Prologue.
Sinclair
Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Blaise Pascal was a fucking genius. Then again, he was French and my countrymen knew a thing or two about being in love.
Therefore, it should stand to reason that I may have inherently known a thing or two about love as well but the idea that love could outweigh logic had never occurred to me. It could have been because I couldn’t remember much about my birth parents, my Roma mother and her French husband who both died mere months apart when I was seven years old. Willa and Mortimer Percy had adopted me when I was sixteen but our family was one of deliberate choice, calculated divination. They loved me in their own way, I think, but it was a secondary emotion. A result of pride and cultivation, the way Frankenstein might have loved his monster.
Then there was the love of Elena Lombardi.
She loved me for the reasons I loved myself: my drive and work ethic, my reasonability and sophistication. I enjoyed her company and coveted her mind; the twisted turns it took to shortcut the obstacles in our road to success. She was dark beneath the veneer, hiding away the same inherent ruthlessness I had been born with, and even though we never spoke about the deep-seated ugliness that poverty had wrought on our souls, it was a comfort to both of us just knowing it existed.
The truth is, we saw in each other the ideal partner for our ideal selves and for years, it was enough because it never occurred to me to ask for more, for the kind of love my kinsmen waxed poetic about…
… and then I saw her.
It wasn’t love at first sight. That implies my response to her was subtle and warm, something easy and quintessentially human.
No, the moment I saw Giselle Moore sitting curled up and vulnerable with sickness and fear in the first class cabin of that plane, my humanity - the class and refinery that I had cultivated for years - sloughed off me like molted skin and revealed the heart of the animal I secretly knew myself to be.
My heartbeat roared in my ears and my groin tightened with a desire so fierce, I almost doubled over. Only one thought reverberated through my head like a fucking mantra.
Take her.
Take her.
Own her.
I felt the pulse of the words in my blood as it scorched through my body and ricocheted off the walls of my heart. I wanted her. It was primal and fiercer than anything I’d ever experienced before. It took every ounce of civilization I had left in me to approach her politely, to keep my twitching hands in my lap instead of spreading them all over her luminous pale skin.
At first, she was reserved with me, barely allowing her eyes to slide my way. I took the time to visually devour her, noting how the golden freckles across her shoulders and cheeks contrasted with the olive tint of her complexion, how her auburn hair glowed like copper under the dim cabin lights. And when she finally met my gaze, I stared hard into her eyes, wide and pure as silver dollars.
I found myself jealous of her smiles, wanting to own them for myself. When I leaned over her, the smell of her lavender and honey fragrance intoxicated me. The soft brush of her aroused breath against my skin nearly made me lose control.
I knew even as I left her behind on the plane that meeting her had changed my life but I never could have guessed how much.
I wasn’t a man that believed in fate but when she showed up at The Westin in Los Cabos, I couldn’t say I was surprised. It solidified the proposal that had waited poised on the tip of tongue since I had first laid eyes on her– a weeklong affair to purge myself of this egregious need for her. Those torturous hours while I had waited for her answer were some of the longest of my life and they set the precedent for the weeks of indecision that followed, horrific bouts of self-loathing peppered with moments of such clear, bright joy that they obliterated all memory of shame and hatred.
Now, here I was, rearranging everything I had always known and thought I wanted, to make space for my siren, my Elle. The mantra that had infiltrated my head like a siren’s song from our first meeting had only intensified, sunk into my bones and saturated my blood. I couldn’t take a breath without feeling her in the previously unused muscles of my heart.
Look at me; she’d even turned me into a fucking poet, a true Frenchman when I’d forsaken my homeland years ago.
I was jeopardizing my reputation and therefore my career, and polarizing the only family that had ever really cared for me. Worst of all, I was forcing the love of my life to choose me over her sister.