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Emma shook her head, scouring her memory for any little detail she could’ve missed about Mr. X, anything else she might type into Facebook, Instagram or Google. She couldn’t think of any. The man had been deliberately vague about all the details of his life. She didn’t know where he lived, worked, his last name, or even where he’d grown up. Then again, they hadn’t spent a whole helluva lot of time talking, either, she remembered, a blush creeping up her cheeks.
I shouldn’t even be doing this, Emma thought. The man left me in the Ritz-Carlton bathroom, half naked! Clearly, all he wanted was sex.
Not that she could blame him. The sex was freakin’ amazing. The sex enough would be fine, yet, Emma couldn’t shake the feeling there could be more than just physical attraction between them. She believed that amazing sex only happened with some kind of authentic emotional connection. They might be near strangers, but they had that connection. Somehow.
And he walked away from it.
She ought to be angry, but instead, she just felt mystified. Why had he bolted? Her mind went a thousand different directions: maybe she’d offended him somehow. Maybe he was really just using her and could only stand to be in her presence for the frantic minutes it took for sex?
But that didn’t make any sense to her. He never let on he felt annoyed by her. The first night, he’d held her all night long.
No. It was almost as if he was fighting himself a little last night, but she couldn’t say why.
Emma knew Xavier had been hurt, knew he wasn’t looking for any commitment and he’d made it abundantly clear that he was only interested in knowing her for forty-eight hours. She ought to just face facts: he’d disappeared forever.
The thought suddenly depressed her. How could he walk away from something so...amazing? Surely, she wasn’t the only one who felt like the sex was...well, white-hot. Surely he didn’t have that kind of connection with every girl he met? Emma knew she’d never experienced sex like that her whole life.
She almost heard Sarah whispering, “You need to get laid more.”
Emma sighed. Maybe it was that she’d only had a handful of boyfriends, all of them...well, on the boring side. She brushed away the thought. Why would Xavier be in such a hurry to leave?
Left on autopilot, her mind went to darker corners. Was he secretly married? His wife could have been waiting outside in their car while he came into the lobby of the hotel. Her palms grew clammy at the thought.
Emma typed in Nost and married men and about a dozen articles popped up on her screen. The headlines screamed at her: Nost a Playground for Adulterers...and No Strings Doesn’t Always Mean Single...
Emma pored through the articles. Looks like Nost did have a cheater problem, with several spurned spouses—men and women—complaining about finding the app on the phone of their husband or wife. Could Xavier be one of them? It made sense: he was steadfastly attached to the “no contact” rule and guarded his last name with CIA-level dedication. Hell, his first name might not even be real.
She banged the edge of her desk in frustration. What was she supposed to do now?
Emma picked up her phone and noticed that her screen now included all new Nost men, none of whom were Mr. X. A search again found nothing, and there was no way to message him any longer.
She put her phone down. Emma stared at her computer for a beat and then pulled up a new Word document. Maybe if she couldn’t find him, she could write about him. She began typing out her story about Nost. She worked on it furiously for the next couple of hours. She called it:
Mr. X, where are you?
When she’d poured out her emotions, doubts and fears onto the page, she sent off the draft to her editor and let out a breath. She had no idea if her article, written as PG as possible, was too risqué for the women’s blog, but she was willing to take that chance. She crossed her fingers that somehow her little message in a bottle would make it to Xavier.
CHAPTER TEN
FOR THE REST of the week, Xavier felt...empty and alone. The feeling that he’d been making a huge mistake walking away from Emma at the Ritz-Carlton hadn’t faded, and had only grown in its intensity. Rather than fade from his memory, Emma just loomed larger and larger, until almost every waking thought was of her. Her lips, her amazing curves, the softness of her skin. The way she simply gave herself to him, the completely vulnerable way she let him pleasure her. The out-of-this-world look on her face when she came for him.
Emma. What are you doing to me? He wondered, as he sat in his townhome in the west Loop, just blocks from his office. From his second-story bedroom window, he watched a couple walking together, hand-in-hand, down Jackson Boulevard, swinging their arms, happy as they laughed together beneath the unseasonably warm September sunshine on a bright Saturday afternoon. He envied their happiness, but he also felt it was all fake somehow. He knew that no matter how happy they seemed, beneath the surface trouble could be brewing. After all, Sasha held his hand, kissed him, even took him to bed while seeking the affection of another man.
