Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I was supposed to be making Xander breakfast at my apartment. My way of apologizing, albeit eleven years too late. Or it’s my way of congratulating him, for the five hours of sleep he got at the study last night. I haven’t decided yet. But it doesn’t matter.
Because I grab onto a fistful of hair and pull him toward me.
He throws me a megawatt smile, flashing his sunburst hazel eyes. And it’s over for me.
He mutters something I can’t make out right before we kiss, but I don’t have the capacity to figure it out because he lets out a groan when our lips meet and I lose all sense of control.
I open my mouth and invite him in, and he doesn’t waste a second. It’s all teeth and tongues and hands everywhere.
It’s three weeks of fucking with each other.
It’s the memory of that night from eleven years ago.
It’s how he feels right now.
Waves of want flood my body. And finally, I get to have him.
Xander’s hands that have been roaming up and down my back cup my face as he presses his entire body into me.
“Ashleigh.” Xander moans my name in my mouth before his tongue finds mine again. He tastes like candy. He feels so needy. He smells so fresh. Like brand-new.
And yet, when he bites my bottom lip—a move he did eleven years ago that had me mauling him for more—and a groan escapes me, I know the history we have is guiding us.
Old and new. An elite combination for getting off.
One of his hands finds my back and pulls me flush against his body. He’s fucking hard already. The pressure of him straining against my stomach feels delicious. He finally breaks contact with my mouth to scrape his teeth along my jawline to my ear.
“Look what you do to me,” Xander says, voice hoarse in my ear. The hot air from his breath travels the length of my body, from my ear to the pulsing between my thighs. The admission that he’s on the verge of losing it from a kiss makes me ache for him.
“You already know what you do to me,” I say back, as he sucks on the sweet spot between my neck and collarbone.
There’s going to be a mark there later. But right now, my remark is enough for Xander to reach his hand up underneath my T-shirt, his warm hands splaying across my back, holding me in place as he walks us backward, toward my bedroom.
Then his mouth is back on mine, and I tilt my head to give him full access. It sends him wild as he pushes me up against wall and devours my mouth.
With my back anchored in place by the wall behind me, his hands return to roaming my entire body. Mapping it like a treasure. He starts making his way up my stomach, his fingers now flirting with the lace of my bra.
Just when I think he’s about to abandon my bra and I’m about to chastise him for being a tease, he reaches the hem of my T-shirt and pulls it up.
The rich cotton of the UCLA LAW T-shirt I’ve been wearing since yesterday lands softly on the floor.
Xander leans back to drink me in. My checkered cotton shorts. My black lace bra.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, his thumb rubbing my already swollen lip before he brushes the hair out of my face.
“You are,” I say, and that’s enough to end our mutual admiration because his lips are back on me. This time, he goes straight for my neck and starts trailing wet kisses to my collarbone.
His hands make their way to my back, expertly working the bra clasp. He hooks his fingers under the straps and slides them down my arms, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their place.
I watch as his eyes roam every inch of my exposed skin, unwilling to settle for just a piece of me. When he looks up at me through the curls, with his eyes dark and wide and a slight half smile on his lips, he says, “Even better than I remembered.”
And with those words, I feel my temperature rising.
My bra now discarded on the floor along with my T-shirt, Xander wastes no time with his thumb and finger working one of my nipples while his tongue licks and sucks and bites the other one.
I moan as the sensation explodes throughout my body.
My hands fling to his hair, twisting and pulling, his curls the perfect length to tug and pull at. My back bows off the wall, riding the fine line between pleasure and pain.
“So perfect,” he mutters, breaking contact before taking my nipple into his mouth again.
I am so fucking wet.
I grab a fistful of his hair by the scuff of his neck and drag him up to my mouth.
His tongue finds mine.
I finally regain the use of my limbs and push us off the wall, walking him backward, to my bedroom.
We trip over something on the floor, and break apart laughing for a second before Xander starts tugging at the elastic waistband of my shorts while I try to pull off his T-shirt, abandoning the mission to the bedroom.
A moment later I’m standing in my panties as I run my hands down his chest to the hem of his jeans.
He lets out a low sigh as I start to unbuckle his belt. Flushed and frustrated, I fumble the buckle until Xander’s hands are on top of mine, helping me.
Then, he’s naked.
My hooded eyes watch as he strokes himself. I suck air between my teeth in anticipation, but before I can reach my hands out, he tuts. “Not yet.”
I drag his body back onto mine and attempt to redirect us to the kitchen bench, but he lifts me up and continues carrying me to the bedroom.
“For the last three weeks, I’ve been tortured by a bed.
Do you know what it’s like to share a bed with you every single night and not be able to have you?
” His voice is rough like gravel, his pupils blown out.
He doesn’t stop walking me into my bedroom.
“It’s excruciating. We are doing this. In. Your. Bed.”
His mouth meets mine, demanding and impatient, as he mercifully guides me onto the bed, his body following mine onto the soft surface. The heat from his body sends every nerve cell burning for him.
Xander breaks from my mouth and trails kisses down my sternum, his fingers tracing lazy circles until he stops and looks up at me, a glint of mischief in his eyes. He hooks his fingers into my panties and slides them down my legs, and the anticipation of what’s to come sends me feral.
I run my hands through his curls before bringing his face down to my stomach, but he doesn’t need any encouragement as he starts tracing his tongue.
Lower.
Lower.
Lower.
At the last moment he reroutes his lips to where my thigh and hip meet.
I bite down on my bottom lip to stop myself from laughing, but the fun is quickly replaced with frustration when he jumps to my other thigh. “Don’t stop,” I say, pleading.
“Just savoring every mouthful,” he says, holding his lips an inch from my skin. It sends a shiver all the way up my leg. Oh, he knows exactly what he’s doing.
With one hand splayed on my stomach, holding me down, and the other one gripping my thigh, I feel his teeth and tongue scrape down.
Down.
Down.
Down.
His lips are on me.
There.
There.
There.
He starts gently. A trace of his lips. A hint of his tongue. The faintest hit of his breath.
It drives me insane until he finally opens his mouth and makes full contact.
At first, it’s slow and drawn out. He takes his time, like this is his favorite thing to do in the entire world. Like I’m his last meal. Like he could stay in this moment forever.
I let out a moan, and I have nothing else to do but sink into it. No more thinking. Just feeling.
I relish in the build-up. Not wanting to rush. Not wanting it to be over. Not wanting it to end.
The hand Xander was using to keep my thighs wide lets go and his fingers swipe over me, getting drenched in the process before they’re inside me, curling against my inner walls. The perfect spot.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And right when I’m on the edge, he whispers, without losing contact, “Come for me.”
The effect of pulling the pressure back sends an orgasm rippling through me—an ember turning into a wildfire. When I scream his name, Xander takes me fully into his mouth, coaxing out another wave of orgasms, one after the other.
Multiple. You don’t get that from Bone It.
As I come back down, I can’t help but let out a squeal. “Xander Miller,” I say, laughing deliriously. “How?” It’s all I can manage.
He hasn’t come up yet so I dare to look down at him, and he’s gazing up at me, grinning.
“It’s all you,” he says, licking his lips like he just discovered his favorite flavor.
Or that he’s tasted it again after being deprived of it for eleven years.
Either way, he looks euphoric, and I’m the one who just came over and over again.
“It’s all you,” I whisper back. And before I can freak out at that admission, he starts kissing me again. The taste of me on him is so fucking hot.
And then he’s kneeling over me, stroking himself. “Condom?”
“Bedside table,” I say, turning around to crawl up to the head of the bed, hearing a private moan from behind. I can’t resist; I arch my back to turn around and look. Xander’s eyes are on fire as he drinks me in from this angle.
His fingertips trace my naked spine before bracketing my hips. He leans down and kisses the dimples on either side of my lower back.
Then he looks back up at me, destroyed by the view.
“God, I want you in every way,” he says, before lifting his body off the bed. I track his every movement as he walks to the bedside drawer. He rips a condom off the strip and in two seconds it’s on. He’s so close to being inside me and the anticipation turns me desperate.
He flips me onto my back and crawls slowly on top of me. There’s a whisper in my ear that asks, “You still want this?”
There it is. An exit strategy. The disclaimer. We can stop. Just say the word.
The truth is, though, we can’t stop. So I nod in desperate agreement.
“Tell me what you want,” Xander says, not moving. Waiting for permission.
“I want you inside me,” I say, almost whining.
And then he sinks into me and I feel him in every way.
My hands immediately find his shoulders, pulling his closer. The weight of his body on top of mine. The smell of his skin. The look in his eyes.
The curls blanketing out the world.
“Ashleigh.” He says my name like a prayer as he slides a hand underneath my ass and pulls a leg up, angling deeper.
The position hits so good.
I look up and see the memory of him on top of me, his arms caging me, colliding with right now and—with the steady rhythm—I’m being nudged closer and closer to the edge.
I find his swallow tattoo and scrape my teeth over it before my lips travel up his arm where I lick at the sensitive spot on his skin between his shoulder and ear lobe.
“Fuck me,” I murmur. It elicits a groan, sending Xander reeling.
Two words. One sentence. It changes everything.
Xander sits up on his knees, both hands holding my thighs in place as he watches himself get repeatedly coated in my wetness.
“Ashleigh.” Xander says my name like a promise as one of his hands travels up my thigh and he thumbs me. “You’re so close.”
This is a far cry from the orgasm he pulled out of me moments ago. This is frantic. And needy. And chaotic.
This position reaches places not even his fingers could hit.
“Xander,” I say, whimpering. I’m completely drunk on this feeling. I’m out of my mind wasted on Xander.
I need to taste him. So I bring his mouth to mine, pleading.
Give me the medicine.
One of his hands moves up to my hair and I completely lose my mind.
I’m peaking. Oh.
I’m peaking. My.
I’m peaking. God.
I’m coming. Fucccckk.
I feel him chasing my orgasm with his own, as he drives and drives and drives.
And then he buries his head in my neck and stops.
“Ashleigh Hutchinson.” He says my name like an oath as he kisses me one more time. This one is slow. And deep. And he lingers on my lips. Then he rests his head on my forehead for a moment, eyes crinkling in the corners with pleasure. “How?”
And, goddamn it, I feel myself smiling back.
How?