“But you won’t let yourself,” she said, more bitterly than she’d intended, “because of what I am.”
His wide shoulders bunched up. “You think I want you to be one of them? It’s
killing
me, Cat.”
“Just—”
With a slash of his arm, he spun away. “How did this get so turned around? I didn’t want any of this to come out. This isn’t about me.”
A fist closed around her stomach, squeezed it tight. “What is it about then?”
He scrubbed his face with his hands then stabbed his fingers into his hair.
“Just say it, Xavier.”
“Okay.” He blew out a breath. “Other Secondaries have gone missing. Apparently some Ofarians from very near here. I came to get you tonight to warn you, to make sure you’re safe.” He was back to saying every word very precisely and very slowly.
“Missing?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what the other Secondaries are—maybe an air elemental, or a fire; she wasn’t specific—just that they’re gone.”
“She?”
He toed a chair to make it perfectly flush with the table. “Gwen.”
“Gwen.” She flipped back through the story he’d just told her. “The Ofarian you kidnapped. The one who brought down her own people.”
“Yeah. We haven’t talked since I left California but we spoke tonight. She’s the one who called during breakfast the other day, and then again this morning.” He cleared his throat. “I told her about you.”
“You told
her
before you told
me
.”
“She convinced me to tell you.”
Cat gasped. “You weren’t going to say anything otherwise. Were you?”
“At first, no.” He focused on a little pile of crumbs on the floor the cleaning crew had missed. “I was going to let you leave. Go back to Florida, where I wouldn’t have had to face it, or you, ever again.”
“Jesus, Xavier.” The curse tasted sour.
“But then I realized how much I’ve hated being a coward all these years. And how much I want to see you safe, for you to have the life you deserve.” Chin down, he lifted just his eyes to hers. “You’re my enemy, Cat, and I—”
“I’m not your enemy!” The shout pinged all around the empty restaurant. She took a hard swallow and stepped closer. “You know that, right? Deep down, you know I’m not your enemy.”
He drew his lips in so tightly they disappeared. She could tell by the glassiness of his eyes that he was just going to run right over that one.
“Gwen says you need to learn how to use your powers before it starts to affect your mind. She wants to teach you.”
That explained a lot. The constant distraction. The shift in her art over time, how at first it had been rapturous and free-flowing, and lately, in the past year or two, it had grown more agitated, more frustrated. Like her.
She could only imagine, at this rate, what her art would look like in another year. Or two.
Or what would happen to her brain.
“She wants you to call her.” He dug into the back pocket of
his jeans and pulled out a piece of paper. When he handed it to her, his hand shook so badly the paper rattled. And when she took the paper, she saw that it had been wadded up and flattened and wadded up and flattened several times.
“Okay, I will.” He’d just handed her everything she’d always wanted. Why wasn’t she happier?
They stared hard at one another.
“I’d been thinking,” he began, then gave a little shake of his head, breaking eye contact. “I’d been hoping that you and I could…be together. Somehow. You made me hope. You made me believe.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“I can’t afford that belief.”
“But why?”
“Because the idea of us is more powerful than the reality. Now that I know what you are, I can’t help it; I’ve put up this wall. I tell myself that you’re different, that you’re not really one of them. But if you call Gwen and she brings you into the Ofarian world, I don’t know if I could handle that.”
“That’s not remotely fair. You have no idea what will happen. You’re shutting everything down before it can even get started. What happened to wanting to heal?” She went right up to him, stood toe-to-toe, and tilted her face up to his. “What do you see, when you look at me now? No, don’t close your eyes.” She placed her palms on his chest. “Tell me what you see.”
“I see you.” His voice was hoarse. “I see confidence and joy. I see warmth and strength. I…”
She saw the moment the desire kicked in, shame chasing it right on its heels.
“Go on. It’s okay.”
He lifted a hand and touched one of the waves of her hair, tracing its swirl across her shoulder. When his palm slipped from the glittery fabric of her shirt to the skin on her arm, he released the smallest sigh.
“Do you think about sex with me?”
Now he closed his eyes. “All the time.”
“That’s not a bad thing. Stop telling yourself it is.”
“Ask me to stop breathing. That might be easier.”
She pressed closer, close enough the fabric of their clothes
brushed together. “And what do you see? In your mind. Us together.”
Him, standing there with his eyes closed, pale surfer hair framing the planes of his ethereally beautiful face, brought to mind a few seriously wonderful scenarios of her own. All of them included him letting down his guard.
“Because I see us like we were last night,” she whispered, and he groaned. “Naked. Lovely. Intense. Now what do
you
see? Open your eyes and tell me.”
His eyelids cracked open and the glimmer of his irises made her heart stutter. “I see your skin,” he said. “Every part of it. And it’s so soft and tastes so good.”
For a second he looked like he was about to give in to panic and shutter himself away, but she couldn’t let him. “More. Tell me more.”
Touch me
.
His palms skimmed lightly across her shoulders and slid around the back of her neck. Holding her, claiming her. “I see all this hair. I…I see it spread across your back. I’m inside you from behind. I wrap your hair around my hand and I pull your head back. I see myself making your back arch.”
The faint pulse between her legs exploded into a pounding rhythm. He’d made her wet with just words. And he wasn’t done yet.
“I see myself going animal. I’ve kept it chained up with you, Cat. I’ve tried to be gentle with you, but since you asked, I see myself letting it out now. I want my mind to go blank of everything but you and how I feel inside you. I see my body taking over, just obliterating all the shit I’ve been carrying around for so long, and I’m free.”
Yes
. That’s what she wanted to hear.
“And when you come around me,” he growled, “I’ll know you’re free, too. That you’re with me. That you’re my cure.”
Something shifted in his eyes and he flinched back. She gripped his biceps, held him steady. “He won’t come for you again. If you do all that, if you let yourself go with me, the Burned Man won’t come.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t say that. This is the kind of shit he loves. I’d be inside you and he’d sit right over there”—he stabbed a finger at the back of the booth—“and grin and say awful things about you, knowing he’d won.”
“Will you listen to yourself? He isn’t real.” She grabbed his shirt in her fist, held on tight. “It doesn’t matter that you know what I am.”
Something sparked in his silver eyes and she dared to believe it was hope. He gave a tight shake of his head. “Oh, man, Cat, it does—”
“I am not the Burned Man. But I’ll be whatever you want me to be, if it will help you.”
A half-crazed look seeped into his gaze.
“Do you hear what I’m telling you, Xavier? I. Am. Yours. Everything you told me you want, I want, too. I will love it, I promise you. And the Burned Man will not come.”
“If you’re wrong…”
“I’m not wrong. All right, I’m putting my money where my mouth is. If you fuck me the way you want to fuck me”—a fire raged across his expression, and it was a hot and wonderful vow that made her all warm and achy—“yeah, I said ‘fuck,’ and apparently you like it. If you fuck me and the Burned Man comes back, I will walk right out of here, call Gwen and never speak to you again. Because that’s what you’re saying you want.”
In an unexpected move, he lowered his face to hers, cheek to cheek, warm voice curling around her ear. “And if I let myself go and he doesn’t appear?”
She turned her head slightly, just enough to brush her lips across his. Just enough so he would know she was smiling wickedly. “Then you come back to my hotel room and sleep next to me. Naked. You’ll be there in the morning when I call Gwen, when we tell her about us. And everything will be just fine.”
She saw it then, the tremble in his lips, the faint furrow of his brow. That’s what lust looked like, yes, but in that moment she knew he might love her, too. Which was absolutely fine, because she thought she might love him back. Out of all the crazy things they’d talked about that night, that just might have been the craziest.
He crushed her to him. His mouth came down on hers, his tongue pushing inside. His lips slanted, took, devoured. She’d thought the kiss on the wintery stairs had been hot, but that day he’d still been hiding behind fear and ghosts. Now he ripped them both to shreds.
He held her so tightly she could barely breathe. Stupid lungs, she didn’t need them. All she wanted was this. Him. Unleashed.
Nothing existed between them anymore. Nothing but clothing that was starting to burn like acid.
She let him push her backward, his hands strong and commanding. Her butt struck the booth table so hard the water glasses tipped over. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard one or two roll off and shatter on the floor, but the sound couldn’t compete with the hard beat of her blood and the roar of desire in her ears.
“Say it again.” He clenched the back of her neck in his big hand and nipped at her mouth.
“I’m yours.” She shuddered. “In every way. I want what you want.”
He kissed her hard, and the sting of pain was very, very good. His tongue met hers in determined pushes and sensual pulls. Then he leaned back, using the grip on her neck to yank her head to one side. He dove for her throat like a vampire and feasted on the sensitive skin there. The suction and the swirl of his mouth made her shiver so hard the table vibrated.
Then he stepped back, his expression fierce. “Take off your clothes. I want to watch this time.”
She’d never stripped for a man. She kicked off her black pumps. He watched them skitter away, then his eyes trailed to where her fingers slowly lowered the zipper of her pants. Pushing the black fabric down her hips, she watched with severe satisfaction as his mouth dropped open at the sight of her black lace boy-style underwear.
“Leave those on,” he ordered.
Taking the glittering gold top, she lifted it over her head and tossed it into the booth. The heat from his eyes and the chill of the restaurant mixed deliciously on all her exposed skin.
She fingered the black lace strap of her bra. “Leave this on, too?”
“Absolutely not.”
As she slid it from her body, he attacked.
Warm breath covered her nipples before he took each one of them between his lips. Pulling. Licking. She bent backward, offering him more. Offering him everything.
His hands fell to her waist and he forcefully flipped her around. Through his jeans, his hard-on jutted against the crack of her butt. His hands smoothed down her belly and slipped over the black lace covering her hip bones, jerking her even tighter against his erection.
The long fingers of one hand slipped under the lace and easily slid over her slick flesh. He groaned, head dropping to her shoulder. He pushed two fingers inside her, filling her shockingly fast, then used his other hand to press on her shoulder. With a lovely shake of anticipation, she complied with his unspoken order, stretching forward across the table. The cold surface pebbled her skin. With a moan of regret, he removed his fingers from inside her, cupped both her elbows and raised her arms above her head. Shoving aside forks and spoons and rolled napkins, he curled her fingers over the table edge.
“Don’t let go,” he murmured, then took his time tracing her body with his hands and mouth. Down her arms and shoulders, her back, her hips and curves. She could do nothing but lay there, dying slowly under his touch.
She heard the gentle rasp of his jeans as he crouched behind her, then felt the soft, tender caress of a single finger as he nudged the lace of her underwear to one side. The hot kiss of his breath fluttered over her before his tongue found the best, wettest place.
“You don’t have to…oh,
God
.” But his tongue kept circling and flicking. “This is about…you. What…you want.”
He removed his mouth but dragged a finger across her clit. “This
is
what I want. I want to hear you scream my name.”
She was naked, stretched forward over a table, while he, fully clothed, worshipped her with his mouth. It didn’t take much to make her comply. Every nerve stood at attention, completely dependent on him. Her whole body hummed, that hum spiraling and spiraling, becoming more and more centered on the movement of his mouth and tongue.
“Let me hear you,” he said against her.
She came, bucking against him, and the sensation was all the more intense because she could barely move. His name escaped her lips in a tremulous cry.
He didn’t ease her down this time. He just stopped, leaving her achingly empty and panting for more.
“Condom. In my purse. Front pocket.”
“Prepared,” he muttered as he rummaged where she said. And even though she couldn’t see him, she could tell he was wearing one of those crooked half smiles that drove her out of her mind.
“Hopeful,” she whispered back.
He came back to her and spread his body over hers, pressing her into the table. Even through his clothes she could feel him shaking. He pressed an apologetic kiss to the back of her neck. “It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be fast.”
He said it like it was a warning, but her ears heard only a wonderful promise. He slid away, his mouth the last to leave her.
She turned her head. “Sometimes hard and fast can be very, very good.”