8. Xavier
8
XAVIER
I thought I had this woman all figured out.
Since the day she hired me, I’ve spent every billable hour, and a few free ones too, learning every part of her, digging into the most intimate parts of her life, studying what she looks like when she’s holding back tears or curbing the burning desire to murder someone, mastering the art of delivering the perfect motivational speech to get her to channel that energy into something other than a destructive act that would hurt her in court.
By the time I prepared the final order of divorce, I felt confident that my knowledge of my client, Grayson Hart, was vast and incredibly detailed. I can say with the same amount of confidence that I don’t know a damn thing about the woman sitting next to me right now. The woman who heard I was celebrating her divorce and, instead of getting upset and calling me a crass asshole, which I would have deserved, invited me, my brothers, Lincoln and Chance, and my best friend, Orion, to join her and her cousins.
Our two parties meshed easily, turning into one big ‘Grayson is finally free’ celebration where conversation and drinks have flowed easily but done nothing to distract me from the waves of shock that wash over me every time I look at her.
She’s traded in the reserved, slicked back bun she usually favors for wild, tousled curls that linger around the soft lines of her bare shoulders before cascading down her back. For as long as I’ve known her, she’s always gone for a more natural look with her makeup, but tonight her plump lips are painted maroon and those wide, auburn eyes have been lined and purposefully smudged for a dramatic, smoky effect.
The true departure, though, is the outfit she’s wearing. The black on black ensemble looks amazing against her mocha skin. I’ve seen her do the monochromatic thing a million times before, but never like this. Never in something as revealing as the corset she’s wearing tonight. My eyes fall shut of their own volition, and I curse silently as the image of her at the bar flashes in my mind once again.
The fucking corset.
Most men can’t tell the difference between one that was made to look like lingerie but is actually meant to be worn outside of the bedroom, and one that was made for the bedroom and found its way outside, but I can. And the one Grayson is wearing is meant to be worn for five seconds before being wrenched from her curves and resigned to the floor of someone’s bedroom while the skin it was just covering is caressed and kissed and worshiped.
“You okay?” A soft, yet husky voice asks through pillow soft lips that graze the shell of my ear. The music is loud, so it stands to reason that her proximity is more of a necessity than a desire for closeness, but I still react to it, to her. Three months of waiting for the right time, the right moment to cross the line we started dancing around on that witness stand have left me raw, an open nerve that her voice grates over in the most deliciously, painful way.
Opening my eyes, I turn to find that she has moved closer to me. We’re alone in the booth now. Everyone else in our combined party has paired off and taken to the dance floor. I’m surprised by how enthusiastically my brothers and Orion have taken to her cousins, but I guess I shouldn’t be, since I know firsthand how intoxicating the women in this family can be. I’ve been intrigued by Grayson from the moment she walked into my office, and the more I’ve gotten to know her, the less that’s changed.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I tell her, taking a sip of my bourbon, hoping the familiar burn will knock some sense into me. “I was just?—”
“Falling asleep in the club?” she asks, her lips curved into a teasing smirk that pulls a laugh out of me.
“Nah, just trying to remember if I signed off on a brief before I left for the day.”
“So, thinking about work at the club?” She twists her lips to the side. “That might be worse.”
“Worse than falling asleep? I don’t think so.”
“No, I think it is. You can’t help it if you doze off for a second, but thinking that hard about work is intentional.”
“I wasn’t thinking hard.”
“Your face was scrunched up, your brows were pulled together. That’s what you look like when you’re thinking hard.”
Her voice is full of authority, and I’m more pleased than I should be at the thought of her knowing me. I throw back the rest of my bourbon before I reply. “I guess you’re right, but it’s an important brief.”
Why I’m choosing to continue with the lie instead of changing the subject altogether is beyond me. I guess I like how Grayson’s eyes are dancing with amusement, how her posture is relaxed and engaged, how she’s leaning forward, all of her attention on me.
“I’m sure it is, but you’re supposed to be celebrating, sir, not thinking about work.”
My mind wants to linger on the shape of her lips when she calls me sir, but I force myself to move past it. “You’re supposed to be celebrating too,” I remind her.
“I’ve been celebrating all night,” she shoots back, her voice laced with pride as she kicks out her legs to show off the heels on her feet. “Me and these bad boys have crossed the threshold of every club in Fairview.”
“Did they make it to the dance floor, though? Or did you just go from the door to a private section?”
A small wrinkle born of light-hearted offense forms between her brows as she leans in close to me. Her breath is a ghost of warmth on my lips, tinged with the flavor of champagne. “You think I’d wear heels I couldn’t dance in all night to my divorce celebration?”
We’re already too close, but I lean in too, eating up the small bit of distance between her face and mine. “It’s a fair question, no? I haven’t seen you out there—” I jut my chin toward the dance floor and the dense crowd enjoying the mix the DJ is spinning, “—since I joined your celebration.”
“That’s because someone needed to keep you company while you sat here and thought about work.”
“And that someone just had to be you?”
“Well, yeah, because it wasn’t going to be any of them,” she insists, glancing towards the center of the floor where her cousins and my crew have been for the past twenty minutes. They’ve paired off. Lincoln with Chantel, Chance with A’ja, and Orion with Kendra, the two of them dancing too slowly for the song that’s playing.
“You’re right.” My eyes drop to her mouth to watch the slow spread of the smile she always gives me when I agree with her. The way she reacts, and my knowledge of the asshole of a man, makes me think she rarely heard those words from her husband. Ex-husband, I remind myself. Grayson isn’t married anymore. I dedicated a lot of my time and energy to make sure that became an undeniable truth.
“Of course I am,” Grayson says, pulling away from me so she can finish the glass of champagne she’s been nursing for a while now. When the flute is empty, she places it on the table and pushes it towards the center before rising to her feet. “Are you done thinking? Because I want to dance.”
A bright bubble of surprise blooms in my chest. “With me?”
She tilts her head to the side. “Well, yeah, unless you don’t want—” she pauses, a flicker of uncertainty flashing behind her eyes that makes me feel like a dick immediately. I’ve let uncertainty fester for too long between us, and I’m determined to use tonight to kill it, to show her I meant what I said in the parking lot of the courthouse all those months ago.
“No!” The word tumbles out roughly as I rush to stand. Grayson steps back, still unsure. I reach for her, catching her by the wrist and dipping my head to meet her eyes. “I mean, yes, I’d love to dance with you, Hart.”
Almost instantly, the doubt that was just marring her features melts away, replaced by a brilliant smile that sends warmth spreading through my chest and down my spine. My grip loosens on her wrist, fingers trailing down the soft skin layered over her pulse, which jumps at the contact. I link our hands together, and Grayson gives my fingers a light squeeze as I lead her to the dance floor, intentionally avoiding my crew and her cousins because I don’t want to share the moment we’re about to have with anyone else.
As soon as we’re settled between the shoulders and bodies of strangers who instinctively make room without us having to ask, the music changes to something slow, sensual and full of bass. I turn to Grayson to find her biting her lip. This isn’t the dance she had in mind.
“Do you—I mean we could—” I tip my head back in the direction we just came, letting her know there won’t be any hard feelings if she’s rethinking this.
“No, I’m good. Unless you?—”
I cut her sentence short with a tug on her hand that brings her chest to mine and place both hands on the generous span of her hips. “This okay?”
“Mhmm, almost,” she hums, spinning around to press her back to my front. Then her head tips back, coming to rest on my shoulder, and she starts to move. Beginning with a slow roll of her hips that makes me curse under my breath and wonder how the fuck I’m going to keep my shit together for the length of the song.
With my gaze cast heavenward and a prayer that I don’t end up fucking this woman in the middle of the dance floor on my lips, I follow Grayson’s lead. Every twist, sway and roll of her body is a guide that I follow with the dedicated interest of a student at the feet of their teacher, eager to please, desperate not to do anything that might make this already surreal experience end before I can fully appreciate the heat of her body pressed against mine.
“I should have known,” she says, flicking those auburn eyes up at me.
“Known what?” My lips are at her ear. My fingers digging into her waist. My chest is pressed to her back, and there’s no space between us. No line to look at and tell us how far past appropriate we’ve gone.
“That you’d be a good dancer.” She turns in my arms, and now we’re face to face. There’s more space between us now, more breathing room, but somehow, with her arms on my shoulders and her fingers linked at the base of my neck, this feels even more intimate. “You’re good at everything you do,” she whispers, eyes locked on mine as she delivers the compliment. In any other context, it might feel innocent, and maybe she means it that way, but that’s not how I take it. And how can I when she’s this close, and she smells this good, and her body is all curves and movement and sin?
“I’m just following your lead.”
“You’re good at that too, so I guess my point still stands.”
“It does,” I concede easily, my voice a rough edge of a waning control that fades a little more every time Grayson’s hips roll into mine. She’s still looking at me. Her gaze low, pupils blown, teeth dug into the plump flesh of her bottom lip as I match her move for move. Our bodies locked in the pale imitation of an act I’ve been desperate to perform with her since I became acquainted with the slick, wet heat of her mouth.
As if she knows I’m thinking of her mouth, Grayson leans in close and brushes her lips over mine. The action is so gentle, so subtle it can’t even be called a kiss, but it still hits me deep in my chest, sending sparks of electricity down my spine and straight to my dick.
“ Hart .” My voice is strangled with surprise and desire as I follow her retreating lips, desperate to keep them close.
“Touch me,” she says, the demand dragging me further away from the line I’ve never even been tempted to cross with another client.
“Where?” I ask, my hands already moving, already exploring as images of the last time she granted me permission to touch her flash through my mind.
“Everywhere.”
Grayson spins around again, leaving her right arm over my shoulder so that her body is one long line of displayed temptation. A canvas I’ve been given permission to paint with curious, unhurried hands. Before I start my quest, I pull her hips back into me, letting her feel exactly what her proximity has done to me, and a quiet moan leaves her lips at the feel of my erection pressed into her ass. An answering moan is pulled from my chest when she starts to grind against it.
“Fuck, Grayson.”
“Touch me, Xavier,” she whines. Leaving one hand on her waist, I drag the other up her body, fingers splayed wide over her rib cage and the satin lines of the corset hiding her skin from me, and wonder if I’ve ever heard a sound sweeter than Grayson Hart begging. As I cup her full breast in my palm, thumb grazing over her nipple, I decide I haven’t.
I also decide that I want to hear it again.
That I want her begging for more while I have my tongue buried in her pussy and the insides of her thighs are already slick with her release.
That I want her pleading to sit on my dick and bounce those perfect titties in my face.
That I want her whines of desperation to echo off the ridiculously high ceilings of my bedroom.
And now that I’ve decided, now that I’ve accepted we’re well and truly past the point of appropriate interaction between a lawyer and his client, former or otherwise, I know I have to have it.
I have to have her .
Grayson’s eyes are closed now, but they pop open when I go from rubbing her nipple to rolling it between my thumb and forefinger, and they stretch wide with surprise and need when I say, “Come home with me.”