CUL-DE-SAC (On The Edge Book 1) (27 page)

CHAPTER 33

Catalina decided that the time spent on
observing Xan’s training was highly educational. At one point she forgot about
her camera and just stood there watching both men struggling with each other
and… themselves.

She couldn’t help but wonder what the
nature of Kelton’s ghosts was, but she was not going to ask about it. Like he
said, maybe one day he would tell her on his own.

Her conscience was lulled into a state of
satisfaction after taking dozens of pictures but she was far from being
satiated. She couldn’t wait to work on the photos even if most would go only to
her private collection.
“I liked Kelton; I liked all your friends so far,” Cat said when they left the
gym.
“They sure as hell liked you too and they don’t like many people in general. I
think I should be worried about them offing me just to take my place.” He
glanced at her when they took their seats in his car. “Should I worry?” His
hand landed on her thigh in an intimate gesture she begun to recognize and she
covered it with her own.
“Oh, I think you are fine.” She smiled when he leaned in to kiss her lips.
“I feel tempted to leave… a mark on you to warn others off.” Cat laughed
lightly but then Xan’s hot breath tickled her and he suckled a kiss to the base
of her neck.
“What’s up with all this territorial behavior?” She pushed him away.
“Beats me.” He shrugged and she just shook her head, deciding to change the
subject.
“What was it all about the breathing?” Cat wanted to know.
“Breathing is the most important part of fighting, the very first thing you
need to learn and never forget.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning… if you don’t breathe, you get winded. Breathing is the key, your
punches and kicks have no power without it.”
“Seems so obvious.”
“Yet it is easily forgotten time and time again,” he muttered.

No matter how simple that sounded, the
reality of learning it wasn’t as easy as one might expect.
“You make a great team–you don’t even need to talk in order to work together,”
she noticed.
“That is why we are planning to continue doing it and eventually upsizing it.”
“What does that mean?” She looked at him curiously.
“We are in the process of opening something akin to a martial arts school.” He
shrugged, wondering why he told her that when there was only a handful of people
privy to it.
“I think that’s great!” She smiled at him. “Tell me more,” Cat demanded.
“There is not much to tell; it is a pricey project and there are many steps we
need to do before we get a green light.”
“Can I help?”
“No!” He protested so violently she decided to let it go… for now.
“Okaaay… Where are we going?” She frowned when he passed the road leading to
her home.
“My place.” His short reply made her roll her eyes.
“Really Xan, thank you so much for your invitation. I would love to see your
apartment,” she offered in a sweet tone of voice and he laughed.
“I’m sorry, Kitten, my mind was elsewhere.” He took her hand in his and brought
it to his lips in an apology.
“When will you say yes to a session with me? And no, not
that
kind,” Cat
specified when Xan opened up his mouth to comment.
“Damn! And didn’t you just take hundreds of them today?”
“They were for fun and for me; I mean the real deal.”
“You know how I feel about that.”
“I bet Kelton would agree,” she said, oh-so-casually, but his head whipped to
the side and his green eyes flashed at her.
“Be careful or this sassy mouth of yours is going to cause you a lot of
trouble,” he warned.
“What kind?” Cat asked curiously, refusing to be intimidated by him.
“The kind that will leave you shaking and begging me to stop… but I won’t,” his
voice dropped an octave, instantly setting her blood on fire.
“Alex…”
“Catalina…”

“I am not so sure agreeing to see your apartment
was such a prime idea,” she muttered and he chuckled wickedly.
“Ah, but I didn’t ask you, same as I won’t ask you to take off your clothes
when we get there. I will simply strip you myself…” He promised, and her
stomach clenched.

Yet it wasn’t fear this time but arousal.
“Scared now?” He asked after a moment.
“No.” She swallowed nervously and he chuckled again.
“You are cute when you try to lie.”
“I thought you would be tired after the training,” she said a bit desperately.
“On the contrary, they usually give me an adrenaline kick.” He grinned at her.
“We are here,” he announced a moment later.

Cat saw they were on Wilshire Boulevard. No
view of the ocean from here, she thought, immediately remembering his words
from the previous night.
“Please come in,” he invited her when they exited elevator and stopped before
one of two doors on the floor.

Catalina laughed when he unlocked it,
shoved it open then took her hand and impatiently pulled her inside.

But the sound died down when his hot and
demanding mouth closed over hers and he shut the door by bracing her against
it. She gasped, surprised, and the heat he kindled between her thighs while
they were driving turned into inferno.

Unwittingly she rubbed herself against the
hard thrust of his jeans-covered erection and was rewarded by his body turning
even more rigid.
“Xan!” She exclaimed when his hands cupped her jaw and his next kiss became
wilder, deeper, an unvarnished promise of a sexual encounter with no holds
barred.
“Did you think I was joking?” He rasped, and between one instant and another, his
big hand was unsnapping her jeans and sliding into her panties to cup her
intimately.

Catalina’s breath grew choppy when his
strong fingers parted her flesh and slid home smoothly. He didn’t give her a
moment to make sense of what was happening but assaulted her already-stunned
senses further by setting a fast rhythm.
“Oh God!” She cried out, shocked both by the intensity of pleasure and the man
himself who was delivering it to her.

He chuckled and spread those wicked fingers,
twisting the hot coils of sensations until she was balancing between rapture and
pain.
“Xan, please,” Cat moaned, unable to take the final leap because his masterful
touch kept changing tempo, bringing her closer to the edge that beckoned, but
refusing to let her go.
“I told you I won’t stop.” His voice was as sinful as his skilful touch was.

One more stroke and he withdrew his fingers
as suddenly as he speared them through her softness before. She cried out in
protest this time, on the verge of cursing him and telling him to go to hell,
half-mad from unfulfilled desire.

But he was already unbuttoning her shirt
and pulling her jeans down her legs, making her toe off her shoes, leaving her
clad only in panties while he was still fully dressed. His head bent and he
kissed her without the bite of teeth this time but with no less heat than
before, still demanding more from her.

And she gave him more; she gave all that
she was because he didn’t leave her any other option than to accept all that he
was introducing to her with his expert touch.

She gripped his shoulders as he unzipped
the fly of his jeans and lifted her up by the thighs.

The thin material of her underwear snapped
after he gave it a strong yank.

He thrust into the snug, wet heat of her in
a single hard push, not taking his eyes off of her and they both shuddered when
her lips parted on a voiceless sob.

Xan felt her nails digging into the skin of
his back and he allowed his hands to run all over her body before he placed
them on her hips, immobilizing them when he started to move within her.

Even when the orgasm hit her and she clenched
around him with a sharp cry, Xan kept going, mercilessly pushing her body
toward another peak.

He didn’t stop until her head fell down
onto his shoulder and he felt her tears on his sweat-slicked skin. Only then did
he allow himself the luxury of surrendering himself to the razor sharp edge of
pleasure.

His last thought was that he unleashed
something that overmastered them both.

***

Catalina’s eyelids were too heavy to pry
open and she decided the effort it would take was simply not worth it. She
wouldn’t be surprised if she lost sight altogether at some point either.
“Cat,” Xan’s voice sounded harsh and hoarse at the same time and made her
realize she was still wrapped around him.

His chest was somehow naked although she
couldn’t say when exactly he got rid of his T-shirt. Where the rough material
of his jeans was like an additional erotic sensation before, it felt abrasive
against the oversensitive inner faces of her thighs now. Her face was buried in
his neck and she could feel his pulse slowly losing its wild gallop.

She wanted to stay just like that for one
more minute or maybe the whole night. But he shifted, slowly jolting her and
she moaned.
“Catalina. Look at me, hon,” he demanded, and this time she heard a note of
worry entering his voice, which made her raise her head and do as he asked of
her.
“Did I hurt you?” Xan wanted to know.

He had lost his goddamned mind the moment
he touched her and was much rougher than he intended to be. Her tears were a
blow, making him feel like the world’s most selfish son of a bitch.
“Hurt?” She repeated, frowning as if she had never encountered the word before.

Her body was still throbbing and she ached
all over, but what did he expect? She wondered.
“No.”
“Then why are you crying?” Xan’s finger caught a tear hanging on her eyelashes.

She cried?
Catalina blinked
trying to comprehend recent events, translate them into an understandable form.
Yet her mind was unable to grasp what he did with her body.
“I don’t think I could survive one more training session of yours,” she
muttered, and he chuckled, relaxing instantly.
“Come on, let me take care of you.” He kissed her forehead.
“I thought you just did,” she mumbled and he chuckled again.
“Keep that up, you are good for my ego.” His hands were delicate when he cradled
her in his arms, carrying her inside the apartment.
“You are such a male,” she sighed.
“And I just proved it beyond any doubt.” He smirked and hissed when she sunk
her teeth in his arm. “You are inviting more you can handle at the moment,
Kitten,” he warned, and felt her smiling which made him smile in return.

It took him a moment to realize he felt
carefree with her, and it was the most unexpected realization because the
sensation was another stranger to him. He had never been allowed to be laid
back, not even as a child–maybe especially not as a child.

He was resting while with Catalina, when he
was not thinking of all the ways in which he could undress her and have his
wicked way with her that is, he thought with a smile.

Oh yeah, and she was constantly inspiring
him to smile.

Perhaps he would have been worried if he
had not felt so good about all of it at this moment.
“I like your place,” she said after the short shower they took.

The ends of the gray shirt she borrowed
from him were kissing her upper thighs while she moved with an intimacy that
echoed the one they’d shared not so long ago.
“It’s nothing compared to yours,” he shrugged.
“It’s worlds apart from the room in the club. The same one you tried to
convince me you are living in, remember?” She smiled sweetly and he laughed.

His apartment wasn’t as spacious as her
house was but the apparent simplicity of it spoke about the complexity of the
man himself, Catalina thought. Everything had its place and was about
functionality, devoid of embellishment, sending a loud and clear message it
belonged to someone who didn’t care about externals.

How at odds with what her life was all
about, no matter her constant fight to change it.

They were both products of their upbringing,
even though something completely different hid behind the meaning of it.
“Kelton told me you saved his life,” Cat said, wandering about his apartment.

He could feel her need to explore more, but
her propriety kept her from it. The only thing she wasn’t able to stop herself
from touching were a few books he had managed to salvage from his childhood
with their dog-eared pages.

“Kel proved to be surprisingly chatty,” Xan
commented.
“Not nearly enough,” she muttered absentmindedly because her heart clenched
when she spotted the books.

They were not priceless first editions but
ordinary timeworn stories suitable for the child he once was, no matter that
his father did all in his power to rob him of it.

She didn’t imagine he took a lot of things
when he ran away, but he kept those. What did that say about him?

Cat blinked rapidly to get rid of the sudden
moisture from her eyes.
“Don’t delude yourself, Kitten, I am no hero material. Whatever I do, I have an
ulterior motive.” He smirked and she wondered why he was going to such lengths
to present himself as a villain.
“Like bringing me here, for example?” She turned to look at him with a smile.
“Of course, and I am not quite done with you yet,” he said with a rapacious
gleam in his green eyes, walking to her and enveloping her in his arms.

But he didn’t try to devour her again, as
his words suggested he might, satisfying himself with simply holding her for a
change and having her close.

Talking about Kelton reminded him of the
last words the man said to him before their session was done for the day:
‘She
is the best thing that could have happened to you; don’t screw it up.’

He didn’t intend to, but they couldn’t stay
away from the outside world forever. Sooner or later it was going to claim its
due.