POV Xander
“So basically,” I repeated slowly, my voice curling like smoke over the dinner table, “you’re asking me to fuck you?”
The fork slipped from her hand and clattered against the porcelain. The sound was sharp, breaking the heavy silence.
Norah choked on air, her wide eyes darting everywhere but me.
“I… well… when you put it like that…” She swallowed, cheeks flaming crimson. “For a good cause.”
I leaned back in my chair, swirling the amber in my glass, savoring the way her pulse hammered visibly at her throat.
“For a good cause?” I echoed, every word laced with mockery. “Norah, if you want to sit on my dick, you could’ve just said so.”
Her eyes widened in horror. Her lips parted, struggling to form words.
“That— That is not what I meant—I—”
I couldn’t stop myself. The laughter came, rough and uncontrolled, cutting through the tension like a whip.
It filled the dining room, echoing off the high ceilings. She turned crimson, glaring at me with the ferocity of a kitten trying to swat down a lion.
It only made me laugh harder.
The thing was, her reasoning had been so precise earlier.
She’d sat across from me, hands folded, voice trembling as she explained how IVF felt too cold, too clinical. Her words had been lined up neatly, practical, as though she was presenting a business proposal.
But every syllable had shaken, and that tremor gave her away… She knew exactly what she was asking.
And I knew the danger of it.
This blurred the one line I swore never to cross with her. She was supposed to be… safe. Untouchable. Off-limits.
But I needed an heir until I was thirty. And if she was offering to do it the natural way instead of sterile syringes and hospital beds… Who the hell was I to refuse?
I set my glass down slowly. The silence between us stretched taut, heavy, dangerous.
Finally, I said, “Fine.”
Her head snapped up. “Fine?”
I let the word linger, watching her squirm under my gaze. Tilting my head, I studied her face, her nervous fingers, the way she wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Do you really want your first time to be with me?”
She bit her lip hard and then shrugged. Actually shrugged. “Not exactly. But… it’s just a business transaction, right?”
A bitter laugh ripped from me. “Your virgin pussy is not a business, Norah.”
Her eyes flared at my choice of words, caught somewhere between outrage and embarrassment.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she snapped, defensive. “I just meant… I’ll have to pop the baby out anyway, so it doesn’t really matter how it… how it starts.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, fighting the sheer absurdity of this conversation. She sat there, flushed and stubborn, talking about sex like it was an item to check off her to-do list.
And yet, beneath all that awkward logic, she was trembling. And I could feel the pulse of her nerves like a live wire running straight into me.
“You astound me,” I muttered.
My chest felt too tight, like there wasn’t enough air in the room. Still, the decision was already coiling inside me, snapping every chain I thought I’d locked tight.
“Fine,” I said again, firmer this time. “If you agree, I agree.”
She exhaled like she’d been holding her breath underwater, her shoulders sinking with relief. “Great.”
For a moment, the tension wavered. She even smiled faintly, as though we’d just settled some ordinary business deal.
But then she froze, her hands tangling nervously in her lap. Her face turned pinker, and her eyes darted toward me before skittering away.
“So…” she began, voice small. “How do you usually start your… you know.”
My brows lifted. “My what?”
She gestured vaguely, looking everywhere but me. “Your… game.”
The sound that burst from me was half a laugh, half a groan of disbelief.
“Game?” I repeated. “You’re calling foreplay a game?”
She nodded quickly, innocent and reckless all at once. “Isn’t it?”
I shook my head, smirking, and pushed back my chair. The scrape against the floor was loud, deliberate. Rising, I crossed the space between us slowly, each step a calculated taunt.
Her eyes followed me, wide, trapped, her breath quickening with every inch I closed.
When I was close enough that I could hear that sharp little hitch in her lungs, I bent slightly, letting my voice dip low, dangerous, rough enough to scrape over her skin.
“If it is,” I murmured, watching her freeze in her seat, “are you ready to lose?”