The door opened, startling me out of the web of memories I’d become trapped in. The sight of him knocked the air from my lungs, and I gasped, tying to remember how to breathe. I’d spent the last two weeks dreaming of his face, but seeing him before me, I realized those fantasies hadn’t even touched on his beauty. The shock of black hair. The perfect lines of his face. The delicious curve of his jaw, the full bow of his lips, and the sapphire eyes that drew me to him, burning me with their intensity as I drowned in them.
Alexander’s shirt was unbuttoned, revealing his chest and six pack. His jeans hung low on his hips. My body betrayed me, responding instinctively to the magnetic energy sizzling between us.
This was a mistake.
Whatever reason he had for asking me to come here, it had been a mistake to come. The tears fell freely down my cheeks, and I didn’t try to stop them. The pressure in my chest built until I heaved with unrestrained yearning.
Alexander reached for my hand, spotting the small wound on my finger. He brought it to his lips and sucked away the blood before placing a gentle kiss on the spot. The gesture was small but not insignificant. When his arm coiled around my waist, I didn’t resist him.
I couldn’t.
So much for being strong, the critical voice in my head sneered.
But his mouth silenced my fears as it pressed against mine. The kiss was tender and hesitant, and his lips moved slowly. Salt mingled with his taste on my tongue, and I pulled away to discover the tears weren’t mine. Alexander dropped to his knees, burying his face against my stomach.
My eyes closed, relishing the peaceful sensation that washed over me. I was desperate for his touch, even though it couldn’t ward off the inevitable.
“You’re thinner.” His tone was measured, but I heard the edge of accusation in it along with something else that sounded a lot like fear.
I had wondered if he would catch the slightly sharper angle of my cheekbones or the tautness of my belly. The color had drained from my world when I left him, and along with it, life’s flavors. I’d been relying on alarms more than I had for a long time, but I was taking care of myself.
“I’m okay,” I said in a soft voice. “I haven’t had much of an appetite, but I am eating.”
“You can’t…” he choked on the words. “Not because of me. Promise me, Clara.”
His alarm caught me off guard, and I struggled not to read more into his concern. “I promise.”
After a few minutes of silence, I couldn’t wait any longer to understand why he’d asked me to come here. “Where are we?”
Alexander rose to his feet and wove his fingers through mine, leading me though the hallway into a living room. Now that the shock had worn off, I digested my surroundings. The home was fully furnished and artfully decorated with a mixture of antiques and clean, modern touches. A fireplace with an exquisitely carved mantle was the focal point of the living area. A plush, linen-upholstered sofa sat across from it, and the rest of the room combined vintage and contemporary into a warm, welcoming space.
“You’re asking the wrong questions,” he said. My core clenched as I drank in the familiar rasp of his voice. Alexander’s eyes hooded as though sensing my sudden, urgent arousal, but he didn’t make a move.
“Twenty questions again, X?”
He shook his head, his tongue wetting his lips as he did. “No games, poppet.”
I stared around us, trying to comprehend why we were here while fighting the dizzying effect of his presence. I’d been too long without him. Now his nearness was almost overwhelming.
“Why are we here?”
“You’re getting warmer.” He moved close enough to me that I felt his hot, sweet breath on my face.
“Whose house is this?” I asked so quietly that he shouldn’t have been able to hear me.
His mouth dropped to my ear and whispered, “Ours.”
I pushed him away and stared at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. Had he lost his mind? “I don’t understand.”
“This is our normal,” he explained, spreading his hands. “This is our sanctuary.”
There were so many questions crowding into my brain that I had a hard time choosing one, but there was one that I couldn’t even guess the answer to. “How?”
“The house is in Norris’s name,” Alexander told me. “I pay for it, of course, but this way we maintain our privacy.”
I walked around the room in a slow circle. Alexander’s eyes followed me, but he hung back as I absorbed what he was telling me.
“You mean to maintain secrecy,” I said, turning back to him.
“Privacy. Secrecy,” he repeated the words with a shrug as though they were the same thing.
The problem was that they weren’t.
“Here we can be Alexander and Clara. Nothing between us,” he continued.
“Except the secrets.”
Alexander crossed to me so swiftly that I barely processed his reaction before his arms were around me. “Not between us. Nothing between us.”
“Oh X,” I sighed. “Everything is between us. Can’t you feel it?”
“I don’t want it to be.” His eyes pleaded with me, and I saw the agony I felt reflected in them.
“Your father expects you to get married. He has it all planned.”And those plans don’t include me.
“I can’t control what he plans, but that doesn’t mean he can force me to do anything.”
“Did you know about his plans?” I asked.
Alexander hesitated, and I already knew his answer before he spoke. “Yes.”
Wrenching away from him, I held out a hand to warn him to stay back. “I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. Because I don’t believe loving you is wrong.”
His stance shifted, his eyes going distant. “Perhaps not for you. I stayed away because I felt it was unfair. I felt like I was leading you on.”
“And this isn’t doing just that?” I cried, my heart breaking all over again. I’d given him a chance to fight for me and he’d put up a wall. “Why are we even here?”
“Because I need you.” He spoke harshly. His words indicting me, as if I had tricked him.
“But you don’t love me,” I whispered.
Alexander’s hand ran through his hair as he shook his head. “I told you I don’t do romance. I don’t do long-term.”
“What mixed signals you give me, Your Majesty.” I practically spit his own words back at him. “That’s a dangerous thing to do with a girl like me. What is this? A place to fuck me in? A little hideout your father doesn’t know about so you can keep your tart a secret, because you can’t have me showing up in the press?”
“That’s not what this is!”
“Then tell me what it is,” I pled, my anger faltering, “because I’m trying to understand. I really am.” I was desperate to understand, because even as I stood here so close that I could reach out and touch him, I felt him slipping through my fingers.
Alexander’s jaw tightened, and when he finally turned the full force of his gaze on me, I staggered back a step as it smoldered through me. “Every woman who has ever loved me is dead.”
I broke for him all over again, shaking my head softly. “I’m sorry, X. But I’m not dead. I’m right here—and you can’t make me stop loving you.”
He crossed the distance between us, and I didn’t stop him as he drew me roughly against him, cupping my chin firmly. “I won’t destroy you.”
“You already have,” I whispered.
His hands dropped from me in defeat. “I never meant for this to happen.”
“I know, but I’m a big girl, X,” I told him. “You can’t control me. You can’t control who I love.”
“Stop,” he demanded, and I wasn’t certain if he was ordering me to be quiet or to stop loving him.
I wasn’t capable of either. “That’s why I can’t stay. I can’t pretend that everything’s okay. I can’t pretend not to love you. I think that wou
ld hurt worse than leaving you. I’m sorry, X. I can’t be your secret.”
“One night,” he said, his voice simmering with longing. “Stay with me one night and if you can walk away in the morning, I’ll let you go.”
I shook my head even as my earlier words replayed in my mind:you never know when you’re making love to someone for the last time.
“Let me show you,” he said.
Show me what? How it’s going to be? How capable you are of giving me the one thing you say you can never give me? A stronger woman would walk away, but my resolve crumbled under his blazing eyes. If I left now, I would always wonder what would have happened if I had not. Going to bed with him would tear me open and rip out my heart, but the break would be clean. No regrets.
My fingers trembled as I found the hem of my shirt and drew it over my head. Alexander froze, watching me lustily as I stripped off my jeans. My bra and panties followed until I stood before him naked. “One night,” I agreed. Someday he might look back and hear the truth hiding in those simple words.
Alexander swept me from my feet and carried me toward the stairs, his lips pressing urgent kisses to my neck up to my jaw as he trailed his mouth slowly toward mine. Desire ignited in my core as he captured my lips, parting them to plunge his tongue with slow, deep strokes into my mouth. My hands slipped under his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders. I ran my fingers along the worst of the scarring that twisted so close to his heart that I felt its steady beat pulsing across the tips.
He wouldn’t let me say the words, but I would show him one last time.
One final night to last a lifetime.
Laying me carefully across the bed, Alexander stole over me. I tugged open his jeans and pushed them down. He kicked them off and moved between my legs, his thick cock finding its way without guidance. I gasped as he entered me with one powerful thrust. His mouth found mine again, and he kissed me, his lips lingering deliberately. Cruising lower, he trailed along the hollow of my neck down to the one between my breasts. He planted a soft kiss there before he caught my nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue over it with languid strokes. My hands fisted into the sheets, arching against him, frantic for contact.
I needed to feel his skin against mine. One final night of connection.
Alexander’s hips rolled deftly as he speared me, stretching my cleft. I moaned as he pressed harder, fucking me deeper. Then he withdrew from me, and I cried out, hungry and empty. Sitting up on the bed, he slid his hand behind my back and lifted my quivering body to his lap. His hands cradled my back as I sank onto his cock, savoring the delicious ache as I swelled around him. He filled me, and he moved slowly as I adjusted to the pitch of his shaft. It was buried deep inside me, and I circled it as the pressure built through my body.
The position was intimate, and it was impossible to escape each other’s eyes and the questions they held. Alexander wasn’t taking me, he was appealing to me. I felt his confusion as acutely as I felt the fevered heat of his skin. In that moment, it was impossible not to see through one another. Alexander’s hands clutched my back, stilling my movement, and I understood the unspoken request.
He wanted to make it last. One final night of wholeness.
My index finger traced the curve of his face, mapping it. I brushed it over his lips, memorizing their soft fullness. My eyes met his, and I fixed the truth I saw shining from them in my mind as my hands traveled over his body, committing each inch of him to memory. I knew the darkness of parting lay ahead of us. Even as I captured this moment and its beautiful serenity, pain commingled with desire. I gave in, my feelings overpowering me, and rocked urgently against him. Alexander’s arms tightened as his cock drove into me tirelessly. We crashed into one another, colliding and connecting, bridging and breaking. Each touch desperate. Each kiss pleading.
“Say it, Clara,” he coaxed hoarsely.
His wish was my command. One final night of domination.
“Alexander,” I breathed, “I love you.”
His eyes closed as his cock spasmed against my velvet channel, pouring inside me, and I spilled over with him, unwinding in his arms. The pleasure splintered across my limbs in brilliant fireworks that fragmented as they rained through me. I rode the torrent of pleasure as I repeated those words.
I repeated them to fill a lifetime. One final night of affirmation.
Alexander didn’t release me as he collapsed onto the bed, instead he entwined his limbs with mine until there was no beginning and no end to us. We lay in silence until I felt him swell inside me, and then we began to move again.
“I will never have my fill of you. I crave you, Clara. I crave your body, your taste. Without you…” he trailed away, his eyes flashing with pain. “I…I…”
And then he was pumping into me again, fulfilling me the only way he knew how, and I clung to him.
One final night of words unspoken.
I slipped silently from the bed, untangling myself from Alexander’s sleeping form when the alarm clock on the bedside table read six a.m. He’d only fallen asleep a few hours ago. He’d fucked me with his mouth and cock until I was near collapse, as if he knew the moment he withdrew from me I would vanish.
We’d spent yesterday in bed, only leaving to feed ourselves before returning back to each other’s bodies. But even as we laughed and lived and touched one another, I forced myself to make a thousand silent goodbyes.
Goodbye to that dirty, sexy mouth that curved so effortlessly into a smirk. Goodbye to that tangle of silky, black hair. Goodbye to his protective streak. Goodbye to the moment of deliberate hesitation before he filled me.
Goodbye to the man I loved.
I dressed quickly and found a pad of paper in the kitchen. In the end, I realized there were no words. I’d said what I needed him to hear. Anything else would just be an excuse, and I couldn’t bear to leave it that way when we both knew the truth. We both saw the wall standing between us, and we both knew we couldn’t tear it down alone.
I left the key on top of the paper. This home had been ours for one perfect, bittersweet day.
Stopping at the door, I closed my eyes and searched for the strength to walk through it.
“This it it?” His voice startled me from my concentration, and I whipped around to face him. He hadn’t bothered to dress and his body was tense, bracing for my response. I saw the torment in his eyes, and I fought the urge to comfort him.
“I’m sorry.” I held my hand up, knowing if he touched me, I couldn’t go through with it.
“Clara.” He looked at me with a sadness that twisted through me, but he didn’t come any closer. “Please.”
I closed my eyes, unable to take the sight of his beautiful face, and shook my head as my fingers closed over the doorknob. “I can’t be your secret.”
Pushing open the door, I staggered into the crisp morning air as he called after me. I ran, but I couldn’t escape the pain. I was in motion even as my world ceased to exist—even as it all collapsed around me.
* * *
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The fear I'd expected wasn't there. Maybe it was the considerable amount of alcohol coursing through my veins courtesy of Belle or maybe it was something more than that—a hunger that had been gn
awing through me since I’d read Alexander's words earlier this evening. I wasn't here to see him. Not exactly. Going to Brimstone was about confronting myself. The club held a special significance for me. It had been the first place that Alexander warned me away. I'd seen the darkness flashing in his eyes that night. It was also the place that had brought us together—and the place where I'd walked away from him. I hadn't chosen the club's name as my safe word lightly. Now it felt dangerous to be here, but after weeks of longing for Alexander, I craved the risk.
The line of hopefuls wrapped around the building. From the outside, it was hard to tell it was London's hottest nightclub. I looped my arm through Belle's and walked past the line, receiving a fair number of dirty looks in the process. We looked hot tonight—me in my short red dress and Belle in a shimmery silver slip dress—but that wasn't what was going to get us in.
"Maybe we should go somewhere else." Belle's gaze flickered toward the line.
"This is where I want to go." I peered ahead, pushing my shoulders back as we drew closer to the bouncer.
"An hour ago you didn't want to go here," she reminded me.
"That was before I had three doubles." Right now I felt like I could face anything. Maybe tonight I would get lucky and run into Pepper Lockwood, Alexander's childhood friend and my wannabe rival. My mouth twisted at the thought.
"Exactly," Belle said, pulling me from my fantasy. "You're drunk."
"And whose fault is that?"
"I just wanted you to loosen up, but I'm not sure—"
"I am," I interrupted her as we stepped to the front of the line. Behind us, I heard a mix of groans and cursing.
"Miss?" The bouncer crossed his arms, straining the seams of his already strained shirt. He tipped his head to the back of the line. Belle tugged at my arm while a few people whistled behind us.
Broken and Beautiful Page 181
