Forbidden Lust: 3 (Lust for Life) (2 page)

Thankfully, Joy turned at that moment and told them it was
time for everyone to take their places. Oscar hung back and let everyone file
out of the room ahead of him. He stood outside the door at the end of the cool
hallway and took a moment to observe the people who were essentially his
surrogate brothers as they moved away from him, talking and laughing and
enjoying the moment the way they always did.

Diego had taken Oscar home with him after their first day of
kindergarten as if he’d been a stray puppy, and his parents and siblings had
happily accepted him into their chaotic clan. The chaos could be overwhelming
at times, but from the moment he’d walked through the Rodriguezes’ door he’d
felt loved. Accepted. Part of something big and bright and wonderful.

Oscar—who’d only had his grandmother after both of his
parents died when he was just two years old—had no idea what his life would
have been like without them.

He was still standing mostly in the shadows when Eva came in
from outside, alone and looking perturbed as usual. She didn’t seem to notice
him watching her as she came in from a side entrance. She crossed the front
entryway quickly on her toes so there was only the quietest echo of her
footsteps in the foyer, her ponytail bouncing and soft skirt swaying, and
disappeared into the sanctuary.

One day, he told himself. He only had to make it through the
day, and then he could go back to looking at her as Diego’s little sister. His
coworker. Just Eva, who frequently got angry for reasons that were often
confusing, snapped at the smallest annoyance and cursed like a trucker.

But maybe, just for one day, he could at least allow himself
to enjoy the view.

The view that day was finer than usual, after all.

But he could only allow it for one day.

The church was packed.

Eva knew she should have come inside sooner but it had taken
her a minute to get her head on straight after Oscar’s stupid comment. Even
though she was supposed to have a spot in one of the front rows, her enormous
family had already pretty much filled them. She found a seat at the end of a
pew next to her sister Tammy and her four-year-old twin boys, Scott and Louis,
who were absolute angels.

The boys were playing a game on their shared Nintendo DS
while they waited for the ceremony to start, talking in that funny
broken-sentence twin-speak they used with each other and no one else. She
kissed them on top of their heads and scolded herself for letting Oscar get to
her. Again.

What a stinking load of bullshit, telling her she looked
better than the bride. No one looked better than a bride on her wedding day.
Did he think she was desperate for a compliment, or that she was going to fall
at his feet for gracing her with the first nice thing he’d said to her in
years? Dude was out of his mind if that was the case.

“Oh great,” she muttered when he appeared next to her,
clearly wanting to sit in the six inches of space left at the end of the row.

But she put an arm around the boys and slid them down the
smooth wooden seat with her hip anyway. When they looked up at her and giggled,
their sunny faces did the trick. They broke through the darkness of her mood
and made her laugh.

And when Oscar draped his arm over the back of the pew
behind her to give them both more room, she did not elbow him in the ribs the
way she might have wanted. She sighed instead, resigned to forever be tortured
by him.

She had no idea what she’d ever done to deserve the way he
treated her—ignoring her for days at a time, mostly short with her when he did
give her the time of day, and now what? Was telling her she looked good a new
way he’d devised to get under her skin, or did he consider that flirting? And
what was with cramming into the seat beside her when there were hundreds of
other people he could have sat with instead?

Whatever she’d done she was sorry. She looked up at Jesus on
the cross above the altar and projected the thought
really, really sorry
in his direction.

“Don’t you have a date you should be sitting with instead?”
she asked him. Her tone might have been a little bitchier than she should have
used in front of the boys.

“No.” His eyes dropped to her mouth for a split second.
“Don’t you?”

She looked away and scratched the side of her neck that was
facing him with her middle finger. He chuckled softly and the sound moved hot
over her skin. It raised the fine hairs on her body, made her nipples get tight
and caused a needy ache in her pussy that had to be a much worse sin than lying
or cursing in church could ever be.

It was a relief when the organist started playing the
ceremonial music. Her throat got a little thick and her eyes started to sting
again as she watched Leni’s mom and then her mother get escorted down the aisle
by her brothers Steve and Diego respectively.

Eva started to sniffle as Leni’s sister Jo made her way down
the aisle. Jo’s daughter Frankie made the entire room laugh when she called out
a cheerful “Hi, Mommy!” that rose high and loud over the organ music.

Eva flinched when a hand holding a cotton handkerchief
appeared near her arm. She looked at Oscar, who merely looked back at her,
before she took it and dabbed her damn leaking eyes.

The music changed and everyone in the church rose, heads
turned expectantly toward the back of the room. The doors opened and there was
Leni, her hand tucked into the crook of Eva’s father’s arm—Leni’s own father
had walked out on her mother when she and her sister were infants—both of them
grinning ear to ear.

Leni was incredibly beautiful. Her blonde hair was half
pulled back from her face and softly curled but not overly done. Her dress was
an elegant, understated work of art made of off-white silk with a gorgeous lace
overlay. It had short, off-the-shoulder capped sleeves and a sexy-but-modest
neckline, hugged her body to the hip and then fell in a long, narrow skirt just
to the floor. No long train. No fuss, no muss, just perfect.

Eva looked at Jamie to see his reaction and knew immediately
that she’d made a mistake. Her big-hearted sap of a brother was openly crying,
tears running down his face as he beamed at his bride making her way up the
aisle toward him.

She held Oscar’s handkerchief to her nose, but it didn’t
stop an embarrassing sob from escaping. Her own tears spilled from the corners
of her eyes, and she couldn’t catch them in the clean square of soft cotton
fast enough. Big, warm hands slid down her arms from shoulder to elbow and she
could feel his body heat as he moved close.

He was trying to comfort her, the fucker, and it was going
to make her cry harder.

His scent came over her like a dream, rich and musky and so
incredibly
male
. He leaned so close his mouth was almost touching her
ear and whispered, “Think of how bad you’re going to be able to tease him for
crying like a big baby.”

It was a damn good thing she had the hankie pressed to her
nose and the organ music was loud because she snort-laughed at the idea.

Neither of them would ever dream of actually teasing Jamie
for crying at his own wedding. He showed his emotions all the time, just lived
them right out there in the open where everyone could see them. It was
beautiful and completely Jamie.

She felt Oscar smile against her temple as he hugged her to
him briefly, his solid chest to her back, then he released her as the priest
started to speak. When they sat he draped his arm behind her again, his body
closer.

Scott, bored since his mom had taken the DS, climbed into
Eva’s lap. He put his head on her chest and pulled her ponytail over her
shoulder so he could twirl the end of it around his finger, signaling he was
about to doze off.

When Louis realized what his brother was doing, he looked
around his brother at Oscar, who twitched his head to tell him come on over,
then helped Louis get settled into the crook of his free arm. Louis pushed up
the sleeve of Oscar’s suit coat and shirt and found the bracelets Oscar never
seemed to be without—one a thin leather strap wrapped several times around his
wrist, the other a bracelet of intricately woven leather and small conch shells
Eva had given him years ago. Louis rubbed a small section of the leather strap
between his finger and thumb as his eyes drifted shut.

Tammy looked at Eva and raised her eyebrows.

Eva gave her a bland look that said
don’t get any ideas
.

Tammy lifted her camera and took their picture.

Eva blushed, and hated herself for it. She hated herself
even more when Tammy showed her the picture on the camera’s display and it
didn’t make her gag. She and Oscar could easily have been a couple, the two
dark-haired boys in their laps their boys.

And the small, almost contented smile on Oscar’s face as he
looked right into the camera gave her a thrill that raised the small hairs on
her arms.

“Delete it,” she whispered as she attempted to grab the
camera.

Tammy smirked and easily held it out of Eva’s reach. “Not on
your life.”

Eva looked to Oscar for backup, but he was focused forward.
He looked as if he was listening intently to what the priest was saying, but
that smile he’d been wearing in the picture was still on his face.

Fucker.

* * * * *

Oscar was standing in a shadow next to a door marked
“Employees Only” near the back of the reception hall, smoking a cigarette, when
he heard heels on the sidewalk.

It was Eva.

For as much of a tomboy as she’d always been, she definitely
knew how to walk in those shoes—one pretty foot in front of the other, slender
hips swaying hypnotically.

“Busted,” he said, and took another drag, which tasted
pretty bad.

“You don’t smoke,” she told him, reaching for the cigarette.

He handed it over and blew the smoke away from her. “Neither
do you.”

Oscar, Diego Sr. and the couple of Rodriguez kids who’d
smoked had all quit as a show of solidarity a few years ago when Diego Sr.’s
doctors found a dark spot on his lungs. It had been benign, but none of them
had smoked since as far as Oscar knew.

She leaned against the wall next to him and took a drag that
made the tip go bright orange for a long moment. Her head fell back against the
bricks and she let it out in a long, slow breath that made his spine tingle and
his cock stir.

“Holy shit, that’s better than sex,” she declared in a
whisper, eyes closed.

His mind went blank. He couldn’t take his eyes off her
throat or the way the angle of her head exposed every tempting inch of it. He
took the cigarette back from her and ground it out against the sole of his shoe
so she couldn’t do it again.

“You might be doing it wrong if that’s the case,” he told
her.

She lifted her head and made sex kitten eyes at him. “You
don’t know how much I just enjoyed that.”

Oh damn
. She was flirting.

He’d gone back to keeping his distance from her after the
ceremony. It hadn’t been hard to do since there were hundreds of people at the
reception. Every time he’d turned around there had been someone new to talk to.

But out there in the dark with no one else around and her
looking at him that way? There was absolutely nowhere to run.

“Why are you lurking out here in the dark by yourself?” she
asked.

He dropped the cigarette into the hole at the top of the
outdoor ashtray. “Just needed a break. There are a lot of people inside.”

“It is a little much,” she agreed and rested her head
against the wall again.

Oscar had to look away. The image he was getting of hiking
up her skirt and burying his face in her neck as he fucked her against the wall
was way too clear.

He cleared his throat. “What about you? What are you doing
out here?”

“I had to get away from Mom,” she answered with a heavy
sigh. “I’m the last of the kids who’s not married. The reception still has an
hour to go and she’s already starting to talk about me being the next to walk
down the aisle. I mean.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s cool that she
and Dad got married and had half a pack of kids by the time they were my age
because that’s what they wanted, but I’m nowhere near ready to settle down and
have babies yet.”

“Diego isn’t married,” he reminded her needlessly.

She blew an exasperated raspberry. “She gave up on that lost
cause years ago.”

“You want me to run interference?” he asked. “I might be
able to persuade her to leave you alone at least until Jamie and Leni leave for
their honeymoon.”

She pushed away from the wall and faced him, feet set in a
wide stance and hands on hips, those shrewd eyes narrowed. “Are you dying?”

He started, caught off guard. “What?”

“You’ve been nice to me all day.” She crossed her arms. “Is
it cancer? Heart disease? Leprosy?”

He barked out a single, surprised laugh. “I’m not dying,” he
assured her.

“Then I don’t understand. You told me I was prettier than
the bride this morning, you were nice to me during the ceremony and you’ve been
looking at me like you want to eat me alive all night.” She was ticking points
off on her fingers. “Now you’re offering to get my mother off my back? What’s
your angle, Oscar?”

He held up his hands. “No angle, Eva. I’m just trying to get
along.”

She propped her hands on her hips again and took a step
closer. “Why?”

Good question. After years of trying to keep her at arms’
length by making sure she didn’t like him very much, he didn’t blame her for
being suspicious.

“Weddings make me a little soft in the head.”

She gave him that
give me a fucking break
look that
never failed to make him want to turn her over his knee and paddle her sweet
little ass.

“Maybe I just wanted to tell you that you look good today,”
he continued. “You know, for being somebody’s scrubby little sister.”

“Fuck you, Oscar.” She turned and started to stalk away on
those heels, then turned back. “I think you need to get your eyes checked, old
man, because it’s been a long goddamn time since I was anyone’s scrubby
anything.”

That made him chuckle. “I don’t quite need spectacles at
thirty-seven.”

She made a disgusted sound and turned away again.

“I see you, Eva,” he called after her quietly, half hoping
she wouldn’t hear him.

She stopped but didn’t turn around. Not at first.

Oscar held his arms out at his sides when she faced him
again. “I see every gorgeous, heart-stopping inch of you.” He let his arms drop
to his sides. “You are, in fact, every fantasy I’ve ever had rolled into one
hot as hell woman, but there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.”

Holy shit it felt good to say that out loud, even if they
were the last words he might ever speak before one or all of her brothers
stomped the life out of him.

She came back to him slowly. “You are some kind of sick
fuck, you know that?”

He put his hands in his pants pockets and waited for the
rest.

“Aren’t you a little old for this game-playing bullshit?”
she continued. “No.” She shook her head slowly. “You don’t get to stand here
and tell me you
see me
after the hell you put me through when you were
supposed to be teaching me, making me scrub the corners of your room and pick
up your lunch every day for
months
before you started to teach me how to
so much as put a tattoo machine together.”

He opened his mouth to tell her he hadn’t treated her any
differently than he’d treated the other tattoo artists he’d taught over the
years, but she raised her hand.