Chapter 11 Yara #2
Xavier was hovering, more attentive than he ever was before, and I couldn't tell him that the sadness I felt wasn't because I was terrified at the prospect of dying, but because I wished that the car accident, I was a part of tonight, was my last resting place.
He seemed more terrified than I was, those onyx eyes landing on me every passing second as if he needed to reassure himself I was still here.
I was, unfortunately.
Maybe I should have been scared, but dying wasn't what terrified me.
It was life that made me sweat at night, reliving the nightmares created of my past. The past where no one dared to love me, to hold me, to ask if I had everything I needed to survive.
What was the point of life if all I would do is just try to survive?
Because this wasn't living. This was breathing until fate decided it was my time.
Right now, it felt as if I was stuck in a parallel universe, doted on by one person who swore every step of the way that he hated me. That he wanted me gone. That his life would've been so much better without me in it.
He taunted me, tainted the prospect of the fresh, new beginning, yet I couldn't stop myself from yearning for him.
I couldn't stop my traitorous heart from beating for him, because when I saw the fear in his eyes, when I heard the tremble in his voice, I knew I would live if only to erase that look on his face.
Xavier carried me from his car all the way to his bedroom, and instead of leaving and letting me be, he sat down on the bed, pulling me in his arms as if we were something more than a stepbrother I feared and a stepsister he loathed.
I didn't miss the way his body still trembled as he dragged his hands over my arms. I was pretty sure he was trying to calm himself more than he was trying to calm me, and I let him.
I didn’t fight him. Not tonight. I would've let him take me to the furthest end of Earth if he would stop behaving like a spooked child.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, that voice of his raspy, betraying the emotions lingering in his blood. "I can get you something to eat. I can—"
"I'm good," I said, interrupting his ranting, stopping that nervous energy from enveloping both of us.
The deep inhale that followed my refusal cut through the air, but his arms only tightened around me, making it harder to breathe.
I didn't want to tell him that his proximity only elevated my blood pressure, or that the lullaby of his voice had the power to calm the demons whispering in my ear, because I didn't want him to laugh at me.
I wanted just a few hours far away from the outside world, because I had no idea how to deal with him out there, among his friends.
He was a different person in here, within these four walls of my room, hidden from the rest of the harpies waiting outside.
Xavier Thornton wasn't mine, but right now I wanted to believe in the false promises that tumbled over his lips when we drove toward the race. I needed them to be the truth.
I had no idea what that said about me and the state of my mind, if the one person who tried to hurt me from the first moment his eyes landed on me was the same person I wanted to get lost in.
But I didn't want to think about the darkness of my mind.
I didn't want to run, not right now. I wanted to remember this moment because I had a feeling that this was the only time when someone cared if I lived or died.
Xavier buried his face in my hair, his breathing chopped, his body as hard as stone, when the words tumbled over his lips.
The words I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have allowed to escape if he was in the right state of mind.
"I thought you were dead," he said, his voice breaking at that last word, as if he couldn't even bring himself to think about it, let alone to say it out loud. "I thought I lost you."
He pierced my heart with the anguish dripping from his tongue and I didn't have the response that would extinguish that pain woven in every syllable.
"Don't ever do that to me again, Yara." He trembled under me, trying to get himself under control, but it was useless trying to do that right now.
His emotions were all over the place as were mine.
The room was filled with the suffocating air of our anguish, pain, need, and the traces of love I didn't dare to even think about.
"Please." His voice broke. "Please, Yara.
I don't want to feel like this ever again. "
Tears gathered in my eyes, trying to fall, to roll down my cheeks, and instead of hiding them now, I turned around, escaping the cage of his arms and sat down on him, right on his stomach with my knees on the sides of his hips.
The hatred, the snide remarks, the loathing that was always so obvious in his eyes were nowhere to be seen. As our eyes connected I could feel his pain as if it were my own. I could feel the fear living on the surface of his skin as if it lived inside my own heart.
The dark onyx of his eyes shone with unshed tears, matching my own silver gaze and instead of hiding himself. Instead of holding back the parts of him like he always did, he let it go.
His tears fell down unabashedly, competing among themselves to see which one would reach his chin faster.
Which one would hurt harder, and which one would have me shaking on top of him, finally feeling things, I tried to remove from my body.
My fingers landed on his cheeks, rubbing at the traitorous tears, silently begging him to stop, to look away, to cry over someone else.
Someone worthy of his tears, but he wouldn't.
His fingers dug in my waist, pulling me closer, until our lips stayed just a breath away from each other, pulled by some weird magnetic energy.
He felt like home, like the summer days after rain when the air felt clear and the turmoil in our hearts finally calmed.
He felt like the first shot of tequila down my throat, sending an electric current through my veins, unaware that he was my poison and my cure.
"I don't want to live without you," he finally said, his breath washing over my lips. "I don't want to exist in the world without you, so please," he whispered, "please don't scare me like that ever again."
My lips parted, words lingering on the tip of my tongue, but before they could form, before I could say them out loud, his lips were on mine, devouring, taking, soothing, showing me instead of telling me how he really felt.
Our tears mixed, dripping over our lips, mingling on our tongues as we fought against the current trying to pull us under the water.
It was useless fighting against fate, I understood that now, and some part of me knew that this man, this complicated asshole who made me want to scream was someone that fate put in my path, and no matter what I did, I had to learn something from this now.
That didn't mean I wanted to. No matter how much I wanted this, how much I craved his touch, his love, I couldn't have him.
Maybe tonight I could pretend we weren't the two people who would never get to be together.
That with the first rays of sun we would have to go back to being strangers if I wanted to survive this town.
It wasn't about my plans. It wasn't about my need to get as far away as possible from my mother.
I couldn't tell him he already had my heart. I couldn't give those words he probably wanted to hear. I wasn't a rich person, and the things I had to offer weren't the things someone like Xavier would want. Not in the long run, anyway.
He suddenly pulled back, pressing his forehead to mine, breathing as if he had just ran a marathon.
"We shouldn't be doing this right now." He sniffled, his eyes closed, but his hands remained on my waist, kneading, touching, eliciting little shivers all over my body every time he tightened his hold on me.
His rock hard cock pressed against my center, and like a woman possessed, instead of inching away, running from him, from these feelings like I should have, I swiveled my hips, earning a painful groan from him.
"Yara." The warning was clear in his voice, but I didn't want to stop.
I needed him to make me forget. I needed him to erase the dark clouds hovering over me.
Most of all, I needed to forget just for a second what I had to do.
"Please," I whimpered. "Please, Xavier." I hovered over him, inching closer, pressing my lips against his, dragging out the beast hiding behind those dark eyes.
It felt as if an eternity had passed, even though it was only a few seconds hanging in this space of uncertainty, when he flipped us over, caging me between his arms.
My legs came around his waist as he pressed his hips against me, drawing out a moan deep from my soul. "Is this what you want, baby?" He pressed harder and harder, dragging his cock over my drenched folds. "You want my cock, pretty girl?"
"Yes," came out as a hiss. "Please, please, please... I need it... I—" But I didn't need to beg for long.
His pants disappeared first, followed by mine, dragging painfully slow down my legs until they landed on the floor next to the bed.
My eyes zeroed in on his cock, the slightly darker head standing tall, almost touching his stomach.
I could see the vein running underneath it, begging to be licked, touched, played with.
"Keep looking at me like that and this will be over sooner than I would want it to be." I looked up, seeing the desperate need written in every line of his face, no longer hidden, no longer just a lingering thought both of us had.
This was so wrong. So fucking wrong, but it felt too fucking right and I didn't want to fight it. I didn't want to fight him.
My whole life I was an unwanted child. I was the black sheep of the family, the one that always did wrong things, said wrong words and could never fit in, no matter how hard I tried.
Wanting my stepbrother, needing him more than the air I breathed, was just one more thing in the long list of wrong shit I have done, and I didn't give a fuck.
Not anymore.
I knew this was one and done. The way to get each other out of our system. I knew how this game worked; I wasn't a fool even if a small part of me wished I could keep him.
There was a part of me that wished to know what it felt like to feel safe. I often dreamed of a life I would never get to live, but I still dreamed. I still hoped that someday, somehow, someone would find me worthy of them, and they would want to keep me.
Forever.
Xavier wasn't my forever, that much I knew, even if the mere thought broke my heart, leaving the cracks behind on an already fucked up surface.
But this was my choice, having him for at least one night.
He would forget about me, about a girl with silver eyes and hair as dark as the night, but I would never forget him.