“It was like you said.” He leans back against the stacks and lets out a shaky breath. “All their questions were things I’d anticipated. No curveballs, or at least nothing I wasn’t prepared to handle.”
“I hate to say it, but . . .”
“You absolutely do not hate to say it, but I’m gonna allow it because I’m too fucking relieved to care.”
“I told you so!” she says with a cackle, but she can’t enjoy it as much as she’d like, not with Miranda’s parting salvo still ringing in her ears.
“God, I’m so keyed up,” Xavier says, pulling her attention back to the moment. “I feel like I could run a marathon or, I don’t know, at least hike Runyon at magic hour.”
“I feel like that might be the harder one,” she says with a laugh, but it fades as he stares at her from across the narrow space between the bookshelves. It’s completely still and the moment settles between them, suddenly heady and tense. He looks away, but only from her eyes, as his gaze slides over the curves of her body with such precision, she feels her cheeks heat up and a burgeoning fire spark in her belly.
Her throat is dry and her tongue darts out to wet her lips and in the absolute quiet of the library, it’s easy to hear the soft rumbling groan that pushes up from his chest as he watches her.
He lifts one brow to her in a silent question and she wants to roll her eyes at herself because she knows what her answer is, even though she’s the one that drew the line between them after that kiss . . . that one absolute wrecking ball of a kiss that she hasn’t been able to wipe from her mind, no matter how hard she tries. Every night it invades her dreams, the slow sweep of his tongue against hers, the way his hands mapped out every dip and rise of her body, how he took that legendary focus of his, the same intensity that she’s admired in his work, and centered it all on her. She was the one to put on the brakes and now . . . now she’s . . . very clearly ready to toss that aside and for what?
To help him burn off the excess adrenaline from his defense?
Actually, no, she doesn’t care.
She doesn’t even care that Miranda was very, very right.
She’s been on edge since that kiss and she can’t think of anything else that will sate that particular urge. And she’d tried. Her own hands were inadequate, too small and soft, and her stupid vibrator too intense and unnatural in all its silicone glory to recreate the slow burning sensation he’d built in her with just the press of his mouth to hers and the touch of his hands over her clothes.
If this is how he wants to celebrate, who the hell is she to stop him, especially since it’s what she wants too.
Answering his unasked question with a slow smirk, she doesn’t waste another second, launching herself across the empty space between them, up into his arms. He catches her beneath her thighs as she wraps her legs around him.
She wishes she could pretend it’s just instinct, that she didn’t think about it before she took that leap, but that’s definitely not the case when she pulls back, just a few inches, and covers his mouth with hers in a bruising kiss. He stumbles back against the sturdy bookshelf and slides a hand up to the back of her head, taking control.
Groaning into his mouth, she nips at his bottom lip, giving it a gentle tug as his hands slide up her thighs and over her ass.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to do this again?” he growls out.
“Changed my mind.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
“I am very, very sure.”
“Academic success is a turn-on for you?” he rasps as he trails kisses down the column of her throat.
“Are you surprised?”
He only answers by sucking even harder at the spot just under her jaw, making her jolt against him. He nudges her backward with his hips and she lets him lead her until her back is pressed into the shelf behind her. He lifts her onto the edge of one, knocking a few cases of wound-up film to the floor, but she can’t bring herself to care. Wrapping her legs around his hips, she tugs him in, with her heels at the small of his back, and revels in the feel of him rutting up against her.
“Seems like it’s a turn-on for you too,” she says, rolling her hips against his, pulling a rumbling moan from his throat. And suddenly that line they discarded just a few seconds ago speeds ahead of them, completely out of sight.
“You’rea turn-on for me,” he mumbles. “So fucking sweet.”
“Please,” she begs, as his warm hand spans her rib cage, up and under her breast, and she arches into his touch.
“You want this, really?” he asks. “You just gotta tell me. Need to hear the words.”
“Touch me, please, Xavier.”
“Alright, don’t gotta beg,” he says, his thumb brushing over her, sending a bolt of lightning through her veins from the pads of his fingers down to her toes and back up again, settling low in her belly.
Leaning forward, she runs her tongue along the shell of his ear and then punishes him a little bit for that.
