Page 12

Chapter 12

Movie Night

Blake

Fuck, today had been a long day.

I sat down with a bucket of popcorn in the cozy living room. My mom enjoyed having an abundance of flowering plants in every room, which made the space feel like a sanctuary. Pink and purple orchids rose up from a bouquet of white roses, their sweet scent drifting my way. Every muscle in my body was sore from how tense I’d been. My jaw hurt, my back hurt, my head hurt. I no longer tasted the ironlike, metallic tang from the blood, although the conflicting swell of emotions was still there.

I thought watching a classic with my mom would help clear my head, but she thought two glasses of wine and a night’s long rest would help hers. She excused herself, which was when I got the smart idea of texting Xavier.

He strutted in through the soft arching doorway. The room was lit by two floor lamps and a few candles my mom had lit. Shit. I didn’t realize how romantic this looked .

I leaned forward and blew out one of the candles. It only worked to make the space more intimate.

“Did you make a wish?” Xavier asked. His laid-back look—black shorts, gray T-shirt, and a backward white baseball cap—contrasted sharply with the suit I’d seen him in hours earlier. I had a hard time figuring out which one I liked more.

“Yes.” I stuffed my mouth with popcorn. “Wished for the world not to end.”

“You shouldn’t have told me. Now you’ve cursed it.”

“Eh, feels like it’s already cursed.” I patted the spot next to me on the long, cloudlike couch. “Come. Sit. Enjoy fine cinema.”

“Just us?” Xavier asked. It didn’t sound suggestive in any way, but I still took it that way.

I swallowed my salty, butter-drenched mouthful. “Yes. Mom went to go to sleep.”

“How’s she doing?” Xavier asked. He looked at me with that handsome baby face of his, those loose curls of dark hair begging to be played with.

Hmm… Maybe this movie night wasn’t a great idea.

“She’s doing fine. She’s really grateful to Warrick for getting her out of there. My mom’s a falcon shifter, so she took to the sky until it was safe.”

“Good, good.” Xavier reached over. “Can I?”

“Mhmm,” I said and tilted the bucket of popcorn in his direction. I picked up the remote and turned the television on, the screen already open to the streaming service. “Ready for the movie?”

“Let’s do it,” he said. His voice was deep and gravelly, and it did something to me. Made me slightly self-conscious. Did I look too casual? I’d been living with Xavier for about a month now, so he’d seen me in plenty of different states, but tonight, I didn’t want to cosplay a slouch. I wore paint-stained black sweatpants and a blue striped shirt I wasn’t even sure was mine. I was sure I looked like a mess.

The movie started with the scene I could recite line by line. A white limo pulled up to curling golden gates, the limo driving up a seemingly miles-long driveway to an ivy-covered estate. The limo came to a slow stop, and the main character stepped out with one broken heel hanging from her hand. A flurry of doves flew out behind her, some whacking into her back and shitting on her shoulders. A handsome Italian housekeeper ran out of the mansion and went to help her, unknowingly helping his future wife.

I set the popcorn between us and said, “Is it weird that we’re supposed to feel bad for Penelope here, but I don’t? I’m happy for her. If it wasn’t for this mess, she wouldn’t have gotten the idea to ‘fake’ marry Gino to get revenge on her rival.” Xavier had gotten comfortable by kicking off his shoes, resting his sock-clad feet on a satin ottoman.

“I don’t think that’s weird at all. I agree with you, actually. I mean, yeah, I feel bad for the bird shit and the way she was set up, but I do think the happiness of the moment outweighs the literal shittiness.” He let out a huff. “I’d rather have her shitty day than ours.”

“That is very true. I can’t believe that all happened less than twenty-four hours ago.” Maybe once the shock wore off, it’d make more sense to me. “Today just feels like a bad dream…”

“Was that your first time ever killing someone? ”

I stared at the screen. Penelope was furiously recounting her day to Gino. “Yes. I’ve obviously witnessed death, but I’ve never been the one to deliver it. I… I know it was either me or them, and I know I did the right thing, but I’m scared that any blood on my hands makes me a monster.”

“It doesn’t. Like you said, that shifter would have killed you if you didn’t act first.”

“I know, but the taste of blood, it was awful. I feel like it’s still in my mouth.” The butter coating my taste buds began to taste metallic. I rubbed at my lips as if I could wipe the smear off me. “I hated it.”

“You shouldn’t love it. It’s okay.” Xavier reached across the short distance between us and grabbed my hand. Was this somewhere in the bodyguard manual? A section where he learned how to moonlight as a therapist? A loud cacophony of sounds came from the TV, where Penelope had accidentally dropped a couple of buckets of paint on her and Gino.

She just couldn’t catch a break, huh.

“Death is something no one can or should get used to. My line of work has brought me face-to-face with the reaper on many different occasions, and I never get used to it. You defended yourself, and that’s it.”

“At least I know I can do it. That makes me feel a little less useless for this starlight dagger hunt.”

Xavier smiled at me, flashing those pearly white teeth. “Who says you’re coming? I’m keeping you locked up in the castle until we figure it out.”

“Um, no, I don’t think so. First off, I’ll go crazy if I’m locked up anywhere. And second, I want to help. You’re my bodyguard anyway—you should be around me at all times.” I shrugged as if it were that obvious.

“There’s plenty of times I’m not around you.”

“Like when?”

“When you’re showering. And you take hour-long showers. Sometimes I worry you’re actually a turkey shifter and drowned while looking up at the water.”

That got a good laugh out of me. “I just like the water. And you can come in next time. Stand there and watch me.” I quickly realized what I said. “Not as in watch me, but as in watch my back. Like in a protective sense. Did I say watch or wash? You know what I mean.”

Xavier cut me off before I could keep rambling. “If you needed someone to get your nooks and crannies, you should have asked me earlier.”

My cheeks were back to burning again. I rolled my eyes and tried to act casual, even though the image of Xavier’s big, strong, naked body dripping wet made my dick twitch.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“You sure?” he asked. “I think you missed a spot here.” He reached behind my ear, hand landing on my neck. I froze. Part of me understood that the right thing to do would have been to pull away, like I should have done in my father’s office. Too much had happened today; I couldn’t be adding more to my processing pile.

I pushed in. Fuck it. I nearly died today. Might as well get a kiss out of it.

Xavier’s hand tightened around the back of my neck. He parted my lips with his tongue, greedy to taste me. I took him in, kissing him back. A wave laced with ecstasy lazily washed over me, soft and slow and indulgent. It was a tender kiss, like we were both exploring each other. He sucked on my bottom lip, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw.

I was left breathless and wanting more. My hand landed on his leg. He had a huge tree trunk of a thigh. I rubbed it, loving how it twitched under my palm and how his soft leg hair felt. His shorts were bunched up around his bulge, which gave me plenty of thigh to work with.

He started to run his hand down my back, pulling me closer to him on the couch. Our legs pressed together. My heart raced, faster than it had during the fight earlier. I became hyperaware of my inexperience with these kinds of situations. I didn’t know much about Xavier’s dating history, but I could take a solid guess that he had slept with many more people than my zero.

His hand moved around to my stomach, slipping under my shirt. I could feel the rough calluses from his workouts against my skin. He stopped his hand over my chest.

“Your heart’s beating so fast,” he whispered against my lips.

“Sorry, I’m nervous.”

“Don’t apologize. What are you nervous about?” His breath brushed against my cheek. He kissed the space between my nose and lip. The room turned an entire twenty degrees hotter.

“This,” I said, my voice shaky. “I’m not, uh, I don’t have a lot of experience with hooking up. I’m a, uh, I’m a virgin.”

There, I said it. Got it out of the way. I expected Xavier’s face to crack in surprise, but he simply smiled and pulled back a little bit. “I didn’t know. I apologize if I was being too forward.”

“I want you to be more forward, if I’m being honest. I get anxious, though. I mean, I’ve fooled around and done a few things here and there, but I’m still not playing in the major leagues, if you catch my drift.” I sucked in a breath. I wasn’t as embarrassed as I thought I’d be talking about this. Xavier had a presence to him that welcomed vulnerability. Maybe it was in his nonjudgmental eyes. “And after my stalker situation, I really stopped getting intimate with anyone. You know about it, right?”

“Yes, I do. And none of it was your fault.”

“That’s not how it felt at the time. I’m the one that started talking to him online. He was cute and interesting. I was opening up to him. And I made the mistake of meeting him one day for a date. We did stuff in a hotel room—not sex—but that was enough for him to become obsessed with me. I immediately regretted it when I woke up to a hundred and three texts from him.”

“Then we can put a pause on this,” Xavier said, clearly wanting to respect my boundaries.

“No, I’m okay with this .” I motioned through the empty space now between us. “I’m only warning you I may get awkward and nervous and sweaty.”

“Like I already said, I don’t mind a little sweat.” He licked his bottom lip, still shining from our kiss. A romantic ballad played on the television. “And don’t feel bad about being a virgin or not having a lot of practice under your belt. I might as well have cobwebs for pubes.”

I gave a snort. “I highly doubt that.”

“It’s true. You want to see?” He teasingly lowered his shorts, just enough for me to spot a tuft of soft black hair. He laughed and snapped them back onto his waist. “I’m being serious. I haven’t been with anyone since my last boyfriend, Harry. We met when I was sixteen. He was, well, my everything.”

A lump of ice formed in my chest at the way Xavier’s voice hitched. “What happened?”

“He had a rare form of lung cancer. Took him out two weeks after his diagnosis. I remember him complaining about a cough, me telling him it’s nothing. He’ll be fine. We were supposed to go on a trip to London, his favorite city. I was going to propose at a dinner in the highest skyscraper in all of London. He never even made it onto the plane.”

“That’s so incredibly unfair. Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

“And then I lost my mom a year later.” He remained as solid as a marble statue except for his bottom lip. It twitched in a way that yanked at my heart. “That’s how I know you can never get used to death. You can’t ever even understand it. You just live with it.”

“Live with death.”

“Exactly.”

“X, I’m really sorry.”

“It’s alright.” He offered me a smile that made me believe him, except for an echo of that twitch at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t okay. Xavier still felt the pain from his losses, deep and throbbing pain. “Let’s get comfortable and watch the rest of the movie. We’ve had a really long few days. I’m down to just turn off and relax. That sound good?”

“I think that sounds great,” I said. He lifted an arm, and without much thought, I lay down, resting my head on his chest. The gentle, slow beats of his heart were a nice backing track to the movie we settled down to watch. Today might have been terrible, but tonight proved to be the complete opposite. I’d discovered a lot about Xavier, much more than maybe I should be discovering, and I found myself wanting to unearth even more. I wanted to keep talking to him until the sun came up. I also wanted to help him heal from his pain, still clearly raw.

Ten minutes into the movie and we had somehow maneuvered ourselves into a little-spoon, big-spoon position on the spacious couch. Sleep came quickly, knocking me out before my favorite part of the movie.

Didn’t matter, though. The dreams I had, all starring Xavier, beat out any film ever made for Best Picture.