Page 40 of Here Comes Trouble
Yes, sleep now.
There would be time for decisions in the morning.
* * *
Xander paced around his bedroom, weirdly adrenalised from the effort of walking away from Jess when all he’d wanted to do was bury himself inside her and stay there all night.
To lose himself in her.
Giving his face a vigorous rub to get the blood flowing, he stared at his eyes in the mirror and tried to pull himself together.
He’d never done that before. Put someone else’s needs before his own and he was amazed by just how fantastic it felt. He was making a positive difference to her life, helping her find something she’d been missing for too long, and the thought of it warmed him.
Xander Heaton, Sex Therapist. Who’d have thought it possible?
It had been hell on earth to walk away, but he was glad he’d done it. He could see they needed to take things slowly so she could keep some vestige of control. Judging by the way she’d closed herself up again afterwards, she evidently needed space away from him now.
So did he, if he was honest.
He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why he felt so unsettled by what had just happened between them, but it unnerved him something crazy.
Perhaps it was because he liked her so much. The lovers he’d had in the past had been very sexy, engaging women, but he’d never enjoyed being with them the way he enjoyed being around Jess. There were so many layers to her that he got the feeling he might never get to the heart of who she was.
She fascinated him.
And he was having fun. He seemed able to push away the anxiety that had plagued him for the last year when she was around – and he needed that right now. It would be good for him to have her company here while he worked on his new paintings.
He just needed to find a way to persuade her to stay.
7
Jess slept badly, despite her exhaustion, trying like mad to put the thought of what had happened with Xander out of her mind until the morning.
She failed spectacularly, of course. He was all she could think about.
He’d made her feel like the most important, fascinating, sexy woman on earth for those few short hours and she knew she wanted that feeling back, so desperately. She could almost taste the tang of need like a physical reaction in her taste buds.
The fact he’d seemed to genuinely find her a turn-on had helped something begin to shift in her head. It wasn’t as though she suddenly felt like throwing off all her clothes and running around in the nude, but his gentle attentions and the stream of compliments had made her start to think about her body in a different way.
Rolling out of bed, she walked over to the cheval mirror in the corner and stood naked in front of it. For the first time in a very long time, she looked at herself – really looked – studying the places he’d mentioned he liked so much, running her fingers over the dips and swells of her figure and tracing the lines of the muscles that delineated her body.
She was surprised by how different she felt this morning, after finally allowing herself to release the brakes on her self-control and discovering that the earth hadn’t crashed in around her ears. It was as if she’d uncovered something new and secret and hidden about herself, after all these years.
Something that Xander had seen all along.
After showering, she dressed quickly, her body humming with a strange excitement.
She needed to see Xander, if for no other reason than to prove to herself he was real, and she hadn’t just dreamt it all.
He was in his studio, stripped to the waist and engrossed in what he was painting on a large canvas. There was a dark smudge of paint on his left cheek, as if he’d absentmindedly swiped at his face with dirty hands like a child would.
There was something so pure and human about that, something that made her chest contract with acute sadness for him. He was alone in the world and carrying around such a heavy load of pain and anger it made her want to cry. No wonder he couldn’t settle down if he’d never known what it felt like to be loved. She so desperately wanted to show him how it could feel, but she was terrified she wasn’t strong enough or bright enough or alive enough to get through to him.
Was she brave enough to at least give it a try?
She still hadn’t figured out what she was going to write about him for the magazine. That really ought to be her top priority, not working out how to get him back into her bed, but she couldn’t think about that right now, not when Xander was standing in front of her looking like all her best birthdays rolled into one.
Her heart raged in her chest as she realised this was her opportunity to ask for what she really wanted. To make love to him. Feel him move inside her. Breathe in the clean scent of his skin and slide against him, over and over again until they were breathless. Something she’d been aching for all night.
