Taboo: A Dark Romance Boxset (Stud Ranch 1)

Xavier hasn’t said anything about it, but I think he’d prefer it longer.

And suddenly I’m very keen to conform to whatever Xavier might like best.

Even a few weeks ago the thought would have disturbed me. Outright disgusted me. But as I nestle my cheek against him and let out a contented sigh, now I wonder, just, why? Why was I pushing so hard against him?

I can’t remember the last time I felt this happy or content. This free.

And yes, I’m clear-headed enough to realize how ridiculously contradictory that sounds.

But it’s true all the same.

I feel liberated.

Like I have no worries in the world. I don’t have to worry about anything. Xavier’s taken it all for me.

I laugh at the realization, feeling a strange giddiness and press my face into his thigh. My whole life has been a mad-dog fight. For grades. Then for the best internships. Then to be better than all my male colleagues to get ahead at work. And for what? What did all that get me? I was never really happy. It was all about just waking up again the next day and striving more for the next hurdle to overcome.

But now?

I think this feeling flooding me is genuine happiness.

Here of all places.

With Xavier.

Because of Xavier.

I raise my head and grin up at him. He pauses stroking my hair, his expression wary and a little befuddled.

I laugh and stand up, then climb up into his lap face to face, straddling him on the chair. I take his face in my hands. The burned part feels smooth and cool to the touch. My finger traces down between the raised ridges of one of the spider lines that runs across his cheek and he reaches up to grab my wrist. He shakes his head back and forth.

I purse my lips but then say what I haven’t been able to stop thinking about all morning, double now after our breakfast table quickie. I can’t help the grin from taking over as I lean my face into his, searching his eyes.

“We might have just made a baby,” I whisper. For the first time in my life, the concept doesn’t immediately send me into a crazed panic either.

I’m not sure why exactly, except that I know it’s because of Xavier. Everything’s changed because of this giant who just barged in and inserted himself in the center of my life. Or rather, he stole me away to his world and like a sun, my life now revolves around him. There’s a voice shouting in the back of my head, unhealthy! Unhealthy!

But when his eyes flare at my words and his hands drop to my waist, I don’t care.

Especially when next, a goddamned miracle happens.

He kisses me.

And not on my ear or my neck or one of the other hundred places his mouth has explored before.

No, I mean he kisses me on the lips.

It’s not just some gentle peck either.

He kisses me on the lips and immediately goes for the kill, pushing through the seam of my lips with his thrusting tongue.

I can’t help clamping my legs tighter around him and kissing him back.

I’ve been kissed before. A fair amount even. I was a virgin but still curious. There were a few boyfriends that I kissed a lot before I broke up with because I didn’t want them getting ideas that all the kissing meant I was willing to go further.

But no kiss in my life has come close to anything like this one.

As with everything else, Xavier immediately takes command of the kiss. And it doesn’t just involve his tongue and lips. No, his whole body is tense and alive underneath mine. His hands grip and knead my waist with a desperate intensity. He kisses me with the ferocity of a man bent on devouring his prey.

And me? I might be happier than I ever imagined, being under this man’s power, but that does not mean I’m about to become some meek little delicate flower.

Hell no.

I give back as good as I get.

My tongue tangles with his and I thrust back into his mouth, as eager to taste and explore him as he is me.

I’m no longer satisfied with the façade he’s been willing to show me thus far. Dammit, I want it all. I want to know the name of the first horse he ever owned and what his goddamned favorite color is. I want to know what haunts his sleep and what makes him happy and sad and everything in between.

So I kiss him back like my life depends on it. Because maybe if I’m lucky, this is the first chink in his armor and I’m paving my first inroad to getting to know this eccentric and, sure, a bit fucked-up man.

But maybe he’s my eccentric, fucked-up man? Or he could be?