Page 41 of The Live-In Temptation (Steele Brothers of Starlight Cove #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

XANDER

The living room was quiet when I stepped inside after my shift. The flickering blue light from the TV cast a soft glow over Chloe where she sat on the couch. Her knees were tucked up to her chest, Emma’s unicorn blanket wrapped around her as she stared, unseeing, at the screen.

“Hey, chaos.” I dropped my keys on the table by the door, my gaze tracking over every inch of her, brows drawing down. “You good?”

She turned to face me, resting her head on her knees, and blew out a deep breath. “Emma had a rough day.”

My entire body stiffened, every molecule in me on high alert, ready to go to war if my little girl needed it. “What happened?”

Chloe huffed a humorless laugh and settled her forehead on her knees, hiding her face from me. “That same little asshole from the fire station tour told her I only love her because you pay me to.”

“ What ?”

“I talked to her about it. Said it wasn’t true. Tonight, I told her a story about a brave princess before bed.” She swallowed, glancing up at me with sadness heavy in her eyes. “And then she asked me to say goodbye before I leave.”

Fuck.

I’d known it was coming. The entire time Chloe had been here, this had been the inevitable end. It was also exactly what I’d wanted to prevent. Exactly what I swore I wouldn’t let happen.

I wasn’t supposed to let Emma fall in love with her.

I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her.

“I pinkie promised I would,” she said. “It’s the least I can do, right? I mean, I am leaving. That was always the plan.”

“Plans change,” I said roughly, the words like gravel.

The corner of her mouth twitched, and she glanced at me with amusement in her eyes. “Says the man with the color-coded routine on the fridge.”

“Says the man who used to follow it.” I met her gaze, mine steady and unflinching. “Things change.”

She tightened her fingers on the blanket as she shifted her gaze to the side, staring at nothing.

“I’ve never stayed anywhere this long. Not since I turned eighteen and got the hell out of my parents’ house.

” She traced the outline of a unicorn on the blanket, not meeting my gaze.

“Sedona is my reset. I’ve done it every year.

We talked about it when I first started. When you said this was all temporary.”

I had said that. Back when I was a fucking idiot.

“Like I said, things change.”

“Like what?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“You let her fall in love with you,” I said, unable to keep the accusation from my voice.

She jerked as if she’d been shocked and snapped her gaze to mine. “You think I wanted her to?”

“Doesn’t matter what you wanted. She did. And now she doesn’t think of you as temporary.” I cleared my throat, hoping to hide the gruffness in my voice, but it was no use. “She thinks of you as hers.”

Chloe’s eyes glassed over, a subtle sheen illuminated by the flickering light from the TV.

“You think she’s going to understand when you leave?” I asked.

She rolled her lips inward and wrapped her arms around her knees, shaking her head. “No.”

“You think I will?”

She stared up at me, unblinking, her eyes shiny and haunted. She wasn’t the only one. It felt like someone had reached into my chest, gripped my heart, and ripped it straight out of my body. Took my soul right along with it.

But I’d walked right into this, hadn’t I? I’d known this was coming the whole time.

“She thinks of you as home, you know. You’d better decide if she’s wrong.”

“And what about you?” she asked, her voice thin. “Do you think of me as home?”

I met her gaze, trying to put everything I could into that single look. “If you don’t already know the answer to that, then I haven’t been doing my job.”

CHLOE

It was well after midnight, and the house was quiet, filled with the kind of stillness that was suffocating.

I stood in the hallway just outside Xander’s bedroom, bare feet silent against the hardwood and hand resting on the doorknob. I should’ve stayed in my room. Should’ve gone to sleep and let this day end without poking at the bruise that was only spreading over my heart, but I couldn’t.

Without knocking, I turned the knob and pushed open the door, the floor creaking as I stepped inside. I cringed at the announcement of my presence, but it didn’t matter anyway.

Xander’s eyes were already locked on me, as if he’d been staring at the door, just waiting— hoping? —for me to walk through it.

He tracked my movements, his eyes following each slow step I made toward him. He allowed his gaze to sweep over me, his eyes heating when he took in the Starlight Cove Fire Department hoodie I’d stopped pretending I hadn’t stolen from him.

I stood next to the bed, close enough that he could touch me. Could slide his fingers up the outside of my thigh, tell me to climb in next to him. And my entire body ached for that very thing with a desire so visceral it was staggering. “I’m not here to talk.”

There was a beat of silence. Two. Three.

And then he murmured, “Good,” just before hooking an arm around my waist and tugging me into bed until I straddled him. He rested his hands on my thighs, his callused fingertips creating goose bumps in their wake as he stared up at me with something I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I whispered, placing my hands on his bare chest and rolling my hips over where he was already growing hard for me.

“Like what?” he asked, hands anchored on my hips, guiding my movements over him.

“Like this means something.”

His eyes hardened, his jaw clenching as he stared up at me. “It doesn’t.”

It was a lie. I knew it was, but it still broke my heart in two. From the lie or the truth I couldn’t bear to hear, I wasn’t sure.

It didn’t matter anyway. Not when he cupped my face and tugged me down, capturing my lips with his. Not when he kissed me like he was drowning. Kissed me like I was the only thing he’d ever wanted in his whole life. The only thing he’d ever need.

Our clothes came off in a blur—everything but his hoodie.

That, he’d just shoved above my tits, descending on them with his mouth as soon as he sank inside.

He stared down at me as he thrust deep, one hand wrapped around my throat, the other gripping my hip and tugging me to him again and again.

His gaze skated over me, his eyes boring into his name printed over my heart like he needed the reminder that I was his.

Even if I never said the words, I was always, always his.

He fucked me hard and rough, his hips slapping against mine and his grunts filling the air like this was only about release. Only about getting off and not about this undeniable connection tethering us together. A connection I’d never once felt with anyone else.

A connection I was sure I’d never feel again for as long as I lived. Not like I did with Xander.

He bent over me, resting his forehead against mine as he sank deep and gave a slow grind of his hips, just like he knew I loved. Just like he knew I needed to come.

“This was supposed to be just sex,” I whispered, as much for myself as for him. Like if I said the words aloud, they’d somehow, miraculously, be true.

“It’s never been just sex, chaos,” he said, firm and unyielding as he slipped a hand between us and thumbed my clit. “And you fucking know it.”

My pussy clenched around him, my body tightening at his touch, already knowing where he was taking me. Ready to follow him anywhere.

“You think I touch anyone else like this?” His voice was just a low growl against my ear, his hips grinding into me like it was the only thing keeping him sane. “You think I want to?”

“Xander,” I breathed because I didn’t know what else to say. There was no realm of reality where I could tell him it was the same for me. That I felt it too.

Because while he confessed all these wild, broken claims of me, he always said them while he was buried deep inside me, half gone to the pleasure.

But in the real world? In our real lives where shitty little boys said mean things to our girl and we’d both sworn this was only temporary? He’d been silent.

“I can’t fucking breathe when you’re not near me.

” He dragged his mouth down the column of my neck, his tongue tracing the tattoo below my collarbone, then sucking the skin hard enough to brand me.

“And when you are? I want you just like this. Spread out and begging. That cunt dripping for me. Because that’s the only time it feels even close to enough. ”

He shifted his hips, pulling nearly all the way out before slamming into me again, deep and deliberate.

Punishing. “This pussy? Mine. All your little fuck-me sounds when I tongue that cunt or sink deep inside? Mine. That look in your eyes when you come so hard you forget your own fucking name? That’s all mine , Chloe. ”

His words shouldn’t have made my body come alive. Not with how he growled them in my ear, not with the possession laced into every syllable. And sure as hell not when I knew it could never be true.

“Say it.” He squeezed my throat, a reminder of exactly what I’d asked for.

“It’s yours. I’m yours,” I breathed, unable to stop the words. Not even trying to.

What was the point? Why bother when he had me spread out like this, wrecked and ravaged and, yes, completely, utterly his .

“That’s what I fucking thought. Every inch of you, isn’t that right? Try to tell me again,” he demanded, his thumb a relentless force against my clit, his other hand gripping my throat, forcing me to look at him. “Tell me it’s just sex.”

I shook my head, fighting against…everything. Falling apart in his arms and coming undone and admitting what we both already knew.

“You think I can’t tell when you’re close?

” he asked, gripping my face and making me look up at him.

He slammed his hips against mine, his cock hitting that spot inside me that had me seconds from coming all over him, and he fucking knew it.

“You think I can’t read your body and give her exactly what she needs? ”

As if to prove his point, he pressed down hard on my clit and bent to take my nipple in his mouth, tugging it with his teeth until I shattered beneath him, his name the only thing spilling from my lips.

“ Fuck . You think you can come on my cock like you fucking own it and pretend this isn’t real?” He pressed his forehead against mine and sank deep, filling me to the brim as my release still echoed around him. “Lie better, baby.”

I tried. I tried so fucking hard, but no matter what I did, my body told the truth with every aftershock that rocked through me, every fluttering pulse around his cock.

“You think this is just fucking?” He drove into me again. Deep. Hard. Like he wanted to sink inside and never leave. “I don’t fucking believe you. Not when you come like your whole body’s begging me to stay. Not when every inch of this pussy feels like mine .”

I couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t do anything but get lost in the pleasure he was wringing from my body, already sending me straight for another climax.

“Say it again.” He slid his hand up my throat to cup my jaw, his thumb brushing against the corner of my mouth. Tender now, even while his hips pistoned against me, his cock a relentless force thrusting inside. “Say you’re mine. Or are you gonna try to lie to me one more time?”

I arched beneath him, my body clenching tight around his shaft, so close to falling, and breathed the only words that mattered. The words I wished fiercely were true. “I’m yours.”

He groaned, long and low as he brought his mouth to mine, our lips touching, breath shared between us. “That’s right. You’ve been mine since the second you stumbled out of that fucking shed. And you’ll be mine even when you leave, won’t you?”

Sobbing out a moan, I closed my eyes against the tears I couldn’t stop, and I kissed him. Desperately. Reverently. Drowning out everything else but the feel of him against me, inside me, his heart beating wildly against my own.

Like they were both trying to rewrite this ending.

Maybe that was why I clung to him harder. Why I rocked my hips up to meet each one of his brutal thrusts, needing to lose myself to him again. Needing him to lose himself in me.

Needing him to need me, period.

“There’s my dirty girl,” he said against my ear, his voice a low rumble as he worked his thumb faster against my clit. “Let me feel that greedy cunt take what she needs. Come on my cock and show me who you belong to.”

I couldn’t hold back even a second more, my body bowing off the bed as I shattered around him, legs shaking, hands trembling, heart breaking.

Because I knew.

Even as he settled deep, burying his groan into my neck, his cock pulsing inside me, I knew. I felt it in my bones. Felt it all the way down to my soul.

I’d gone and done the one thing I swore I never would.

I’d fallen in love.

Me—the girl who never stayed. The girl no one ever asked to stay.

And now, I wasn’t sure I’d survive what came next.