Page 36 of The Live-In Temptation (Steele Brothers of Starlight Cove #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHLOE

The bathwater was a deep shade of purple—like something a unicorn would bathe in—and the scent of lavender hung in the air, thick and sweet.

It should’ve felt over the top and ridiculous, but it didn’t.

Not the unicorn water. Not the candles flickering on the windowsill.

Not even Xander standing in the doorway, arms crossed, shoulder propped against the frame as if he was guarding something sacred while he watched me lower myself into the tub with a sigh.

“This is gonna give a girl ideas,” I murmured, voice low, teasing, as I rested my head back and steam floated up from the water.

“About time.”

My heart stuttered at his immediate response, and I shifted in the water, having no idea what to do with all his attention focused directly on me. Especially when I looked like this .

I ran my hand through the water and glanced at him. “So this is what does it for you, huh? Cramps. Puffy eyes. General emotional instability. Real sexy stuff over here.”

He allowed his gaze to trace over me—to the hair piled on my head and the aforementioned puffy eyes and the rest of my body hidden in the deep purple water—before locking his eyes with mine again. “It’s still you.”

I stared at him, mouth parted, and could only blink while my stomach flipped over itself and something sharp tugged in my chest. I wasn’t lying when I’d said he was going to give a girl ideas. What was concerning was this girl didn’t usually have those kinds of ideas.

“You going to stand there and watch the whole time, or do you want to join me?”

There was that slow drag of his gaze again, as if he was trying to clock everything I didn’t say in every subtle tic of my body, every twitch of my expression. “You don’t want to enjoy your bath alone?”

I gave a slow shake of my head, my eyes locked with his, and sat up, scooting forward and giving him a place to slip in behind me.

Xander didn’t even pause. Just reached back and pulled his shirt over his head before shoving down his sweatpants and boxer briefs. And then he strode toward me like a man on a mission, and I… Well, I enjoyed the show, to be honest.

A naked Xander Steele was a sight to behold. But a naked Xander Steele with his attention and focus locked on me?

That was enough to steal every ounce of my breath straight from my lungs.

He stepped into the tub behind me and sank into the water with a hiss. “Jesus Christ. It’s like the seventh circle of hell in here.”

I snorted. “You fight literal fires for a living. I think you’re fine.”

“I’ll probably survive.” He circled my waist and palmed my stomach low, just over the incessant ache that refused to calm down. “Now, lean back and relax.”

I did as he’d instructed, exhaling a deep sigh and melting into him. The solidness of him behind me and the weight of his palms against my front felt like the most wonderful, comforting cocoon, and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to leave.

Especially not when I rested my head against his shoulder, and he dipped his face to kiss a path up my neck, across my jaw, and along my hairline. And especially not when he tucked his face in close, his beard brushing my temple, his breaths ghosting over my skin.

“Does it still hurt?” he murmured, his thumb brushing a soft path along my abdomen beneath the water.

“Unfortunately.”

“What can I do?”

I hummed and shook my head, closing my eyes as I rested my hands on top of his. “Tell me something to get my mind off it.”

He was quiet for a long while, and I thought for a minute he wasn’t going to say anything. And then, quietly, like he was scared to say the words aloud, he whispered, “I’m afraid Emma’s going to hate me for not being there.”

I froze for a moment, my body going stiff as his confession sank in. And then I had the overwhelming urge to reassure him, and I couldn’t hold back. “No, Xander. She won’t. You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”

“Is it? Because if my dad came back right now—left that brand-new family he abandoned us for—I’d tell him to get fucked. Him finally stepping up wouldn’t rewrite the years he’d been gone. My dad left when I was old enough to hate him for it, and now I worry Emma’s going to feel the same about me.”

Jesus. We were quite a pair. I’d thought Xander’s family was picture-perfect—rowdy, yes.

Weird and wonderful and obnoxious, yes. But that was the family here in Starlight Cove.

His dad? Well, he was an asshole. And I’d had no idea just how much Xander and I would have in common, thanks to our shitty parents.

“It’s not the same.” I squeezed his hand. “You have to know that.”

“Do I?”

“ Yes .” I shifted, turning around to face him and straddling his hips. “You were there for her the second you knew she existed. You changed everything for her. You’re here.”

“Now I am. But I wasn’t. For four years, I wasn’t. Not for her first word or her first step or her first day of preschool. I missed all of it.”

Darting my gaze across his face, I catalogued his features, tight with guilt and regret.

Guilt that wasn’t his to bear and regret that wouldn’t help anyone.

“You didn’t miss it. That time was stolen from you both.

But you’re making up for it now. You didn’t run.

You showed up. Moved your life for her. Became the dad she needs.

That’s not abandoning her. She sees it. I see it. ”

I reached up and cupped his face, his beard scraping my palms. He met my gaze—his so full of guilt and grief and hope and so much damn love. No doubt for his daughter and this little life they’d built.

“She knows you now. And she adores you.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked as he stared at me, as if he didn’t know what to do with the weight of my words. Like maybe they were too much.

Or maybe they were exactly enough.

He didn’t respond. Didn’t speak at all. Instead, he pressed his forehead against mine, his eyes closing for a beat as he breathed me in.

And I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t sit there unmoving.

Couldn’t do anything but shift the tiniest bit and press my lips to his.

Softly. Just a lingering touch, really, but there was so much wrapped up in it— thank you and please and don’t let go all rolled into one.

My pleas were silent, but he seemed to have heard them anyway, because he kissed me back. He slid his hand around to cup my neck, his thumb brushing along the curve of my jaw and then using it to guide my mouth open. Allow him deeper.

He slipped his tongue between my lips—soft and claiming—and I moaned at the first taste of him.

The sound seemed to crack something in us both, the tether holding us back snapping all at once.

He tightened his hold on me as I shifted forward, grinding against his cock before I even realized I’d moved.

With a low groan, he shifted his hold and gripped my hips, tugging me closer. Holding me tight, as if I was the only thing keeping him anchored to earth. And it felt so good—so fucking good to be here with him, like this. To feel wanted and needed and…cherished.

I wanted to feel everything with him.

I rolled my hips against him again, just a slow drag of our bodies together, but the result was anything but soft.

He groaned into my mouth again, but it was needier this time.

Desperate. Both of us aching with something we couldn’t say aloud.

I needed his hands everywhere—needed him inside me, filling me up and reminding me I was his.

At least for this brief moment in time, I was his.

But the reality of the moment caught up to me—why I was here in this bath in the first place—and I stilled, my breaths coming out in pants as I rested my forehead against his.

“Sorry,” I murmured against his lips, shifting my hips back, away from him.

He didn’t allow me to get far, his grip tightening on my flesh, holding me steady. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because of…this.” I bit my lip and gestured vaguely to my midsection. “Hell-spawn uterus and whatnot.”

“Are you saying that because you don’t want to or because you think I don’t?” He skated his gaze across my face, dipping briefly to where my breasts peeked out over the top of the water, his fingers tightening…tightening against my skin. “Because I can promise you it’s not the latter.”

“No?”

He gave a slow shake of his head, wrapped one large palm around my hip, and tugged me toward him in the water. “No.”

I rested my hands on his bare chest, loving the feel of him under my seeking hands. Loving the feel of him everywhere. “It might get messy.”

“I don’t mind.”

I huffed out a short laugh. “Please. You hate messes.”

He didn’t look away. Didn’t even blink. “Not anymore.”

Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just the steam and the relaxing bath and the way he was touching me like I wasn’t too much and instead like I was exactly enough.

But god…in that moment, I wanted it to mean everything .

Wanted to believe it wasn’t just tonight…

wasn’t just this . Wanted to believe that maybe— maybe —this was something else. This was something more.

And those thoughts terrified me most of all.

With his hands bracketing my hips, he pulled me forward, guiding my hips against him in a slow, steady grind.

Both of us moaning at that first contact.

He felt so good—it always felt so good with him—that I couldn’t stop.

I gripped his broad shoulders for leverage and rolled my hips over his hard cock, grinding my clit against him, desperate to satisfy this burning need that always simmered between us.

But that was a lost cause. I wasn’t sure it would ever be satisfied. Not with the desire and want he brought out in me. Not with how much I craved him even when he wasn’t around.

I rocked against him, building a rhythm between us as his mouth found my throat.

He kissed down the column of my neck and across my shoulder, brushing his lips against me, softly, reverently, before dipping his head to my breast. His touch was featherlight—just a whisper of breath against me—until, all at once, it wasn’t.

He took my nipple into his mouth and sucked hard, deep, pulling a gasp from my throat. Controlling my body with nothing more than his lips and tongue as I arched against him, my hands flying to his head to hold him steady. Hold him close.

“You feel that?” he rasped, his lips brushing against my nipple. “You feel how much I want you? That pussy gets wet, and I want it in my mouth…want it wrapped around my cock.”

“Oh god,” I choked out, my release so close, I could taste it. But I didn’t want to come like this—empty and aching for him—so I reached between us, gripped his shaft, and guided it to my entrance.

And then I sank down on him, our groans mixing together in the otherwise quiet space as I took him inside. Took him deep.

“Xander…”

“That’s right, baby. Just me who gets to feel this perfect cunt, isn’t it? Just me who’s filling you up so well.”

I rolled my hips against him, chasing that high he always gave me. He dug his fingers into my flesh, guiding me, anchoring me, until I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began.

On his next deep thrust, my head fell back, a broken moan spilling from my lips as he hit that spot every time I sank down.

“Look at you… Riding me like this. Sitting on my cock like you were made for it. Made to be filled up by me,” he rasped against my skin, his voice laced with something I couldn’t quite name. “Gonna keep filling you until you believe it too.”

I whimpered, digging my fingers into his shoulders, working my hips faster, faster, chasing that release I always found with him. He kissed my breasts, up my chest to my collarbone, my neck, my jaw, then the corner of my mouth. Like he couldn’t get enough. Couldn’t stop tasting me.

Like he didn’t want to.

“I’ve never wanted anything the way I want to stay inside you,” he murmured.

And god , I wanted to believe him. Wanted to live in a world where a man like Xander Steele wanted me that completely. That desperately. That reverently.

My cheeks were flushed, my body burning up from the inside out as I rode him with a gnawing hunger I was all too familiar with around him.

I kissed him then, because I didn’t trust my mouth.

Didn’t trust myself not to say something I couldn’t take back.

Something that gave him the power to break me.

“I dream about the way your pussy feels around me. Wake up hard and aching every fucking day, thanks to you. Because nothing— nothing —feels as good as this. As you.” He dropped his hand into the water between us and found my clit with his thumb, rubbing quick, tight circles around it in a way that had my legs tightening, my thighs trembling.

“There you go,” he said, low and rough and laced with a need that made my chest ache. “I can feel you, dirty girl. Can feel you squeezing my cock, that little cunt begging to come. Let me give it to you. Let me be the reason you fall apart every fucking time.”

“Xander,” I choked out, sure I would’ve collapsed on him if he weren’t guiding me. If I weren’t so starved for the release I knew he could give me.

“You think I care about a little blood, baby?” He moved his thumb faster against me, dragging his lips up the column of my throat to my ear. “I’d fuck you in a goddamn war zone if it meant being inside you.”

That was it—that was all it took. Just that broken plea, that low growl proving just how desperate he was. How desperate he was for me .

I shattered—wrecked, ravaged, ruined as I shook in his arms, my body contracting around him as he filled me up. As he sank deep and spilled inside me with a groan. With my name on his lips and something soft and silent between us.

I had no idea how long we stayed like that, tangled up in each other, the water cooling, the candlelight flickering.

All I knew was, in that moment, neither of us let go.