Chapter 6
CALI DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS WORSE: the fact she’d taken the necklace and hid it in her purse, waiting for Xavier to notice it wasn’t on her neck or that she was willing to use sex to deflect any real conversation.
She hiked her dress over her hips, exposing her tiny thong as she grinded against his erection. Her hands palmed his face while her tongue went on a mission to taste every crevice in his mouth. His fingers dug into bare flesh, slowing her desperate movements.
The limo driver navigated the city streets, turning randomly as Xavier told him to go anywhere. To drive until he was told to take them home.
She didn’t even care that the driver knew they were fucking in the back seat. She figured it happened enough times that the knowledge no longer affected the driver.
Kissing her way down Xavier’s chest as she unfastened each button, she tried to push the events of the evening from her mind.
Except one thing stuck out.
Sadie, the FBI agent, said that the Feds were actively investigating unethical business practices of certain businesses owned and operated by the Costello’s. The current contract her parents had signed with Thompson and his loan company made him a partner. God only knew what he might be running through the restaurant.
“Cali,” Xavier whispered, gently lifting her off his lap, smoothing her dress down over her thighs. “I’d like nothing more than to bury myself inside you, but your mind is somewhere else right now.”
“What are you talking about?” She reached for him, but he curled his fingers around her wrists, resting their hands on his thighs.
“You tell me,” he said, his tone neither accusatory nor angry, but it had a certain edge that made her squirm.
“I’m right here with you.”
He traced a path up her arm with his finger, tickling her skin. “When we’re together, I want you to be only thinking about your personal pleasure, or mine. Just now, I could tell, your mind was on something else; it wasn’t anything related to taking me in that hot mouth of yours.”
Every cell in her body exploded at the thought of feeling his thick shaft in her soft hands while her tongue glided over the tip. She smiled as she slid to the floor of the limo, positioning herself between his legs, hands splayed over his muscular thighs. “I have only one thing on my mind.” Slowly, she unbuttoned his slacks and lowered the zipper, pressing her palm over him. “And that’s how quickly I can either make you flip me on my back, ramming yourself into me, or lose total control and release into my mouth.”
He groaned, tossing his head back as she greedily took him in, letting her teeth scrape against his sensitive skin.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered as she massaged him while her lips eased up and down his hard shaft, tongue swirling around the head, focused only on him. Nothing she did would make the reality of what would happen when he found out what she’d been doing change. But for now, she’d lose herself in their love making. With every grunt or hiss, she repeated the motions harder and faster. She needed him in ways she couldn’t understand.
He tugged her hair. “That’s enough,” he commanded, his chest heaving up and down with his labored breath, his eyelids closing over half his emerald orbs.
She smiled, still caressing him with her hands. “What are you thinking?”
“Are you sure you want me to say that out loud?”
“I am,” she whispered.
“Sit across from me,” he murmured in a sexy drawl laced with need.
It wasn’t the response she anticipated, but she hiked up her dress, taking off her thong as she sat in the leather seat, spreading her legs, exposing her freshly waxed womanhood.
He growled as he practically leapt across the limo, his fingers diving inside her as he took her mouth, probing deep, his tongue matching his strokes.
Clenching around his fingers, she bit down on her lower lip as an intense orgasm built in the tip of her toes, catapulting to the tips of his fingers. She slammed her fists on his hard chest.
“Oh my God.” She grabbed his wrist, halting his movement as her body jerked, her climax shocking her system with one wave of passion after another. Before she could catch her breath, he’d covered himself with protection and was inside her, stroking her slowly, lovingly, as more heat trickled over her pores.
“Xavier,” she said with a throaty pant.
His lips brushed the skin under her earlobe. “Cali,” he whispered. “You’re stealing my heart.”
Her breath hitched. The words didn’t necessarily mean he was falling in love with her.
She, on the other hand, had fallen so hard, it must have knocked her senseless because it had only been in this moment that she knew without a doubt, she loved Xavier.
And she was going to betray him.
Closing her eyes tight, she held back the tears that threatened to expose her for what she really was. She rocked her hips in unison with his, concentrating on every tender stroke. A bittersweet moment that would forever be ingrained in her brain as the best time in her life.
And the worst.
As his body stiffened, on the verge of release, a mini wave of gratification made her tremble from the inside out. Their climaxes tumbled and twisted together like the thrill of a roller-coaster ride. Just as she thought it was about to subside, her body gave way to another freefall.
“I love you,” he whispered so softly she wondered if she’d heard him correctly.
“I love you too.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. How could she have said those words out loud? How could she hurt someone she cared for so deeply with the kind of lies and infidelity that could cut a wound so deep, he’d bleed out?
For a long moment, they held each other, kissing and petting each other like old lovers would. An awkward silence took over the limo as they both adjusted their clothing. Maybe he had just said he loved her in the heat of the moment.
She shouldn’t have been so willing to freely give herself to him.
He pressed a button on the panel behind the window separating them from the driver. “You can take us home now.”
“Doesn’t look like we’re too far,” she said, looking out the window.
“Your necklace, it’s missing,” he said, pointing at her cleavage.
She glanced down, sucking in a deep breath, trying to hide her shame. “Oh, no. It must have come off while we were…were…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words making love, and sex just didn’t cover it. She glided her fingers in the seats and looked on the floor, lifting the floor mats. Her heart hammered against her chest so fast she thought she might pass out. “It has to be here somewhere,” she managed, knowing the exact location of the piece of jewelry.
“Don’t worry about it. They will find it when they clean the limo.” He looped his arm over her shoulders, kissing her cheek. “Do we need to talk about what we said to each other?”
For a brief second, it felt as though her heart stopped.
Lucky for her, the limo driver’s voice came over the speaker, letting them know he was about to pull up in front of Xavier’s building.
She took his hand and followed him into the lobby and elevator, neither saying a word. Her fingers trembled as she held her purse a little too tightly.
Once inside the spacious, top-floor, loft apartment, Xavier took her purse from her hands.
“I have some make-up in there I want to put away,” she said, mortified as he flipped it open, pulling out her wallet. “What are you doing?”
“I have a couple of questions for you.” He pulled out the receipt the woman at the secondhand store had given her for the dresses. Reaching in her purse once again, he held up her necklace. “I could almost understand selling the dresses, considering I know you don’t have a lot of money and are saving for law school, but what I don’t get is why would you lie about losing this? Did you plan on selling it too?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Think. Think. Think.
But her mind went blank. Not even a bad lie popped into her brain.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she muttered, collapsing onto the sofa, covering her eyes with her forearm.
“Try me,” he said.
She heard his feet shuffle across the room, but she didn’t bother to glance up to find out where he went. Didn’t matter.
“And while you’re at it, explain to me how you know Thompson.”
She laughed. A horrible response, but it was more of a sarcastic laugh anyway. “You fuck my brains out, knowing I sold the dress, and stole the necklace—”
“I never said you stole the necklace, and you started it in the limo.” His tone had turned cold and harsh.
“Whatever.” She didn’t have time for his childish game of who started what. She had only one option. Tell him the truth. Either he’d buy her out of the agreement, and she’d be a few thousand short, or they’d continue with the companionship, and she’d make it work.
The latter seemed like a miserable way to go now.
“I need two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to pay off Thompson.” She sat up, smoothing down her dress and stared at Xavier, who stood with his back toward her, his hands on his hips.
“Pay him off for what?”
“He took advantage of my parents, getting them to sign a legal, but questionable contract ethically, and now if I don’t get him the money, they will force my parents to turn over their restaurant.”
“A legal shakedown, go figure,” he said, shaking his head. “How much do you have to date?”
“About sixty-five thousand.”
“Is that every penny you have?”
“Yes,” she admitted, letting out a sigh of relief. While she knew she’d lost Xavier for good, it felt good to unburden herself.
He turned. His green orbs speckled with blue highlights and filled with hurt. “Did you mean what you said in the limo? Do you love me back?”
“I responded to what you said first.”
“Doesn’t answer my question,” he said behind a tight jaw.
It felt like she was damned if she loved him and damned if she didn’t. “Based on the way you’re looking at me now, my answer wouldn’t matter because you can’t stand me.”
“I’m pissed at you, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve managed to let myself fall madly in love with you.” There was no denying the anger dripping from his words, but a trickle of devotion intertwined in his tone.
“Even though I haven’t been upfront with you?”
“That’s why I’m pissed, but I can understand why. The Costello’s and their employees can be dangerous people and difficult to deal with. You’re doing what you have to in order to protect your family. I can respect that.” He let out a long breath, easing his stance. “But I need to know if I’m going to have to get over you, or find a way to move past the lies and start fresh.”
No point in lying now. “I love you,” she said with a shaky voice. “I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to hurt you, but I couldn’t stop it.”
“I’ll call my parents first thing in the morning and see if we can borrow the money from them.”
“What?” She blinked. “Why?” What did his parents have to do with any of this, and why did she get the feeling he wasn’t telling her something important?
As important as why she’d signed the agreement in the first place.
“I don’t have that kind of money. I’ve only received one payment from my book deal, and it’s not that much. I have maybe a hundred in my savings, but most of it is in stocks and bonds.”
“Wait. You’re supposed to be rich.” She snapped her mouth shut. That hadn’t come out right.
“Well, I’m not. My father is, but when I graduated college, the money train left the building.”
“This loft? The limos? Cars? What is all that then?”
“Everything but the loft my father let me borrow.”
She stood, inching closer. A combination of fear and rage prickled her skin. “Why?”
“You used me and the agreement with the sole purpose of getting money to pay off Thompson. You weren’t looking for companionship. Neither was I.”
“What were you looking for?”
“A story about the Costello’s, and I thought you might be working for them.”
“Asshole,” she muttered, knowing she had no right to be angry, but the mere idea she would be in cahoots with the mafia made her stomach churn. “You picked me because you knew about my—”
“I didn’t know anything other than seeing you in a picture with Thompson and him being a partner in your parent’s business. I picked you because of that, yes. I became a client of Infidelity because I’m trying to find out how they use the corporation for their operations, and you seemed like the best way to get that information.”
“Well, you were wrong.”
He had the audacity to smile. “I was wrong about you, but not wrong in picking you and not just because I love you.” He yanked her to his chest.
She slammed her fist down, trying to push him away, but he held her tighter.
“The story isn’t the Costello’s and Infidelity. It’s all the other small business owners they are putting out of business to run their money laundering, or drugs, or whatever else through, and you and I are going to expose it.”