21. Xavi
Chapter 21
Xavi
H ow I got roped into being the one to ask her was beyond me. The guys had muttered something about me being able to get her out of work since my dad was her boss and then left me to it, taking off together to go grab lunch for all of us and leaving me alone with her.
But I was complaining about the alone part one bit.
The moment the door shut behind Cole and Colton, everything in the room seemed to soften. The background noise of the TV faded into a quiet murmur, the sound turning to nothing more than filler. Annie was curled up on the couch beside me in nothing but her underwear and one of Cole’s shirts, her head in my lap, half asleep and nestled in like there was nowhere else she’d rather be. My hand was moving on instinct, just slow passes through her hair, catching once in a while on a little tangle and smoothing it out. But it was the little sound she kept making when my fingers hit just the right place on her scalp that made my chest tight.
I watched her, felt the heat of her breath on my boxers-covered thigh. She wasn’t asleep — at least not fully. Her lashes fluttered now and then, her breathing shifting, her hand twitching against my leg when my hand paused.
I didn’t know why I was hesitant. It wasn’t that she made me nervous , but it sure felt like it, especially with us like this and without the pressure of going along with whatever three men wanted her to do. But I swallowed it down. “Annie,” I said softly.
She stirred a little more, her brow furrowing before she turned her face into my thigh like she didn’t want to leave the spot she’d created. She’d been so contentedly tired all morning, and I couldn’t blame her, not after taking all three of us last night — even a coffee and chocolate chip pancakes hadn’t helped her.
“I need a shower,” I murmured, my thumb brushing softly over the curve of her ear. “Come with me?”
Her head turned out a little, her eyes opening, sleepy and slow-blinking. “Are you asking because you need help with washing your hair?” she teased, her voice low and scratchy from exhaustion. She turned a little more, looking at me from the corner of her eye.
I huffed out a breathy laugh. “Nah. I just don’t want to go without you.”
She blinked again, slower this time, her mouth splitting into a crooked little smirk. “Sounds like an excuse to get me naked. Think you might have a crush on me, Moreau.”
I rolled my eyes, lips twitching despite myself, and leaned my upper body over her, lifting my leg a little to force her to meet me halfway. She squinted at the sudden closeness, her breathing catching adorably as I dipped my head and pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to her cheek.
“Oh no, you caught me,” I whispered, dragging out my words with fake dread. “Guess I’ll have to live with the shame.”
She grinned fully then, and god, it lit the whole room. “Not my fault that you’re terrible at hiding it.”
“Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to hide it at all?” My thumb brushed across her cheek and jaw as I slowly straightened back up.
She rolled onto her back, looking up at me with those stupidly devastating blue eyes, her eyelids still a little heavy from sleep. She reached up toward me, her fingers tracing softly along the curve of my lips. “Well… if you’re not hiding it, you’d better be ready for me to start using it against you. I’m a menace when someone likes me.”
A chuckle worked its way up my chest. “You’re already a menace, baby.” I worked my fingers into her hair, tucking my hand beneath her head. “Are you coming to shower with me or would you rather lay here all alone on the sofa?”
Her cheeks deepened in color just the slightest amount, but she moved just a little, and I let my hand slide down her back and helped lift her upper body. She stretched and rubbed her eyes, yawning absolutely adorably. “I suppose .”
I stood up, offering her my hand, and she took it without a second of hesitation. We walked through the quiet house, just the soft pad of our footsteps over the hardwood, the hum of the air conditioning, the low drone of the television. I led her down the hall of our bedrooms, cracking open the first door on the right and holding it open for her, hand pressed flat to the wood.
She stepped in, her gaze sweeping the room in curiosity. I always kept it clean — not in the pristine, show-off way like Cole’s room, but in the lived-in, no-clutter, please-for-the-love-of-god-don’t-look-too-close kind of way. My walls were dark grey, and without the overhead light on, the space was mostly dark from my black-out curtains — but it was lit enough now with them half-open to actually see. It was a room made for shutting the world out when I needed to.
“Not exactly five-star,” I chuckled as I walked in behind her, shutting the door behind me. “But it’s not a wreck like Colton’s can be.”
My bed sat low to the ground across the fairly large space, my maroon sheets still a mess from when I’d gotten up yesterday, and I felt unusually self-conscious for not making my bed when I’d never done that a day in my life. Across from it, my wall-mounted TV hung, but I rarely used it. The bookshelf beside it was cluttered, packed two layers deep with books and graphic novels and a handful of vinyl, a stack of well-used notebooks sitting on the floor in front of it — ones I only let myself open in the dead of night when I couldn’t sleep.
“It’s kind of moody,” she said, her little smirk still plastered to her cheeks. “But it’s, like, sexy moody.”
I snorted. “Thanks, I think?”
I pushed her forward to the half-open door on the other side of the room, the low light of my bedroom leading into a much brighter en-suite. It was something we’d picked this house specifically for — each of our rooms had its own en-suites. We didn’t want to be at each other’s throats fighting over showers.
She stared at my walk-in shower. It was easily big enough to fit the four of us if we wanted, all tile walls and floor, with two rainfall shower heads and a couple of standard heads on either side, one long built-in bench running along the back side of it. Definitely made for at least two people, but there had only been a handful of times I’d not used it alone.
“You could fit us and the whole team in there,” she chuckled.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I teased, coming up behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist, the warmth of her body heating my bare chest and cutting straight through the sleeves of my zip-up. “Are three men not enough for you, Annie? Do you need twenty-three ?”
She laughed, full-bodied and bright, and it was like music to my goddamn ears. “I’m barely surviving the three of you,” she said, her arms resting on top of mine as she walked toward the shower, dragging me with her. “I think twenty-three would send me to an early grave, like, tomorrow .”
I tried to hide my smile in the crook of her neck, breathing in the warped scent of her that still held hints of all of us. “Maybe just one for now, then,” I muttered, unable to keep the grin out of my voice as I fisted Cole’s shirt at her stomach, slipping my other hand beneath it as I worked the fabric up and over her head.
I let my zip-up fall off my shoulders and down my arms, the zipper clattering on the tile as it landed behind me, and grabbed her by the waist again to pull her bare back into my chest. Heat on heat. Flesh on flesh. It made my head go light, and from the way I could see her flushing in the mirror to my left, it was affecting her, too.
“Christ, look at you,” I murmured, pointing idly toward the mirror. Her head turned, taking in the sight of us, me in my boxers and her in nothing but her underwear, wrapped up in my arms. My thumb stroked the curve of her waist, my hand splayed out across her skin, my heart pounding in my chest. “I think I’d burn the whole goddamn world down to keep you like this.”
The pink in her cheeks spread down her neck, her mouth parting as she stared at me in our reflection. “You can’t just say things like that,” she whispered, not pulling away, but blinking like I’d knocked the air out of her.
I froze.
Shit.
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Or at least, hadn’t thought it through before the words had come out. It should have stayed buried in the echo chamber of my own head, not laid bare between us like some stupid, irrevocable confession. I opened my mouth, closed it, my pulse roaring in my ears.
“I know,” I said quietly, feeling like I was a second too late. “That was… Fuck, I’m sorry, that was too much. I didn’t mean?—”
“No, you did,” she swallowed, her hand moving to mine and holding me to her before I could try to let go. “You meant it.”
She wasn’t accusing, just… quiet, curious, maybe a little stunned. I let out a breath, chastising myself internally, and leaned down, letting my forehead fall against the crown of her head. “Yeah, I did,” I admitted, my voice barely more than a whisper. “Doesn’t mean I should’ve said it, though.”
Her fingers traced over the veins on the back of my hand, down each finger and back up. “You’re intense, Xav,” she murmured.
“Yeah. That’s the polite word for it,” I said dryly, trying to steady the roar of self-deprecating thoughts starting to rise in my head. I took a deep breath and peeled myself from her gently, my jaw a little tense. I reached out and hit both switches for the water, each of the shower heads roaring to life instantly, and did my absolute best not to look at her as I pulled off my boxers and walked in.
I hated that I doubted whether she’d follow me. I hated that I’d said that in the first place — I knew better, had been too much to too many people in my life before, had taught myself how to rein that in and keep things to myself when things were so fresh. But even as I stood with my back to the shower’s entrance and my head under the steaming water, I couldn’t stop myself from hoping that maybe she was feeling as insane as I was, maybe she fell hard and fast too.
The gentle tickle of a hand on the small of my back had me drawing in a breath, and I turned, soaked and waterlogged. She stood there, just out of reach of my showerhead, her body completely bare with a smattering of stray water droplets clinging to her skin like diamonds. Everything about her, from the way her hair fell around her shoulders, the way her pouty lips were parted in confusion, the way her obnoxiously, devastatingly blue eyes locked onto mine — to the way her breasts curved, the way her waist came in and her hips flared out, to the waxed skin of her groin and the way her chest rose and fell a little worriedly… it made me barely able to form a coherent thought.
I took a step forward and wrapped my arm around her waist, pulled her back into the water with me, and kissed her like she was going to be the death of me.
I was pretty sure she would be, anyway.
My mouth crashed against hers, my hand coming up to cup her cheek, my other digging into her back. She folded into me immediately, her arm hooking around my neck, and for a moment, the tension in my body drained, washed away down the drain with the rest of me. She was too much. I knew she was, knew what was happening to me because of it, but with her mouth on mine and her bare body against my chest, I couldn’t find it in me to care.
I kissed her like I didn’t know where I ended and she began. My lips dragged over hers, greedy and full and aching with every bit of restraint I’d lost the moment I’d actually touched her last night. Her fingers played with the damp hair flattened against my neck, tugging just enough to make me groan low in my throat.
She pulled me closer to her, the water cascading over us, between us, around us, and the soft gasp she let out when I traced my hand down her spine and stopped just shy of her ass had my blood pooling in my cock. It was a fucking miracle I was still upright.
I turned, my feet almost slipping on the soaked tile, and pushed her up against the wall, making sure my hand cupped the back of her head to cushion it. My mouth explored hers the way I had last night when she’d been on the counter, mapping it like a cartographer, wanting to memorize every inch. She set me on fire by just being alive , and I didn’t know any other way to dull down the flames that wasn’t this. Didn’t want to find another way.
I knew I needed to slow down, needed to pull back, needed to not be too much. But when I broke the kiss to breathe and looked down at her blissed-out expression, her lips parted and swollen from me, I didn’t know how to do any of those things.
“You have no fucking idea what you do to me,” I rasped, letting my forehead fall to hers, wincing at my own words. My nose brushed against hers, my mouth so close I could taste her breath. “I’m trying, genuinely trying, to not be too much.”
I pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, her jaw, her throat, lingering there like I could hide from how out of control I felt. But her head turned toward me, her chin nudging against my cheek to coax me back up, and I couldn’t ignore her unspoken request. I pulled back a little, still flush against her, but enough to meet her gaze.
Her eyes searched mine, serious and steady despite the warmth in her cheeks and the droplets of water dripping down the sides of her face. “You’re not… you’re not too much,” she breathed.
I stared at her, every part of me trying to read between the lines, my chest tightening like a madman. You’re not too much. You’re not too much. You’re not too much.
But I was. I knew that. Always had. People left because of it. My birth parents left because of it.
She wasn’t running, though. At least, not yet.
I kissed her again, needier this time, my desperation only growing with every second I held her to me, and from the way she kissed me back with just as much fire and energy, I knew I was screwed. She wasn’t just under my skin. She was burying herself in my fucking blood.
I didn’t want to waste another second.
My hand moved down the slope of her body, my fingers digging into the soft flesh of her rear before moving around to her hip, her thigh. My cock swelled against her stomach, and I didn’t care that she could absolutely feel it. We both knew exactly where this was going when I asked her to shower with me.
My mouth trailed down her throat again, nipping and sucking at the spot that made her body go a little limp and her mouth make those pretty noises. My hand dipped between her thighs, not touching her exactly where I knew she needed it but instead trailing along the seam, along the inside of her thighs, along her lips. Her nails dug in at the back of my neck, her other hand clutching my chest like she was worried she’d slip and fall if she wasn’t holding on for dear life.
Her hips moved, trying to find the friction I wasn’t quite giving her, but my fingers shifted before she could take it. “Are you trying to ruin me?” she laughed breathlessly, her head tipping back against the tile. “Because it certainly seems like it.”
I nipped at her earlobe and dragged my finger gently down through her soaked folds, giving her just a little bit more, but dodged her clit entirely. Her laugh warped into a whine, the sound of it making my cock ache with need. “Not trying, baby. Succeeding ,” I rasped, pressing a kiss to the hollow of her cheek.
She shifted her hips again, catching my fingers on her clit before I could move, and I let her have that one. The whimpers she made were too cute to keep teasing her, even if it meant sacrificing the artificial build-up of need I loved seeing so much when I slept with someone.
But maybe I didn’t have to have that with her. Maybe the need was already there.
“Knees up on the bench,” I said, my voice low and a little strained as I peeled myself most of the way off her. I nodded toward the built-in tile bench that ran the length of the wall behind us, and she moved without hesitation, climbing up onto it with her front to the tile wall.
Christ, her ass. Her ass . I wasn’t normally an ass-man, but that thing looked like it had been sculpted by Michaelangelo himself. I came up behind her, grasping it like it would somehow solve every problem in my life, my fingers digging in and dimpling the soft flesh. She was a little higher up now on the bench, her back arched and her rear jutting out into me, the perfect height for our hips to line up without me having to hold her up the whole time.
Which I’d have gladly done. But I wanted to be able to touch her.
I moved her damp hair out of the way and peppered her back and shoulders with nips and sucks and kisses, my chest tightening as she arched into it and went with the movement of my body. My hand slid down her front, my touch light as I ghosted the swell of her breasts, just barely skimming her nipples, then lower, across her stomach, and finally, without even teasing her, over her clit.
Her answering moan was like a match to kindling.
“Fuck, I need to be inside of you,” I murmured against her spine, my fingers moving in lazy circles over her clit. “ Now .”
I pulled her back a little further, lining her up, and grasped myself in my free hand. The tip of my cock nudged against her slick entrance, the feel of that alone sending shockwaves down my spine, and I couldn’t have held myself back if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.
She split open for me like it was the easiest goddamn thing in the world.
Tight, warm, soaked — every inch of her felt like bottled heaven, like sin, like a snake and a garden and the temptation of fruit. Her little whimpers only heightened it, and I sunk in slowly but surely until there was nowhere else for me to go, until my hips went flush with her rear.
God, I never wanted to leave.
It wasn’t pristine or filthy, it wasn’t rough or gentle — my hips began to move with measured thrusts, calculated drives of my hips to pull the most noises out of her, to see what made her clench and what made her hiss. I wanted to learn her fully, wanted to know what made her tick so I could do it again and again and again.
I wrapped her damp hair around my fist, pulling just enough to get her head to rest back on my shoulder, her chest pressed against the wall. “Xavi,” she moaned, and I nearly came on the spot.
I pushed down my answering chuckle as I watched her face flush a little, her eyelids fluttering and mascara flaking, her mouth parted. So fucking beautiful . “Can’t tell if you say my name more like a prayer or a curse,” I smirked, pressing a kiss to her temple as I kept my thrusts steady at the angle that seemed to do the most for her, my fingers pressing in a little harder with their ministrations between her thighs.
“Both.” Her voice broke into a moan, her brow furrowing, her walls tightening and muscles trembling. She was close. “Xav… I… Please don’t stop, please.”
Don’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. Didn’t ever want to stop, didn’t want to cage myself, didn’t want to hold myself back when she looked like this, when she felt so fucking good. I wanted to let every thought I knew I should hold back pour out from between my teeth, wanted to tell her anything and everything. “Don’t stop?” I teased, keeping myself steady, keeping every rhythm the same so I wouldn’t mess up her building release. “Annie, baby , I don’t ever want to stop. I want to bury myself in you over and over and over until the only word you can say is my fucking name, just like that, with your pretty little moans and cries.”
She reached back, her fingers digging into my hip, her thighs shaking. I shifted my hold on her, keeping one hand between her thighs and moving my other to her cheek and jaw, holding her back against my shoulder as I struggled to keep my head on straight. I could feel my own release coiling low in my gut and spine, and I sucked in a deep breath, trying to hold off.
“Come for me, baby,” I rasped, nudging her cheek with my nose. “Let me hear you fall apart.”
Her breathing went unsteady, her eyes closing, and on a moan so high pitched that I briefly worried if I hurt her, she came around me. Her walls fluttered around my cock, milking me, the pleasure of it blinding me so thoroughly that it sent me spiraling over the edge with her and drowned me in sensation.
I held her in the come-down, the water hitting my back, the tension in my body draining to nothing, my heart thudding against my chest, and I knew damn well that it wasn’t her who had fallen apart from that.
It was me.
————
She looked like a goddamn dream sprawled out on my bed in Cole’s shirt and my pajama pants, her damp hair fanning out around her head, her heavy-lidded eyes tracking my movements as I looked for clothes for myself.
“Let me call my dad,” I offered, pulling on a clean long-sleeved shirt and glancing over my shoulder at her. She raised an eyebrow, shifting slightly, the collar of Cole’s shirt slipping and revealing the line of her collarbone. I had to force myself to look away before I gave up on the carefully controlled restraint I was showing by being okay with her leaving this house at all.
“You can’t just call your dad when you want me to skip a shift,” she chuckled, giving me that same soft lilt to her voice that had been there since I’d tried to wash her hair for her and had apparently done it wrong. “Wait. Wait . Don’t tell me my shift being moved last night was because of you.”
I froze, a sock in hand, my eyes locking with hers again. “I… might’ve called him.”
She blinked, but then she laughed, bright and real, and it made my chest tighten the way that sound of hers always seemed to. “You’re ridiculous,” she said, her teeth raking over her lower lip, her smile untamable. “Kind of cute, though.”
“Yeah, yeah, hush,” I chuckled, my cheeks heating just a tad, her smile infectious.
She pushed herself up a little, her damp hair falling over her shoulder, that collar slipping just a little lower, and god dammit, I couldn’t stop myself from asking what I needed to ask without thinking of how to say it.
“Come on the whole trip.”
It didn’t really come out as a question, and she blinked, pausing, staring at me with a little line forming between her brows. “What?”
I took a deep breath, my mouth opening and closing as I tried to rectify the outburst that should have had a gentle lead-in. “The, uh, whole Pacific Division run,” I said, taking a step closer, the tips of my ears burning. “The guys and I were talking about it this morning before you got up. We want you to come to the whole thing, not just the first game in LA.”
I lowered myself a little, resting one knee on the bed beside her, my eyes searching hers for some kind of reaction. But she was so hard to read. “I… How long?”
“Two weeks. The whole of the West Coast, so California, Nevada, Washington, and into Canada a little.” The words were quick, tumbling out of me as I tried to explain it. “Do you have a passport? We can fly you to each one. We can try to make it as much of a vacation as we can.”
She looked up at me as she pulled her legs in, sitting cross-legged on my sheets, looking just as much like a damn angel as she did when she’d had her makeup done and hair styled. “That’s a lot, Xav,” she said softly. “And yeah, I have a passport, but?—”
“Bring your guitar,” I added, swallowing, not knowing how to shut my mouth. “You can work on your music or do whatever you want while we’re at practice. You can come to the games, we’ll get you tickets. The hotel rooms are nice as hell. I mean, shit, I’ll buy you some portable recording stuff and you can write songs with Colton snoring in the background. Just come.”
She snorted lightly, her eyes blinking a little fast. “Tempting. I’ve already got portable gear.”
I took her face in my hands. I knew I was being too much, knew I was coming on too strong, but I found it harder and harder to shove that away with her. “I’m serious, baby. You’re good for us. For me. I want you there, we all do.”
She chewed her lip, her eyes flicking between mine. “I’d have to get the time off.”
“I’ll talk to my dad.”
“Xavi—”
“I’ll ask my dad,” I corrected, my lips splitting into a grin as I realized I was wearing down her reluctance. “Nicely.”
She stared at me for another second, then sighed, her mouth twitching as she tried to stifle a smile. “Okay,” she breathed. “Yeah. I’ll come.”