Page 22 of The Live-In Temptation (Steele Brothers of Starlight Cove #2)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

XANDER

A soft noise broke through my subconscious, and I was off the couch in a blink. Halfway up the stairs before I even registered what I was doing. I’d heard…something. Something loud enough to tug me out of a dream and into reality.

Emma .

I’d woken just like this so many times before, I moved on autopilot as I headed straight to her room.

Once inside, I darted my gaze around the space until it landed on her.

She was sprawled across her mattress, her arms and legs taking up every inch of her twin bed, and her mouth hung open in a way that would definitely lead to drool.

Completely, blissfully asleep.

I exhaled a relieved breath, my shoulders sagging even as my pulse still beat wildly in my ears. Reaching down, I brushed the hair back from her face and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, grateful she was dreaming peacefully tonight instead of having another nightmare.

After stepping out into the hallway, I closed her door behind me, the strong sense of déjà vu washing over me.

I shook my head and scrubbed a hand down my face.

I was tired. Fucking exhausted. Apparently, catching a total of four hours of sleep sprinkled throughout my twenty-four-hour shift wasn’t enough to keep me going once back in my own house, despite my plan to stay awake for the evening.

The last thing I remembered was Emma snuggling up next to me after dinner, Chloe on the opposite end of the couch, as we started our 672nd viewing of Frozen .

Now, I made my way down the hallway toward my bedroom, desperate to crash and fall back into whatever dream I’d been woken from. I couldn’t remember it exactly, just that I’d enjoyed it. I had that vague, hazy recollection of something I was dying to experience all over again.

Something involving Chloe, no doubt.

Before I could close myself off in my room, the soft noise that must’ve pulled me from my dream in the first place sounded again, closer this time.

Like I was repeating something I’d done a hundred times before, I crept down the hallway, stopping just outside Chloe’s partially open door.

She sat on her bed, her back braced against the headboard, bare legs outstretched on top of her dark purple sheets. As usual, she wore a hoodie so large it could’ve fit three of her inside it. But this time, it wasn’t one of her generic sweatshirts.

It was mine .

Starlight Cove Fire Department was stamped across the front, directly over her tits, and my name was etched above it.

I’d seen her in that same hoodie a dozen times before.

But every single one of those times had been in my dreams. And every single one of those times, I’d woken up with a hard cock and the knowledge that it hadn’t been real.

None of it had been real.

Her cheeks were flushed, that plump lower lip caught between her teeth as she whimpered soft and low.

She held her phone in one hand as the other was tucked between her legs, her fingers moving against her pale pink pajama shorts just peeking out beneath my hoodie.

And all the while, she stared, transfixed, at whatever was on the screen.

“Are you watching porn, chaos?”

Gasping, Chloe snatched her hand from between her legs, her wide-eyed gaze flying to me. “Xander! What are you doing?”

I raised a brow. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing!” She placed her phone down on the bed and shook her head. “It’s just a book. I swear.”

“Must be some book. What’s it about?”

“It’s—wait.” She furrowed her brow as she looked at me. “You’re not judging me?”

“No. I’m not judging you.” I raked my gaze down her body in a slow, deliberate perusal, cataloging every inch of her I could see. Cataloging every inch of her I couldn’t . “But I am interested in what you’re doing.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, confusion sweeping over her features. “What’s happening here?”

I leaned against the doorframe—something I’d done a dozen times before—and crossed my arms over my chest. “Looks to me like you were touching yourself while wearing my hoodie.”

She cleared her throat and averted her gaze, her cheeks flushing scarlet. “I…thought you were asleep.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m still dreaming.”

“Okay…” she said, drawing out the word. Sweeping her gaze over me from head to toe, she studied me as if seeing me for the first time. “I’m not really sure what to do here.”

“Tell me what your book’s about.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I told you to,” I said, the command in my voice low but unmistakable.

Her brows flew up, her body jolting as if she hadn’t been expecting the words or the tone. Hadn’t been expecting her response to them either. But then she parted her lips, her eyelids growing heavy as she stared at me with undisguised want.

Want I was all too willing to be on the receiving end of.

“This is…new.”

Not new to me. If only she were aware of just how many times some variation of this fantasy had played out in my mind…

“Do you want me to stop?”

Her chest rose and fell with her breaths, and her eyes stayed locked on mine for so long I thought for sure she’d say yes. Yes, she absolutely wanted me to stop. Wanted me to get the hell out of her room. Leave her alone and let her read her book in peace.

Instead, she whispered, “No. I don’t want you to stop.”

Somehow, my cock grew even harder at her admission until it was throbbing incessantly in my jeans, desperate for her. Just like fucking always.

“Good girl. Tell me what you’re reading and why it made you slip your hand between your thighs and touch that sweet little pussy.”

“Oh my god,” she murmured, barely more than a breath. Definitely not something she’d intended for me to hear. Then, louder, she said, “Are you sure about this?”

“Are you?”

She hesitated for only a second before biting her lower lip and nodding.

“The words, chaos. I need the words.”

“I’m sure.”

Christ. If my cock got any harder, I was going to pass out from loss of blood to my brain.

“Good. Now tell me.”

She shifted her gaze to the side before meeting my eyes again. “It’s a romance.”

“I figured as much. What about this romance made your pussy so needy you had to touch it over your shorts?”

She exhaled a shaky breath, her eyes locked on mine as she swallowed. “This scene…the couple. They’re, um… They’re not supposed to be together. He’s her boss. But then, the guy finally snapped. Dragged her into a back room at their office…”

“Then what?”

“He told her he was tired of fighting it. That he didn’t care if he lost his job. He just needed to be inside her.”

“Did he fuck her? Is that what made you wet?”

“He hasn’t yet. He…he was telling her what to do. Telling her to touch herself and watching while she got herself off.”

Fuck . I desperately wanted to reach down and grip my shaft just to get a handle on myself. Precome was already leaking from my cock because of nothing more than a handful of words spoken by my wet dream.

“Which part got you hotter? How he bossed her around or that she fingered herself while he watched?”

She licked her lips, her gaze darting across my face as if she couldn’t believe I was still here or that I was asking her this. That made two of us. “Both.”

“Show me.”

“What?”

“Show me,” I said, firmer this time. “If I hadn’t interrupted, show me what you would’ve done.”

“I…I don’t?—”

“Do you need direction? You want me to tell you what to do?”

A pause before a stilted nod.

“The words, chaos.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I want you to tell me what to do.”

I hummed low in my throat. “There’s my dirty girl. Slide your hand inside your panties. Tell me how wet you are.”

“Fuck,” she breathed. Hesitating only the briefest moment, she did as I asked, spreading her legs just wide enough to allow me a glimpse of her pale pink shorts and the shape of her fingers beneath the wet spot on the fabric.

I knew the second her fingers brushed over her clit because a shudder rolled through her as she whimpered, her legs falling open even more. “Well?”

“I’m…wet. So fucking wet.”

“I know you are. You leaked through your bottoms, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she admitted, her fingers moving faster now. “ God . I need…”

“What? What do you need?”

“I don’t know…”

“I don’t believe that. I think you know exactly what you need.”

She locked her gaze on me, desperate and needy and trusting as she worked herself over with her fingers. “I want you to tell me what to do. Please, Xander.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

I didn’t know why the hell my name on her lips was so hot, only that it was. Only that it made me all the more eager to fuck her until it was the only word she said. The only one she screamed.

“Tell me how many fingers you have buried in your needy cunt right now.”

Her breath hitched, her legs closing and trapping her hand between them. As if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been.

“Don’t. Don’t hide from me. I want to see it all. Wish you didn’t have those fucking cocktease shorts on that you’re always wearing. Wish I could see exactly how deep you’ve shoved your fingers inside your sweet little pussy. Now tell me how many you’ve stuffed inside.”

“Two.”

I made a rough sound in the back of my throat.

“You’d need more than that, wouldn’t you?

If you were going to take my cock, you’d need all four.

Slide another one nice and deep for me.” I raked my gaze over her again, desperate to see beneath the fabric covering her.

“As much as I fucking love seeing you in my sweatshirt, I wish it were gone so I could finally get an eyeful of those perfect tits I’ve been dreaming about every fucking night. ”

“Oh god,” she breathed, her other hand slipping under my hoodie and going straight for the tits I wanted in my mouth. “Don’t stop.”

“Not until you come. You know that, don’t you? There’s no fucking way I could stop once I had a taste. Once I sank even a fucking millimeter inside that heaven between your thighs. It’s why I’m all the way over here and you’re going to come on your fingers instead of against my tongue.”

“ Xander .”

My cock was throbbing in time with my heartbeat, the overwhelming urge I had to go to her unrelenting.

To rip a hole in the crotch of her shorts, feast my eyes on what I knew would be the prettiest pussy I’d ever seen, and sink deep without wasting another second.

Find out if she’d gotten herself wet enough to take every fucking inch or if I’d have to make her come on my tongue first.

But instead, I stood rooted in place, in the doorway of my daughter’s nanny’s bedroom.

And I watched her fuck herself with her fingers.

Watched those tits heave beneath my sweatshirt as she gasped in lungfuls of air.

Watched her bite that plump lower lip as whimpers and moans escaped her mouth.

Watched her hips roll as she moved her fingers faster and faster beneath the material of her shorts.

I was close—so fucking close—to coming undone with nothing more than a zipper pressed tight against my dick. And I had no hope of stopping this runaway train now.

“Jesus Christ. Look at you. Even covered up so I can’t see a damn thing, you’re still a fucking wet dream, aren’t you? Still the hottest goddamn thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

Her breath hitched, her eyes growing even heavier, and goose bumps broke out over her skin at my words. I knew I shouldn’t have said it. Shouldn’t have said a damn fucking word because I’d shared too much.

But what did it matter in this quiet space in the dark of night? I’d already established I shouldn’t even be here in the first place. So what was one more line I’d crossed?

I wanted to tell her to add another finger to get her ready to take my cock. Wanted to tell her to lick those fingers clean, taste herself, and tell me how sweet she was. Wanted to demand she admit she thought of me just as much as I thought of her—that she couldn’t get me out of her head either.

But I didn’t say any of those things. Instead, I gripped the doorframe until my knuckles turned white and watched in awe as the girl who’d starred in every single one of my fantasies since she’d stumbled into my life inched closer and closer to orgasm.

“You’re close, aren’t you? You gonna come?”

“ Yes .”

“Good. Shove those fingers deep, dirty girl. Pretend it’s my cock filling you up. Come all over me, Chloe.”

“ Fuck .” She snapped her legs together, her head dropping back as she softly cried out my name. Her hips rolled beneath her hand, her fingers buried in the pussy I’d give anything to feel as she came undone.

And, like I was a goddamn teenager all over again, I went right over the edge with her, shooting off in my jeans as if I had zero self-control.

Although I was quickly coming to realize that, when it came to Chloe Bradshaw? Zero was exactly how much self-control I had.