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Sometimes I could be a good mom or a good girlfriend, but certainly not both.
Xavier just shrugged and waited for a reply.
“I am a bit afraid to touch anything,” I admitted as I looked around again. “Especially after what happened out there with the planter. But you’ve already called your designer. It’s fine.” I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to spoil things with criticism before they’d already started. “Do you want to show me my room now?”
“Your room?”
I turned. Xavier’s tone was even sharper than before, and he stood tall now, on alert.
“Yourroom?” he asked again. “The fuck do you mean, your room?”
I looked around, feeling even more like I was messing things up. “Out there. All the bedrooms. You said…we…we all needed our own space. I figured one would be mine. I just assumed—wha!”
Before I could finish, I was literally swept off my feet, then tossed onto the cloud-like bed with a distinctly ungraceful thump. The duvet floated up around me, then back down as Xavier crawled up my body and pinned me to the mattress while he framed my face with his hands.
For the first time since I’d arrived, our differences faded away. Here, I couldn’t see the contract between our clothes, housing, or anything else that made me feel so utterly inadequate compared to Xavier and all his glory.
Here, it was just his beautiful face, with its full lips, angular jaw, and penetrating blue eyes peering down at mine.
“Francesca.”
The formal use of my full, given name sent ripples up my spine. Xavier slipped a hand down to my waist to hold me still. As if I could move at all, caged under his big body.
“I thought you were smarter than that,” he said as he peered down at me, dark eyes fathomless, unmoving.
“I—I am smart,” I stuttered, though I’d never felt more like a fool.
“Then how in bloody hell could you think I’d ever let you sleep alone under my roof?”
Oh.
Realization and relief flooded me all at once. And finally, that tightness in my chest started to unravel.
I tried to move, to get out from under that penetrating gaze, but he was stone, holding me in place.
“Woman,” he pronounced, keeping my chin firmly in place. “I thought I made it clear. You belong to me. Just like I belong to you. You’re not sleeping less than two feet from me anymore, much less in another fucking bedroom. Is that clear?”
We gazed at each other for a few seconds until it became obvious he wasn’t joking. Or looking away until I answered.
“Yes,” I said, feeling a bit like a chastised schoolgirl, albeit a very turned-on chastised schoolgirl. “That’s clear.”
His grip on my jaw softened, and Xavier closed his eyes. When they opened again, the anger was gone, replaced by something gentler and yet somehow more potent.
“I missed you,” he admitted as his thumb stroked my right cheekbone.
The tension in my chest loosened a bit more. “I’m glad. But you could have said so once in a while, you know. It was a long six weeks of five-minute phone calls.”
Xavier shook his head, causing a lock of black hair to fall forward and tickle my brow. “Honest? I think I was afraid to say it. If I admitted how much I really missed you and Sof, I’d have flown right back across the ocean to find you again. And I had to wait. I had to be here.” His forehead met mine again. “But I promise, I hated every fucking second without you.”
Trying to encourage his timorous touch, I nuzzled him back. “Well, I missed you too, Mr. Parker. A lot.”
Those full lips smiled against mine. “Yeah?”
“So much.”
He kissed me, sweet and slow, as he cradled my face between his broad palms and worshiped my mouth for several minutes. But just as I was about to slip a foot around his calf and tug him close by the belt loops, he rolled to one side, freeing me from my Xavier-shaped cage so we could look at each other.
“I want you to be comfortable here,” he told me. “Both of you. I know it’s not right yet. The furniture, the colors, everything. But we’ll make it right for all of us. Whatever you want. The cost is no matter.”
