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Screw the warmth of embarrassment of being watched. I felt the warmth of the sun on my butt—and I didn't even care because his fingers skated down to grip the round curve of my ass and he lifted me up like I didn't weigh a thing.
He caught his breath, his kiss swollen lips quivering as his eyes burned into mine. “Tell me you want this.” There was a hesitation swirling in the emerald warmth of his gaze. He was giving me a chance to walk away. To stand my ground about the rule that once seemed like a life raft and now was just pulling me down. The rule was drowning the intensity of this moment.
Fuck the rule.
My hair spilled into my eyes and I whipped it back. I didn't want to hide. I wanted him to hear and see my desire.
“I want this.” I kissed him hard, taking his bottom lip between my teeth and tugging until he groaned his approval. I let go and the words dripped like honey. “I want you.”
He took us to the floor, the cushions catching our bodies. I expected his hands to drop to his fly, but his hands returned to me, fingertips stroking up my calves and rounding my knees. He tore open my thighs and a gasp stole away from my lips. There was an urgency that radiated from him that made me bloom. This muscled, delicious, holy crap sexy guy couldn't wait one more moment to have me. Me.
His fingertips brushed my inner thigh and goosebumps ran wild, dialing every pore in my body up to hyper sensitive. I'd never been touched the way Xander touched me. Like I was meant to be his. Like this was the realest thing he'd ever known.
I was propped on my elbows, watching him gaze at my body like it was nirvana, right within reach. I'd never been so close to climax without being touched. When he disappeared, only the crown of his head visible, the warmth of his breath on me turned me inside out. He was just breathing, gusts of air caressing my skin and I was already panting and thrusting my hips.
He moaned against my skin, lips dancing across the seam to my core. I fell backwards in ecstasy, everything but his mouth fading to black. His tongue roamed inside me, tasting my need. Suckling my desire.
When I came I shook like I was falling apart and somehow, some way, it wasn't terrifying. No one had touched me in months, but when I blinked through the haze of lust I realized I was wrong. No one had touched me the way he touched me...ever.
Chapter Eight: Xander
“No helicopter ride to meet your parents?” Her sweetheart mouth dipped with feigned disappointment. “That changes everything.”
I swatted her ass playfully and the gasp, followed by the reddening of her cheeks as she tossed me a scolding glare, was almost enough to calm the apprehension that scrambled to my throat. The silence invaded the memories of an afternoon that morphed from business as usual to Penny—Penny's hand in mine, Penny's smile no longer hesitant, Penny letting go...letting me take us to the place we both longed to go.
And now we were headed to meet my parents.
That fact alone should have been enough to make me dig in my heels and catch a breath. This whiplash romance had my head spinning. But the sinking in the pit of my stomach had nothing to do with the gravity of introducing her to my parents. I was battening down the hatches because even though I still tasted her on my tongue, still heard her moans swirling in my ears, there was no escaping the fact that even though being with her felt as close to real that I'd been in a long time, the fact remained that I'd only met her because my father was forcing my hand. I was paying her a great sum of money to heed his wishes and it turned what should have been anxiety inducing for romantic reasons to anxiety inducing because this was an arrangement.
Just don’t think about the end. Enjoy the ride. Enjoy her and this thing, whatever it is.
For all my talk about letting go, living in the moment, and enjoying what Penny and I had, I’d been fooling myself. I saw her pop the grapes in her mouth like a bitter pill she had to swallow, eyes swimming with emotion she refused to own up to and I made a choice. I wanted to make her smile, do something gallant, and a little absurd. I wanted to show her a life that I often took for granted; I had a helicopter, private jet, and a fleet of cars to take me anywhere in the world. When she glided to the window and looked out at the city with awe, like she was moments away from pinching herself and waking from this dream, I knew exactly where to take her. Brentwood Winery was my favorite in the area and I wanted their delicious wine to coat her tongue; I wanted her to see that beauty and escape were within reach. Most of all, I wanted her to see that I was willing to do anything just to make her smile.
That was my first mistake.
My second was jokingly suggesting we swing by and meet my parents.
And then she said yes—and I realized that this wasn’t a joking matter at all.
I leaned back, trying to exude a confidence that usually came to me naturally. “It should be fairly uneventful. My father will be in his wing, under lock and key. The likelihood of him summoning us for a meeting is nil. My mother will treat you like a long, lost friend that’s finally come home.” I could picture the hug, my mother’s thin arms wrapping around Penny like a python, squeezing the life out of her. “And my sister-” I stopped cold, my hackles immediately raising. Marie was a lot of things: vapid, ungrateful, indulgent, and a professional liability, but one thing she was not was overly nice. If my mother dialed up the congeniality meter to 10, Marie would dial it down to zero and skip right to treating Penny like she didn’t exist at all. “Let’s just hope my sister is out spending money she didn’t earn.”
“And I thought me and my sister had issues,” Penny whistled.
I let her gaze pull me in and instead of shrugging it off, I owned up to my comment. “I have two years on my sister, but you’d think it was two decades.” My head told me that this was all too much, that she couldn’t possibly want to hear about my sibling drama, even if she could relate to feeling completely alienated from your own blood. My heart couldn’t help but share. There was something disarming in the way she searched my face like she was ready to shine a light to pierce all my dark memories. “When I was growing up, my father told me about the importance of hard work. I received constant reminders of how he put blood, sweat, and more blood into Wade Enterprises. My sister got hugs and kisses and if at first you don’t succeed, just bat your eyes and I’ll fix it for you.”
“I’m sorry, Xander,” she said softly.
I let out a rumbling sigh as I shifted in my seat and aimed my ire out the window. I ignored the sympathy I felt coming from her. I felt like I was whining, and men didn’t whine. “It is what it is.”
“You don’t have to do that with me. I know about not being seen by your family,” she murmured. The melancholy in her voice was the same loneliness I refused to name. It was easier to shove it to the dark recesses of me, throw myself into my work, and avoid it altogether.
I tilted my head in her direction, expecting to see sadness. Ready to take it head on and let her know that I’d learned not to go there, but she didn’t need my comfort. I saw the fight in her that had sparked back at the club. I saw determination.
“It would be easy to run from it all. I’m really good at running.” The sweetheart line of her lips hardening to stone. “Every time I run away, like I did this afternoon, I just give that scared little girl power over me. And that’s far more terrifying than anything they can throw at me.”
I stared at her, past the beauty, the white hot sex appeal that first drew me to her...and I saw the woman beneath. The one that didn’t need me to whisk her away to a winery because her family didn’t appreciate her. She didn’t need saving at all.
She dropped her chin to her chest, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “I’m not saying that you’re wrong to feel that way about your dad and sister-”
