely,” he acknowledged heavily. “I thought, as we hadn’t been able to have children, that maybe it was just a natural progression of marriage. I never guessed, not once during the fourteen years that followed, that Cathy had been in love with someone else before we married and that she’d continued to be in love with them for all the years of our marriage.”
“I— What— Why— How—” Remy wasn’t just bewildered now, she was stunned. The woman Sinclair was describing didn’t sound anything like the Aunt Cathy she had known and loved for almost eighteen years of her life. But nor did Remy doubt, even for a moment, that Sinclair was telling her the truth.
“How do I know?” he finished harshly. “Because Cathy told me the truth when she asked me for a divorce a few days before she was kidnapped and murdered.”
“She wanted a divorce?” Remy gasped.
He nodded. “Why did she stay married to me for all those years? Because the person she loved was married to someone else and not free to be with her. Why did she ask for a divorce when she did? Cathy said it was because she couldn’t carry on living that lie a moment longer.” He snorted. “I’m more inclined to think it was because there was a chance the person she loved might finally be free of the marriage and Cathy wanted to make sure she was too. What did I feel when Cathy told me the truth? I felt fucking humiliated is how I felt,” he acknowledged bleakly. “I was thirty-six years old and realized I’d spent all of my adult life being married and faithful to a woman who had just told me she’d always been in love with someone else.”
Remy didn’t know what to say. There was nothing she could say that could ever take away the hurt and disillusionment Sinclair had suffered.
Except the truth. Something it seemed Cathy hadn’t ever given him. Remy could deal with how she, personally, felt about her aunt’s betrayal another time. Right now, Sinclair was the one who needed her honesty.
“I didn’t tell you any of that so you’d feel sorry for me,” he dismissed before she could speak. “I entered the marriage knowing Cathy and I weren’t deeply in love with each other.”
“But you didn’t know she was in love with someone else then, or when you decided to continue with the marriage.”
“No.” He winced. “It’s still humiliating to think of that, but I assure you, I’m well past any feelings of self-pity.” His expression softened. “I’ve only told you the truth now because I don’t want you to ever think there’s a specter in bed with us. That I could never fall in love with you because I’m still in love with Cathy. The truth is, we never were wildly in love with each other, but for those last few days, once I knew how she really felt about me and our marriage, I think I actually hated her for using me all those years,” he acknowledged heavily.
Remy wasn’t very happy with her aunt right now either. Sinclair was a proud and self-confident man, and Cathy had taken both those things away from him with her admission of being in love with someone else for all the years they were together.
“Why was she still living on the estate?”
“Because she hadn’t found anywhere in London she wanted to move into yet, and I didn’t want to be that man.”
Remy frowned. “The man who had just been very soundly kicked in the balls by his own wife?”
He sighed wearily. “The man who turns affection into bitterness.”
“You had every right to feel bitter.”
He shrugged. “After she died, I turned that emotion into vengeful anger instead.”
Remy looked at him searchingly. “Do your parents, brothers, or cousin know any of this?”
“I didn’t think so no, but the remarks they’ve made today make me think they might have known all along and were just saving my feelings,” he sounded rueful. “I’m pretty sure Mal knows. He’s pretty impervious to emotions, but he likes to observe and analyze them so he can understand them.” He released a heavy breath. “But I’ve never actually spoken directly about it to any of them. They all loved Cathy, and it isn’t an easy thing to admit, especially to your own family, that you’ve been taken for a fool for almost half your life,” he added bleakly.
“You weren’t the fool, Sinclair,” Remy assured him vehemently. “I hate to say this about Aunt Cathy, because she was good to me and I loved her a lot, but she was the fool. How could she not have loved you or ever appreciated what an amazing and gorgeous and sexy man she was married to?”
Sinclair half smiled. “I think from what you’ve said, you might be biased.”
“Oh, I’m a lot more than that.”
“I’m…getting there,” he admitted gruffly.
Remy widened her eyes at what those words might mean. “Really?”
“Darling, you’re not only gorgeous, but also warm and honest and so fucking hot, I think my cock has been hard and throbbing since the moment I first looked at you earlier at the hotel.” His smile was self-derisive. “It felt as if I’d received a taser to the chest that not only reengaged my libido, but also started the ice melting around my heart.”
“For me?”
His expression softened. “Only for you. I’ve had women come on to me during the last five years, but I haven’t wanted a single one of them. Nor did I physically respond to any of them in the way I do you.”
She moved closer to him. “Can we make love now?”
He chuckled. “I thought you would never ask!”