Page 28 of No Strings

But then there was the thorny problem of Mr. X. Was he married? At least thirty percent of Helena’s readers thought so, if the comments on the post were any indication. Keep moving, honey. He’s married, wrote one. Or, Available men don’t disappear like that. He probably has a wife and kids in the ’burbs, wrote another. One woman had simply written TOXIC BACHELOR in the comments section and another wrote escaped felon? And he might be all these things. Or none of them.

Yet, deep inside, Emma just felt he wasn’t. He was a man who’d been hurt by love, betrayed by the one woman tasked with loving him above all others, and this was his way of dealing with it. She took what he said at face value. She knew she might not be able to change him, and probably couldn’t. He’d flat-out told her he wasn’t able to have a real relationship. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that they belonged together. How many couples fit together so well? The sex wasn’t just sex. At least not to her.

She might not be able to change him, she figured, but she just wanted to know him better. That’s all.

She glanced around the near empty coffeehouse and sighed. This was a bust. An absolute bust. What a waste of time! Emma let out a long sigh as she gathered up her things, her flowered peasant top sliding down, revealing one bare shoulder. She wore a flouncy skirt and sandals, knowing that the warmth of this rare mild autumn afternoon would soon be traded for the chill of October. The summer seemed to be having one last hooray in September, but she knew the cold winds off Lake Michigan would arrive soon and they’d all settle in to coats and gloves for the rest of the season. She stood, about to leave, when a dark shadow fell over her table.

She glanced up to see Mr. X, wearing a simple dark T-shirt and cargo shorts. The T-shirt left nothing about his muscular chest to the imagination, and as she pulled her gaze away from his impressive muscles, she locked eyes with the man she’d been searching for for days.

“Xavier,” she breathed, her heart thudding in her chest. “Where did you come from?”

“The door,” he said smoothly and grinned. “Am I late?”

“Yes...er, n-no. Sit.” Emma slumped back in her chair, feeling part shocked and part giddy. He’d come. She’d called on him and he’d come. “You...saw my story.”

Xavier gave a single head nod, his golden hazel eyes never leaving hers as he slipped gracefully into the seat, all lean muscle, all stealth. “I especially enjoyed the part about...our kiss, but we did more than that.”

“I—it had to be PG,” she explained. How else to talk about how Helena wasn’t the kind of magazine that published explicit sex.

“I liked our x-rated parts the best.” Xavier flashed white teeth beneath his tanned face. The man was gorgeous, a dark-haired god. Emma forgot how much she felt the charismatic pull to him, and realized that she hadn’t been crazy about letting this man do what he would with her—the electricity, the connection between them, couldn’t be denied.

Xavier leaned forward. “Maybe we ought to retreat to the bathroom?” He let the offer hang there, and Emma’s mind went straight back to the Ritz-Carlton, where he’d taken her, panting, inside the stall. She’d never done anything like that her whole life, yet as soon as he mentioned it, her whole body tingled in anticipation. Then she remembered—The Brew didn’t have bathrooms.

“No bathrooms here,” she said, of the tiny little coffeehouse with only a couple of tables. The counter took up one whole wall of the establishment, and then windows and the door were on the opposite. The bathroom, if there was one, was for employees only.

“That’s a shame.” Xavier’s hand snaked out under the table and rested on her knee, and she could feel the heat and the heaviness of his hand through the thin fabric. He then moved his hand beneath her skirt, his hand touching the bare skin of her inner thigh. She sucked in a breath. Here, in the middle of a public shop, he had his hand up her skirt. He stroked her inner thigh, inching ever higher. Emma’s heart beat harder as Xavier’s index finger reached the fabric of her panties. He gently laid pressure through the thin fabric, a temptation, a promise.

Emma had never wished for a bathroom so much in her life. She could feel her insides turning to warm mush, her arousal growing as his finger gently probed her through the fabric, which, she thought, had to be drenched. A patron came in through the front door then and Xavier withdrew his hand, and Emma felt its cold absence. Now her body was abuzz with a million wants, and the man who could fulfill them leaned back in his chair across the table and took a sip of coffee, calm as ever.

---