Chapter 10 #2
Shaking her head at the constant enigma that is Xavier Byrne, she puts the rice pudding into the fridge, away from Amelia’s curious nose, and heads to the corner where her record player is sitting, untouched for too long.
Some music, that’ll help. Just some music to take her mind off her family and her job prospects and even, to an extent, the man just a few feet away pouring her a glass of wine.
She quickly flicks through her vinyl collection and stops at one her dad gave her years ago.
And despite the absolute whirlwind she went through tonight, it feels like the right moment to play it, especially with the taste of the rice pudding on her tongue.
The scratch of the record echoes through the room for a second before the opening twang of the bouzouki accompanied by a tinkling piano.
Xavier’s warm chuckle releases the tension in her shoulders. “Zorba’s dance?” he asks.
“The syrtaki,” she corrects.
“Syrtaki,” he repeats, putting the emphasis on the first syllable.
“And hasapiko. They’ve sort of become mushed together over the years. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
“Syrtaki and hasapiko,” he says, testing the second word on his tongue before he shakes his head. “If I’m gonna dance, I need ouzo not wine.”
“It’s not that bad, it’s barely dancing.”
“I’m supposed to follow steps?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“That’s dancing, boss.”
“Oh, please. Besides, how are you gonna impress all those Greek girls without knowing how to dance to the song of our people?”
“So I should just show up to a random bar in Athens and whip out Zorba’s dance and the girls’ll just fall at my feet.”
She grins. “I might come to visit you just to see what happens if you do.”
“Bianca.”
“C’mon, let me show you.”
“Fine.”
He does a shot of ouzo from the bottle they almost but didn’t quite finish that first night, as she pushes her coffee table back against the couch, giving them room to dance.
After taking a couple of sips of her wine, the drink sharp and fresh on her tongue, she says, “At first, it’s just literally stepping to the beat of the song.
” She demonstrates, stepping forward with her left foot, then bouncing the toe of her opposite foot behind her before swinging it back and then out to hold.
Xavier’s glass is already empty when it joins hers on the coffee table. “That’s . . . more than just stepping to the beat. And aren’t I supposed to be doing something with my arms?”
“We’ll get to that.”
He groans, but follows her actions, stepping, tapping, swinging and then holding his leg out.
“Now what?” he asks, shaking on one leg and losing his balance a little bit.
“And back with that front leg, kick the opposite one out front and to the side and then bring it back, then kick with the other.”
He shakes his head, looking adorably lost. “You gotta show me again.”
She demonstrates one more time. Bianca hasn’t danced this dance since her sister’s wedding, but the muscle memory from childhood lessons brings it back to her immediately.
“Got it?” she asks finally, looking up to see his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Absolutely not, but let’s try it.”
“Okay, let’s do it with our arms wrapped, I can lead. Oh crap, hang on, let me put my shoes back on. You are way too tall.”
She winces as she slides her feet back into the sandals she’d worn to dinner.
“You okay? Those look painful.”
“It’s better to look good than to feel good, darling,” she says, mimicking an old SNL skit her mom had been obsessed with while she was growing up.
Xavier snorts, but doesn’t elaborate when she comes up beside him to wind their arms together, her hand curling around his shoulder blade while his is so much longer, his hand rests at the back of her neck, fingertips nearly to her opposite shoulder.
The music is long over, but they don’t need it as she breaks down the dance slowly.
“Step, touch, kick, hold, step back, kick, step back, kick, step back. And again, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.”
As they go through it the second time, his hand slides down, falling to the middle of her back, somehow spanning the entire width of it, and the contact sends a wild shiver through her, her heart stuttering, making her lose her own rhythm.
How, after everything that happened at the library, is this simple touch affecting her so much?
“Is that it?”
“What?” she asks, blinking up at him, only half hearing what he said.
“The dance,” he asks, turning toward her fully, his hand guiding her closer as his tongue darts out against his bottom lip.
Letting out a reedy breath, she pulls her gaze away from his, trying to regulate the uneven fluttering in her chest.
“No,” she whispers, “there are . . . there are a few more steps.”
“You gonna show me, boss?”
“You still want to learn?”
“If you want to teach me.”
She’s not talking about the dance anymore and neither is he.
His fingertips drift up the line of her back before they dive into her curls, cupping the back of her head, tilting it to the perfect angle as he lowers his mouth to hers.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Yes,” she murmurs, just before their lips meet and she groans into the kiss as she wraps her arms around his neck, running her tongue along his bottom lip.
Slipping her tongue inside, she teases hers against his until he chases hers back and she groans into his mouth, letting him know how much she likes it.
One hand busy in her hair, the other slides down to her hip before edging around to her ass, running his fingers over the easy rise, squeezing gently and then with more purpose as her hips grind against his.
“Like that?” he asks, pulling away from the kiss, guiding their lower bodies together as his mouth drops to her neck, almost immediately finding that spot he knows she likes.
“Just like that,” she gasps.
He spins them around and walks her backward until her calves hit the wood of her coffee table and with a nudge of his hips, she takes her cue easily and sits back while he drops to his knees in front of her.
Ducking down, he runs his nose up the seam of her thighs to the hem of her skirt, nudging it up as he turns his head and presses a soft kiss to the newly revealed skin.
Her legs fall open as he presses forward, hands pushing the skirt up the rest of the way as he leans in to meet his mouth with hers again.
“Did you mean what you said in that text?”
“Stop teasing,” she protests.
“C’mon, boss, tell me what you want,” he practically growls against her as she tries to strain closer.
“I want you. Fuck, Xavier, I want your mouth on me.”
His eyes light up, pure joy radiating from him as he surges forward for a kiss, hot and open, and as she groans into it, he moves away, his hands mapping the peaks and valleys of her body.
She arches into his touch, wanting to feel skin against skin.
Pushing him away, she reaches down and yanks her blouse up over her head, knocking off the clip that was holding her hair back with the motion, her locks spilling around her shoulders as she tosses the shirt away.
“These curves, Bianca,” he says, one hand rising to cup her breast, the other landing at her hip to pull her closer. “Absolutely perfection.”
She wants to laugh, and a small chuckle escapes before she can stop it.
She knows her body meets very few universal beauty standards – too short overall, too soft in some spots, a bit uneven in others and the ability to grow a startling amount of hair in places she doesn’t want it to.
She made peace with that a long time ago, but honestly, who the fuck is she to argue with Xavier on it?
If he thinks she’s perfect, then for at least right now, she’s going to feel perfect.
Leaning forward to kiss him again, she sighs into his mouth as his hands find purchase against her thighs, slowly easing them apart as he moves between them.
Wordlessly, he shifts backward, lowering his mouth over the rise of her breasts, down between them to her belly button, which he circles with his tongue, making her squirm.
“Xavier,” she says.
“Yeah, I know,” he answers and then finally, he reaches his target, his pinky fingers slipping under the elastic at her hips, sliding her panties down her legs and tossing them behind him. “Finally,” he says with a sigh as he shifts down between her legs.
“Really?” she asks breathlessly, quirking an eyebrow despite how close to the edge he’s driven her in the last few minutes.
“I’ve been thinking about this since the day I met you. I don’t even know how I got through that first class. I just kept thinking about sitting you up on your desk and going down on you for hours.”
And she’s laughing again at how ridiculous they’ve both been this whole time, both instantly wanting each other and neither one of them saying anything.
His grin widens at the sound and then fades as her laughter does and she wonders if it’s for the same reason. Because even if they’d acted on it back then, they’d still be in the same place right now and it would probably be so much worse.
“Well, we’re here now,” she says finally, “what are you going to do about it?”
“I told you I could die here a happy man. I plan to make good on my word.”
Then it’s his wicked mouth and his clever tongue and the rasp of his scruff on the inside of her thighs. He presses in, hooking her legs over his shoulders.
“Bianca,” he says, “look at me. Open your eyes.”
When she finally manages to force her eyes open, sensation still firing through every nerve ending in her body, it’s the sexiest thing she’s ever seen in her life.
His hair a wild mess from where her fingers tangled into it, his cheeks flushed from the effort, his mouth swollen and glistening.
His eyes hold hers from between her thighs, his pupils blown almost completely black with a thin ring of dark inky green at the edges.