by Alice Ward
“Bad?” he repeated and picked his boxers up from the floor, stuffing his legs through the holes.
I groaned. At this rate, I was never going to have sex. Ever. “Why are you angry?” I asked, genuinely perplexed. It was my virginity. My loss. His gain. At least that was what my sisters and I had been led to believe all of our lives.
He waved his hands around. “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was high, a little squeaky at the end.
I waved my hands around too. I was still naked, but I didn’t care. He was acting as if I’d done something wrong and it made no sense as to why. “If it’s such a big deal to you, why didn’t you ask?” I retorted, planting my hands on my hips.
His mouth fell open. “Me?” He sputtered the word a few times. He was genuinely, authentically upset. “Why would I think to ask? What twenty-two-year-old is a virgin now days?”
That took the wind out of my sails. Was I really that unusual? A freak?
Tears filled my eyes, but I lifted my chin, daring them to spill. “My… my parents were very protective.” Dammit. A tear fell, and I brushed it away. “My life… it’s…” How did I explain without shedding light on the truth of who I was?
The anger faded from him, almost as quickly as it had arrived. He muttered something under his breath, a curse most likely. Then I was in his arms, enveloped in his scent and his warmth.
The kindness was nearly my undoing, and I fought desperately for control.
“I’m sorry,” I said when the emotion had been swallowed. “I didn’t think it mattered.” In truth, I didn’t want it to matter. It had been too much of a focus. A tie to my past.
He kissed the top of my head before tipping my chin up until I was looking at him. “Of course it matters. The first time a person has sex is supposed to be special.”
I met his eyes. “It is special. This is special.” I made a sound that was like a scoffing little snort. “If we ever get to actually do it.”
To my relief, he laughed. It wasn’t a ha-ha-ha laugh, but it was enough to feel the tension in the room slipping away. “I wish I’d known.”
“Why?”
He seemed to search for an answer. “So I could have been more gentle or something.”
“I don’t want you to be gentle.”
His cock pulsed against my stomach. “You don’t?”
I pressed against him, lowered my hands to his ass to draw him even closer. “No. I want you to do what you were going to do before that stupid little membrane messed everything up.” I was pouting. I didn’t remember ever pouting as an adult.
He was growing even harder. “It’s not stupid. It’s special.”
“Please stop saying that. I don’t want it to be the focus. I want what we were doing a few minutes ago to be the focus. You. Me. Nothing else.” Moving my hands into the waistband of his boxers, I pushed them down to the tops of his thighs. “Make love to me, Xander. Please. Show me why it’s so special. Take me there.”
He growled, deep and low in his chest, but he didn’t say a word.
Feeling desperate now, I stepped back a few inches. His cock followed, falling until it was touching me again. For some reason, it made me feel powerful. Brave. Brazen.
Wrapping my hand around him, I tried to make a fist, but he was too big for that. I added my other hand, securing him completely in my grip. It was alive, almost a being of its own, pulsing and twitching in my hand as I stroked down to the base.
Xander’s head fell back onto his shoulders as I brought my hands back up to the tip. There was fluid there, and I swiped my thumb over it, felt the warm, slick texture. It made stroking down him again easier, and when more appeared at the tip, I took advantage.
He moaned and raised his head until he was looking down at me again. “You want me to take you there?”
I stroked down. “Yes.”
His hands moved to my shoulders. “There’s no going back. There is no undo button with this.”
I stroked up. “Good.”
His nostrils flared. “I was wrong. You’re not an angel, you’re a witch, and you were sent to cast some spell over me.”
I stroked down. “Is it working?”
His hands moved to circle my throat. “Yes.”
I sighed and stroked back up. “Then for the love of god, please stop this torture.”
His hands squeezed, and his eyes darkened. I swallowed, felt my larynx move under his fingers, but I wasn’t afraid. Because I didn’t have time. His lips were on mine again, his tongue licking into my mouth when I opened for him. Then I was on my back, taking his weight.
“Are you on birth control?”
“No.”
He cursed and pushed away. With fascination, I watched him roll on a condom, watched him lick his palm and move it across the tip.
My heart rate picked up when he moved between my legs, and I began to breathe faster when he positioned himself at my entrance. This was really going to happen.
But instead of connecting us, he looked at me and grinned. “I swear to god, if a kid wakes up, or a dog goes into labor, or aliens land in our backyard, or the house begins to burn, I’m not stopping this time.”
I laughed, and he plunged.
It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a stretching of my body to accommodate his.
He held still, and when I opened my eyes, he was watching me closely.
“We did it,” I said, in awe of how our bodies fit so perfectly together.
He chuckled and lowered down onto his elbows. “We certainly did. We made it to step one. Now, I’m going to show you everything else we can do.”
Mouth on mine, he began to move, withdrawing slowly at first. Running on instinct, I wrapped around him, shifting my hips to meet his stroke for stroke.
This was sex.
I was beginning to understand what all the fuss was about.
It was everything I’d ever imagined. Hoped. Dreamed. Even fantasized of.
Pleasure, yes. Fulfillment, yes. Fun, yes.
And something deeper, primitive and raw that started taking over my body and mind. Our connection became everything, my entire universe, and my entire being revolved singularly on the man.
This wasn’t just sharing my body. This was a sharing of the deepest part of myself.
He picked up speed, thrusting faster, harder, our bodies slapping together.
“So good,” he growled against my mouth and hooked an arm under my knee, spreading me wider. With the movement, the angle changed, and I cried out as I stretched, my body burning as I accepted him even deeper, to the very foundation of my being.
I was lost.
No. I was found.
I was with the man destiny chose for me, thumbing its nose at my father and my responsibilities. And I’d be grateful to my mother and destiny’s intervention for all of time.
Opening my eyes, I found him watching me intensely. “Do you feel how much I want you? Can you tell how much I need you?”
I could. “Yes. I need you too.”
Harder, he drove, and I felt my breasts rock on my chest, felt the sheets shift under my back. I felt everything, every sense alive. The scent of our sex making it that much more vivid.
My body tightened, and Xander gritted his teeth but didn’t stop. “That’s right, baby, explode all over me.”
I really thought I might. It was like I was being wound up, like he was turning some key I didn’t know existed.
“Xander.”
His name was only an exhalation of air, and I held on to him tighter as he drove into me. His hand tightened in my hair, and he pulled until my throat was exposed. Then his teeth and tongue were rough on my skin, but I didn’t care.
“Tell me, baby. Tell me what you need.”
There was no need because with his next stroke, I was there.
Jumping. Soaring. Knowing.
He captured my scream in his mouth.
But he didn’t stop, even when I couldn’t breathe or think. As if my orgasm had f
ed him, gave him strength, he moved with even more urgency.
“Is that what you wanted, my angel, my witch? It’s what I wanted too. And I’m going to want it again. I want to feel that tight little pussy squeezing down on me.”
His words were a surprise and so erotic, a seduction of their own. He drove into me harder, deeper, faster. My vision dimmed, but I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t want to miss anything about what he was doing to me.
His breathing changed, and it was like I could feel him grow close to his own release. His cock thickened more, spreading me, burning me. I didn’t care.
“Don’t stop.”
He dripped sweat on me, and I loved it. “I won’t, baby. I won’t.”
It was messy. Unexpectedly so. Nobody told me that.
The scents were sharp, and I inhaled deeply of them.
We were loud. The hissing of our breaths, the slapping of our flesh on flesh. My cries, his curses.
It was everything rolled into one amazing experience I knew I’d never forget.
And when I came again, my body contracting around him, I took him with me. Watched his face as he fought it, then surrendered to his need. And I held him as he shuddered and collapsed.
“It will be better next time,” he said as he rolled over, taking me with him.
I was too tired to even lift my head from his sweaty chest. “Not possible.”
But when he made love to me sometime in the middle of the night, then again as the sun rose across the Atlantic, it was true.
And even though I was sore, I looked forward to doing it again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Xander
One day bled into another day, then another, then more. Madalyn’s skin began to take on a golden hue from where we spent so much time on the beach. The kids were getting tanned too, even though we slathered them with sunscreen before they even stepped a toe under the bright sunshine.
I wasn’t able to spend all my time with them since I’d carved out the morning hours to deal with the office. I held a strict nine to one schedule though, and so far, it had been working, although I’d need to head back to the city for a day next week.
Giggles came from outside.
Stepping to the window, I spotted my girls by the pool. Kenzie leapt into the water, and Madalyn clapped when she swam all the way to the other side.
She would make a terrific mother one day. Stepmother.
I’d stopped having a near heart attack whenever my mind wandered in that direction a few days ago. Not that I was thinking about marriage. Hell, I was still sticking my toe into the deep relationship waters again. We still had so much to learn about each other, so much to explore. But I could see us there in a year, maybe two. I could see her belly swollen with my child.
Did I love her?
I didn’t trust myself enough to recognize the emotion, but I thought I was heading that way. And fast.
My phone rang, and I groaned when I looked at the screen. It was my ex-wife. A perfect reminder that I needed to slow this shit down. I used to think she was special too, now look at us.
“Yeah.”
Danielle was crying. It wasn’t really a surprise. One day it was screaming, the next weeping. I never knew what to expect. “They’re taking the house.”
I owed my lawyer a steak dinner. He told me this was coming. Even though I’d paid cash for the house, it was in her name. And apparently, she’d taken out a second mortgage several months ago. Where that money went, no one knows.
The story just got deeper and darker and uglier with each passing day.
Pressing the heel of my hand against my eye, I said only one thing. “When?”
She sniffed. “I don’t know exactly. They found more… stuff.” The “s” was slurred. She was drunk or high. Something.
The stuff she referred to was Jet’s involvement in a pedophile ring. And it was worse even than that. His frequent trips to Thailand had nothing to do with music, and everything about young, male prostitutes. The singer was now singing like a damn canary, ratting out his buddies, hoping to get less time.
Danielle was in a world of trouble too because she’d apparently tried to destroy laptops and hard drives. She swore that she knew nothing about what was on them, and I wanted to believe that part. Surely, she couldn’t be that vile.
“They’re taking everything, Xander.”
Picking up the remote, I turned the television on and flipped to national news. It was on mute, but sure enough, the reporters were outside the mansion, practically salivating with this juicy tidbit.
I tried to remember the Danielle I first met in college. The fun Danielle. The sweet Danielle. The one who made me laugh and fucked my dick off.
But I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her smile. That old Danielle was gone. If she’d even been real in the first place.
“What do you want from me?”
I already knew. Money, of course. Her accounts had been seized.
“Can I come stay with you and the kids?”
I nearly choked on my own spit. “Um, no.”
“Please. I miss them.” She started to cry again.
“What have you been taking?”
She snorted. “Just something for my nerves.”
“What have you been drinking?”
“Fuck you,” she shouted. “You don’t know what I’m going through.”
Another loud giggle drew me to the window, and I was glad to see that Kylian had joined the girls. All three were in the pool, tossing a ball to each other. The entire scene made me smile, even as the woman on the phone continued to curse me.
I closed my eyes. I knew I’d regret this, but I did it anyway. “Look, I’ll book you a suite at the Hyatt. You can stay there.”
“The Hyatt? You cheapskate bastard…”
I took the phone from my ear, hit the end call button, and sat the device down on the table.
It began to vibrate immediately, then a beep. Another. One more.
Texts this time. Sorry. I’m just upset. The Hyatt is great. Thank you.
Shooting off an email to Joyce, I asked her to make the arrangements. Almost immediately I received a reply. It was simple. Grrr.
I smiled at that, but knew she’d do what I wanted. Not that I wanted to help Danielle.
But, dammit, she was the mother of my children. If nothing else, I owed her a modicum of respect. A little help. Shelter. I’d let the judicial system decide her guilt and punishment, if any. That wasn’t my job.
Another text. Thank you. Joyce called.
It didn’t escape my notice that she didn’t ask how the kids, Kylian specifically, were doing. As the week passed, Kenzie had stopped asking about her mother too. Kylian hadn’t asked about her at all.
Looking back at the television, I picked up the remote, about to turn it off since the Jet Ford story was over.
Now, a picture of a woman caught my attention. I frowned, trying to remember where I’d seen it before. Last week. Of course. Some princess who had drowned somewhere in Europe. It wasn’t from the United Kingdom royals. If it had been Kate Middleton, the world would have shut down. No, this princess had been from some little county I’d never heard of. My geography teacher wouldn’t be pleased.
I unmuted the sound and listened to the recap of how she’d fallen from a boat just after her engagement was announced. There were pictures of the princess’s mother and father, then another one of the princess again.
She was beautiful, in a very icy way. She actually reminded me of the Snow Queen from Frozen, one of Kenzie’s favorite movies. Her light golden hair was up in some overly elaborate bun thing on her head. Her makeup was overdone too, making her look like she wore a mask painted over her face. The earrings were too big for her small frame, almost as big as her head, and they seemed to weigh her ears down.
Lovely or not, everything about her screamed high maintenance. Not someone I’d want in my life. At all.
But… there was something
about her. Even with the glitz and glitter all around her, she looked sad. I wasn’t sure why I thought that. Her smile was megawatt. Her smile was…
I moved closer to the screen to study the image better, but it disappeared, and an asshole looking man took up almost the entirety of the screen.
His name, Prince Pavel Vitalievich, flashed across the bottom of the screen. He was from another country I knew little of but thought it might be somewhere near Russia or maybe Bulgaria. Possibly Croatia. Damn, I really needed to pull out a damn world map every once in a while.
“I still believe Princess Birgitta is alive,” he practically shouted into the camera, his accent not quite Russian but close, “and I am intent on finding her. To aid in her quick recovery, I’m offering a reward of six billion rubles for information that will lead to her safe return.”
I whistled as I did a quick calculation. Six billion rubles was over a hundred million American dollars. If this woman was alive as her fiancé thought, she would be hounded to the end of the globe. She would never find peace. I almost felt sorry for her.
I thought about that smile again, and something tugged at me.
“Daddy, Daddy!” The door came crashing open, and my daughter came rushing in, dripping water on the whitewashed oak floor. “Are you done yet? Maddie and Kylian and me are hungry. We want pizza. I’m going to toss the dough into the air.”
“You are?”
She nodded solemnly. “Yes. Just like a professional.”
Clicking off the TV, I held out my hand and she readily took it. I found Madalyn and Kylian in the kitchen, pulling out ingredients. I kissed her on the cheek and she flashed me that smile. Then she frowned up at me. “What?”
I stared at her and shook my head. “Nothing. I was just thinking of how beautiful you are.”
She pushed her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose and did a little hair flip. “Well, thank you. I think you’re pretty beautiful too.”
I grinned and pressed my mouth to her ear. “Absolutely no news today.”
Her face fell. “Bad?”
I nodded. “Very.”
She nodded. It had been one of our pacts. We’d removed electronics and mostly did Netflix or Hulu movies if we wanted to watch TV. It was actually really nice. We had my iPad if Madalyn needed to pull up a recipe or something, but the rest of the time, I kept it tucked away. The kids didn’t need to see anything of that. Not now. Not ever, if I could help it.
