14. Xavier
14
XAVIER
A ndrew Savage, the founding partner of my firm and my mentor, once told me that a man in love is a man at risk of losing his sanity. It was a random statement meant to teach me some abstract lesson about a client’s state of mind that I put out of my head immediately because I realized early in life that most people view love as a weapon and yield it as one.
That’s what my father had done. Fashioned his love into a blade that cut my mother down to the quick, stealing her confidence and joy, making it so she didn’t trust herself to take care of us even though he didn’t want to. Somewhere along the way, between my fucked up childhood and the height of my career, I decided that love wasn’t for me, which meant I would never be at risk of losing my sanity.
That was true until I met Grayson, and now I’m certain I’ve lost my mind because I’ve allowed her to talk me into attending a seven-year-old’s birthday party. Actually, attend is the wrong word because between Orion and I, we’re caught somewhere between hosts and entertainment, keeping the group of thirty or so kids busy while Grayson, Kendra, and every other adult besides us, hides from the heat inside the house.
Sweat beads on the back of my neck, and I just let it because there’s no point in fighting back against August heat. You never win. Even when you’re in the pool wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks.
“Alright, alright, last round of Marco Polo,” O yells, clapping his hands to get the attention of the group of kids floating or standing in the water between us.
I’m at the back, where the water is deepest, and Orion is standing in the shallow end, his hands on the shoulders of Kendra’s son, Crew. I’ve always known O was good with kids—he has a ton of nieces and nephews that adore him— but I’ve never seen him like he is with Crew. It feels almost paternal. Now that I know about whatever is going on with him and Kendra, I hear about Crew all the time— Made a Roblox account, so I could play with Crew. Can’t meet tonight, I promised Crew we’d FaceTime and watch anime before bed. Think I might sign up to coach rec basketball again because Crew wants to play —but this is my first time seeing them interact, and it’s obvious to me they’ve developed a strong bond.
I just hope it’ll be able to stay intact if things don’t work out between him and Kendra.
O leans down, looking the birthday boy in the eye. “Ready, kid?”
Crew nods quickly but doesn’t begin counting down immediately. Instead, he catches my eye. “Can we do it in Japanese again?”
“Of course. How about you start, and I’ll jump in if you get mixed up?”
His answering grin is wide, filled with gaps from where he’s lost his two front teeth, and I smile back, proud to have found a point of connection with a kid that means so much to two of the most important people in my life. I don’t even know how I ended up revealing that I speak Japanese, but Crew latched on to the fact, supplying me with word after word to translate for him and his friends as they ran between the bouncy house and pool.
“Close your eyes first,” O reminds him. “Everyone, get ready to scatter.”
A slew of excited giggles sounds out around us, but I stay focused on Crew. His eyes are closed now, and his voice is tentative when he begins to count.
“Ichi.” One. “Ni.” Two. “San.” Three. “Shi.” Four. “Go.” Five. “Roku.” Six. “Shichi.” Seven. He pauses, brows folding into a hard line as he tries to recall what comes next.
“Hachi,” I say, supplying the word for eight.
“Hachi,” Crew repeats, his body swaying a little in the water. Orion says he does that when he gets nervous. “Kyuu.” Nine. I find myself mouthing the final words with him, giving him a nod of encouragement even though he can’t see me. “Juu!” he shouts triumphantly, stopping the count at ten before launching himself into the water and hunting down his friends with a ruthlessness Orion is still bragging to Kendra about as he carries Crew to her car when they leave for the night.
When they’re gone, I lock up and join Grayson in the living room where she’s relaxing with a much deserved glass of wine. Even though it wasn’t her kid’s party, she put in a lot of work to make the day special for Crew and stress-less for Kendra. I can see that it’s all catching up with her now. I take a spot on the couch too, pulling her feet into my lap to massage them.
She closes her eyes and sighs. “That feels nice.”
“Do you want me to run you a bath so you can really relax?”
“I would love that,” she says, peeking at me through heavy lids. “But I have to wash up the few dishes Mom couldn’t fit in the dishwasher.”
After the party was done, Grayson’s mom, aunts, and cousins worked with us to return the house to its usual pristine condition. They would have stuck around to do the last few things, but Grayson wouldn’t let them, insisting she was going to leave everything else until tomorrow. I knew she was lying then, which is why I planned to take care of it tonight.
“I’m going to do that. You’re going to take a bath and get in bed, and when I’m done, I’m going to come up and eat your pussy because we both know you sleep better after you’ve had an orgasm.”
The way she reacts when I talk so openly about eating her out will never get old to me. No matter what she’s doing or where we are, it’s always the same thing. The slow trickle of heat that turns her eyes into twin pools of desire. The slight parting of her lips and the subtle shift in her breathing that makes her breasts rise and fall just a bit quicker. Everything about it is real and raw and mine .
Grayson reaches down and grabs the hem of her sundress—which to no one’s surprise is black and perfectly tailored to her curves—hiking it up and exposing her thick thighs and the tiny scrap of fabric covering her mound. She lets her legs fall apart, forcing me to notice the way the poor excuse for a pair of underwear leaves her pussy lips partially on display.
“Or you could eat my pussy now.”
I’m between her legs in an instant, shifting her underwear to the side and pulling her clit into my mouth. Grayson arches up off the couch, her shocked gasp hitting the ceiling before raining down around us.
“Fuck. Xavier. Wait, I—” She squirms underneath my ministrations, trying to get away from the unrelenting strokes of my tongue across the sensitive bundle of nerves. I pull back a bit, just long enough to watch her face when I say, “This is what you wanted, Hart. Don’t run from me when I’m giving you what you asked for.”
Then I’m back on her, licking, sucking, nipping until there’s a puddle of her essence on the couch underneath her ass and her legs are shaking around my ears. And even then, I don’t stop. I kiss the inside of her thighs and drive into her soft, silken heat with two fingers while she grips her breasts and rolls her hips, trying to match my movements to maximize her pleasure.
“You’re incredible, Grayson. Tell me you know that.”
She gives me a jerky nod, eyes still squeezed tight as I stroke in and out of her. “I know,” she gasps, a rough moan falling from her lips when my fingers start to focus on that ridged flesh at the front of her walls.
“Say it,” I demand, bringing my mouth back to her clit as her sex begins to tremble around my fingers.
“ Xavier, ” she pleads, frustration laced with pleasure leaving her body in a huff. She hates when I do this, when I make her speak love and positivity into herself, when all she wants to do is come. As far as timing goes, I know there are better moments to have her repeat affirmations, but there’s something so fucking sexy to me about hearing Grayson’s proclamations of self-love blend with the frayed edges of an orgasm.
“Say. It.” I curl my fingers inside of her, emphasizing the verbal request, and she bucks against me wildly, grinding her sex into my face and onto my fingers, trying to chase down her release without my assistance, which only makes me want to withhold it.
My hand goes still, and my mouth hovers just a few inches away from where she needs me. Grayson sits up, eyes wild and disbelieving. “ Xavier, please. ”
“You know what I want to hear, Hart.”
She throws herself back against the cushions. “I’m incredible,” she huffs, rolling her eyes and then moaning when I start to work her over once again.
“Say it like you mean it, baby,” I coach her.
“I’m incredible,” she repeats, this time with more feeling.
“Again.”
“I’m incredible.”
“Again, Grayson. Say I’m incredible.”
“ I’m incredible,” she says, the declaration breaking over a moan.
I reward her obedience by finger fucking her faster, sucking her clit harder, keeping the pace and pressure consistent while she sobs through one orgasm and then another. When it’s all said and done, Grayson is boneless and sated, which means she doesn’t argue or protest when I usher her upstairs and run her a bubble bath.
“Join me,” she says from inside the large, freestanding tub where there’s more than enough room for the both of us.
“I would love to, Hart, but I’ve got dishes to wash.”
Lifting one bubble covered hand out of the water, she reaches for me with a seductive pout on her lips. “The dishes can wait.”
“Fine, I’ll join you.” She does a little celebratory shimmy, and I laugh as I strip down. “You have to promise that you won’t try to sneak downstairs in the morning and wash those dishes, though.”
Grayson places her hand over her heart, watching me sink into the water. “I promise.”
I squint at her, suspicious by how quickly she’s folded. “Why don’t I believe you, Hart?”
“I don’t know, Allen.” She nudges me with her foot, and I catch it underneath the water, tickling the sole just to make her giggle. “Why didn’t I know you speak Japanese?”
My multilingual status was revealed to her by Crew as he shoved birthday cake into his mouth. She’d lifted her brows at me but said nothing. I knew it was going to come up again, though.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t intentionally keeping it from you. I guess it just never came up.”
Silence stretches between us as we both consider all the things that haven’t come up in conversation in the time we’ve known each other. Given the way we met, I think there are probably more blanks on my side than on Grayson’s, which makes me feel like I have an unfair advantage. She must feel the same way too, because her eyes are now sparkling with curiosity.
“Do you speak any other languages?”
“Spanish. A little German. Some Mandarin.”
“Did you learn because you wanted to or because of your job?” she asks, pushing up out of the water and gliding through it to get to me. I watch, mesmerized, as bubbles and droplets of moisture slide off of her breasts and onto my chest as she straddles me. My hands go to her hips, and I gaze up at her, conscious of the fact that the tip of my dick is grazing her pussy.
“A little of both,” I grit out, losing my train of thought when she reaches down and grips my length, positioning me underneath her. “What are you doing, Hart?”
Her teeth are digging into her bottom lip, a telltale sign of deviance, but she still bats her lashes at me innocently. “Listening to you, of course.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” The words come out rough and my fingers flex against her skin as she hovers above me, teasing me with the possibility of feeling her with nothing between us. We’ve talked around this topic. The whole no condom thing. I’ve proven that I’m clean, and Grayson has as well, but somehow we’ve never actually leaned into what that could mean, how that could change sex for us.
I’ve been content to leave the decision with her, and now, at the moment when I least expected, she’s decided.
Her nails score the skin on my shoulders as she sinks down onto me. The first few inches are always the hardest for her, so she goes slow, allowing herself time to adjust. I have to force myself to relinquish my hold on her, to give her space to move, and the rhythm she sets is punishing. Every rock of her hips is powerful, sending water sloshing over the sides of the tub, taking my self control with it.
“Fuck, Hart,” I groan, already feeling that bolt of lightning down my spine. “You feel too good.”
“Say something.”
Any other moment, any other encounter, and I would have been able to make sense of her words, but this moment is unlike any other. There’s so much to hear and feel. The steady slap of water landing on the tile. Grayson’s warm, slick body moving against mine. Her pussy gripping my dick like a vise.
“What?”
“In Japanese or any of the other languages. Say something. Anything,” she says, her breath catching in her lungs when I start to fuck up into her. “I just want to…fuck, Xavier, please.”
There’s nothing left. My self control is shattered, lying in pieces on the wet tile of Grayson’s bathroom, so when she starts to beg, I don’t think, I just act. I just give in to that part of me that’s committed to giving Grayson everything she wants, no matter what it costs me.
Helpless, I groan the first words that come to mind into her ear.
“Aishiteru wa.”
I love you.