Page 61 of Daddy's Dirty Little Secret

I moaned, my back arching off the wall as he toyed with me. His talented tongue and fingers worked in combination until I was a quivering mess against him, caught up in the devilishlydelicious sensations he evoked in me. I grunted hoarsely as I shattered around his fingers for the second time, the aftershocks making me twitch against him.

When my knees threatened to buckle, he held me up. My palms splayed on the shower wall, my hips bucking back into his face. The convulsions were stronger than the last time, and pleasure radiated into each of my limbs, down to my fingertips and toes.

As the orgasm passed, he licked me clean, then rose, keeping his hands on my hips, and guided himself back into me.

“Christ,” I gasped.

“I know,” he growled in my ear, and then the only sound was the water pelting our skin, and our harsh breathing.

Xander drove into me relentlessly, stretching me to the brink and beyond, and my inner muscles clenched around him, milking him greedily. I needed him inside me, needed this connection like I needed oxygen.

One hand left my hip, pressed on my lower back to bend me over, and he backed up as he pulled me toward him. The spray of water hit my hips as he began thrusting into me again.

His increased fervor had me biting down on my lip to stifle the moans, but he sucked the life out of me with each thrust, drawing moisture from my very pores. As if he sensed my surrender, his hands tightened along my hip bones and he thrust roughly into me, as I reached between my legs to rub myself.

“Amelia,” he called out hoarsely above the drumming water.

I felt him pulse inside me and clenched around him tighter before pitching over that precipice for the third time in as many minutes into the abyss of sensation overload. He pumped into me as I came down from my high and when he pulled out and I straightened, he turned me in his arms. My head rested on his shoulder; he washed my back. Then we traded places in the water and he washed my hair.

After we dried off, he led me to bed where I curled up and he coiled around me like a serpent with its prey, not letting me go. His arms wrapped around me, his breath in the crook of my neck as I drifted off into deep thought.

His chest rose and fell against my back, like he was trying to breathe around something heavier than air. I didn’t speak. I didn’t move. I stayed tucked into his chest, waiting for whatever he needed to say. There was a pause before it came, the kind that meant it had been living inside him for a long time.

“I asked her to stay,” he said. “I stood at the door, and I asked her not to go. I didn’t cry. I didn’t yell. I just asked. And she left anyway.”

I shifted just enough to look at him. He wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were on the ceiling, the lines in his forehead soft but drawn. He looked like someone remembering a scar.

“I didn’t see her again,” he said. “No phone calls. No letter. She didn’t just leave the house. She erased herself. My dad never talked about it. I think he thought ignoring it would help, but it didn’t.”

I reached for his hand and found it resting near the hem of the blanket. When I laced my fingers through his, he held on like he needed to.

“I thought maybe I wasn’t enough to stay for,” he said. “That’s the part I couldn’t shake. I think I stopped letting people get close after that.”

He said it simply—no drama, no attempt to draw sympathy—just the bare truth. I swallowed the knot forming at the back of my throat and leaned in a little closer.

“I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep,” I said. “But I’m not the kind of woman who gives up when things get hard.”

He didn’t answer. His thumb moved slowly against mine. “Then why’d you quit?” he asked. “No warning. No call. Just gone.”

I expected the question. Still, it landed harder than I thought it would. I pushed myself up a little and turned toward him so I could see his face clearly.

“Because staying started to feel like lying to myself,” I said. “I was pretending it didn’t mean anything when it did. I was in love with you, and you made it clear from the beginning that it wasn’t supposed to be more than sex. I didn’t know how to keep showing up like it didn’t hurt. And then the baby…”

His brow furrowed, just slightly. He didn’t speak, so I went on.

“I wanted you to be happy, even if it wasn’t with me. I saw how it bothered you—when I was around Godwin, when we left meetings together. You didn’t want anything more from it, but it still got under your skin. You said you had zero feelings for me.”

He exhaled through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching like he might argue but couldn’t.

“And then I found out about the baby,” I said. “That was the last thing you needed. If I’d told you, you would’ve stepped in. You would’ve felt obligated. And I didn’t want that. Not from you. Not when I didn’t understand what you felt at all.”

He looked down at the space between us, then back at me. “What was going on with Godwin?”

I smiled for the first time since the conversation started. I had to fight back a chuckle, but the snicker still escaped, and the grin came despite my reluctance. “Godwin is so gay, Xander,” I said, and a quiet laugh slipped out. “He came out to me over microwave popcorn in the break room a month after he started. He makes playlists for his boyfriend’s cats. There was never a threat there.”

Xander let out a quiet, embarrassed laugh. “I hate that that makes me feel better.” I loved the way his smile reached his eyes.

I traced a small circle against his shoulder with the pad of my thumb. “You don’t have to be jealous. It was always you.Even when I didn’t want it to be. Before we even had this dumb agreement.”

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