Chapter 3 #2
Upstairs, he stood in the doorway of their bedroom and watched Isabelle sleep.
She'd pulled his pillow against her chest in his absence, her arms wrapped around it, her face pressed into the place where his head had been.
A substitution. An unconscious replacement.
And even that, even this small proof that she reached for him when he wasn't there, wasn't enough to silence the voice that said: she told him things she hasn't told you.
Because that was the real issue. He'd replayed the dinner conversation four times now, and each time the same detail snagged. She hadn't just mentioned Douglas casually. She'd been animated. She'd talked about him with a warmth and that Xavier couldn't reconcile with "old college friend."
He didn't know what they'd talked about in the garden.
She hadn't volunteered it. He hadn't asked, because asking would've meant admitting that he wanted to know, and wanting to know would've meant admitting that he was afraid, and Xavier Grant did not admit fear.
Not to his partners, not to his competitors, not to himself, and certainly not to the woman sleeping ten feet away with his pillow in her arms.
He got back into bed. She stirred, released the pillow, and turned toward him. Her hand found his arm again, fingers curling around his wrist. That same unconscious grip.
"You got up," she murmured, not opening her eyes.
"Water."
"Mm." She pressed closer. Her forehead touched his chest. "You're cold."
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Just come here."
He pulled her in. Her mouth found the base of his throat, a half-asleep kiss pressed against his pulse, and something in him broke open. He tilted her chin up and kissed her. She made a soft sound of surprise, then her lips parted and she kissed him back, slow and warm and tasting of sleep.
Her hand slid from his wrist up his forearm, over his shoulder, into his hair, and she pulled him closer with a gentle pressure that undid him completely.
He rolled her onto her back and she went easily, her knees falling open, her sleep shirt riding up her thighs.
Her dark blue eyes were heavy-lidded, still soft with sleep, and she looked up at him with such open, uncomplicated want that his chest ached.
He kissed her jaw. The hollow beneath her ear.
The place where her neck met her shoulder, where her skin was warmest, where she always shivered.
She shivered. He ran his hand down her side, over the linen of her shirt, finding the hem and then the bare skin beneath it.
Her stomach. Her hip. The dip of her waist. He knew this body.
He'd spent a decade memorizing it, mapping every curve and response, and the familiarity should have been a comfort but tonight it was something else.
Tonight it was a recitation. A proving. Each place he touched was a place that belonged to him and he was confirming the inventory.
He didn't let himself think about that. He let himself think about her.
"Xavier." His name in her mouth. His. Low and breathless.
She arched into his han, he pulled her shirt up and over her head in one motion.
She lay beneath him bare from the waist up, her brown hair fanning across the white sheets, and he stopped.
He always stopped here. This pause, this moment of looking, was something he'd never been able to rush past no matter how urgent the want became.
"You're staring," she whispered.
"I'm looking. There's a difference."
She laughed. A real laugh, quiet and warm in the dark room, and he kissed her sternum and then lower, his mouth tracing the line between her breasts, down the center of her stomach. She sucked in a breath. Her fingers tightened in his hair.
He took his time. He always took his time with her but tonight there was an edge to the patience, a deliberateness that served something other than generosity.
Every sound she made was evidence. Every time she whispered his name was a closing argument.
He wanted to hear it again and again until the voice in his head went silent, until Douglas Torres's name dissolved into nothing beneath the sound of his wife saying Xavier, Xavier, please.
She said it. She said all of it. Her hips lifted against his mouth and her back arched off the bed. She cried out when she came, and he stayed with her through it, his mouth against her sweet center.
Isabelle pulled him up and into her; he groaned against her neck, a sound he couldn't have controlled if he'd wanted to.
She wrapped her legs around him, holding on as he slid inside of her.
They moved together: two people who knew each other's rhythms by heart.
She kept her eyes open. She always kept her eyes open with him, those eyes watching his face, and he held her gaze because he couldn't look away.
Afterward, she lay on his chest with her ear over his heart, one leg thrown across his hips, her breathing slowly coming back down. His hand moved up and down her spine in long, absent strokes.
"What was that?" she murmured.
"That was me not being able to sleep."
"You should have insomnia more often."
He smiled into her hair. She nuzzled closer, pressing a kiss against his collarbone, and within minutes her breathing had changed again, gone slow and deep, her body heavy against his.
She fit against him perfectly, her hip against his hip, her knee between his knees, her breath warming the hollow of his throat.
He held her. He held her, stared at the ceiling and listened to her breathing slow back into sleep.
His grip on her waist was a fraction too tight.
She didn't notice. She never noticed when he held her a fraction too tight.
She interpreted it as love, because it was love.
It had always been love. The problem was that the love and the fear had grown into each other so completely that he could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
She's mine, he thought, and the possessive pronoun moved through him with the force of a physical thing, a door closing, a lock turning.
She's mine. She married me. She wears my ring. She lives in my house. She falls asleep holding my arm. She says my name when I'm inside her and no one else's.
And then, quieter, underneath: So why did she look like that when she said his name?
He closed his eyes. He didn't sleep for a long time.
In the morning he made coffee, brought it to her in bed, kissed her awake and smiled his real smile, the one that was only for her. She laughed, pulled him down and spilled coffee on the sheets, and for twenty minutes everything was fine. Everything was them.
But when she mentioned, casually, over toast, that she was going to see Douglas's new apartment on Sunday, something in Xavier's expression went still.
"Sunday," he repeated.
"He's on Fillmore. Apparently the bathroom is criminal but the crown molding is original."
"And he wants your opinion."
"He wants my company. The opinion is a bonus."
Xavier forced a smiled. He buttered his toast. He said, "Tell him I said welcome back."