I hear myself whisper, “I guess I don’t laugh all that much anymore.”

A silence. He’s still looking at my lips as though waiting for them to smile again. “That’s a pity,” he murmurs. He lifts his finger and traces my lips, corner to corner. “I do like that laugh.”

I look at him, breathless.

I’ve never had a vice until him. His aroma hits my senses, making my mouth water. He’s my only vice. My only longing.

This longing, I bet he can see it in my eyes as he drops his hand. My smile is gone, but the feeling of his touch remains on my lips.

We stand here, and though I want and crave, we stand looking at each other like strangers.

As if you never knew his arms, and how they held you; his lips and how they pressed onto yours . . . always the corner of your lips first.

A breeze hits me, and I know that I have never hurt like this, or had so many regrets. I know that I might not be okay until the first part he touched forgets what it was like to feel his fingertips. But will I ever? I feel like his fingertip just branded my lips for another eternity.

A woman comes over to greet him. He clenches his jaw as if the interruption frustrates him.

“You stunningly beautiful man,” the woman gushes with a manicured hand fluttering up his hard chest. “I tell everyone I know you’re the only man who looks as stunning in his passport picture as he does in real life. Let’s do Monte Carlo again!”

She leaves and I find myself smiling in amusement. “Is that where you’ve been traveling?”

He shrugs disinterestedly. “Among other places, yes.”

“But not with Callan and Tahoe?”

“They had business. I traveled with other friends.”

“Socialites? And . . . playboys who have nothing to do?”

“People who wanted to get away for a while.”

Away far from me, I think sadly. I kick a leaf from the terrace floor and realize that somewhere during the night, my braid came undone. Now I try to keep my hair from flapping around me and tilt my head to study his face. “It felt like you didn’t even want to come back to Chicago.”

He’s studying me with equal intensity, watching me fail to catch the flying wisps of my hair. “Nothing to come back to in Chicago.”

“M4,” I tell him.

He reaches out to seize most of my flapping hair in one fist and holds it in control against my nape. “M4’s a big boy. I’ve taught it to stand on its own two feet without me.” He smirks. “At least for a little while.”

But you didn’t teach me how to survive the storm that is you, I think as I reach up and use both my hands to keep my hair still.

When he eases back and drops his hand, I shiver with the breeze—the loss of his body heat cooling me too fast.

“Cold?” he murmurs.

I shake my head—because it’s so much colder in Chicago in winter—but he heads to the end of the terrace, where there’s a pile of blankets.

I wrap my arms around myself and sit down on a couch near the fireplace and I try not to look at him like I have nothing else to do. Then I try not to look at the couple kissing on the other corner of the terrace. They’re making out by the railing. It’s not a full-on juvenile make-out but rather a long adult kiss that seems to go on and on and on.

I shiver and tighten my arms around myself. Malcolm brings a blanket and hands it over, silently looking at me.

He’s standing there, beautiful beyond the imagination. He oozes power and class, sophistication. He oozes testosterone and every woman inside has noticed him—even the ones here with other men. I notice that too. My stomach squeezes unhappily at that. I drop my gaze and I see his shoes as he lowers himself down next to me.

“You all right?” he asks me, pulling the blanket over me.

I shake my head, then nod, then want to groan when I realize maybe the wine is bubbling a little too high into my brain.

When he stretches his legs out, before I can think better of it, I lift the blanket. “Here, it’s cold,” I say, scooting to make room for him.

He grabs me by the waist and slides me next to him so he doesn’t have to move, then he lets go and leans back and doesn’t seem cold at all, the blanket idle by his waist as he sips wine and studies its contents.

The move was easy and natural . . . and Saint looks so calm right now. But I’m floored. He wants me near?

Holding the blanket a little higher with one hand, I watch him drink his wine out of the corner of my eye.

I think of all those long dreams I had, only to wake up alone in bed. Needing. Needing him. And now my shoulder touches his. I sit helpless. I should move away but I’m stealing this touch and I can’t stop myself.

He reaches out to grab a new wine from a passing waiter.

“Do you want to take a break upstairs or do you want to stay here for a while?” he asks me, his tone casual, but his deep stare is somehow not the least bit casual.

“I’m enjoying the terrace very much right now.”

He smiles. And god, that smile.

“Do you want to try this one? It’s a cabernet, ’sixty-eight.” He offers the wine to me.

“I’m heading into the woozy department, so maybe not,” I admit.

“Just a taste?” He watches me with those eyes full of mischief and dips his thumb into his glass. I watch as he lifts it. My heart stops when he rubs my lips with it and at the wet caress, desire drizzles over every corner of me, every shadowed place.

“What are you doing?” I ask breathlessly.

“Something I shouldn’t,” he husks out, his eyes dark and somber but with a devilish glint.

Holding my breath, I part my lips and suckle a little. His eyes darken even more, and my body contracts when the taste of him—Sin, the only guy I’ve ever wanted, ever cared for—reaches me. Opening up my every memory, my every need.

His voice like silken oak, he whispers, “One more, Rachel?”

We’re playing with fire and we both know it. I can see the devil in his eyes and I can feel the heat that’s going to turn me to cinders and I can’t stop it; I won’t stop it. I nod, but then, when a little fear screams at me that he’s going to hurt me, I say, to protect myself, “Just one.”

This time when he dips his thumb into the wine and brings it up, I suck it delicately, not wanting him to know how much I crave his taste more than anything.

I give it just a tiny suck, as if I’m only interested in the wine slipping down my tongue. But it’s his thumb, square, clean, familiar, that I want to bite into, that I want to kiss, taste, make love to. There’s a moan in my throat, trapped there. A need inside me, trapped there. A love inside me, so very trapped there he might never get to know how much, how very much I’ve come to love him.