Page 25 of The Live-In Temptation (Steele Brothers of Starlight Cove #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHLOE

By the time I got home, I was wine-flushed, disarmed, and emotionally whiplashed, all thanks to the tag-team therapy session I hadn’t known I was signing up for.

Luna, Sutton, and Quinn had shown up and dragged me out of the house. Because I was being—and I quote—a whiny, emotionally stunted, and utterly avoidant man about the entire situation.

Apparently, they hadn’t realized that was literally my entire personality.

And I also didn’t think they realized just how much wine it would take for me to drop those walls.

It hadn’t been the four glasses they’d poured for me, in case anyone was keeping track.

While they knew all about the entire make-out session in the kitchen with the cookie dough audience, I hadn’t spilled one single word about my mortification from the other night.

When I’d come harder than I ever had before, all because I’d thought Xander was in it with me, when in reality, he’d thought it was a dream.

Yeah, I wasn’t interested in reliving that humiliation with my girlfriends. It was a big fat no fucking thank you from me.

With a threat—er, promise—to do this again next week, my girl gang had dropped me at Xander’s place and went on their way.

I walked inside, dropped my keys on the table by the door, and kicked off the death traps I called heels, sighing in relief as my feet sank into the plush rug.

After a night where I’d spent far more time avoiding—er, dancing—than I’d intended, my feet were absolutely throbbing and looked like a nightmare.

My soul? Maybe even slightly more so.

The main floor was quiet except for the soft hum of the refrigerator and the heat blowing through the vents. But the proof of an evening well spent was everywhere.

Nail polish bottles were scattered across the coffee table like confetti after a parade. A plastic pink tiara was half-hidden beneath a throw pillow. And an empty cotton candy tub sat on the dining room table.

It was a mess, yes, but now it was quiet and still. The aftermath of something exciting and fun.

Something I’d missed.

Honestly, I was used to missing things. It was basically the blueprint of my entire life. Of how I’d designed it to be.

So I wasn’t jealous—not exactly. I just felt like I was outside looking in. Like the party had started and ended—the best part of the night having already happened—and I hadn’t even realized I wanted to be here for it until it was too late.

But it was far easier not to feel left out if you bailed before someone forgot to invite you to stay.

My chest tightened, that all-too-familiar feeling blooming inside again. It was a sensation that had followed me like a shadow my entire life. It was why I’d leaned into my place as the opening act—fun, fleeting, forgettable.

I physically shook those thoughts away, rolling my eyes and mumbling to myself, “Your limit is three glasses before you get in your feels, Chloe. You know this. Remember it. Live by it.”

When I was at the top of the stairs, I heard it—a voice, low and deep, soft but rough in the way that always made my belly tighten.

Emma’s door was cracked, dim light spilling out into the hallway as Xander read a book to her. I paused in my trip to my bedroom and listened closer, my breath catching when I realized he wasn’t reading .

He was storytelling.

His words were smooth and effortless, like he wasn’t even thinking about them before they came tumbling out.

It was a story about a grumpy dragon who lived alone and was lonely without even realizing it, until a smaller, sweeter dragon stumbled upon his cave. And then came a unicorn that upended their lives.

Except, from the way he told the story, it didn’t seem like he thought of the unicorn as an inconvenience or a disaster. Instead, he made it sound like the visitor was a gift.

And though he’d disguised this tale as one of make-believe with mystical beings, I had no doubt in my mind that he was telling our story. The story of him and Emma.

And me.

My breath caught in my throat, the sudden stinging behind my eyes immediate and completely irrational.

It was just a story. And I was drunk. Okay, I wasn’t quite drunk, but I was definitely well past tipsy and had no business getting sappy in the hallway of my boss’s home. So, I did what I always did when my emotions threatened to overcome me.

I ran.

Well, actually, I tiptoed down the hallway and fled to the safety of the guest room.

I breathed a sigh of relief and quietly closed the door.

Then I stripped out of my girls’ night out clothes and swapped them for my favorite pajama shorts, a tank top, and, because I was a complete idiot as previously established, Xander’s hoodie.

The one I’d come while wearing.

And no, I absolutely did not hold it up to my nose and inhale deeply as the lingering scent of Xander filled my lungs.

“You are a complete fucking weirdo,” I said to my room, occupied by only me, myself, and I.

I should’ve just gone to bed. Should have stayed tucked away in my room and let the night end where the only mess involved the nail polish bottles strewn downstairs and not my emotional state.

Instead, I padded down the steps like a whole damn idiot, because apparently I had the self-preservation of a toddler barreling through a parking lot.

Once in the living room, I started collecting the polish bottles like my life depended on it—anything to distract me from the way my chest felt heavy and too tight. Like it was caving in on me. Like I’d sucked in too much air and there wasn’t enough space to hold it all.

“Focus, Chloe. Just clean,” I said to myself as I grabbed a bottle of Grape Escape, pretending I wasn’t halfway to a self-induced menty B.

“You’re not spiraling. You’re fine . Totally, completely fine.

And the reason you’re fine is because you are absolutely not thinking about how the man upstairs saw you come and hasn’t said a damn thing about it.

And you’re also not thinking about how he looked at you while you straddled him in the snow like he’d die if he didn’t kiss you.

And you most definitely are not thinking about the fact that he featured you as a star in a bedtime story he imagined for his daughter. ”

Thank god no one was around to hear my spiral because that was the last thing I needed. And I definitely did not need Xander Steele to grace me with his presence tonight when I was feeling like the frayed hem of those jeans I should’ve thrown out three years ago.

Because that was nothing but a recipe for disaster.

But since I’d crafted a damn good abundance spell that was still haunting me like my great-grandmother Edith, the object of my obsession—er, thoughts—stood at the bottom of the steps, hair damp from a shower.

He was barefoot in gray sweatpants—and god damn , why was that so hot—and a well-fitted Henley that made my uterus glitch.

He swept his gaze over me from head to toe—my hair twisted up in a knot that looked like it lost a fight with a hand mixer, the borrowed hoodie he wasn’t supposed to see (again), and bare legs—and swallowed hard.

Froze as if the sight of me here knocked the air out of him.

Shook something loose inside that had been caged too tight.

“You don’t have to clean up my mess,” he said, his voice that soft honey-gravel that made my pussy wet and my nipples tight and every ounce of self-preservation flee my body.

“It’s fine. I didn’t have any plans besides existential dread and an expired face mask.”

“Is that thanks to girls’ night or something else?” he asked, and from the way he was studying me so intently, it was clear he truly wanted to know.

“Oh, you know. Just another Monday night.”

He hummed low in his throat, as if he didn’t quite believe me but wasn’t ready to call me out on it yet. He crossed the room slowly, his eyes on me the entire time. And I…collapsed onto the couch.

Obviously because my legs were tired and my feet were killing me from those shoes and not at all because Xander Steele literally knocked me off my feet. That would be ridiculous.

I didn’t expect him to stalk toward me. I didn’t expect him to crouch on the floor in front of me. I also didn’t expect him to lift my foot into his lap, his thumb ghosting over the angry red welt left by my hot-as-fuck heels.

And I certainly didn’t expect the way his brows slammed down as he glared daggers at my feet.

“What the hell is this?” he asked—demanded, really.

“Just a little female sacrifice in the name of looking good.”

He turned his attention from my feet to glare at my shoes instead. “Why do you wear those damn things if they hurt you?”

“Who said they hurt me?”

“I do. And these angry red marks are screaming about it pretty loud, too.”

I lifted a single shoulder in a shrug and tried not to think about the press of his thumb against the arch of my foot. Or how easily he could toss my foot over his shoulder and let me feel that beard on my inner thighs. “They make my legs look great.”

He lifted his eyes to mine, something hot and hungry in their depths. “Everything makes your legs look great.”

My breath stuck in my throat, my heart seizing as his words played over again in my mind. I couldn’t have heard him right…could I? He hadn’t actually said that. Was I the one dreaming now?

“And if you break your damn ankle on those heels, I’m going to set the fucking things on fire.”

Instead of giving in and reminding myself exactly what he tasted like and exactly the tenor of that low groan when I’d brushed my tongue against his, I breathed out a laugh that was too high, too fake, and pretended like everything was totally normal.

Totally, completely normal.

“You said that about my curling iron when I burned myself and about the mandoline slicer last week.”

“You just about cut off your whole damn finger.”

“It was barely a scratch, actually.”

“It needed a bandage, didn’t it?” He started rubbing slow circles into the arch of my foot, his thumb ghosting over the red marks that were gradually fading.

I was gradually fading too. Into a puddle of goo right in front of him, and I needed to get back on solid ground. Immediately.

“For a fire chief, you sure do threaten to burn a lot of things.”

Though my tone was playful and teasing, the look he shot back was anything but.

“Seems to me the only things I threaten to burn are ones that fuck with you.”

And if I thought the air was thick between us before, it had nothing on what it felt like now. With my foot in his lap, his thumbs massaging away my aches and pains and that last shred of self-preservation I was clinging to, and his eyes locked on me, watching as if he didn’t know how to stop…

As if he didn’t want to.

He pressed his thumbs deeper into my arch, and I barely swallowed a moan. I curled my fingers around the couch cushion, just to keep from launching myself at him.

If I didn’t focus on something else—literally anything else—I was going to do something stupid. Like mount him right here, amid the remnants of a riotous slumber party.

I darted my gaze around the space, looking at anything and everything. And that was when I noticed his fingers. Or rather, the massacre where his fingers used to be.

“Is there a crime scene somewhere we need to clean up?”

He snorted and shook his head, but he still didn’t stop his delicious torture of my feet. “Just my nails. And now that you’ve seen them, I’m officially permitted to clean them up.”

“Doodlebug got a little creative with her doodling?”

“Something like that,” he murmured.

We sat there in silence—me reminding myself to breathe, all while he lavished spa-level foreplay on my feet with those hands that had starred in more than a dozen of my dreams and him carrying on as if this was all perfectly normal behavior.

As if I wasn’t sitting in his borrowed (stolen) hoodie, as if he hadn’t seen me come apart days ago, as if I didn’t know exactly what he tasted like.

In what felt like a scene from one of the books I loved to read, he set my foot down in his lap, reached for the bottle of Grape Escape polish I held, and unscrewed the lid.

Then Xander—my scowly, gruff, emotionally constipated boss who’d demanded how I should get myself off—bent his head over my feet as if in prayer and carefully painted my toenails.

It was clear he was new to this—the initial crisscross on every nail before he painted over the top said as much. But he gave it as much attention as I imagined he gave fire truck inspections. He worked slowly. Precisely.

Like it wasn’t just nail polish on toes, but something more. Like it mattered.

Like I mattered.

Every second that passed, that feeling inside me bubbled up more and more, rising through the butterflies in my stomach and the thudding beat of my heart and up my throat that was tight with an emotion I refused to name. And then it was spilling out of me, no hope whatsoever of catching it.

“This is dangerous,” I said, a whispered oath in the silent room.

His hand stilled, and he glanced up at me, his voice just as low as mine. “You in my hoodie? Yeah, it just might be.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean, chaos? What’s dangerous?”

This. You. The way you touch me, and I forget how to breathe. You look at me, and it feels like the world disappears. The way this house has started to feel like a home—like the safest thing I’ve ever known.

The way I’m starting to want to stay, when all I’ve ever done is run.

But I didn’t say any of that. I couldn’t.

It was too much, too soon. And it definitely didn’t belong in a space between a single dad and his nanny.

So instead, I just sat there—heart and hands trembling, my foot cradled in Xander’s lap as if it were something precious. As if I were something he desperately wanted the privilege of taking care of.