Chapter 31

THIRTY-ONE

S omehow, I twisted around and managed to unlock the door, even with his enormous body pressed against me. But as soon as the door was opened, Xavier swept me up princess-style in what I was starting to consider his trademark move.

“Let someone carry you for once,” he said as he kicked the door shut, then turned for the stairs.

Up we went, mouths fused until, finally, I was set on my feet once more on the floor of the landing. Xavier’s palms slid up my neck to frame my face.

“So beautiful,” he murmured, eyes drifting over my nose, cheeks, lips. “So perfect.”

“I’m not perfect,” I protested weakly.

His hands slid back down over my neck and shoulders, taking with them my shawl and the thin straps of my red dress. Down they went, over my arms, my hips, until I stood in front of him in nothing but my underwear and shoes.

Xavier’s full mouth hung slightly open, like a starving man at a buffet.

“I don’t think you could ever convince me of that,” he said, then swept me up once more and turned to lay me gently on my bed.

I watched, transfixed, as he made quick work of his shirt and jacket, tossing them carelessly onto the chair next to us. The moonlight streaming through my small window cast a silvery halo over his lanky form, softening the sharp lines of his chest, arms, and shoulders. The tattoos curving up and down his right arm glowed, but not so much as his eyes as he looked down at me.

Love. That was what I saw there. Lust, desire, yearning—that too. But all of it was wrapped in pure, unadulterated love I’d never received from anyone. Not even my family.

I reached up. “Don’t leave me here alone.”

“Never,” he promised as he kneeled on the floor beside me. “I’ll never leave you or her again.”

He pressed kisses along around my waist, across the ridges of my hip bones, and lingering over the softer part of my stomach, the place that no matter how many crunches I did, no matter how many aerobics classes I taught, would never again be perfectly flat.

“I wish I could have seen her here,” he said, hands cupping a nonexistent bump just under my navel.

I weaved my fingers into his hair, luxuriating in its silky softness. “I wanted you here. Xavi, I’m so sorry?—”

“Shh. I know.”

He rested his chin on my hip and looked up at me. For a moment, we didn’t speak. I trusted he could see the regret in my eyes, know the pain I still felt over stealing that part—or any part—of her life from him, even if it’s what I believed was necessary at the time. In his face, however, I only saw forgiveness and love. The knowledge that if we were to continue this path together, there could only be trust between us. And that it was time to let the past go.

I relaxed and smiled. And to my utter delight, he smiled back, shining the light of his joy over both of us before he turned his head and pressed his cheek to my stomach. Then he continued delivering kisses down my body, taking my underwear with him until I lay naked on the bed.

“I love this,” he whispered as his lips feathered over my sensitive skin. “And this.” Gently, his hands pushed my legs apart. “And this.”

His mouth landed on my clit, locating that most sensitive part of me. I arched naturally into his touch, allowing him to slip his hands under my bottom and hold me up to his lapping tongue.

“Xavi,” I gasped.

“Mmm,” he hummed, sending a delicious vibration through me while he worked.

My thighs clenched around the breadth of his shoulders. His hair fell forward, tickling the insides of my thighs while his hand teased the wet entrance that was aching for him—any part of him.

His finger dipped inside, soon joined by another. Curled within me. And pressed.

I started to shake.

“Xavi, please ,” I begged, though I couldn’t have said for what. “Please, I can’t…”

“Yes, you can,” he grumbled before nipping me lightly between his lips. “Come for me, Ces. Show me how much you want me.”

Three fingers slipped inside, stretching, rubbing, offering the delicious friction that, combined with his mouth, was quickly my undoing.

My fingers threaded into his hair, and I yanked. Hard. My eyes shut tightly, and automatically, my mind searched for something, anything, to latch on to. A character. A story. Erotic or not, but anything that could help me toward that final destination.

“Focus,” he ordered, then sucked hard again. “You’re here, not in some fucking book.”

“I know,” I whimpered. “Xavi, I know.”

“Then think of me, beautiful girl. It’s me with my mouth on your pussy. Me worshipping your beautiful body.” He punctuated every statement with a vicious swipe of his tongue, a thrust of his fingers. “Me that loves you, Francesca.”

Love.

It was all I needed.

“Oh!” I cried as my orgasm overtook me. “Xavi!”

He feasted on me as if his life depended on it, tongue and hand moving in disciplined, concentrated movements designed to draw out my ecstasy. I vibrated under him as waves of pleasure pulsed through me.

It didn’t get any better than this. It couldn’t.

Until he showed me how.

Slowly, so slowly, I came back down to earth, only to find him watching me with a satisfied half-smile. His gaze drifted down my body, hovering between my legs. My own gaze dropped below his waist as he stood to remove his pants and boxers. His erection sprang free, solid and demanding.

I licked my lips.

“One day,” he said as he found a condom from his pants pocket before dropping them back to the floor, “it will be only us. No barriers. Nothing between us. You know that, don’t you?”

I could barely nod.

“Yes,” I managed in a voice torn with lust. But then I swallowed, reached up and stopped him just before he rolled on the thin bit of latex. “It could start now.”

Xavier froze, as if he wasn’t sure I’d actually spoken. “Are you—are you sure?”

I swallowed. “I—if you’re safe, then yes.”

He nodded. “I—there’s been no one else since you and I—and I was tested just before coming here.”

I exhaled. I didn’t want to think about him with anyone else. It was a small relief that we had started on somewhat of a clean slate, so to speak.

“I’m on the pill,” I whispered, grasping for his hand. “And there’s only been you, Xavi. You know it’s only ever been you.”

He shuddered as if the truth of my piety to him was too much to bear. “Christ, woman. You’ve no idea what that does to me.”

Without a second more hesitancy, he tossed the condom aside, then pulled my legs apart so he could kneel fully between them. I wriggled under his touch, eager to feel him inside me. But he maintained my legs in a steely hold, staring between them with the look of a man who had just reached the promised land. His cock rested lightly at my aching entrance. Teasing. Provoking.

He slid inside less than an inch. “God, I could tear this body in two, Francesca. But I don’t want to hurt you.”

His words vaguely registered. My God, he really had no idea. I wasn’t the delicate virgin he had known five years ago. I was a mother. My body had been through more than he could possibly imagine.

I grabbed his chin, reveling in the sandpaper texture of his unshaven jaw.

“Believe me,” I said clearly. “You won’t.”

He grunted and surged forward, seating himself fully within me on a low, guttural groan. “Oh, fuuuucckkk .”

I arched back with a gasp, spreading my legs wider to take him fully. He was so big, yes, but still utterly perfect, the shape of him fitting to every part of me with undeniable precision.

His lips found my breast, pulling the berry of my nipple into his mouth and sucking hard as he pulled out and then thrust in, harder this time, eliciting moan after moan that I couldn’t muffle if I tried.

“Fuck,” he breathed again against my neck. “Fucking hell, Francesca.”

My fingers clawed at his broad back. “Xavi, don’t stop! Take all of me, please.”

“Never,” he growled.

He pushed up onto his knees, then grabbed my thighs and tilted my hips up to meet him, pound for unmerciful pound. His hands gripped hard enough I knew they would leave bruises, and yet I urged him on, rocking upward, reaching overhead to grab the iron rods of my headboard, and shouting my desire into the night, sure it and he would swallow me whole.

Suddenly, he pulled out and flipped me over onto my front, hips yanked back as he drove into me with ruthless precision. He took harsh handfuls of my backside, kneading and slapping as if he were shaping me into one of his culinary masterpieces.

“Fucking hell,” he barked as his thumb tickled just around the last, undiscovered part of me, only a few inches from where he currently resided.

He wanted more. I could tell he wanted more. But he was still afraid to ask for it.

“Do it,” I ordered sharply, more on instinct than anything else. “I mean it, Xavi. All of me. I belong to you.”

In response, his groan practically shook the room. His hand darted back to his mouth, and when it returned, I shivered in pleasure as his finger pressed against my delicate rosette.

He paused, pulling out so that his cock was only an inch or so inside me, throbbing at the entrance of my pussy. Then, at an excruciatingly slow pace, he pressed back in while his thumb made the same journey at my ass. Inch by delectable inch, he entered both parts of me at once. Taking me everywhere. Worshipping all of me.

The feel of that slow, purposeful penetration in not one but two places was too much to bear. Then, slipping a hand over my hip, he located my clit, essentially trapping my pelvis with the power of his fingers for a few final thrusts until, on a shout, I exploded under him.

“Xavier!” I called, clawing at my pillow, trying to escape the shocks overwhelming me, yet internally begging that they would never stop.

“Francesca!” he roared, taking a few final, utterly brutal thrusts.

We shook together on my small bed so hard I thought the entire house might crumble around us. At last, his hands left me as he fell forward, pressing me into the mattress while he emptied himself inside me.

“Francesca.” This time it was a depleted moan, not a shout, directed into the crook of my shoulder, his breath warm against my neck.

For a few moments longer, we just lay together, sharing breath and sweat and the glow that remains even after the throes of ecstasy subside.

Then he pushed himself up and pulled out, gently rolling me over so I was facing him once more.

“I love you,” he said as he pressed kisses to my lips, cheeks, chin, and eyes. “Do you believe it?”

Still caught in my post-coital daze, I nodded. “Yes, I believe it.”

“Then the next time you want to run away into one of your books because you’re scared, will you tell me so I can remind you again?” His hips pressed forward, informing me just how he intended to do that.

I smiled against his lips. “Yes, I will.”

“Good,” he said as he buried his face into my neck. “Because I meant what I said earlier too. I just don’t work without you, Ces. I’ve been trying for too long. I don’t like who I’ve become.”

I sighed, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. “It goes both ways, my love.”

He pressed up onto his forearms. “Do you really mean that? You’ve never said it. I don’t want to force you, but…”

He drifted off, uncertainty playing over his strong features as his eyes darted over my face, unwilling to meet mine.

I blinked in confusion, retracing my words from earlier. Between quoting Charlotte Bront? and crying my fears, was it possible I hadn’t actually told the man the truth that lay deep in my heart?

I looked back at him, begging his blue eyes to meet my own, wanting to dive into them, swim in them, and let him feel every emotion pulsing through me, emotions he inspired.

But for now, I had only words.

My words.

Simple and true.

So I gave them up.

“I love you,” I told him honestly.

And meant it with all my heart.