Page 113 of Crossing the Line
Waverly leaned forward and took a big gulp of her soda. “I can’t remember. I don’t know if I ever have,” she confessed. “My parents always had a chef, and if we were going out, it was to a cocktail party or Nobu to be seen.”
“You poor deprived child,” Xavier teased, taking her hand in his.
“I feel like this is a date,” she told him, looking at their linked hands.
“When’s the last time you went out on one of those?” he asked.
She thought back. “Probably three or four months ago. He was a baseball player, and his agent called mine. His contract was up for negotiation at the time. He picked me up in a McLaren, and we went to Spago.”
Xavier stared at her for a beat.
A waitress in a flour coated black polo and green apron dumped steaming pizza on paper plates in front of them and bustled off.
“I’m afraid to ask how it went,” Xavier said dryly.
“His contract was successfully renegotiated, and he didn’t make it past my front door,” Waverly said, picking up a slice from her plate. “How about you?”
“Two months ago… maybe three. An attorney I met at a conference. She called me at the office when she was back in town and asked me to dinner.”
“You didn’t fall in love over candlelight?” Waverly asked.
“She told me the never-ending saga of her last divorce over mediocre Italian. I gave her some solid advice that she didn’t like, and we didn’t even order coffee.”
“I’m not sure which of our stories is sadder,” she commented.
“Mine didn’t involve a McLaren.”
“You’re right. Yours was sadder.”
They ate and laughed until the kitchen closed and the waitress booted them out. They took gelati to go, and tucked under Xavier’s protective arm, Waverly enjoyed the late night quiet of Rome.
They wandered a circuitous route heading back in the direction of the hotel with neither of them in a hurry to arrive. The cobblestones beneath their feet were worn by centuries of feet. Here, ancient buildings were glued together on narrow laneways, rolling uphill and down. Bouquets of flowers spilled over window boxes on every floor. Most windows were dark now in this neighborhood. It felt like they had the world to themselves.
Waverly knew what neither of them was willing to say. This relationship that had bloomed between them was possible only because of the bubble they were enjoying. Temporarily safe from Ganim, on the other side of the world from her parents, and not chained to a movie set, Waverly and Xavier could just be. It was easy to fool a handful of studio execs who were more concerned about profits than personal relationships. But once at home, there would be others to consider and consequences to weigh.
This night might be the last one they could share.
He brought her to a halt and brought his finger to his lips. With a furtive glance around them, Xavier reached into a window box and nipped a freesia bloom from its stem. He tucked it into Waverly’s hair behind her ear.
Charmed, she wrapped her arms around his waist and smiled up at him. There was a look in his eyes, a softening, a warmth. He ran a thumb over her lower lip, then skimmed his hands through her hair. And when his mouth lowered to hers, it was magic. Softly, softly his lips moved over her, teasing her until she opened for him. His tongue swept in to claim new territory, mating with hers in the kind of gentle possession she’d never before known from him.
He kissed her under the inky night sky until she forgot everything. Nothing else existed beyond this postage stamp of cobblestones. Just Xavier offering her the gift of one more magical night.
As gentle as he was being, she still felt fierce need ripple through him. He was hard against her. She felt him straining against the denim and it made her ache. She broke free of the kiss, and when he moved to pull her back, Waverly shook her head.
She took his hand and pulled him into the skinny, arched alleyway carved out between two buildings. Three feet into it, the light from the street disappeared leaving them completely isolated in the dark.
When her fingers moved to the fly of his jeans, Xavier stiffened.
“Waverly, what are you doing?” his voice carried a warning.
She brought her mouth to his as she lowered the zipper. “What I want on our last night here,” she whispered.
She felt his glorious abs tense when her fingers slipped inside, heard his intake of breath when they closed around him. Carefully, Waverly freed him from his jeans, and he fell heavily into her waiting palm. She realized she’d never seen him not hard. Their physical reaction to each other was so visceral and, it seemed, never-ending. Just as her desire to do this.
She sank down to kneel on the stone path in front of him.
“Angel.” Any further words died on his lips when her tongue darted out to steal a taste of him.
