Chapter 22

TWENTY-TWO

J ust like always, that deep voice made me shiver with anticipation. This time, though, it was flavored with fear.

Clearly just off the pitch, Xavier was wearing Troop’s red and white polo shirt, white second-skin pants that left little of his powerful body to the imagination, and riding boots that made him look like he was on his way to a Regency duel. He might have cut a dashing figure if it weren’t for the look of outright murder in his bright blue eyes.

He didn’t look like the kind, passionate man I’d fallen for again over the course of several months, but the one who’d strode into my life last December with the intent to overturn everything without a care for the cost to others.

He didn’t look like the man I loved. He looked like the man I hated.

“You motherfucker,” Xavier growled, prowling toward us like a red-striped tiger. Without his helmet, his black hair had fallen into his face, just grazing the tops of his knife-sharpened cheekbones. “You slimy little fuck . What did I say would happen if you touched her again?”

“Xavi, don’t,” I said quietly, already noticing the way several people were peering over their cocktails at us.

“Please,” Adam retorted. “You’ve always expected everyone to be terrified of these tantrums you throw when things don’t go your way. But not everyone is scared of the big bad Xavier Parker.”

“If people are scared of me,” Xavier said as he grabbed Adam’s collar and jerked him up so they were nose to nose, “it’s because I give them a good fucking reason to be.”

By the time he was finished talking, the entire tent had gone quiet. Whispers floated through the air, and I had a feeling there were more than a few cell phones filming.

“Xavier.” Georgina’s voice echoed across the tent in a hushed tone with clear disappointment.

“Xavi,” I said in a low tone between my teeth. “You need to stop.”

“Why?” he asked without taking his eyes from Adam’s irritatingly stubborn face. “Why the fuck should I?”

“Because otherwise, you’re going to sabotage every goal you had in coming here,” I said in a low voice that hopefully only he could hear. “And besides.” I took a deep breath. “You know, this is really between you and me. So let’s go talk. Somewhere without an audience.”

Xavier took three long breaths. I knew because I counted, watching the rise and fall of his chest until the last one was expelled. Then, at last, he dropped Adam to the ground and turned to me, that blue fire blazing in his eyes.

“Fine,” he said before turning to Adam. “This isn’t over, though. You touch her, you’re dead. And you’ll pay for that fucking kiss.”

Then he grabbed my hand and towed me out of the tent after him.

“Xavi, slow down! Xavi, oh my God, stop !”

We were all the way behind one of several sets of stables before I managed to prise Xavier’s hand from around my wrist. Bits of mud were splattered around my ankles. I didn’t even want to think about what Regina’s pristine cream shoes looked like.

When I broke free, Xavier finally whirled around, sending a spray of dirt out behind his boots along with tufts of grass.

“What the fuck were you doing with him?” he demanded. “I’m gone for five fucking minutes, and then I find you snogging that stale scone in the middle of my fucking polo match. I know you’re starved for attention, but for fuck’s sake, Ces, are you trying to get me arrested?”

Under normal circumstances, I might have laughed. There was no way he would know that kissing Adam had roughly the same appeal to me as a day-old pastry.

But it didn’t matter now. I was too mad.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “Five minutes? We had a horrid fight this morning, the Ortham ball was a disaster, but I came here anyway because you said you needed us. Me and Sof. You know, your daughter?”

“That’s completely unfair,” Xavier cut in. “Sofia’s not the one with the problems here. It’s you.”

“You’re damn right, it’s me!” I yelped. “Why did you even want me here? To ignore me all over again? I honestly don’t know why you want me to attend any of these things with you, considering the second we arrive, I’m freaking invisible.”

He looked at me like I was speaking gibberish. “What do you want me to do? Ask you to research wind farms? Slap you onto the back of my pony?”

“Maybe you don’t have to play at all!” I shot back. “No one forced you to do the club a favor. Just like no one forced you to ride up to the fence to flirt with Imogene like she was a medieval lady giving a knight a favor.”

Xavier’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking, right? You’re fucking joking. Imogene ?”

“No, apparently the joke is on me,” I snapped. “Because to my surprise, I got to come listen to a million socialites scheme about how best to get you down the aisle and leave me in the dirt. Super fun! So glad I made time to watch my boyfriend flirt with his neighbor and listen to rich people shit talk me and my kid for the millionth time. It’s been great .”

I shook my head, willing away the tears that were rising to the surface. I didn’t want to be this girl. I didn’t want to be so clingy my partner couldn’t do things for himself or spend time away from me, so jealous I couldn’t even handle other women speaking to him. Xavier couldn’t help what other people were saying any more than he could help the fact that his neighbor had a crush on him.

I took a deep breath. I needed to calm the hell down.

“Xavi, for the record, Adam kissed me ,” I tried again. “And I did not kiss him back. I believe my response was to push him off and demand to know what he was doing.”

Wrong move. Xavier’s eyes flamed all over again, and he turned around, like he was looking for Adam.

“Hey!” I cried out. “I’m right here. It’s me you want right now, isn’t it? Or is that just not the case anymore?”

That got his attention.

Slowly, he turned back around, chest heaving under his attempts to control himself. “How could you even say that?”

My lower lip trembled. I would not cry. I would not cry. I would. Not. Cry.

“Have you been listening to me at all?” I choked, pulling at my neckline. “This place. These people. These stupid dresses?—”

“No one is forcing you to change,” Xavier put in.

“Oh, really? That wasn’t your stepmother you agreed with when she said basically everything about me was unacceptable for the Season. For these people, whom you’ve had more to say to over the past few weeks than your own daughter and me!”

“That was all for you !” Xavier shouted. “All the clothes, it was all to help you! If you didn’t want any of it, you could have just said! And I hated that pink dress. I practically tore the fucking thing off, didn’t I?”

“I think we both know what you wanted there,” I retorted. “And if it had more to do with what was under the dress than in it. And look at me now! I look like I’m cosplaying Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman , Xavi. I look like a freaking cartoon! But what did you say when you saw this dress in my closet? That I would finally ‘fit right in.’ Isn’t that right?”

“Apparently more than fit in,” Xavier returned through his teeth. “Half the bloody field was interested in what was up your skirt, and your ‘friend’ was about two steps from finding out!”

“Oh my God, he was not !” I shouted. “But honestly, if he was, it would serve you right.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess that’s what happens when you dress a girl up like a doll and then treat her like one, left at a table while you play with your other toys!”

I gestured toward the stables and the horses, toward the clubhouse where the mallets and other polo equipment were kept, and toward the tent on the other side of the stables.

“I didn’t come all the way across the big blue ocean to be abandoned, Xavi. But since you decided to do just that, maybe I should make the best of it.”

“By kissing the first idiot who pays you any attention?” he seethed.

“If that’s what it takes.”

My words dropped like bombs between us. But Xavier seemed to be done yelling too. He just stared at me, blue eyes flashing, the muscle in his jaw ticking like a bomb itself, waiting to detonate.

“You want a kiss?” he asked in a dangerously low voice as he took one step toward me, then another. “I’ll give you a fucking kiss.”

Then his mouth was on mine. And once again, there was no love in that touch, just straight-up lust and power. It was a direct attack. Well, that was fine. As it happened, I was in the mood to fight.

“Asshole,” I snarled between desperate, biting kisses, full of teeth and tongue, and bruising takes.

A second later, I was shoved against the barn’s wall.

“Trollop.”

“Fucking bastard .”

“Whore.”

“Fuck you.”

“You already have,” he snarled as his hands found their way under my skirt so he could lift me up against the wall. “And in a second, you will again.”

It took him all of two seconds to undo his pants and sheath himself within me. I would have screamed, but his mouth had already covered mine, swallowing my cries, suffocating them and anything I might have to say with his lips, with his entire body.

“These lips are mine ,” Xavier huffed as he began to pump into me. “This body is mine , do you hear?”

“Fuck—you—” I could barely get the words out even as I was clawing at his shoulders, trying to pull him ever closer. I wanted to do more than just be at his mercy. But he wasn’t giving me the chance.

He drove forward, setting a harsh rhythm that had me careening toward climax faster than I ever had in my life. By some sick logic, it was as if all the tension in our fight had coiled us like springs, ready to release at any moment.

“Xavi,” I hissed as his teeth found my neck, like an animal pinning me down. “Xavi—I’m close!”

Two, three more thrusts, and I was almost there. No tender touch between my legs, no adoring, no savoring as he had always loved to do. Or so I’d thought. This wasn’t savoring at all. It was quick, purely animal. This was revenge. And by God, if I wasn’t enjoying it on some sick level.

“ No ,” he said, then shoved into me one last time before every muscle he had tensed completely, smashed me against the wall while he came hard, my body still aching beneath him for the release I’d never get.

“Ahhh!” I cried, arms flailing, legs kicking, dying for what he wouldn’t grant. I yanked at his hair, scratched at his shoulder, rocking my hips into him while he pulsed within me, the rest of him stone. “You brute,” I panted. “You complete and total bastard. ”

When Xavier pulled back, the beast in him had vanished. But what was left broke my heart. He looked down at our bodies, still joined, and sighed heavily, then gently pulled away and set my feet back to the earth. My legs were wobbly, though the rest of me was still tensed, dying for the orgasm he’d so blatantly withheld. As he handed me a handkerchief to clean myself up, his expression was full of sorrow. And regret.

“Ces, I?—”

“D-don’t,” I said. God, the tears were still threatening.

Sex with Xavi—still the only man I’d ever been with—had only ever been a joy. Had only ever made me feel cherished. But here, behind this barn, away from where some of the most glamorous people in England were carousing and drinking, I was only another thing to him, no different than a mallet or a skillet. Something to use. And then be done with.

I balled up the handkerchief and chucked it behind a bush, eager to be done with it as I put the rest of myself together. The last thing I needed was to walk back into that crowd with my dress tucked into my underwear. If I made it back at all.

Sounds from the party grew from the other side of the stables. Or maybe that was just the roaring in my head. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if people were listening.

“Frankie, are you all right?”

I swore under my breath at the sound of Adam’s voice. Xavier, having put himself back together already, turned on his heel, hands balled into fists.

I stepped in front of him, praying my hair, so carefully tamed by Georgina this morning, didn’t look like a rat’s nest. “Adam, this is really not the time.”

Adam approached, though his eyes were on Xavier, not me. Lord, the man really had a death wish. “I think it is.”

“Mate, you’d better listen to her. For your own fucking good.” A muscle in Xavier’s jaw started ticking dangerously while his fists clenched by his side. His eyes were so dark a blue, they were practically black.

“One, I think we both know I am definitely not your ‘mate.’ And two, I think this is a perfect time for me to step in. This beautiful lady is crying, seemingly because of you, and I’ve never been one to walk away from a woman who needs my help.”

“Adam, please,” I started again, even as I swiped the evidence off my face. “This really doesn’t concern you.”

“I think it does,” Adam interrupted, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“Get your fucking hand off her!”

Before I could stop any of it, Xavier’s fist thrust between us, finding purchase with Adam’s face and sending the man sprawling into the green while the force of their collision threw me back against the barn all over again.

“What the hell!” Adam shouted, clutching his nose, where a torrent of blood was spreading down his face to join the dirt already smeared over his suit. “You just bwoke my fugking dose!”

“I’ll break more than that if you don’t stay the fuck away from my woman!” Xavier snapped, stepping over his body like a predator attending its prey.

“Your woman?” Somehow, I managed to find my voice as I stepped between them and shoved Xavier hard in the chest. “After what you just did, you have the audacity to call me your fucking woman ? Well, I have news for you, buddy. I am not at your beck and call. I am not your cheap plaything or something you can just pick up whenever you feel like. I DO NOT BELONG TO YOU !”

We stood there for what seemed like hours, staring at each other over Adam’s moaning, bleeding carcass.

“Adam?”

“Mr. Klein?”

“Good lord, what’s happened?”

Several voices joined us, but I paid them no mind. For the first time in weeks, I had Xavier’s undivided attention, and I wasn’t about to lose it now.

“Is that so?” Xavier asked, voice low enough that only I could hear it.

I swallowed, conscious of all the eyes watching us.

But it wasn’t them that forced me to hold my ground. It was the one set of eyes that wasn’t watching. Little blue ones, just above a button nose, belonging to someone who called me “Mama.” The one person I could never afford to see me like this, but who was far too close anyway.

“I—yes,” I said, tilting my chin up. Stiff upper lip indeed. “Yes, it is.”

His glance darted between me and Adam, who was now being helped up by some of the club’s staff. When it landed back on me, he seemed to have come to a decision.

“Then I think,” Xavier said at last, “perhaps you should go.”

“I—” I tried to tell him I wasn’t going anywhere. I tried to say maybe he should leave. He was the one throwing punches, the one acting like a Neanderthal.

But through the trees, I caught sight of more than one long nose pointed our way and several pairs of snooty-eyed expressions veiled only through the leaves. None of them were directed at him. They were all looking at me.

The American. Dirty Yank. Mistress or girlfriend or sidepiece, or whatever the papers were calling me.

One thing was clear: I didn’t belong to him. But I didn’t belong here, either.

“All right,” I said softly. “I’ll just…go back to the house. Enjoy—” I gulped back a sob. I wasn’t going to give our audience the benefit. “Enjoy the rest of the party.”

“Francesca—”

I didn’t wait to hear him finish his sentence. Instead, I turned and left, conscious of all the eyes watching me leave. Watching and thinking, yes, it was for the best.