Page 87 of Xander

I yelped as he rolled us over, still inside me, the movement pushing him so deeply that I felt a sharp pain as he whispered the filthiest things into my ear, that I was a good girl, and he knew I could take it, and didn’t I enjoy being bred? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blushed in front of a man, but the things he was said—I didn’t have words to respond.

He came with a roar, slamming his arm beside my face for leverage as I felt the heated shudder of his cum inside me. Every warning I’d ever heard about unprotected sex flooded through my mind as I felt his cum trickle down my thighs. I had lost count of how many times he had fucked me without protection.

“You feel so good.” He brushed a lock of hair out of my face with a gentleness that was at odds with the way he fucked. “I can’t control myself when I’m with you.” He tugged playfully at my hair.

The way Xander spoke about me always left me breathless, bringing back the three little words he had uttered earlier tonight.

“I love you.”

No one had said those words to me in years. I didn’t have the chance to process them when the paparazzi interrupted us, and now, it was a can of worms I didn’t want to reopen.

“I’m tired,” I said instead of tackling the elephant in the room. “Can we go to sleep?”

“Yeah.” He reached over me with one solid arm to turn the lights off. The dark hair on his chest was coarse against my bare arm, eliciting goosebumps I was glad he couldn’t see.

We didn’t sleep, though. That night, in the dark shadows of his room, he took me again and again until we couldn’t move from exhaustion. Finally, he draped his arm against my waist, pulling me up against him until I could feel his hips against my ass, my heavy eyes drooping without permission.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I opened my eyes, the sun filtered through the floaty curtains, and I felt Xander’s breath puffing against my ear. His breathing grew shallow as he stirred against me. He was smiling faintly in his sleep, and if I had any disillusionments about what those dreams might entail, the hard evidence was riding up between my thighs.

I squirmed out of his grip and got my phone. Hundreds of notifications stared up at me—all of which had been steadily building since I started working again—but I ignored them for now.

I needed to see if that photo of Xander and I had been posted.

I typed our names into the search engine and saw the usual puff pieces about our family and Henry’s “charity” work, so I switched the time of posting to this week to see if any small blogs or articles had picked it up.

Then I saw the article: NHL STAR—PUNCH DRUNK?

“That’s the other article,” I muttered under my breath, my publicity instincts already kicking in as I began to dig. Was this the article Xander had mentioned? I could tell from the preview that it wasn’t going to be good news, but the article was even worse than I imagined.

The article claimed they spoke to guests from the party, spinning the events in the worst possible light. “An older man with heart issues.” Henry came off as a frail old man, and Xander was the aggressor. There was no mention of beating me. Instead, I’d been referred to as the troubled wife. As far as the author of this article was concerned, Xander might as well have stolen me from a mental asylum.

This had Henry’s fingerprints all over it. He must have gone to one of his telecom buddies and paid them a generous sum to run this piece. What were the terms of their bargain? I wondered. Free ad space on his new app? A hefty payout? Golfing with the boys on some distant island paradise?

I didn’t recognize the publication, and it was hardly front-page news, but if a bigger periodical caught wind of this and ran with it, or the wrong “tea channel” went viral with it, things could be very, very bad.

Xander sat up in bed, the sheets dropping to his chiseled hips, revealing the deep, curving lines of his Adonis belt. The golden light made his olive skin glow. He rubbed his eyes in a gesture that might have been disarmingly boyish if it weren’t for the way it made his arms and stomach flex. He tilted his head toward me, and I felt my stomach drop.

“You’re up early,” he remarked, his voice hoarse from sleep.

I held my phone out to him. He blinked at it with an expression that said he thought he was humoring me.

“I told you about the article. Why are you showing it to me?”

“This is so much worse than you made it out to be.”

He grazed a thumb over the fading bruise on my cheek. “Because you deserved a few days to recover before the shit hit the fan.”

Xander pushed my phone away and slid out of bed, revealing an erection that hung heavily between his thighs. I could feel my cheeks heating like a schoolgirl when he bent over uncaringly, stepping into the boxers he’d discarded last night.

After he’d made me strip.

“You still should’ve told me sooner. We need to decide what to do about this. I mean… I’m your publicist, which reminds me, I need your agent’s number.”

“Number is in my phone under Ross.” He tossed his phone on my lap and gave me the password.

I couldn’t help noticing that Xander never had anything to hide, openly sharing every part of his life with me. Meanwhile, Henry used to sneak his phone into the bathroom to answer texts. In hindsight, it now made sense.

I heaved a sigh. “Let’s set up a meeting with Ross and get this under wraps while we can still control the narrative.”