Page 44 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)

Tristan

The inn blue and yellow colors come into view, a modest place near the inlet. Brandon’s rental car is in the parking lot. I pull up beside it and kill the engine.

Brandon jogs over from the lobby before we get out. I climb out of the driver’s seat. “How did it go?”

He scratches his head. “Well, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I took the scenic route, stopped for gas twice, made myself as visible as possible, but…”

“What? Spit it out. I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Nothing. Nobody followed me. It’s like those MC guys just...didn’t care.”

I frown. That doesn’t make sense. If they don’t care, why did they try to scare Birdie? Why was she so terrified that she wouldn’t stay in the city a second longer? One-percenter clubs don’t just let go of a grudge.

Birdie gets out of the car. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, ma’am. The bike is secure and so are the rooms,” Brandon continues, and then he whispers to me, “top floor, suite covered by the security cameras from all angles. I’ve already swept for devices.”

“Good work.” I grab our bags from the trunk. “Get some rest. Tomorrow is gonna be a long day.”

Brandon nods, helps with the luggage and heads back inside.

Birdie and I follow in silence. There’s no elevator, so we take the stairs.

It’s only two floors, but the stair flights seem to stretch endlessly.

Birdie’s perfume clings to the air—sharp yet threaded with something sweet. I can’t breathe without tasting her.

I keep my eyes forward, jaw locked, but every nerve in me strains toward her. My mind loops with one poisonous thought: she’s let the detective too close. She’s let him get to her head, touch pieces of her that should have been mine all along.

I should shove her against the wall and take her right here, lay her on these stairs and brand her with my cock so deep she’ll never again think of herself with anyone else.

Instead, I dig my nails into the suitcase handle, veins standing out on my hand. I storm into the hallway, checking the security protocol on the go. Brandon points to our units. A two-bedroom suite and an adjacent room.

“Cozy,” Birdie mocks.

“Sorry, it’s not the Four Seasons.” I shove the room key too hard to open the door. “They don’t have connected rooms here, but it’s the best place to keep a low profile. Daytona Beach would have been too obvious.”

Once I’m in, I let go of the bags. They hit the carpet with a dull thud. I check every entry and exit point in the suite. “All clear. You can come in.”

She takes in the interior of the living area.

Sand-toned walls with white trim, echoing the beach just outside.

A plush loveseat in muted linen with nautical throw pillows.

Driftwood weathered coffee table, with a bowl of shells and local guidebooks.

Sliding glass doors open to a small patio, letting in salt air and moonlight.

“The bedrooms are this way,” I tell her. Then I nod at Brandon to leave. “Choose yours, I’ll take the other. Brandon will be in the next room.”

I walk behind him. I can’t stand to look at her, not another second. I’ll lose my fucking mind if I do.

Abruptly, just as Brandon steps out, Birdie slides in front of me, presses her back on the door and locks it.

I force my gaze back on her. “What are you doing?”

Her chin tips up, and she slowly takes off her shades. Her eyes…her eyes are molten, reckless, a wildfire set loose just for me.

The pulse in my throat hammers so hard it might crack a bone. “What the hell are you doing, Birdie?” My voice is more growl than words, ruined. That’s all it takes. One look in her eyes, and I’m ruined.

Her lips part, letting out a painstakingly slow exhale. “Is it not obvious?”

The way she says it—soft, sultry, threaded with defiance—goes straight to my cock. My hands curl into fists at my sides, fighting the urge to rip her words out of her throat. “Don’t you dare. I’m not your rebound or a one night stand distraction.”

“I agree. Those require a…far less complicated man.”

My body steps into the heat crackling between us. Her breasts thrust up as she takes in another breath, grazing me. My palms slam flat against the wood beside her head. “Fuck you, Birdie.”

“That’s precisely the point.”

I groan. “ Me estás rompiendo la voluntad. No puedo más, te juro que me voy a perder en vos. ”

She bites her lip. “I love it when you speak in Spanish.”

My hips press into hers until she gasps and there’s no room left for guessing how hard I am for her.

I hover a breath away, yet enough to taste the cherry sweetness of her lipstick.

“If this is about our deal, tell me now, because I don’t want it.

I don’t want you out of obligation to square some promise—”

“I know. You want me to beg. I won’t, but I’d do this.” Willingly, she lifts her wrists, crossing them above her head. A sinful offering of her body. A complete surrender.

The moment I’ve been waiting for since I laid eyes on her.

“Here,” she rasps, “does this look like obligation to you?”

“Fuck it.” I seize her mouth, hungry and savage, passion and punishment—except she meets me with equal fury, pulling me deeper, grinding against me like she’s been starving for this, too.

I can’t process that this is actually happening. That she’s here, touching me, wanting this, me.

The world stops.

I’ve read that line countless times and laughed at the poetic way people write about first kisses in those saccharine novels, but it’s true. When her lips touch mine, it’s like someone has pressed pause on reality itself.

My hands shake as I frame her face, and I hate that she can feel it. I’ve killed men with these hands. I’ve broken bones and ended lives without a tremor, but right now, with her mouth moving against mine, I’m coming apart.

Eight years, no, twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years of waiting, of watching, of wanting her with a hunger that has eaten me alive from the inside out. Twenty-seven years of suffering with every other touch, every other offer, because they weren’t hers. Because no one else mattered.

She tastes like the nights I carved her name into my mind just to feel something real, like the ache of yearning years, and yet better than every fantasy I’ve tortured myself with, better than the dreams that have haunted me.

But it’s what lies underneath that undoes me: the unmistakable taste of her skin, her pulse, her essence. It’s memory, obsession and relief colliding in my mouth.

My tongue slides against hers, clumsy and desperate. Christ, I’ve read her every book, memorized every scene like a bible, but nothing prepared me for this. Nothing prepared me for the way she melts against me, the small sound she makes in the back of her throat that throbs in my cock.

Reflexively, my hands glide down to her throat.

The darkness in me roars to life, demanding more, always more.

I feel it in my spine, in my fists, in the part of me I keep locked away.

I want to consume her. To make her forget every man who has ever touched her.

To ruin her. To mark her so thoroughly that no one will ever question who she belongs to. Forever altered. Mine.

No. Don’t rush it. This is the moment you’ve been living for.

For once, I listen. She’s precious. She’s perfect. She’s mine, finally mine.

When she pulls back for breath, I follow her, needing to capture her mouth again because the absence of her touch feels like death. Her eyes are wide, pupils dilated, and there’s something in her expression that bubbles my chest with possessive satisfaction.

She’s looking at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. Maybe she is. Maybe she finally understands what she means to me, what she’s always meant. The lengths I’ve gone to for her. The things I’d do in her name.

My thumb traces across her bottom lip, swollen from our kiss. She’s real. I tell myself again and again. She’s here. She’s mine.

And this is only the beginning. “This should have been our first kiss.”

“Seriously,” her eyes droop, her voice husky, “you choose now to bring up my transgression.”

“What?” My heart sinks to my ass. “No, no! That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you m—”

I swallow her words with another kiss. Her protest drowns in my mouth. Then she arches against me, moaning, her body writhing, begging for more. I break from her lips only to trail down her jaw, my teeth scraping the delicate skin of her throat.

“Jesus, where did you learn to kiss like that?” She gasps, tilting her head against the door, offering herself like she knows I’ll bite, like she wants me to bite.

“I’ve never…” I stop myself from talking but not from marking her neck.

She doesn’t need to know about how I’ve structured my entire existence around this single possibility.

She doesn’t need to know that I’ve imagined this kiss a thousand different ways, that it’s played on repeat in my head during countless dark nights.

My fingers tangle in her hair as I glance up at her wrists.

Pictures flash in my head. A hundred different ways Birdie is tied to my bed.

Birdie’s cuffed wrists while she’s on her knees and my cock fills her throat.

Birdie on a velvet-lined table, wrists bound with silk cords, movement is no longer hers to command, where I keep her exactly where I want her and finally take what I’ve starved myself of for years, above her a ceiling mirror where she can watch everything that I do to her body.

Bound and trembling under me, every inch of her branded.

Birdie’s body pinned, arms and legs spread wide…wings stilled… preserved… forever.