Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

W e stared at each through the dark like we were trapped in a beautiful, awe-inspiring lagoon, not sitting on my brother’s old leather couch he’d salvaged off the curb in Sheepshead Bay.

Was Xavier offering what I thought he was offering?

Was that even something I could consider?

Was my baby brain getting in the way of my actual reasoning skills?

Did I even care?

“I…I don’t know,” I said, even as I squirmed in my seat. “We’re not…it wouldn’t change anything.”

Lord, those hands. That mouth. It was one thing to fantasize about complete strangers or characters in a book. It was another entirely when I had the real thing most women only dreamed about right here, offering himself up on a silver platter.

“It wouldn’t be like that,” Xavier said, scooting a bit closer. “I promise.”

“That’s easy for you to say. But how—how do I know it’s not just you trying to…” I couldn’t bring myself to say “get me back.”

It sounded absurd. Xavier wasn’t the type to play games, nor was I the kind of woman to be schemed over. Not like that. But he had said we weren’t over, hadn’t he? And while he wasn’t exactly known for his patience, his success over the last ten years certainly pointed to a certain amount of resilience and grit.

He was used to getting what he wanted, and I had no doubt that sometimes it meant playing dirty.

He cocked his head to the left as he cautiously scooted again so that his leg pressed fully against mine. Warm, solid muscle that I could feel through his pants and my thin sleep shorts.

“I’m a lot of things, Ces,” he said in a carefully low voice that hummed with anticipation. “But never thought devious was one of them. Do you really think I’d use something like this to fool you back together?”

It was true. Subtlety was never his strong suit. Xavier was more like a bull than a serpent. He strode into whatever room he entered, took on the task at hand without any doubt, and charged at it full-throttle.

“No,” I admitted. “That’s not really your style. But?—”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” he remarked as his dark gaze passed over me sympathetically. “You have to do all the work. No release. Why not let me help how I actually can?” Tentatively, he reached out a hand, which hovered just over my mouth. “Look at you. Even your lips are begging to be kissed. You look like you’re ready to burst, babe.”

And I felt it. My breathing had intensified. My nipples were tingling, and that sensitive place between my legs was practically throbbing just sitting next to him.

There was no use denying it. I was basically dying for him to touch me.

“I just—I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” I whispered, even as he stroked a broad thumb over my cheekbone.

His fingertips tickled the nape of my neck, causing goose bumps to fly up everywhere. I shuddered, vision already hazy with want.

“It’s all right.” Ever so gently, he took my shoulders, then rotated me in my seat until my back was toward him. “I know it can’t—I know it doesn’t mean anything.”

He drew me back and settled me on his chest, nestled between his long legs. While I could feel his considerable length against my lower back, there was nothing lecherous about the movements. Instead, a feeling of safety and warmth overwhelmed me. Something akin to freedom, but in a place where I was taken care of completely.

“Just let me help,” he said as his hands slid around my waist, flattening them over my belly. “Anything you need.”

I exhaled, then found myself sinking into his broad chest. God, he felt good, even just holding me like this, surrounding me with his clean, salty scent. So much better than a couch or a pillow. So warm and solid, but thrumming with untapped energy.

Some things really couldn’t be substituted. Things like heated muscle, arms like steel, and soft lips that feathered over the top of my ear.

“What do you want?” he asked as he stroked through my thin cotton shirt. I watched as he pulled the fabric up so that his fingertips brushed my skin. “I’m at your service, babe.”

“Mmmm,” I hummed as his fingers started moving up my rib cage. “Oh, I…”

“Tell me,” he purred, slipping his hands under the cotton even more to tickle the undersides of my breasts.

His touch was tentative, but knowing. Because he knew I liked it when he teased me with a feather-light touch, right at the beginning. Just like he knew I loved it when he kneaded them a few times right when he entered me, then pinched and pulled right when I came. The secret to good sex, I had discovered, was getting to know your partner’s body at different times—not just one reaction, but all of them.

And Xavier had learned every one of mine. Maybe even better than I had.

“Ahhhh,” I murmured. “Oh, do…do that.”

“This?” He cupped my breasts, distinctly heavier now, in each hand, then drifted his thumbs across my nipples.

They were so sensitive, I almost came right there. When I jerked, his tongue slid around the curve of my ear before he sucked the lobe between his teeth and tugged lightly.

“What else?” His deep voice rumbled, breath warm over my dampened skin. “What else do you want?”

“Talk to me,” I sighed, half lost in a dreamlike daze from the hypnotic rhythm of his fingers at my breasts. “Tell me something, Xavi. Give me something to imagine.”

There was a low chuckle behind my ear. “What else would Francesca Zola want to hear but a good bedtime story?” He tugged lightly on my nipples, then slipped one hand back down my belly to linger at the waistband of my pajama shorts. “Shall I?”

I could have stopped him then. And maybe I should have. He was crossing nearly every boundary I’d set up between us.

But every cell in me was crying for his touch. At that moment, I honestly needed him more than I needed arbitrary rules designed to keep us apart. I needed him like water. Like I needed the air to breathe.

“Yes,” I said. “But keep…talking.”

It would help me stay out of my head and enjoy the moment now that I was apparently giving in to it.

I closed my eyes and focused on the twin sensations of the hand that continued to switch off between my breasts, tugging and playing with their sensitized tips, and the other that quietly slipped under the waistband of my shorts and the elastic of my underwear, sinking into the soft curls that beckoned him always, my entire body shuddered in his embrace.

“Once upon a time there was a man in a bar. Tall, tatted, impossibly handsome.” His deep voice was the texture of velvet.

“And scowling,” I added dreamily. “Don’t forget scowling.”

The chuckle vibrated against my neck as the hand below drifted back and forth over the most sensitive part of me, toying lightly with the delicate skin and nerve endings that seemed to be more alive than ever.

“That too. With dark blue eyes. He was very unhappy, you see. Had a life of hardship and loss. Nothing in the world had ever seemed good until that moment, when he saw her across the pub, laughing with a friend.”

I tensed slightly, though his fingers were too hypnotizing not to relax me again. I knew this story. The story of the night we met. How I went from being a virgin to…not…at the sight of a brooding British man watching me in a crowded bar on the Upper West Side.

“She was a vision in red,” he continued. “This tiny shirt?—”

“The shirt wasn’t that small?—”

“Microscopic shirt,” he continued like I’d said nothing at all. “And massive earrings that shone against her long dark hair. She had an arse he could fill his hands with, apple-shaped tits, and a mouth that beckoned his cock from the across the room.”

“She sounds frisky,” I joked, though his less-than-gentlemanly description was already making my breathing a bit heavier.

“Hush, and let me tell it,” Xavier chided me with a pinch of one nipple that made me squeak. “Then she turned and smiled. And the man couldn’t even remember his own name, much less all the reasons he knew he should leave her alone.”

His deft fingers dove deeper, finding my clit, beginning to move with the familiar rhythm he’d seemed to know from the very beginning.

“So he bought her a drink,” he continued. “And asked her to dance. She was a tiny thing, just perfect to hold as she rubbed her curves all over him, song after song. Eventually, she let him kiss her, and her mouth tasted like the sweetest candy. He knew she’d taste even better everywhere else.”

My breath caught as I anticipated the next part.

The real question was whether he was going to tell it all the way.

“So what did he do?” I whispered as I tipped my chin up and to the side.

Xavier took the invitation and pressed his lips to my neck, nipping, licking, and sucking in tandem with his fingers below. “He lifted her up so they were eye to eye and asked her—begged her—if she would let him taste her everywhere. He was hard as stone and honestly afraid he might die if he couldn’t.”

I shivered at the memory. The way Xavier had bent down right there in the middle of the bar and lifted me by the waist so that my feet were nearly a foot off the floor. He’d swallowed me with a kiss, then asked me in a rough burr if I’d go back to his hotel with him. Called me beautiful, sweet things while he asked again and again between mind-bending kisses.

Please, you beautiful thing, you. I’m begging. Let me taste you. Let me make you feel better than you ever have before.

“She said no,” he went on, truthfully.

I swallowed as his finger dipped into me, then back up to toy with my clit some more. “She was shy.”

“She was fucking exquisite. Which is why the man knew if she wouldn’t come with him, he’d have to show her what she’d be missing.”

I gulped. Yeah, I remembered that, too. Remembered the way he’d carried me off the dance floor just like that, toward the back of the bar, then forced open a closet so we were blocked by a door at the end of the hall near the alley exit. Told me he’d stop whenever I asked but that he needed more. Begged me for more. Literally got on his knees.

And I had said yes. I couldn’t stop kissing him. Not when his hands had slid under the waistband of my jeans to take lush handfuls of flesh. Not when they moved around to undo the button and slide down the zipper. Not when he’d peeled the denim around my curves and pressed his mouth to the soft skin of my upper thigh.

From the very first night, I could never say no to Xavier Parker. I’d honestly never wanted to.

“He got down on his knees for her,” Xavier continued. “Right there on that dirty fucking floor—and this man, mind you, kneels for no one.”

“Dukes rarely do.”

I smiled as his stubbled cheek rubbed against mine. The hand at my breast joined the other below my waist, gently pushing my legs to spread wider for his probing fingers. I sucked in a harsh breath when one breached my extremely slick opening but didn’t push all the way in, instead content with teasing me there while the other hand worked my clit.

“Xavi,” I gasped. “ Please .”

“When he licked her delicate cunt, it was like coming home. He couldn’t believe his luck, that she was allowing him to do this, right there where anyone might see, letting him taste her sweet flesh, drive his tongue deep inside her. Salty, honeyed, utter fucking nectar. She tasted like heaven. Like the home he’d never known he could find.”

The finger at my entrance pushed in farther, then was joined by another.

“Oh God ,” I murmured, the image clear in my mind as he worked. “Oh, Xavi.”

“But it wasn’t enough,” he growled. “It wasn’t fucking enough. He needed more. His cock throbbed for her, every cell in his body wanted to devour her. He needed to be inside her, needed to spill his seed deep within her womb, needed to part the gorgeous peach of her and drive home until the entire city knew the way his name sounded when she screamed it aloud.”

“Ah!” I called as his teeth latched again to my throat, holding me in place as he continued to fuck me with his hand.

“But he didn’t,” Xavier said. “Instead, he feasted on her with his mouth until she called above the pounding music and rode his face like a pony. He vowed to give her pleasure then and take his later. Because even then he knew. This girl—this utterly perfect woman—didn’t just deserve one night. She deserved forever.”

“Oh!” I cried, flailing my head to one side, then the other, as my orgasm crept to the edge of a cliff I wanted to dive over. “Oh, Xavi, p-please!”

But he didn’t relent. As his fingers continued their terrible onslaught, Xavier captured my mouth with his, banishing gentle touches in favor of a bruising, punishing kiss full of tongue and teeth and all the aching want he had just described with his wicked words.

“Come, then,” he ordered quietly, then kissed me again as three fingers thrust inside me.

I screamed his name into his mouth as my entire body began to shake violently. He didn’t stop, just kept working me with that rhythm, as insistent and vital as a heartbeat between my legs. Fucking me with his fingers, rubbing my clit until every moan had left my body to be swallowed by that full, demanding mouth.

He knew. Oh God , he knew how to make it last. He knew how to press and penetrate and keep me still until every muscle had flexed beyond its abilities, leaving me to melt into a pool of depleted lust and satiated woman between his legs.

Wedged against the small of my back, the length of him still throbbed. But as I came down from my orgasm, he made no move to turn me over, pin me down, or take any pleasure for himself whatsoever.

And I wanted him to. Badly. What was supposed to sate me for the night had only turned up the heat. I needed much, much more. And that was a very bad idea.

I turned in his arms to say exactly that, but he was already shaking his head as I scrambled to the other end of the couch.

“Don’t say anything,” he said. “Not a word.”

“But—”

He laid a finger over my lips. “I said hush. Now, I just wanted to help, babe. You don’t owe me a thing.” Another sly smile crept across his handsome features. “Don’t make it weird, eh?”

I opened my mouth to argue but found I could only grin back at him. The sweet relaxation was still passing through my limbs. I couldn’t help but enjoy the ride he’d brought me on and soon found myself yawning with bliss.

Before I could stop him, he swept me up in his arms and stood.

“Xavi,” I murmured, but couldn’t bring myself to ask him to put me down.

Sleep was coming fast. A few more minutes, and I was liable to use his bicep as a pillow right here.

“Come on, Sleeping Beauty.”

Xavier offered me another bittersweet half-smile as he carried me out of the living room and up to my bedroom, where he laid me gently under the sheets. I allowed him to pull the blankets up and tuck me in on all sides. Anything sexual had vanished from his touch, but it was still impossibly tender.

“Xavi,” I murmured.

The ability to move any of my limbs was all but gone, thanks to his work downstairs.

“Just let me take care of you.”

I lay still as he finished tucking me in, then watched as he sat back on the bed and looked at me blinking up at him. My eyelids felt like they were made of iron, but I couldn’t stop looking back. His eyes were like stars, calling me home.

His gaze drifted to the right side of the bed. His side. The very empty side.

It took everything I had not to ask him to get in.

At last, he offered that sweet half-smile once more. “Think you can get to sleep now?”

I nodded. My limbs still felt like noodles.

I wanted more. I’d always want more, especially when it came to him. But with his gift had come an ocean of calm that had me floating toward sleep at last.

“Good.” He bent down and placed a tame kiss on my forehead. “Night, Ces.”

As if by their own accord, my arms rose and wrapped themselves around his neck, holding him close. His mouth hovered just an inch from mine, close enough that I could smell his fresh breath and feel its heat on my skin.

“Xavi,” I whispered.

He gave a low groan but kept completely still.

God, it was hard not to do it. I wanted to kiss him more than I wanted coconut LaCroix. More than any of the weird stuff I’d been craving night and day. More than I had ever wanted anything .

But to my surprise, he didn’t try to kiss me. He just stayed as he was, immovable. Waiting.

“I…” I stared at his mouth, feeling as parched as I was only thirty minutes ago.

“I know,” he replied. “Fuck, babe, I know.”

We sat there together in a standoff as each of us dared the other to make a move.

No one blinked.

And so, eventually, I pulled my arms back.

Xavier sighed.

“I’m…” I trailed off, thinking about apologizing but not really sure what for.

I wanted to kiss him again. But I knew we shouldn’t. Maybe we’d just crossed a line, but for some reason, kissing in my mind seemed to go well beyond “pretend.” Kissing Xavier had never been anything less than vividly real.

“Ces, relax.” He grabbed my chin, thumb brushing over my lower lip, then dropped it with a rueful glance. “It’s all right.”

“Do you…do you want to stay? You could just sleep here.”

I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why I asked.

That rueful smile broadened, but to my disappointment—relief?—Xavier shook his head. “I’ll be back in the morning before Sof wakes up. Seven, right? I just need to get some sleep. If I stay here, I’m going to stare at you all night in those bloody shorts.”

It was then I noticed how turned on he still was—thick and obvious through the thin material of his pants.

My God, the poor man.

Poor me .

I settled back into my pillow, unsure how to decipher the emotions roiling inside me. “All right, then. Night, Xavi.”

“Sweet dreams, babe,” he whispered.

And then, quick as a shadow, he was gone, leaving me in my bed with my hand to my mouth, touching the spot that still seared from his touch.