Chapter 15
Fifteen
Dangerous After
Kelly
The first thing I thought after sex with Xerses on a dark beach was that I wanted to do it again. Not eventually but now.
My body was still shaking. My mouth was swollen from kissing him. My thighs were weak in a very specific, very glorious way. And being here in moonlight with the ocean behind us and my sweater in the sand, all I could think was:
Oh. So this is what it’s supposed to feel like when it’s right.
God, it had been hot. His mouth. His hands. The way he found my face like every reaction mattered. The way he didn’t rush me even when he was devastated himself. The way he made wanting feel like something we were doing together instead of something he was taking from me.
But more than that, it had felt right.
I stood there in the sand trying to pull myself together, and I was smiling.
I was smiling because I was truly, stupidly happy.
And that was so much more reckless than guilt would’ve been.
Xerses bent, picked up my jeans and sweater, and handed them to me without a word.
That shouldn’t have been romantic, but it was.
He was still gentle.
His attention stayed on my face, not my body, while I stepped into my jeans. He was making sure I was okay. I pulled my jeans up and laughed softly under my breath because this was my life now.
He looked at me. “What.”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“You don’t get to read my face after that. Give a girl five minutes.”
“Your face is extremely readable.”
“That is deeply offensive.”
“It’s a compliment.”
“It’s not. Compliments make people feel good. You make me feel exposed.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“For you, maybe.”
I looked up at him then.
At the man standing barefoot in the sand, hair devastated by my hands and the wind, mouth kissed raw enough that I wanted to kiss him again for how beautiful he looked afterward.
And I said the truest thing I had.
“I’m trying hard not to look too pleased with myself.”
That got me a real smile.
His eyes sharpened. “Unearned.”
I shrugged one shoulder, shy in a way I hadn’t been a second ago.
“I don’t know. It ” I looked down at my sweater in my hands and then back up.
“I’ve spent so long making jokes about my dating life and being the last one left and all of that, and now I feel like I’m standing on a beach after having sex with the man I wanted most and, ”
I stopped because even for me that was a lot.
His whole face altered anyway.
Something softer.
Something that looked like he was absorbing the weight of what I’d said and trying not to make me regret giving it to him.
“That doesn’t sound unearned,” he said quietly. “That sounds overdue.”
That thing he did.
That impossible ability to make me feel less ashamed of myself with one sentence.
I hated how good he was at that.
No. That was a lie too.
I loved it. That was the problem.
I stepped into him before I could overthink it, one hand going flat to his chest, the other still clutching my sweater and bra and whatever else I hadn’t put on yet.
His hands came to my waist automatically.
Warm. Solid. Familiar already.
I tipped my head back and said, “That was a very precarious thing to say to me right after I had sex with you.”
His thumb moved under the edge of my camisole where my skin was still bare and sensitive. “Why.”
“Because now I want to kiss you again and that feels irresponsible.”
One side of his mouth tipped.
That was all it took.
I kissed him hard to make him take one step back in the sand.
That made me feel better.
Because if he was going to keep saying things that got under my skin like that, he could at least suffer a little for it.
His hands tightened at my waist and then he kissed me back with that same treacherous mix he seemed determined to ruin me with, heat and control and something so stupidly romantic under both that it made the whole thing worse.
This kiss was different from the ones before.
Less edge.
More wonder.
But because the pressure had broken.
We weren’t circling anymore.
We knew.
And somehow that made the wanting feel fuller, not flatter.
I slid my hands up into his hair and took my time kissing him, because for the first time in my life I knew what I was doing with a man and why I was doing it.
That alone nearly made me emotional.
And all of it, the beach, the sex, him holding me like I was something he wanted and something he meant to take care of, felt unreal in the best way.
When we finally broke apart, I let my forehead fall against his chest and listened to the thud of his heart under my ear.
Fast.
That made me inappropriately happy.
“You’re very pleased with yourself,” he murmured into my hair.
I smiled against his shirt. “You say that like it’s a problem.”
“It might be.”
“Yes.”
I leaned back enough to look up at him. “That sounds personal.”
“It is.”
“Stop looking at me like that while I’m getting dressed,” I said.
“Like what.”
“Like you’re memorizing something.”
“I am.”
“That is not helpful.”
“It’s not meant to be helpful. It’s meant to be honest.”
“Your honesty has a very specific effect on my blood pressure.”
“Good.”
“Stop saying good. That word has been weaponized.”
I finished getting dressed. By the time I was done, I was still glowing.
No other word for it.
It in my skin, in the softness of my mouth, in the weird buoyant looseness in my chest.
I had made the right choice.
That thought landed over and over as a kind of private miracle.
Not maybe. Not I hope I don’t regret it.
Not wow, that escalated.
The right choice. For my body.
For the woman I was, not the one who’d been carrying around old embarrassment like a secret stain.
We started back toward the path and this time when he took my hand, I didn’t even pretend to hesitate.
Xerses slowed once when my step faltered a little.
His gaze dropped . “Are you okay.”
That could have annoyed me.
It didn’t.
I liked that he noticed.
I liked it so much that I almost smiled before answering.
“I’m fine.”
“I am not.”
He gave me a look in the dark.
I laughed. “Okay, maybe a little sore.”
His jaw set.
In a terrifying, masculine, very treacherous way.
“Don’t make that face,” I said.
“What face.”
“The one where you look offended by physics.”
“I’m offended by anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
And there he was again, saying something that should have been too much and somehow wasn’t because of how simply he meant it.
I squeezed his hand once. “It’s not bad.”
His eyes searched my face like he was double-checking the truth of that.
I let him.
That was new too.
I let him.
Maybe that was the biggest change of all.
Not that I’d slept with him.
That I had stopped feeling like every man’s concern for me came with hidden strings attached.
At least with him.
At least here.
The side gate to the compound came into view.
He stopped before it.
I turned toward him, still holding his hand.
For one second we both stood there in the dark with the lit-up house behind us and the beach still on our skin.
I looked at him and thought, with a rush so warm it felt almost unreal, I’m glad it was you.
The thought must have shown somewhere in my face because his expression tightened .
“What.”
“That’s not true.”
I stepped closer, our joined hands between us now.
“No,” I admitted. “It’s not.”
He waited.
That was the thing about him now. He waited for the whole truth when he thought there was one.
And because I was happy and a little wrung out and too full of him to play games, I gave it to him.
“I was just thinking,” I said softly, “that I’m glad it was you.”
The words landed between us and stayed there.
His face moved in a way I felt more than saw. Something quiet and rough moving under the control.
He lifted our joined hands and brushed his mouth over my knuckles.
That nearly took my knees out.
Completely unfair.
I laughed softly just to survive it. “You cannot start doing things like that.”
“Why.”
“Because I already had sex with you. You don’t get to become more romantic now.”
One side of his mouth moved. “That sounds made up.”
“It is not.”
“It is.”
I stepped fully into him then because the night had become too much for distance and because if I didn’t kiss him again before going inside, I was going to be unsettled all the way upstairs.
This kiss was shorter.
Softer.
And somehow more disarming because of that.
No rush. No edge. Just my mouth on his, his hand at my waist, both of us smiling a little into it because whatever else this was, it wasn’t ugly.
It wasn’t ugly.
It wasn’t awkward.
It wasn’t something I had to recover from or explain away or laugh off with the girls later like a story that had happened to someone slightly more tragic and slightly less lucky than me.
It had been good.
Beautiful, honestly.
Hot as hell, yes. But beautiful too.
I went upstairs to my room still smiling.
Still glowing.
Still feeling him everywhere in the best way.
And for the first time in my life, the word virgin no longer felt like a bruise. It felt like a door I had finally walked through with the right person at the right time because I had wanted to.
The next morning, I woke up wrapped in warm sheets and sunlight with the weirdest, happiest urge to laugh.
I didn’t feel ruined.
I felt warm.
Satisfied in some deep, feminine way I didn’t have better language for yet. My body felt used, yes. Gently sore. Sensitive in places that made me blush when I thought too hard about them.
But mostly I felt light.
Like something old and stupid had finally dropped off me in the night.
I rolled onto my back and smiled at the ceiling like an idiot.
“You had sex on a beach,” I told the ceiling. “With a billionaire. Under the moon. And you liked it.”
The ceiling was very quiet.
“You more than liked it. You loved it. You want to do it again. You are lying in Egyptian cotton sheets thinking about his mouth and you have zero regrets.”
I buried my face in the pillow.
“Zero,” I said into the pillow, muffled. “Absolutely zero.”