“That’s a shame.” Xavier’s hand snaked out under the table and rested on her knee, and she could feel the heat and the heaviness of his hand through the thin fabric. He then moved his hand beneath her skirt, his hand touching the bare skin of her inner thigh. She sucked in a breath. Here, in the middle of a public shop, he had his hand up her skirt. He stroked her inner thigh, inching ever higher. Emma’s heart beat harder as Xavier’s index finger reached the fabric of her panties. He gently laid pressure through the thin fabric, a temptation, a promise.
Emma had never wished for a bathroom so much in her life. She could feel her insides turning to warm mush, her arousal growing as his finger gently probed her through the fabric, which, she thought, had to be drenched. A patron came in through the front door then and Xavier withdrew his hand, and Emma felt its cold absence. Now her body was abuzz with a million wants, and the man who could fulfill them leaned back in his chair across the table and took a sip of coffee, calm as ever.
“Are you married?” Emma blurted, suddenly.
Xavier nearly spit out his coffee. “No.”
“In a relationship? Pregnant girlfriend at home?”
“No! Of course not. I’m on Nost.” He acted as if the idea was preposterous.
“I read about married men...and women...seeking...fun on Nost. It’s a perfect cover, right? No names, no strings, no way of your spouse finding out you’re cheating.” Emma’s voice was rising and she worked hard to keep it down. Keep calm.
“Well, that’s unfortunate that some are not who they say they are.” Xavier frowned. “I’m sure that’s not what Nost intended. In fact, I think it says something about that in the user agreement.”
Emma waved her hands, not caring about the fine print of Nost. “Why did you run out on me?” This was the hardest question, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to know the answer. “At the Ritz-Carlton?”
Xavier studied her a moment. “I was scared,” he finally admitted, shifting uncomfortably in his chair and not meeting her gaze.
“Scared?” Emma didn’t understand.
“I...want more from you. More than forty-eight hours.”
Emma’s heart leaped. “That’s exactly what I want.” She leaned forward and grabbed both his hands with hers. “Why don’t we do that? Here... Here’s my phone number.” She frantically scribbled on the pad of paper, gave him her name and phone number. “You can give me yours, and we can start there.” He stared at the paper on the table. But instead of looking excited, he looked...sad.
“Emma, if we continue on, this relationship won’t last,” he said.
She felt as if he’d struck her, the pain, the disappointment sliced through her. Did he not like her as much as she liked him after all? “What do you mean?”
He squeezed her hand and studied her hand linked in his. “It’ll grow old. All relationships do. It’ll get comfortable. Predictable. Or worse, volatile.” He spoke as if the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. “And then, regardless, boring or volatile, you or I...will stray. That’s what happens.”
“Not to all relationships,” Emma protested.
“To all the ones I’ve had,” he said, and she saw the fresh pain of his fiancée’s betrayal on his face.
“But you can’t assume all women are like...her.” She wasn’t Sasha. How could she prove it? “I’m not the kind of woman to cheat.”
Xavier laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. “Emma, all people can cheat, given the right circumstances. People aren’t like penguins. We don’t mate for life. People get bored, they get tired, they get frustrated. I’m not so sure it’s possible to have a healthy, monogamous relationship.”
Emma sighed in frustration. None of what he told her was exactly new. Hadn’t he admitted after they first met that that’s why he liked Nost so much? Why was she surprised to find a commitment-phobic man on Nost? Yet she just couldn’t give up on the connection they had. She wasn’t ready to walk away yet.
“But don’t you want to explore...this?” She gestured between the two of them with her free hand. “You can’t have this—what I’m feeling—with just anyone.”
That made Xavier pause and think. Right then she knew he felt more than he was saying. He felt their strong bond, too. This was more than just white-hot sex, more than just two people wildly attracted to one another. Something real lay beneath, something that felt like they’d met before. Emma didn’t believe in reincarnation, but if she did, she’d swear they’d met in a previous life.
“This...is real,” Emma said, squeezing his hand tighter.
“If you knew me, if you really knew me, then all of this...this chemistry...would disappear.” Xavier sounded so sure.
“How can you be so sure? I mean, it might. You’re right. There’s a risk it could. But what if it didn’t?” Emma shifted her legs beneath the table and her knee touched his. She could feel the electric current of want flow between them and as he leaned in, she knew he felt it, too.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asked her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EMMA WALKED BESIDE Xavier down the crowded street of North Avenue, strangers passing them, seemingly unaware of the current running between the couple. The late-afternoon air had turned cooler, as the sun dipped below the horizon, setting a blue tint to everything. Night was coming, but it wasn’t quite here yet. The slight breeze ruffled the changing leaves as a few yellow ones fell at their feet. Emma could almost feel it: a force field of desire, a pull between them. He was the earth and she was the moon, attached by gravity, an invisible force, aware of every little move he made.
As they walked, he slipped his hand over hers, possessive, a promise.
“I already knew about you, Emma Allaire,” Xavier said suddenly.
“What do you mean?” she asked, thinking about the paper she’d scribbled in the coffee shop. The paper that Xavier hadn’t taken. She’d folded it and tucked it in her bag.
“I searched you on Google,” he admitted. “You told me the magazine where you worked, so it wasn’t hard to find you. Your Facebook page is set to public, by the way. Did you intend that?”
Emma felt hot suddenly. He’d searched for her? Just as she’d searched for him. Then, of course, he had to: after all, he’d found her at the coffee shop, hadn’t he? Read the article she wrote? But the fact that he was admitting to wanting to know more about her, admitting to not being satisfied with them being perfect strangers, linked only in carnal knowledge, went against his life philosophy, didn’t it? Maybe she was getting to him, tearing down the walls he’d built to protect himself, to keep her out.
“You broke your own rules, then.” Emma felt strangely smug in pointing that out.
Xavier gave her a sidelong glance, his eyes looking almost golden in the autumn sunlight. “Yes,” he admitted. “You intrigued me.”
“You intrigued me, too. I searched you as well. But you gave me nothing to go on.”
Xavier chuckled, low in his throat. “I know.”
“Give me one detail. Just one.”
The two passed a narrow alleyway between two brownstones. Xavier pulled her into it and around the corner, protected by a Dumpster on one side and a brick wall partition on the other. “Kiss me first,” he demanded, voice low, a gravelly whisper.
Her lips parted, and all she could do was nod her head. Xavier swooped down, claiming her mouth, and suddenly the heat flared between them, their mouths and tongues wrapped together in an ancient mating dance of want and desire. God, she wanted him, the passion flaring, her need growing as he delved into her mouth again and again. They devoured each other, the passion like none she’d ever experienced. Was it because she knew that he could disappear from her life at any moment? Was it because he was a stranger? A man who stubbornly refused to open himself up to her? To give her a detail as small as his last name? Could it be that he was a blank canvas, someone she
could project everything on to, the perfect man?
She didn’t know. All she knew in that moment was that her body became a melted puddle of want, that in that moment, passion made her a slave. She’d do whatever he asked, whenever he asked it in that second. She’d long forgotten about the people passing by just around the corner on the sidewalk, or the fact that in the alley, even in the darkening dusk, they could still be seen by a row of condo windows. She didn’t care who saw them. All she wanted was more of his mouth and his hands, as they roamed her body. She might not know his name, but she knew his hands, the sure way they possessed her, stroked her, made her beg for more. Emma suddenly didn’t care that she was in public, in the darkening dusk, partially hidden and yet still visible. All she cared about was getting more of Xavier, of not wanting this moment to end.
“I want you. Here,” Xavier growled in her ear, and then his hands were inside the thin lace of her thong, feeling how much she wanted him, too. “I want you now.”
All thoughts of caution fled her mind. She was just a pulsating nerve of want, nothing more. She’d never done anything like this before: in public, barely covered by the darkening light. Yet, she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. She pushed her own thong off her hips and it dropped to the ground. She felt the coolness of the night air slide between her thighs. She felt exposed, but it only added to her desire, her want. She was ready. Suddenly, Xavier lifted her, pressing her against the brick wall of the alley, taking her with his whole self. She gasped with shock and pleasure, instinctively wrapping her legs around his waist as he pushed inside her, his eyes meeting hers, the want in them as strong as her own. Emma took him all, feeling reckless, feeling how deliciously wrong this was: a stranger, an alley, herself, exposed to anyone who happened by, doing the thing good girls never did. Good girls never did this with strangers, in public. Yet, here she was, spreading her legs eagerly, letting him in, ready for him; the combination of adrenaline and want sent her instantly over the edge, as she hit a ragged climax, swallowing the shout of pleasure in her throat.
Xavier came as well, in a last urgent and shuddering thrust before quickly withdrawing.
“I want a detail,” she murmured to him in the dark, grabbing a fistful of his shirt. “I want to know your last name.”
“If you knew that, you wouldn’t have come for me so hard,” he warned, voice low as he zipped up. “You wouldn’t have let me take you here.”
“You promised a detail,” she pressed. “For a kiss. And I gave you more than a kiss.” She was still panting as Xavier glanced back and forth, looking for witnesses. Then he leaned forward and whispered the digits of a phone number in her ear. He kissed her hard and left her wanting more.
* * *
Emma memorized the digits, repeating them in her head long after they’d gone separate ways from the alley. She watched as Xavier moved down the crowded public sidewalk. She was spent and sore, feeling like she might be standing on the edge of a precipice with no way down. Should she follow him? She felt weak-kneed and spent. Had she just fucked him in public? In full view of the condo window across the alley? She’d no idea if someone had seen, and she hurried on her way down the block and back to the safety of her own condo, so quickly she’d abandoned her thong on the concrete ground. She wondered what on earth had come over her. But then she knew what had: Xavier. His hands, his steady hazel eyes, his jet-black hair. The way he fit inside her perfectly, seemed to hit every nerve ending in her body all at once.
Was he right? Was the chemistry between them just because they were strangers? Emma didn’t feel this with the men she saw on the sidewalk, or on the train, or passing her in the aisle of the grocery store. Being strangers didn’t automatically mean chemistry. She stuck resolutely to her belief that she and Xavier shared something: a past life, a spiritual connection, something that made the sex so amazingly mind-blowing, that made her want him so badly that she took off her thong in an alley for him, let him inside her in the darkening dusk.
Would the sex be as wild, be as amazing, if they were a couple? Sleeping over in each other’s beds, knowing the ins and outs of each other’s routines? She thought about her past boyfriends, about knowing all the little details: the sound of their snores, their favorite Thai takeout dishes, their childhood stories. Had that made the sex...boring as well? Predictable?
The more sex she had with Xavier, the more...unpredictable, hotter, it got. She’d never in a million years guess she’d let him take her against a brick wall outside, just a few feet from a bustling city street, yet she had. She’d wanted it as much as he had. Was that because she didn’t know him? Would knowing him make her too shy, too embarrassed to do those things?
Emma wondered. Still, it didn’t stop her from immediately typing in the phone number he’d given her to try to find its owner. Every site she tried came up with a dead end. The number, whatever it was, wasn’t registered to anyone. A burner phone? Maybe.
She decided to text it and find out.
I want to know your last name, she texted.
Well, hello to you, kitten, Xavier wrote back almost instantly, as if he’d been waiting for her. I enjoyed you today. Did you enjoy me?
Yes, she typed, her fingers trembling slightly as she remembered the passion with which he took her just a half hour ago.
I love the way you feel. You were made for me.
And you for me, she typed. I’ve never done that before. Outside. In public.
I know, he wrote, as if he could read her mind. But, that’s what can happen between two strangers. No inhibitions.
You’re not a stranger to me, she said. I know what you like. How you come. Your body. She knew how he came, the look on his face of pure release. She knew the little shuddering movement he made when he was done, a little hiccup unique to him, and the rush of air from his lungs when he did. That made them less than strangers. She knew he never came before she did, she knew he was always determined to please her first. She knew his touch drove her wild.
You already know too much.
I want to know more, she furiously typed back.
And then, Mr. X went quiet. No more texts. Emma stared at her phone, wondering where he’d gone. To work? She had no idea where he even worked. There were dozens of tech companies, and he’d been deliberately vague. Home to his wife?
He’d said he wasn’t married. She believed him, and yet...he seemed so extremely commitment-phobic for a man who’d only lost a fiancée. Sure, that was traumatic, but this felt so...extreme. Emma wondered about that. Was there an extreme form of commitment phobia? Was it a condition? She ran a quick Google search.
“Relationship anxiety,” she read aloud, skimming a few psychology articles. “...in its most extreme forms means a person is afraid to make a real commitment to another. This can be caused by the end of a relationship they didn’t see coming, or, in some cases, childhood trauma.”
Emma paused then. Childhood trauma? Could this be it?
She skimmed further. Most often, she read, sufferers of extreme commitment phobia failed to have secure bonding with one or both parents, or they might have been hurt by someone they trusted, a relative or caregiver. “Sometimes,” she read, “those with the severest cases of relationship anxiety often show conflicting signs: they might be passionate one minute, and aloof the next.”
Emma nodded her head with conviction. That was Xavier in a nutshell.
“To cure relationship anxiety, the sufferer often needs to confront his or her past and understand that those traumas might not be repeated in the present,” she read aloud. She wondered if it would be that easy? She shut off her computer. Was she really going to diagnose his psychological failings by Google? Wasn’t she projecting her own thoughts and worries onto him? That’s what happened when she didn’t know him. All she could do was guess.
I want to see you. Dinner tonight? She tried.
Emma star
ed at her screen but saw nothing. No reply. Had she lost him? Was he just in an aloof phase? Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her fishing line had gone slack and he’d cut bait.
* * *
Xavier stared at his burner phone, the one he only used for Nost, at Emma’s invitation. Every fiber of his body wanted to say yes, wanted to see her again, smell her lavender shampoo once more, feel her again: soft, wet and willing. But the very need that rose in his chest scared him. He hadn’t felt this needy since growing up as a child, alone in his room, his father desperately trying to talk his mother down from one of her rages. Later, of course, he’d know it was that she was bipolar, but that would only come after. He buried those memories of his mother so very deeply that he wondered why he thought of her now. She’d died when he was just nine. His memories of her seemed vague at best, though he knew that sometimes she was vibrant, energized, unstoppable, the brightest star in the room, not caring who she burnt, and other times, she wouldn’t leave her bed for days at a time. Papi remained loyal to her her whole life, and when he questioned why, his father told him, you can’t choose who you love. The old romantic. Look what it had gotten him: a troubled marriage, the early death of his wife, almost a whole lifetime living without her.
He shook the thought away. He could choose not to love, couldn’t he? He shut off his burner phone and tucked it into his pocket, vowing not to look at it for the rest of the week.
CHAPTER TWELVE
EMMA TOOK A deep swig of her gin and tonic as she sat at the crowded bar in the heart of Wrigleyville. Outside, the sidewalks were thick with bar hoppers, and the air was chilled with coming fall. The Cubs had long since finished their game at nearby Wrigley Field, though the revelers hung on, still celebrating the first post-season victory.
“You need to let him go,” Sarah advised, as she took a sip of her vodka soda. She wore her red hair up in a messy bun, and a slinky sweater, skinny jeans and open-toed ankle boots that showed off a new cherry-red pedicure. “He’s been AWOL for a week, he probably gave you a burner number and, anyway, he’s not responding... I mean, the writing is on the wall.”
No Strings Page 9