Chapter 19
Xander
Any assumptions I had about Charlotte are both confirmed and wrong at the same time.
She is even more incredible than I gave her credit for, and I didn’t think that was possible.
She should be broken. Between her childhood, living relatives, and what I’ve put her through, she should be in victim mode.
But she’s not.
Charlotte sees life through a glass half full instead of empty. She needed me, and I wasn’t there for her, but she still is willing to love me, believe in me, and allow me to show her I love her.
Charlotte has had no one besides her four friends love her. She could choose any guy she wants, but she’s chosen me. And after everything I put her through, she still loves me.
We are naked, lying on our sides facing each other in bed, wrapped up in each other. Her head is resting on my arm, and I am stroking the soft skin of her back.
“When’s your birthday?” I ask her.
Sadness passes in her eyes. She quietly says, “February eighth.”
I stroke the side of her head. “Why do you seem sad?”
She looks away from my eyes and shrugs. “I don’t like my birthday.”
“Why?”
“Because it always reminded me that another year went by and chances were going down for a family to adopt me.”
My heart bleeds at this moment, thinking of Charlotte as a little girl, waiting for a family who never came to adopt her. I don’t know what to say, so I pull her tighter to me and kiss her.
Biting on her lip, she blinks. “I had to hold myself back from texting or calling you on your birthday.”
“Good thing you didn’t call me because I had a huge pity party that day,” I admit.
“What happened?”
I inhale deeply, and my pulse goes up. “Nothing good.”
She stares at me, waiting for me to tell her.
“I was really frustrated because I still couldn’t remember anything and thought I was twenty-two turning twenty-three.
Noah, Chase, and Jamison took me out for dinner and some drinks.
The cake came and had thirty-five on it, and it hit me.
They’d told me for a month I was not twenty-two, but at that moment, everything hit me.
I remembered nothing about the last twelve years, so.
..” I turn away from Charlotte, not wanting to tell her the rest because of my shame and embarrassment.
Quietly, she says, “It’s okay. I won’t judge you. What happened?”
“I got drunk and into a fistfight with Chase. Noah and Jamison had to pull us apart. The cops were called because it was in the restaurant, but we all knew the cops from being paramedics. Noah wrote the restaurant owner a big check and convinced him not to press charges. I apparently knew the policemen who were there, but I didn’t remember them that night because my memory hadn’t come back yet.
” I wait for her to judge me and rightly so.
But she doesn’t. She pulls me closer and strokes my cheek. “It’s good you were with friends. That explains a lot now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was still at Noah and Piper’s in New York recovering. I assumed something happened, but I didn’t know what. Noah acted strange when he came home, but I felt something was wrong. I asked Piper what happened, and she said there was an argument, but everything was fine.”
“Things got ugly for a bit after that.”
Charlotte stares at me. “With Chase?”
I shake my head. “No, he forgave me before we left the restaurant. It got...it got dark for me.”
She scoots closer to me, and our faces are inches apart.
“I...I was frustrated because I couldn’t remember. And...” I stop myself from finishing because I don’t want to hurt Charlotte.
“And what?” she urges.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“It’s okay. Tell me, Xander.”
I lick my lips, and I nervously glance at her.
She’s waiting for me to tell her. “I kept dreaming of you, and I knew you weren’t Billie.
So I felt guilty. And I couldn’t see your face, so I didn’t know who you were.
I didn’t tell anyone because I thought maybe you weren’t real, and I was going crazy.
” I omit to tell her I considered killing myself a few times before my memory started to come back.
Charlotte says nothing at first. She strokes my cheek. I can see her thinking, and she finally asks, “Do you still feel guilty?”
“No,” I say without any hesitation.
“Not even a little?”
I cup her face in my hands. “No.”
She lets out a breath.
I lean into her and kiss her, trying to show her she is the only woman I desire and love.
If I could press pause on life and bottle up how Charlotte makes me feel, I would be in a state of eternal bliss. When she kisses me, she consumes me, breathing life into me where I thought I was dead.
When you’ve gone through the darkness, and you’re faced with so much light, it’s blinding.
People think blindness is always bad, but when you’re blinded by light after being in the dark for so long, you realize the things you put stock in, that you assumed you needed to have a future, have been a figment of your imagination.
Charlotte is the light. The blinding light healing me from my fears and all the worries I may never have a clear picture of my past. Whatever happened then can stay there. The only thing that matters is the future.
She laces her hands behind my head, once again giving me a notion of something in the past, some memory that wants to come out, but I don’t try to comprehend it. I pull her closer and detach from anything that isn’t right now.
My lips move across her jaw, down her neck, and to her chest that is already rising and falling. I lick her areolas, one at a time, teasing her puckered hardness, listening to her quiet whimpers.
Her legs part, widening, so I’m centered on her. My lips give homage to the smoothness of her stomach and the curves of her waist before I feast on her mound.
She moans, and I harden further. Desperation to taste her, as her scent flares in my nostrils, overpowers me, and as I massage her thighs, I take my first nibble.
A perfect concoction of flavors, both salty and sweet, hits my tongue, and I remind myself to take my time and savor her.
“Oh...oh...” she moans, pressing into me.
Gliding my finger in and out of her, I add another, as she grinds harder.
I kiss her inner thighs and around her sex then go back to dining on her, licking her clit, sucking her soft and then harder, flicking my tongue against her delicious, pink pussy.
“Xander,” she cries out, bucking harder into my face as I finger fuck her faster.
The heat of her body penetrates my cells, tempting and torturing me, as pre-cum drips down my dick.
“Please...please don’t stop,” she begs, digging her fingers into my skull and squeezing her thighs around my neck.
I sink my fingers into her hips and pull her into me as close as possible and suck her into her high.
“Xander! Oh...oh!” She flies into a state of glorious ecstasy, vibrating into my mouth and on my fingers.
She’s quivering, and when she slows down, I kiss her thighs, letting her breathe, then latch back onto her.
The second time, I ferociously eat her out, and she screams my name, trembling almost immediately into my mouth.
Her flushed skin is warm and smooth, as I make my way up her body. My cock is hard and throbbing, and when my mouth meets hers, she opens her legs and wraps them around me.
I glide into her and groan.
“Oh,” she moans, already pulsing around me, bringing my every cell to life.
I stroke her hair. “Keep doing that,” I breathe. “You’re amazing.”
She grasps my shoulders, and her fingers sink into my back. The warmth of her skin melts into mine, and she buries her face in my neck.
Kissing me. Licking me. Sucking me.
Adrenaline is like a spider, weaving its web throughout my body, bouncing from one place to the next, connecting all my cells.
“Harder,” she murmurs.
I thrust harder into her as my balls tighten, and I go as deep as I can.
“Oh...Xander,” she cries out, and it’s the sweetest sound I have ever heard.
“Let go, baby,” I tell her. I need her to cum, and I need her to cum now. So I slam into her harder. She spasms violently, shattering in my arms as I release my own hurricane within her.
In our aftermath, I kiss her, keeping my body pressed to hers and not wanting to be anywhere else.
Heaven exists with Charlotte, and I’m a man on a mission to never again forget it.