There was no slow burn between them but a sudden flare getting hotter and hotter still threatening to get out of hand. Maybe it had already, she thought feverishly, lost to sensations.
Then she felt his calloused hands sliding down her body and it shocked her to feel them on her thighs under her dress somehow.
Nothing could anchor her in reality more firmly than that.
It was an unwelcome but so necessary reminder he was but a stranger to her and there was nothing between them other than the surely fatal attraction.
She pushed at his chest, gasping for breath, grasping for sanity.
“You have to go.” She managed to utter the words although they felt numb on her lips or maybe it were her lips that were stupefied.
She didn’t know and it terrified her as much as what his touch did to her, stripping her of all her restraints as his hands tried to strip her of her dress.
“Do I really?” Was his lazy answer and his lips hovered above hers again but she couldn’t allow this madness to go on.
“Yes!”
He sighed deeply, not liking her decisiveness. Not liking it at all.
He much more preferred her compliant and so damn responsive he could already imagine how it would feel to be inside her the way his relentless erection demanded.
“I want to see you again.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I am sure it is not.” She didn’t look at him and he didn’t like it so he gripped her jaw between his thumb and forefinger before she could shy away.
“You can lie to me if that makes you feel any better, but why would you lie to yourself? Sleep well, Doll,” he told her and walked toward his car without a single glance back.
He had a very strong feeling he wouldn’t find the will to leave if he saw her standing there, delicious and inviting in this state of dishevelment–his handiwork.
CHAPTER 16
Xan managed to get his body under control during the drive back to his place and he was whistling when he entered the club through the back door.
He even chuckled, remembering Catalina’s ire at his purposeful avoidance of using her name.
He wanted to throw her out of balance and keep her in this state as long as possible so he could enjoy her the way he planned to.
He had no doubt they were going to meet again and the very fact she told him they shouldn’t tipped the scales.
She could try to pretend there was nothing between them, but the sexual pull nearly took his head off and now he was set on having Miss-Cool-and-Collected until he satiated this sudden hunger she evoked in him.
From his perspective his interest was utterly on her, she really shouldn’t try to pin it on him.
“You are back.” Tony’s voice intruded his trail of thoughts.
“Didn’t realize I had a curfew.” Xan smirked, hating the fact of living in the club anew, even if the situation was temporary.
He enjoyed his independence too much, grew too used to it to let it go again and answer to anyone.
From the displeased line of Tony’ lips it was obvious he was not in the mood for Xan mouthing off to him.
Too bad, he thought. He was not in the mood to hear whatever his boss’ problem was but it seemed they were both doomed to live through disappointments tonight.
They walked toward Tony’s office and Xan noticed no female was decorating it with her presence tonight. It could mean that the Cul-de-sac’s owner didn’t want a witness for his meetings and activities or was simply not in the mood.
Neither bode particularly well because he was known to be in the mood. Always.
Xan shrugged, more focused on recalling how soft Catalina’s skin was under his palm than his current surroundings.
“Are you even listening to me?” Tony snapped and Xan looked at him.
No, not really but he didn’t think it wise to say out loud when there was a nervous tick in Tony’ clenched jaw already. He knew the meaning behind the action intimately recognizing it as one step preceding a fit of temper.
“What is it about?” He wanted to know.
“I saw you canceled your next fight.”
“So?” It wasn’t the first time and he had never explained himself before in a similar situation.
“Were you injured?” Tony’ gaze slid to his jaw and Xan knew it was the only visible sign of his last encounter on the ring.
“Enough to be wary and make me want to sit the next one out. You have other fighters.” Xan reminded him.
“None of them is you.” That was the truth and they both knew it. “You seem in a good mood and those things usually bug the hell out of you,” Tony noticed.
“And you always tell me there is going be the next one. So cut the crap and tell me what is going on.” Xan folded his arms.
“I wonder if it has anything to do with the photographer chick.” Tony shrugged and Xan looked at him, incredulous.
“Keeping tabs on me, T?” He asked quietly.
“Always have, my man, you told me she was taken care of. Did something happen to make you believe otherwise?”
“She is no danger to the club.”
“Ah, so your interest is purely personal. Can’t blame you, she is a sweet piece of ass.” Tony agreed and Xan barely stifled the need to plant a fist in the other man’s face.
It was fine and dandy when he thought the same, but it was losing its appeal when he heard someone else talking about Cat so… objectively.
“She doesn’t concern you.” He bit out.
“But you do and everything that affects you affects me and the club. Fuck her and move on. You don’t have time for distractions.”
“I can manage my time just fine, fuck you very much. Stay out of my business, Tony.” The warning in Xan’s voice was very clear.
“Do you think a woman like her would look twice at someone like you, Xan? She can’t even fathom all the things you had done. Our world doesn’t mix up well with her bougie2 lifestyle, my friend.” Tony looked sympathetic, which only felt like an additional blow to Xan.
And unlike punches received on the ring, he couldn’t fight it off. That didn’t mean he had to agree either, he thought, and felt pain in his jaw not even realizing he clenched his teeth so strongly.
“You know dick about squat.” He told him.
“And yet I still know more than her.”
Xan clenched his fists and stormed out of Tony’s office, silently congratulating himself for not wrecking the tidy workspace the way he wanted to.
But his self-restraint faltered and left him after he closed the door to his room. Xan gazed at the unmade bed, raw and cracked walls, shoddy shelves. It didn’t matter his apartment was much better that that. This was his reality for many years.
Hell, this was where he came from, he blew out a harsh breath.
He might have acquired a taste for finer things but it didn’t change facts. They were as unadorned and merciless as the world he was born and raised in.
Xan grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City but in the past it was nothing like what it was today. Its gritty reputation kept real estate prices below average and kept… most people away, unless they were poor, desperate, or both.
Like Thorpe’s family was.
The name ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ first appeared in print in 1881 when a New York Times reporter went to the area with a police guide to get details of a multiple murder. He referred to a particularly infamous building at 39th Street and Tenth Avenue as ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ and said the entire section was probably the lowest and filthiest in the city. Later the name was expanded to the surrounding streets and eventually the whole area.
The most common version about the origins of the name though traces back to the story of a veteran policeman who was watching a small riot on West 39th Street near Tenth Avenue with his rookie partner. The rookie was supposed to have said, "This place is hell itself," to which the veteran cop replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitc
hen."
There were also other versions, but no matter what the name stuck and was portraying the bleak reality of the place on the dot.
It once was a bastion of poor and working-class, but Hell’s Kitchen’s proximity to Midtown has changed it over the last two or three decades of the twentieth century and into the new millennium.
Xan hadn’t been back there for years now and in his mind it was still the same crappy place he dreamed to escape from as much as his father’s control.
Eventually he did escape both, but no matter how many miles he put between there and now, he couldn’t deny both were still part of his bloodstream and there was no escaping that.
Tony wasn’t that far off the mark, he thought.
Why did he care what someone like Catalina would think of him? Why did her initial opinion bother him and why did he go to such lengths to prove to her he wasn’t as bad as he introduced himself to be?
The real question was: whom was he trying to convince about it–her or… himself?
He wasn’t that bad, he admitted inwardly, he was much worse.
He kicked at the pair of dirty jeans lying on the floor since the previous day right where he dropped them and paced the room, feeling like he was in a cage. He hated closed spaces without even the smallest window to breathe the air through.
It felt too much like jail or at least his idea of it. Prison was his father’s reality and Xan had sworn to himself when he was but a child it was never going to be his own.
Thinking about his old man filled him with unadulterated hate followed by viciousness, and it seized him in its embrace until the pressure became unbearable. His fist connected with a wall.
Pain was his old companion, the most loyal friend when he had no other, but it wasn’t enough to take the edge off so he beat it against the wall again and again, washing his knuckles in crimson.
He hissed out a breath when a fresh, much stronger wave of pain crashed into him, sobering him up instantly.
He looked at his bloody hand as if it didn’t belong to him or maybe he felt too detached from himself.
He didn’t know anymore.
He walked toward the washbowl and opened the tap with cold water.
“Fuck!” He gritted his teeth when the coolness poured over his battered hand.
His fingers were throbbing but that was nothing as long as he could move them. He had suffered far worse injuries and didn’t want to think it had never been by his own doing so far.
He glanced into the mirror hung above but there were no ghosts to look back at him, just his own troubled reflection. Yet he knew his eyes reflected every damn mockery that had ever been hurled his way by his father.
He wasn’t good enough. He should have never been born.
And now Tony’s voice joined the choir, he thought, and smashed the mirror with his pulsating fist.
The glassy surface seemed to bend inward just to explode from its frame and pour the sharp shards around him in dangerous rain.
“Good going.” Xan muttered to himself, washing off the blood once again.
He was used to taking care of himself, not that he had another option since there was no one to do that for him, he thought.
He dug out a bandage from his handy first aid kit and wrapped it around his hand, not caring much about making it pretty.
He smirked, thinking his own stupidity was going to put him out of the ring for quite a while, making Tony so much happier he already was.
Not that Xan gave a flying fuck about Tony’s happiness at this moment.
He grabbed the keys to his car and with the wallet still in the back pocket of his jeans, left the room, the club and the whole world he didn’t want to be a part of at the moment.
***
Xan’s parting words kept replaying in Catalina’s mind long after he was gone himself. They accompanied her when she was taking a hot bath, which failed to relax or calm her. They were present when she was working on final touches of the spur-of-the-moment study she took of a half-withered rose bouquet she received after the exhibition.
Was she lying to both of them?
Maybe she was, but she really didn’t think that seeing him again was a good idea. The strong physical reaction she had to him was a proof of that enough, wasn’t it?
It didn’t require a genius to understand this was exactly why he found it such a prime idea though, she snorted inwardly to herself. He was a man after all and at least in this, it didn’t matter that he was not the type she spent her whole life surrounded by, Catalina thought.
She went out on the terrace and sat on one of the deckchairs, wrapping herself in a sweater and raising her camera to her eyes.
The day was long gone now and the night that crept to take its place forced the sun to kiss the surface of the ocean before drowning in it, repeating the same ritual as always.
There were not many people on the beach to be seen now and that usually made her job so much easier. Tonight should have been the same, Cat thought, lowering the Nikon, deciding to look around with unreliable eyes instead.
Everything felt wrong tonight, pulling her away from the reasons why she attempted it in the first place.
She wanted to work.
She wanted to relax.
She wanted to think.
She wanted to dip into oblivion.
She wanted… something.
But something was exactly what seemed out of her grasp, she decided.
Her thoughts were drifting elsewhere, reminiscent of a jigsaw puzzle, coming together and falling apart again after not finding any rooting.
She felt disturbed, not knowing exactly why. Yes, she was lying to herself after all, she sighed.
She knew exactly why.
Seemingly everything was just like any other given day or night, but she felt altered after dinner with Xan.
Dinner that didn’t take place but something else happened, she thought.
In a matter of barely two hours, he made her feel more alive than she had felt throughout her entire life and it was one of the reasons why she was scared of it, of him and didn’t want to see him again.
He drew her in without the smallest effort on his part and as she proved already, she had exactly zero self-restraint when it came to him.
She looked down at the camera in her hand, the one he gifted her with. She didn’t think she was particularly a selective person, but when it came to her gear she could be considered a very demanding one.
It always took her forever to get used to a new camera, but the one from him fit right in as if it had always been a natural extension of her hand. She wanted to know why he felt so familiar to her while he was anything but that.
Cat groaned and closed her eyes, trying to see her surroundings without looking. A trick she had learned some time ago usually helping when she was unable to focus properly.
To no avail.
She knew she was the source of the problem even if it was beyond tempting to blame it on dozen other reasons.
There was magic in the salty air she inhaled, in the sound of the ocean lulling her.
Yet it was all a fragile thing devoid of its soothing qualities.
The sky was dark and dotted with stars, the water fathomless and magnetically enticing.
But the hues of darkness were all wrong.
Everything felt too bottomless and magnified to a degree where it stopped being enjoyable, becoming dreadful instead.
Catalina couldn’t understand what made her feel so raw and jaded inside but she knew that whatever was happening, pictures were going to show her lack of composure rather than portray the reality of the night.
She blew out an angry breath, disappointed with her shortage in the concentration department.
Her skin felt pulled tight over her bones and they were too brittle to carry her weight. She wrapped the sweater around herself even tighter but it was not the cold that bothered her.
She glanced at her wristwatch when the melody of her doorbe
ll reached her over the terrace. She hoped it wasn’t Chloé because she didn’t have enough energy to answer her friend’s questions about how her date went.
She snorted walking toward the door.
It was almost ridiculous to call their going out a date although it ended with a kiss that nearly swept her off her feet.
She really had to stop thinking about that part, she told herself, but when she opened the door she saw nobody else but Xan on the other side.
She wanted to ask what he was thinking, coming back after she clearly told him not to, but then she noticed his hand.
It was battered and wrapped in a bandage in a way which said likely he was responsible for the haphazard dressing himself. It was marred by a dark stain of blood standing in vivid contrast to the whiteness of the band, making it very clear the injury–whatever the nature of it–was very fresh.
Questions could wait, she decided. Any kind of reproach was pushed aside and replaced by worry.
“Please come in so we can take care of it properly.” She said and stepped inside without hesitation, not seeing anything strange about the fact that of all places, he chose to come to hers.
CHAPTER 17
Xan was as surprised as Catalina when he found himself at her door. Maybe more so because it was impossible to judge her bland expression while he was convinced his astonishment was written all over his face.
He had been driving for hours, or at least it felt like that when he was immersed in his thoughts, acting like an automaton. He had no memory of taking the turn leading to her house yet he must have.
What did that mean? He wondered.
He half expected her to tell him to go to hell no matter her manners but something else entirely filled her eyes, and since he had no experience with this particular emotion it took him a moment to understand it was… concern.
Xan couldn’t remember a time when someone was worried for him, if ever.
Catalina looked at him over her shoulder when he was obediently following her through the house and he saw a thousand unasked questions in her gaze. Yet all remained locked behind her temperance and class.
CUL-DE-SAC (On The Edge Book 1) Page 13