No Strings Read online

  * * *

  Emma watched her phone reconfigure Nost. Mr. X was suddenly gone from the app, and there was no way to find him, no way to continue the message.

  “Damn it,” she cursed as she sank into a leather couch near the fountain in the hotel lobby. What was she supposed to do now? She’d searched the bar, the lobby, and had even walked out to the street, but had found no sign of Mr. X. Xavier. That’s all she knew about the man. She had no idea where he lived, how old he was, or what he did for a living other than the vague “work in the tech sector” explanation he’d given her.

  Emma could feel a delicious soreness creeping in between her legs. Just moments ago Xavier had filled her up in the most intimate way possible, and now he was gone forever, a ghost, a stranger she might never see again. She couldn’t understand why he’d left so quickly, why he’d bolted. Had she offended him in some way? Had she done something wrong?

  Why had he left in such a hurry? She needed to know. She wanted to know. She had to see him again.

  Maybe he was a wanted man, she wondered. It would explain a lot, and yet, Emma wouldn’t believe Xavier was a felon. He’d told her about his fiancée betraying him and breaking his heart, but she’d never met a man so clearly petrified of commitment. She’d heard of toxic bachelors, but this was ridiculous. Emma glanced up at the lobby desk manned by a hotel clerk, a young man in his twenties. Emma got up and walked toward him. Maybe she could get answers.

  “Hello.” The clerk greeted her with a friendly smile. “May I help you, miss?”

  “I was wondering if you could tell me if Xavier booked a room tonight. He had one last night. We were in room...” Emma stopped. What room were they in? 12...something. 1209? 1208? She racked her brain. She knew it was the twelfth floor, but why couldn’t she remember? Granted, she’d been a little busy when Xavier had swept her inside to notice much about the golden numbers on the door. He’d had his mouth on hers, a memory that made her shiver with delight remembering his soft, determined tongue as it gently probed her. She felt her face flush. “Uh, a big suite. On the 12th floor. Maybe 1209?”

  The clerk now studied her with suspicion. “There are several suites on the twelfth floor. Your name, miss?”

  “Uh, Emma Allaire. But the room wasn’t in my name. It was under Xavier’s.”

  “Xavier...?” The clerk paused, waiting for the last name. But Emma didn’t know it. That’s what she needed to find out.

  “Yes, Xavier.”

  “Xavier...what? His last name, please?”

  Emma bit her lip. She realized she was going to get zero information from this clerk. She was sure this hotel had all kinds of privacy rules, and now that she thought about it, it was probably insane to just go asking about hotel guests. Besides, what was she supposed to tell this man? She’d had sex multiple times with a man and she didn’t even know his last name? In fact, she could still feel the wetness of her own come between her legs from him taking in her their very restroom just a hundred feet away.

  Emma glanced at the young clerk. No, he wouldn’t understand.

  “Never mind. I’ll just call him.” She held up her phone as if somehow Xavier’s number might magically appear on her screen. Emma hustled away from the lobby counter, her face red with embarrassment. Even with a first name, she knew next to nothing about the man who’d made her come harder than anyone ever. Of course, now she knew his first name. Maybe she could find something on Google or Facebook? Maybe if she went home and tried, she might.

  Emma rushed out to the dark Chicago night and hailed the first cab she saw, hoping that once she got home she might still be able to find the mystery man.

  * * *

  The next morning, after a few hours Googling “Xavier” and “tech” Emma came up with absolutely nothing. “Xavier” and “Chicago” yielded thousands of entries, none of whom seemed to fit Mr. X, though she discovered a local Xavier College, an apartment building and one restaurant. None of which were connected to Mr. X in any discernible way.

  “This is so frustrating,” Emma complained out loud as she set her coffee mug down on her desk with a little extra force. This was the digital age, after all, where all information was supposed to be a single Google search away. She’d never been in a position where a few clicks of the mouse wouldn’t open up someone’s whole identity.

  Emma shook her head, scouring her memory for any little detail she could’ve missed about Mr. X, anything else she might type into Facebook, Instagram or Google. She couldn’t think of any. The man had been deliberately vague about all the details of his life. She didn’t know where he lived, worked, his last name, or even where he’d grown up. Then again, they hadn’t spent a whole helluva lot of time talking, either, she remembered, a blush creeping up her cheeks.

  I shouldn’t even be doing this, Emma thought. The man left me in the Ritz-Carlton bathroom, half naked! Clearly, all he wanted was sex.

  Not that she could blame him. The sex was freakin’ amazing. The sex enough would be fine, yet, Emma couldn’t shake the feeling there could be more than just physical attraction between them. She believed that amazing sex only happened with some kind of authentic emotional connection. They might be near strangers, but they had that connection. Somehow.

  And he walked away from it.

  She ought to be angry, but instead, she just felt mystified. Why had he bolted? Her mind went a thousand different directions: maybe she’d offended him somehow. Maybe he was really just using her and could only stand to be in her presence for the frantic minutes it took for sex?

  But that didn’t make any sense to her. He never let on he felt annoyed by her. The first night, he’d held her all night long.

  No. It was almost as if he was fighting himself a little last night, but she couldn’t say why.

  Emma knew Xavier had been hurt, knew he wasn’t looking for any commitment and he’d made it abundantly clear that he was only interested in knowing her for forty-eight hours. She ought to just face facts: he’d disappeared forever.

  The thought suddenly depressed her. How could he walk away from something so...amazing? Surely, she wasn’t the only one who felt like the sex was...well, white-hot. Surely he didn’t have that kind of connection with every girl he met? Emma knew she’d never experienced sex like that her whole life.

  She almost heard Sarah whispering, “You need to get laid more.”

  Emma sighed. Maybe it was that she’d only had a handful of boyfriends, all of them...well, on the boring side. She brushed away the thought. Why would Xavier be in such a hurry to leave?

  Left on autopilot, her mind went to darker corners. Was he secretly married? His wife could have been waiting outside in their car while he came into the lobby of the hotel. Her palms grew clammy at the thought.

  Emma typed in Nost and married men and about a dozen articles popped up on her screen. The headlines screamed at her: Nost a Playground for Adulterers...and No Strings Doesn’t Always Mean Single...

  Emma pored through the articles. Looks like Nost did have a cheater problem, with several spurned spouses—men and women—complaining about finding the app on the phone of their husband or wife. Could Xavier be one of them? It made sense: he was steadfastly attached to the “no contact” rule and guarded his last name with CIA-level dedication. Hell, his first name might not even be real.

  She banged the edge of her desk in frustration. What was she supposed to do now?

  Emma picked up her phone and noticed that her screen now included all new Nost men, none of whom were Mr. X. A search again found nothing, and there was no way to message him any longer.

  She put her phone down. Emma stared at her computer for a beat and then pulled up a new Word document. Maybe if she couldn’t find him, she could write about him. She began typing out her story about Nost. She worked on it furiously for the next couple of hours. She called it:

  Mr. X, wh
ere are you?

  When she’d poured out her emotions, doubts and fears onto the page, she sent off the draft to her editor and let out a breath. She had no idea if her article, written as PG as possible, was too risqué for the women’s blog, but she was willing to take that chance. She crossed her fingers that somehow her little message in a bottle would make it to Xavier.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FOR THE REST of the week, Xavier felt...empty and alone. The feeling that he’d been making a huge mistake walking away from Emma at the Ritz-Carlton hadn’t faded, and had only grown in its intensity. Rather than fade from his memory, Emma just loomed larger and larger, until almost every waking thought was of her. Her lips, her amazing curves, the softness of her skin. The way she simply gave herself to him, the completely vulnerable way she let him pleasure her. The out-of-this-world look on her face when she came for him.

  Emma. What are you doing to me? He wondered, as he sat in his townhome in the west Loop, just blocks from his office. From his second-story bedroom window, he watched a couple walking together, hand-in-hand, down Jackson Boulevard, swinging their arms, happy as they laughed together beneath the unseasonably warm September sunshine on a bright Saturday afternoon. He envied their happiness, but he also felt it was all fake somehow. He knew that no matter how happy they seemed, beneath the surface trouble could be brewing. After all, Sasha held his hand, kissed him, even took him to bed while seeking the affection of another man.

  Sure, all relationships started out filled with passion, but eventually they all petered out, under the weight of routine and familiarity. Or, they become something worse. Something harder. Like his parents’ troubled relationship. He shook his head. No way was he going to become like his father, a slave to love.

  He and Sasha had ripped their clothes off the night they met, but then a year later, beneath ratty old T-shirts and dozens of nights in the same bed, they had grown tired of one another, bored. Sex had become mechanical, predictable. No wonder she’d looked outside their relationship for satisfaction. He couldn’t blame her. The passion that had once lit their relationship had fled.

  Xavier pulled up his Nost profile on his phone but barely even looked at it. This was not like him at all. Normally, he was already on to his next challenge, his next anonymous rendezvous. The last year since Sasha had been a blur of bodies for the most part. He knew on some level it wasn’t the healthiest way to get over his ex, but it sure was the most fun. Instead of browsing through the new candidates on his phone, he headed to the laptop in his study and once more pulled up Emma’s profile. She’d been active in the last twenty-four hours, he saw, sending a little pang of jealousy through him. Had she already gotten over him? Was she trolling for new mates as he sat here at his computer?

  His fingers froze on the keyboard. Would he snoop to find out? No. He shouldn’t. That broke every privacy rule Nost had.

  Get a hold of yourself, Xavier said. What are you doing?

  He decided to Google her once more. That was safer than digging through her Nost profile—safer and not opening him or Nost up to a lawsuit, either, he mused. With a few quick clicks he discovered Emma had posted a new article for Helena. About him.

  Interest piqued, he scanned the article.

  Where is Mr. X? I never thought I’d ever use an app like Nost, or like it, but...

  Xavier scanned the article, eating up every word. She enjoyed every minute of being with him, she said, enjoyed the freedom, the intimacy, the immediate connection. He knew they’d connected, but seeing it written in black and white delighted him. The way she described him was godlike. He grinned to himself. He hadn’t even used all his best tricks. He still had some in reserve for...

  When? When would he ever see her again? Their time was up. Forty-eight hours. That was his rule, but...

  He glanced at her small profile picture that hovered above her article. Cornflower-blue eyes, lush blond hair, amazing pink lips. He remembered her small, pink nipples, the way they puckered beneath the caress of his tongue. Remembered below her waist, her delicate pink folds. He wanted to taste her again, make her arch her back and squirm with pleasure, see that amazing look in her eyes when she let the whole world go and embraced the climax he gave her.

  He just wanted her.

  He glanced once more at the end of the article.

  Mr. X, if you’re out there, find me at the Brew Coffee House. North Avenue. Four p.m. Saturday.

  Xavier glanced at his watch. He had an hour to make it. If he really wanted to leave Emma in his past, stick to his rules, he’d let her wait. But he also felt desire growing inside him, a white-hot burn. She was asking for him. Could he really refuse?

  * * *

  By the time the fourth awkward, pimpled and overweight guy stumbled up to her and claimed to be Mr. X at the Brew Coffee House, Emma was beginning to think her idea to call out Mr. X publicly had backfired.

  “You’re not Mr. X,” she told the twenty-something, acne-prone gamer who stood before her wearing a Game of Thrones T-shirt. He shuffled his massive feet.

  “No, but I totally am!” he insisted, pushing up his flat-brimmed baseball cap to reveal unwashed, greasy hair beneath.

  “You’re not,” she said, shaking her head. He didn’t fight too much harder, and eventually shrugged and left. The cup of coffee she’d gotten half an hour ago now sat empty and she wondered how much longer she ought to keep this up. Mr. X clearly wasn’t coming. He might not have even seen her article, and even if he did, might have chosen to ignore it. After all, he had the forty-eight-hour rule. No strings. No attachments.

  But Emma wasn’t asking to marry him. Just...explore him. A little longer. She just wasn’t ready to let him go yet. He’d become a craving, more than that, an addiction. Something she didn’t just want, she needed. The idea of going back to her boring, vanilla boyfriend sex life just felt horrible. She didn’t want to do that. She wanted Mr. X.

  Emma scribbled down a few notes on a notepad about Game of Thrones guy and figured that at least this would give her enough material for another article. Her Helena editor had loved the Nost piece, and no wonder, it was the top trending article on the blog and already had thousands of shares on social media. The article was blowing up, and Emma thought that was in no small part because more and more users were intrigued by Nost, and she was the good-girl-next-door who’d tried it and liked it. The story almost sold itself.

  But then there was the thorny problem of Mr. X. Was he married? At least thirty percent of Helena’s readers thought so, if the comments on the post were any indication. Keep moving, honey. He’s married, wrote one. Or, Available men don’t disappear like that. He probably has a wife and kids in the ’burbs, wrote another. One woman had simply written TOXIC BACHELOR in the comments section and another wrote escaped felon? And he might be all these things. Or none of them.

  Yet, deep inside, Emma just felt he wasn’t. He was a man who’d been hurt by love, betrayed by the one woman tasked with loving him above all others, and this was his way of dealing with it. She took what he said at face value. She knew she might not be able to change him, and probably couldn’t. He’d flat-out told her he wasn’t able to have a real relationship. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that they belonged together. How many couples fit together so well? The sex wasn’t just sex. At least not to her.

  She might not be able to change him, she figured, but she just wanted to know him better. That’s all.

  She glanced around the near empty coffeehouse and sighed. This was a bust. An absolute bust. What a waste of time! Emma let out a long sigh as she gathered up her things, her flowered peasant top sliding down, revealing one bare shoulder. She wore a flouncy skirt and sandals, knowing that the warmth of this rare mild autumn afternoon would soon be traded for the chill of October. The summer seemed to be having one last hooray in September, but she knew the cold winds off Lake Michigan would arrive soon and th
ey’d all settle in to coats and gloves for the rest of the season. She stood, about to leave, when a dark shadow fell over her table.

  She glanced up to see Mr. X, wearing a simple dark T-shirt and cargo shorts. The T-shirt left nothing about his muscular chest to the imagination, and as she pulled her gaze away from his impressive muscles, she locked eyes with the man she’d been searching for for days.

  “Xavier,” she breathed, her heart thudding in her chest. “Where did you come from?”

  “The door,” he said smoothly and grinned. “Am I late?”

  “Yes...er, n-no. Sit.” Emma slumped back in her chair, feeling part shocked and part giddy. He’d come. She’d called on him and he’d come. “You...saw my story.”

  Xavier gave a single head nod, his golden hazel eyes never leaving hers as he slipped gracefully into the seat, all lean muscle, all stealth. “I especially enjoyed the part about...our kiss, but we did more than that.”

  “I—it had to be PG,” she explained. How else to talk about how Helena wasn’t the kind of magazine that published explicit sex.

  “I liked our x-rated parts the best.” Xavier flashed white teeth beneath his tanned face. The man was gorgeous, a dark-haired god. Emma forgot how much she felt the charismatic pull to him, and realized that she hadn’t been crazy about letting this man do what he would with her—the electricity, the connection between them, couldn’t be denied.

  Xavier leaned forward. “Maybe we ought to retreat to the bathroom?” He let the offer hang there, and Emma’s mind went straight back to the Ritz-Carlton, where he’d taken her, panting, inside the stall. She’d never done anything like that her whole life, yet as soon as he mentioned it, her whole body tingled in anticipation. Then she remembered—The Brew didn’t have bathrooms.

  “No bathrooms here,” she said, of the tiny little coffeehouse with only a couple of tables. The counter took up one whole wall of the establishment, and then windows and the door were on the opposite. The bathroom, if there was one, was for employees only.