by S. Ann Cole
Eying me, Tex hesitantly sat down across from me, rested his elbows on the table, relocated them to the chair handles instead, then leaned forward and rested them on the table again.
I’d hate to think an illustrious rock star like Tex Laklin, who had women throwing their thongs at him on stage all the time, would have the gall to be agitated in front of me.
“She’s happy,” I said, launching the conversation for him, seeing as he didn’t seem capable of finding the words himself.
Ice-blue eyes flicked to mine, and he opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again to ask, “The rumors, are they true? Is she really—”
“Pregnant?” I finished. “Yes, she is.” For a third time, actually. But the public didn’t know of her previous miscarriages. Saskia was private, she had a killer PR and a stern manager, getting scoops on her personal life was like trying to catch fireflies in daylight, so whenever a rumor popped up about Saskia Day, people questioned it a million times over before believing it, because half the time the rumors turned out to be falsities.
The lead singer looked devastated by this confirmation. Was he sane? He dropped his head, over fourteen inches of jet-black hair hiding his face.
“It’s been years, Tex,” I said in a slow, gentle voice. “Did you really believe there was still a chance?”
For several minutes, he said nothing. So I didn’t either. Sometimes silence was all a heart in pain needed, someone who’ll listen to the words unspoken and understand.
And boy, did I understand. My situation didn’t differ much from his. Except I knew how to hold my shit together.
“Since she dumped me, I’ve been playing every single moment I spent with her over and over in my head, trying to pinpoint where I went wrong, what I did or didn’t do to make her give up on us. I never once screwed around on her, I never once treated her any less than my queen. I was all about her. I was all about her. And one night she just…gave me the best stab of my life then broke up with me.” He raised his head and looked across at me, searching for answers I didn’t have. “She ever told you…what I did wrong? Why she left me?”
Reaching across the table, I placed a hand over his. “I’m not Kia, so I can’t give you the closure you need. But I can assure you that you weren’t the problem. Her heart was just…elsewhere.”
“She said that?”
“Yes.”
“Was it him?”
“Yes.” I consolingly rubbed the back of his tattooed hand. “You’ve got to let her go, Tex. She’s gone. Forever.”
Placing his other hand above mine, he brought both our hands upright and lowered his forehead to them, as though he were trying to feel Saskia through me. As if living with her had somehow made me a part of her. Or maybe I was just the closest he’d ever get to being near her again. I had no idea. No idea what this meant for him, so I just let him hold my hand to his forehead.
We remained like that for quite some time, until I heard footfalls, then Xavier materialized at the sliding doors.
My eyes went to him, and his eyes went straight to my hand sandwiched between Tex’s. Jaw tightening, those eyes came back to me.
All I could offer as explanation was a one-shoulder shrug, while Tex, oblivious of Xavier’s return, still had his forehead pressed to our hands, prompting me to wonder if he’d fallen asleep or something.
Xavier shook his head, and in one swift motion yanked Tex up by his collar and flung him against the railing.
“Your shit, get it together,” he said without even a slight raise to his voice, but the menace was undeniable. “She’s not Saskia. Not even related to her. You need to stop this shit, man. We’re all sick of it.”
Tex swept his long, black hair from out of his face, working his jaw. His head tilted a little to the side as he glanced over at me, then he dipped his chin and looked at Xavier. “Don’t fall in love with her. The day you get your heart blown wide open, you’ll understand the impossibility of getting your shit together.” He pushed off from the railing, tilting his head to me again. “You say it’s been years. You think I should be over this by now because ‘time heals’, right? Wrong. Time’s nothing but eternal torment when you’re dead.”—Pause—“Saskia Day killed me.”
Shouldering past Xavier, he marched through the room and out the door.
Face impassive, Xavier studied me for several heartbeats, combed his fingers back through his hair, then turned and left without a word.
Goddamn broken, melodramatic rock stars.
While Xavier was in his meeting, I stayed out on the balcony and Skyped Saskia so I could see my son. But she reminded me that I’d permitted Saturdays to Dave Hamilton, Jacob’s grandfather. We chatted for a bit as I gave her updates, omitting the episodes with Tex, and that he had a knife in her heart on his bedroom door. She was already going through a tough pregnancy; I didn’t need to bog her down with that kind of drama.
I did, however, ask her about Xena, and she cautioned me to be careful because Xena was a lot smarter than she pretended to be and had split personalities. She went on to divulge that she and Xena never got along because once when Tex left his cell at her place, a text came in from Xena: a selfie of her wearing only her underwear. When she confronted Xena about the text, she broke down and admitted she had an epic crush on Tex since she was in high school but hid her feelings because she knew Xavier wouldn’t allow it.
Can’t say I didn’t pick up on that in the movie room.
After hanging up with Saskia, I rang Dave Hamilton but had to listen to Jacob’s gabbling over the phone since Grandpa Hamilton had no clue what Skype was.
By the time I padded back into the room it was almost ten o’ clock and Xavier still hadn’t returned.
I showered and got dressed in Xena’s pajama set, then immediately stripped naked again and climbed into bed, deciding that sleeping nude was most feasible of galvanizing Xavier into playing “lick and stick” with me tonight.
I drew the silk covers up to my neck sighed up at the ceiling. Davian hadn’t come to Beach Rock at all, and I knew Zach had to have told him by now that he saw me.
I wasn’t sure what I expected. For him to rush over to Beach Rock and hug me, expressing how overjoyed he was to see me? No, not that, because then Xavier would know I’d lied.
Besides, with the abrupt manner in which Davian had dropped out of my life like a power outage right in the middle of your favorite TV Show, I doubt he’d come running like that.
Nonetheless, I expected him to show, if even as a pretext of borrowing sugar, while darting his gaze around to check if I was truly there, hooking up with a Ninety Miles member.
I couldn’t let myself believe he didn’t care an iota if I were dead or alive. I didn’t want to believe he was wholly happy and in love with Jessica Stucco. I didn’t want to believe he’d forgotten Alina O’Hara existed.
I wanted to believe there was a chance.
But the fact of the matter was, he didn’t show.
Because he didn’t care.
I’m a light sleeper, so I was awake the second the door opened and a splice of light sliced through the darkness. I gave no indication I was conscious, though, anticipating what he would do when he discovered me nude beneath his silks.
There was a pause at the bedroom door, the slice of light disappearing as he closed the door. Footfalls sounded across the floor, not towards the bed.
A switch flipped, light invaded the darkness again, and then I heard him moving around in the bathroom. The shower came on, ran for about eight minutes, then he was out, the lights went off, and he was at the bedside.
As he flipped the covers back, cool air tickled my bare ass. A long, long pause ensued, a gravelly expletive, and then the mattress concaved with his weight. He scooted up behind me and my heart went into a tizzy, banging around in my chest. I felt his damp chest to my back at the same time I felt it, poking my rear.
An orgasm teetered right at the tip of my cli
toris, and I curled my toes.
“Chino?”
I didn’t answer, even though I was eager to spread wide for this man.
Churning out another expletive, he reached over my head to switch on the bedside lamp, then pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder as one big paw smoothed down to my ass, delivering gentle, rousing rubs. “Chino, babe, please…” More swearing. “I can’t…”
Lips curving, I rolled over to face him. “You’ve been gone a while.”
Xavier made it clear he wasn’t in the talking mood when his mouth met mine before I could even finish the sentence. I pushed up against him, breasts crushing to his chest as he forced one of his thick thighs between both of mine, providing me something to grind my folds against.
I knotted my fingers in his damp waves, matching his driving need, his urgency, his fierce desire, determined and impatient.
He groaned. I swallowed it.
I was soaked, on fire for him, rocking against his thigh, coating it with my juices.
I’d thought about this moment all week, about letting Xavier inside me, what it would be like. Now the moment was here, and I was so heady I couldn’t remember my son’s name.
Taking charge, I pressed my palms to his chest and shoved him on his back, promptly straddling him. The strained, desirous expression on his face was nearly enough to make me come right there on his abs.
From my view looking down, he was breathtaking. He had brooding-gray clouds and lightning storms in his eyes, and I wanted to ride him out to a quiet calm.
Leaning down, I peppered kisses over his famed pecs, circling the center of my palms over his taut nipples. His fingers dug into my hips, watching me, cock twitching behind my bum.
My kisses meandered down his abs, going lower, tongue licking along the defined grooves, Xavier’s feet shifting restlessly. When I got to his navel, I balked, because that’s where his dick, blood-filled red and concrete hard, rested.
I stared at it.
Let it be known that big men had even bigger dicks. Xavier’s dick was thick and long and intimidating. He had a wide, blunt head, like an umbrella sheltering his tight scrotum. Suffice to say I was frightened by the thing, froze up.
To be fair, I’d only ever seen two other penises in the flesh before: my son’s and Davian’s.
Davian’s dick was a very suckable seven and a half inches of male goodness. But Xavier’s dick went far beyond seven and a half inches, and it wasn’t even just the length that scared me, but the width, and the engorged, cherry-red blunt head.
Xavier’s dick was not the kind of dick a girl could go more than one round on. It was the kind of dick that would put you out faster than an overdose on Ambien.
Confidence waning, suddenly uncertain of myself, I timidly dragged my gaze up along the length of his body and found him watching me.
Bottom lip caught between his teeth, he tried to hide a smile.
“You get this reaction from girls every time they see your dick?”
“Every. Single. Time,” he replied, top lip twitching.
“Do you take, like, enhancement pills or something?”
He took no umbrage to this. “No. Just been free-balling since age eight.”
“So you’re saying briefs make penises smalle—”
“Chino,” he interrupted, half-frustrated, wholly impatient, “do research later. But right now, put my dick in your mouth.”
That raw command did nothing but make me all the more hot for him. Hands-free, I obeyed by lowering my head and taking him in my mouth. His hips gently flexed upward at the same time he let out a deep moan.
Keeping my hands on the bed, I sheathed my teeth and took as much of him as I could manage—which was about half—then began sucking him. I was no expert. I’d only ever been with one man. But Xavier’s grip in my hair, the deep sounds escaping him, and the unremitting undulating of his hips assured me I wasn’t entirely an inexperienced neophyte.
“Chino,” he prayed to the ceiling when I moved one of my hands to fondle his sack. Unbelievably tight and round, firm enough to play marbles with.
The man was a god.
As my inner walls pulsed ponderously, begging for some action, and my clit generated its own heartbeat, I released him from my mouth and crawled up his body, fisting him, readying to impale myself and ride us both into oblivion. But Xavier shook his head, wrapped one big arm around my waist and threw me back on the bed, flipping us like a coin so he was above me, my head almost hanging off the edge.
“Told you Chino,” he said, parting my legs, “always lick it before I stick it.”
He went low, then his lips met my lips—the ones below, that is—and I bucked into his mouth, gasping out like a virgin getting touched for the first time.
Two years. It’s been two whole years since I felt these sinful sensations, since I’ve been this open and…intimate with another human being. I felt as if I’d just walked out of a blizzard and right into a furnace. Life returned to me as Xavier tongued me on high speed, licking all the stiffness out of me, greasing my joints, rescuing me from the desert and bestowing me a tall, tall glass of water, quenching a thirst of two years.
Gripping his head and holding it tight to me as if I were afraid he would stop and take the euphoria away, I ground into his mouth, raising my upper half so I could watch him eat me, then slamming my head back to the mattress when a bolt of pleasure hit me, seconds later raising up again to watch him then slamming back to the mattress. Back and forth, back and forth I went, unsure of what I really wanted to do. Pleasure had me confused, had me crazed, spinning me in circles, dizzying me.
By the fifth time I raised up and slammed back on the bed, thrusting maniacally against Xavier’s enthusiastic tongue, my head was dangling off the bed, hair spilling down to the floor. I was about to suggest he slow down so I could scoot back onto the bed when he sucked me hard at the same time he plunged a finger inside me and began pumping.
I trembled. Forget my position, he couldn’t stop now. Not now. I was too near to that place I haven’t visited in a while.
“Don’t stop, Xavi,” I cried, blood rushing to my head from my upside-down position. “Please, don’t…stop.”
I locked my legs around his neck, fearing he would stop to spite me. Might be cutting off his circulation, but I just…I just…I didn’t know. Except that I felt insanely good and wanted this to go on and on all night.
Xavier didn’t stop, he ate on, even though I pretty much had him in a headlock.
Like a streak of crooked lightning across the night sky, I cracked, splitting open as my orgasm fled me in bursts of light like shooting stars zinging through the darkness and exploding into the moon.
I wailed in sheer pleasure, the sound bouncing off the walls and echoing back into the room as my clit pulsed on Xavier’s tongue, my hips way, way up off the bed.
As the particles of euphoria slowly popped out one by one, like bursting balloons, I became aware of Xavier pulling me back up onto the bed.
“Jesus Christ,” I heard him mutter under his breath.
When I finally opened my eyes, Xavier was on his knees, rubbing the back of his neck. “Could’ve prepared me, you know,” he accused. “Could’ve told me you’re a wild and greedy one in bed.”
Aiming for cute and sheepish, I bit my lip.
“Think you broke my neck.”
“You’re too big to break.” Like a tree trunk.
I pushed up on my knees and took his face between my palms. “Just in case it wasn’t clear enough from my animalistic reaction…that was mind-blowing.” I kissed him hard. “Want you to eat me like that everyday.”
Mouths sealed, he clasped my hips and urged me closer to eliminate the slim gap between us, so I hung on to his shoulders and wrapped my legs around him while he remained on his knees.
Hands gripping my butt-cheeks now, he raised me up and positioned me above his dick. And as I felt his head press at my entrance,
slowly opening me up, I closed my eyes and squelched my wince.
He lowered me further down in the same time his hips thrust slightly up. At the first lick of pain I ripped my mouth from his and buried my face to his neck. It felt like I was having Jacob’s head tear through me all over again.
“Chino,” he whispered in my hair, for some reason taking his gentle time to lower me onto him, “you’re too…how…how long’s it been?”
Inexplicably annoyed by his question, I snapped, “A nine-pound baby came through the same hole. It can’t be that...unaccommodating. Just shut up and be a rock star.”
Without warning, he slammed the rest of the way up into me, and I screamed. Actual tears sprung to my eyes the pain was so not fun. It wasn’t even so much his size as it was my lack of sexual activities in so long.
Curling his fingers in my hair, he tugged my head up from the crook of his neck and forced me to look at him. “Talk to me like that again and I will stab you hard with no concern about the pain I know you’re in and tryna hide.”
Before I could curse at him he captured my mouth with a swift kiss. “Now tell me, how long’s it been?”
“Why are you being so freaking annoying?” I wasn’t certain why I was so embarrassed to tell him, but I was.
“You picking a fight with me while my cock’s inside you?” His voice held disbelief.
“You’re the one who—”
“Chino!” His tone was stern and forceful, shutting me up. “How. Long?”
I dipped my head, hiding behind my hair. “Over two years.”
Tipping my face up by a finger under the chin, he kissed me softer, slower this time. “Never thought I’d hear myself say this— ridiculous really—but you’re too tight. Cockhead’s having a pounding migraine right now. I take charge, I’ll shoot in two seconds, tops. So you take charge tonight, ‘kay? Get used to the size. Acclimatize. Familiarize. Whatever the hell.”
“You have a very weird way of speaking.”
“Chino…”
I moved, raising up and then slowly easing back down, biting my lip at the stab of pain. He really was too big, and I didn’t know how this was going to work between us if we couldn’t get our sexes to get comfortable with each other and start communicating properly.
