Something inside me ached and I tightened my arms around her.
You can’t let her go. Not now.
‘I know,’ I said aloud, both to her and to the voice inside my head. ‘I would tell you I’m sorry, but I’m not.’
There was silence.
‘I’m not sorry either.’ Her fingers moved on my skin and I felt her thigh shift against mine, brushing my painfully hard cock. ‘Oh. You didn’t—’
‘No. And before you say anything, I don’t want you to take care of it. All of that was for you.’
Another silence.
Then she tipped her head up, her copper eyes meeting mine. ‘You do all this stuff for me. But what do I give you?’
‘You don’t have to give me anything. This isn’t a transaction.’ Such a strange thing to think, when I was all about transactions. When all I wanted was to find that money and give it back to her, pay back my debt. But it was true; I felt the certainty of it deep inside me. ‘I want to take care of you,’ I said. ‘And there’s no requirement that you give me anything in return.’
She stared at me like she didn’t believe me. ‘But what if I want to give you something?’
‘You don’t have to—’
This time it was her finger that pressed over my mouth, silencing me. ‘I don’t have a lot to give anyone, Xander. But I want to give something to you.’
‘Poppy,’ I began.
But her finger fell away and her hand curled around my neck, and she tugged me down so that my lips were on hers, giving me a kiss that was so achingly soft and sweet, my breath caught.
Then she pushed me over onto my back, leaning on top of me, her silky bare skin sliding over mine, her hands stroking my chest.
‘Poppy,’ I said again. ‘You don’t have to—’
She stole the words out of my mouth with another of those soft, sweet kisses. ‘I know I don’t have to,’ she whispered against my lips. ‘But I want to.’
She reached to undo my trousers, sliding her fingers down inside the fabric to curl around my cock, making the breath catch hard in my throat.
She kissed me, exploring my mouth the way I’d explored hers, tasting of sweetness and the spicy flavour that was all her, stroking my dick at the same time, making me pant. Making me ache.
Stopping only to grab a condom from the coffee table, she then rolled the latex down on me, her fingers a gentle torture. Then she straddled me, holding my cock in her hand to position me. She lifted herself up and then slid down slowly onto me. So fucking slowly.
I couldn’t stop the groan that escaped, my hands reaching for her hips and holding on tight as her sweet, slippery heat enveloped me, clenched around me.
Jesus Christ. She was a goddess. A cloud of black hair and golden-bronze skin. Molten metal eyes. Watching me as her hips flexed and she moved. Graceful and fluid, like a flame.
Pleasure licked up inside me and curled around me, stealing my breath, stealing all thought.
Her hands spread on my chest as she balanced herself, the slick glide of my cock in her wet pussy driving me out of my mind.
My fingers pressed into the soft flesh of her hips, trying to urge her to go faster, but she didn’t. She moved, lazily and sensually, turning everything into a gradually building heat, like a pot of water on a stove only slowly coming to a boil.
I groaned out her name because she was killing me, fucking killing me, and I was loving every second of it.
Releasing her hips, I slid my palms down her thighs, feeling the fine sheen of perspiration on her skin, then back up again, curving my fingers around to cup her beautiful ass.
She arched, gasping, shoulders back, breasts swaying in time with her movements.
‘Fuck,’ I ground out, my voice ragged and harsh. ‘Fuck... Poppy.’
Her gaze came to mine once more and then her hands were splayed on my chest, and she was riding me with all the beauty and grace of an Olympic equestrian.
Harder. Deeper. And then, finally—fucking finally—faster.
Our gazes met, held, the connection between us winding tight around my soul.
I couldn’t fight this. I didn’t want to.
She and I...perhaps that was all the anger and enmity had been—us fighting what couldn’t be resisted. This intense, incredible connection that went deeper than sex. That felt like a joining on a whole other level.
I didn’t know what it was; I’d never felt anything like it before. But what I did know was that I’d made her mine and right here, right now, she was making me hers.
And I was done fighting it.
I reached up, hooked one hand around the back of her neck, bringing her mouth down on mine.
And let the orgasm drag me under.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Poppy
EVERYTHING CHANGED THE night I cried in his arms. It felt like a weight had lifted off me. As if the guilt I’d carried for years about my father had dropped away.
I spent the whole of the next week at work not feeling like I had to prove myself for a change and consequently I enjoyed myself more than I ever had.
It helped that every time I did something for Xander—got him a coffee or made sure his favourite sushi was on his desk for lunch—he would gently brush his fingers over my cheekbone and give me a smile. It was the only gesture of intimacy he allowed at work and it never failed to light me up inside.
I loved it. I loved doing things for him. I loved that smile he gave me and the way he touched me. I loved spending every night at his place, letting him do whatever he wanted to me. I loved the way he took care of me. I loved how he made me feel, for the first time in my life, that I was worth something.
I think I probably loved him.
But I wasn’t going to let myself think about that or what it meant, or about the future. I only wanted what we had now, because I’d never had anyone do for me what he did. I’d never had anyone make me feel so special and I wanted to hold onto the feeling for as long as possible.
A couple of days later I met with Ajax to discuss my sketches, initially feeling nervous and slightly defensive about them.
Xander had prepped me on how best to deal with his brother, because he’d decided that he wasn’t going to be involved with the meeting. Apparently he dealt with the finance side of things, not the buildings, and that was my area of expertise not his. Besides, he said, my drawings spoke for themselves.
I appreciated that he thought I could handle this myself, but I was surprised by how much I wished he was going to be there with me. Especially given Ajax wasn’t an easy man to talk to and I’d never been very good at talking myself up.
He was built like a tank, with the presence of an emperor and the stare of an executioner, and he’d always made me uneasy, even though he’d never been outright rude or obnoxious.
Then again, he didn’t need to be. One look from his strange, intense light blue eyes and you were reflecting on all the things you’d done wrong and how best you could fix them to his liking.
However, once we started talking and going through my sketchbook, all my defensiveness dropped away. Ajax wasn’t a man for easy bullshit. He was rough, blunt and brutally honest. And he was so ridiculously into my designs I ended up raving to him for a whole hour about liveability and accessibility and all kinds of other stuff.
I went into Xander’s office afterwards, still buzzing, and, before I knew what I was doing, I started raving to him as well.
He sat back in his office chair, watching me, a faint smile curving his mouth, his deep black gaze warm somehow.
I stopped the flood of words, feeling self-conscious. ‘What?’
‘I have a meeting in five minutes, but I don’t want to stop you. You’re beautiful when you talk about something you love.’
My cheeks got hot. God, I should have remembered the meeting before I starte
d wittering on. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t—’
‘You absolutely should. In fact, I’m going to insist on it tonight. Let’s go out for a change, hmm? You can tell me exactly what you told Ajax over dinner.’
He was as good as his word, taking me out to some fancy place down on The Rocks on Sydney’s harbour. And he let me rave to him about my ideas for designs and how I could incorporate what Ajax wanted for his luxury apartment building into something truly amazing.
He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t dismiss me the way Mum did when I tried to talk to her. He listened and then shoved a napkin in my direction and got me to sketch out some ideas quickly so he could visualise them the way I did.
It was so good talking to him about it and when we got back to his apartment I found myself pulling out my sketchbook and showing him some of my earlier drawings, ones that had incorporated some of the ideas I was thinking about for Ajax’s apartment building.
We sat together on the sofa, me nestled in his lap, leaning back against his hot, hard chest as I held the book open, going through some of my designs.
And then his fingers pressed down on one of the pages, preventing me from turning it. ‘What about this one? Tell me about it.’
It was the drawing of my house. My dream house.
I felt the instinctive need to pull away, to protect myself, but things had changed. I wasn’t going to do that any more, not with him, and, what was more, I didn’t want to.
He’d taken me apart, turned me inside out. He’d seen the contents of my soul and he’d kissed me, touched me, made me feel more cared for than I’d ever felt in my life. Not a mistake after all, but someone who maybe did deserve some of the things she wanted for herself.
So I didn’t pull away.
I spread open the pages of my book and I told him what I’d never told anyone else, about the little house on the side of the cliff, overlooking the sea. About how I wanted to be near the ocean because I liked the sound of the waves and the smell of salt. And I wanted a big deck that I could put a big comfortable chair on, that I could curl up in and read, or daydream. And a big kitchen so that when I had kids they could play nearby and I could teach them how to cook, and lots of cupboards in the lounge area so there was a place for their toys.
‘Kids, huh?’ he said. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘One day.’ I traced over the outline of the cupboard space I’d drawn next to the stairs. ‘I want a place for a family and I always thought that my family would include children.’
‘A family,’ he echoed, his hand coming over mine where it rested on the page of the book. ‘That’s what you were thinking about that day in the pool.’
‘Yeah, it was.’ I hesitated, the warmth of his touch filling up the empty places inside me. ‘I’m sick of not belonging anywhere. I want a place to belong. And people to belong to.’
‘I can understand that.’
There was a slightly wistful note in his voice that made me turn to look up at him. His attention was on my sketch, an expression in his eyes that I couldn’t interpret. And it struck me all of a sudden that this whole evening I’d done nothing but talk about myself and what I loved, what I wanted.
I hadn’t asked him one single thing about himself.
‘What about you?’ I asked quietly. ‘What is it that you want, Xander?’
His attention remained on the sketch of the house. ‘I want something that’s mine. And maybe...’ He stopped and for a long moment there was silence. Then he lifted his gaze from the book to my face. ‘Maybe I want to belong to someone too.’
My heart seized up and my throat tightened. There was longing in his eyes and something that looked like denial, the expression of a man desperately wanting what he could never have.
I lifted my fingers to his strong jaw, feeling his slight beard prickle along my fingertips, aching to tell him that if he wanted to belong to anyone he could belong to me.
But abruptly his expression changed and it felt like a door closing in my face.
I was still trying to figure out what had happened, whether it had been something I’d said, when his long, lean body tensed and very gently he shifted me out of his lap onto the sofa cushions.
Then he pushed himself off the sofa and took a couple of steps over to the windows facing the view of the Opera House. He stopped there, tall and broad and dark. Unspeaking. Unmoving.
Silence fell, full of a tension that hadn’t been there before.
I stared at him, shocked and not understanding what was going on.
Bars of darkness that the light threw through the shutters fell over him, striping him in shadow.
Cold curled in my heart.
‘Xander?’ My voice sounded small and full of doubt in the quiet. Something had changed between us and I had no idea what it was. ‘What’s wrong?’
He was silent.
‘Is it me? Did I do something?’ I slid off the sofa and took an uncertain step towards him. ‘I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have gone on and on about the house and—’
‘It’s not you.’
Another heavy, dark silence fell and he didn’t break it.
‘Then what—’ I began, only to stop short as he turned around sharply.
His beautiful face was a mask of ice, but those midnight eyes of his...they blazed with an emotion I didn’t understand. ‘You’re so beautiful.’ His voice was deep, thick. ‘You’ve got so many fantastic ideas and you’re so passionate about them. And tonight, telling me about your house, trusting me...’ He stopped short, staring at me so intensely I felt as if all the air was being sucked out of the room. ‘I’m not the man you think I am, Poppy.’
‘What?’ I didn’t understand what he was talking about. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I told you I was honest, that I would never lie to you.’ His eyes glittered. ‘But I have lied. I’ve kept something from you that you need to know.’
The cold thing in my chest got colder, icing the blood in my veins.
What the hell did he mean that he’d been keeping something from me? Had he been seeing someone else? But as soon as the thought occurred to me, I dismissed it. Xander wasn’t that kind of man. I knew it in my bones.
This was something else.
My breathing quickened and I stepped towards him, wanting to touch him, have his heat warm me up, but he shook his head, stopping me in my tracks.
‘What is it?’ I tried to keep my voice neutral; I tried not to let my fear bleed through. ‘You can tell me, Xander. You can tell me anything.’
His expression twisted and I saw pain flare in his eyes. And I took another step towards him, helplessly responding to it.
Whatever it was, it was hurting him and I hated that.
‘No.’ His voice was flat and cold. ‘Don’t come near me.’
I halted, fear twisting in my gut.
Oh, God. This was serious, wasn’t it?
‘What is it?’ I couldn’t bear the look on his face and the way he was holding me at a distance. I had to know what was hurting him like this. ‘Tell me, Xander.’
‘It’s about your father.’
‘What do you mean it’s about my father?’
‘He took his own life because he went bankrupt, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes. He lost it all when an investment deal went bad.’ I frowned. ‘But...how is that relevant?’
Xander said nothing and I felt the atmosphere get heavier and heavier. Then at last he spoke. ‘Dad used to play a game with me. He called it the “investment game”. He would give me certain parameters and then challenge me to see how much money I could make given those parameters. I used to enjoy it. It was a challenge and I loved challenges.’
I had no idea where this was leading, but that horrible cold feeling in my chest wasn’t going away. And, since he wouldn’t let me touch him, I folded my arms ov
er the feeling instead.
‘Then one day—I think I must have been around fourteen and a half—Dad gave me a new challenge,’ Xander went on in the same flat tone. ‘Instead of making money, he told me that I had a certain amount and that I had to hide it, so no one knew I had it. It sounded...interesting. Something different.’ His gaze was full of a darkness I didn’t understand.
But I had a horrible feeling that I was going to. And soon.
‘I thought about his challenge. I really thought about it in depth, because it was a good one and it tested me. But... I figured out a way to hide all that money so no one would ever know where it was. Not even myself.’ Xander’s expression was fixed, the mask of ice becoming even more frozen. ‘Dad was thrilled when I told him and so was I, because I liked pleasing him.’ He paused then looked away, towards the window. ‘It was only a game. That was what I thought. Just a game. Only it wasn’t just a game. It was real.’
Icy fingers clenched around my heart.
I knew. Don’t ask me how, but I knew.
‘Dad,’ I whispered faintly. ‘This involved Dad, didn’t it?’
I wanted him to laugh, to tell me I was being silly, that of course it hadn’t involved my father.
But he didn’t.
Xander looked back at me, his eyes like black holes. ‘Dad got me to write down the exact methods I’d used and I did. I told him everything. And I didn’t think anything more about it. Then he moved on from games and had me handling his finances for real, hiding his money and making more of it. All of it was...tainted.’ Xander’s mouth twisted and I felt those icy fingers curl tighter around my heart, stealing my breath. ‘I should have known then, I should have realised, but I liked numbers. I liked making them disappear. I liked making them double, triple... They were simple. They were easy. They absorbed me, blinding me to what Dad was doing, and I let them. People were complicated, but not numbers.’ He paused and the tension in the air got even heavier, the pressure pushing against my ears like we were metres beneath the ocean.
‘It was Ajax who told me, years later. Who made me see what Dad was doing, the crimes he was committing—and the consequences. And afterwards I couldn’t stop myself from going back through Dad’s financials and looking at everything. Seeing all the money I’d hidden away for him. Drug money. Money from guns and prostitutes, and all sorts of other shit.’ His gaze sucked me under, wrung me out. ‘Money from investments that he’d taken. Money that he’d stolen from other people. People like your father.’
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