“I guess. You know how we are. It’s complicated.”
“Complicated. Now there’s an understatement of epic fucking proportions.”
I had to laugh. She wasn’t wrong.
And that’s how Tristan found us as he approached, laughing and relaxed.
The relaxed part went a bit south as he sat right next to me, and I instinctively started to tense up.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Frankie told us with a grin. “I have some freaking to do on that dance floor.”
“Who the hell calls it freaking?” I called to her back, but she just kept walking.
It wasn’t easy, but I made myself turn and look him in the eye.
I’d likely be mortified in the morning over what we’d done, but I thought the entire thing was too new for my shocked mind to react appropriately.
His face was sober. “We need to talk.”
That surprised a laugh out of me. “We just tried that. Didn’t exactly work out.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’d say it was cut short. I’d like to try again.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. “I bet you would!”
Finally, his solemn face cracked into a smile. I had to clench my fists to keep from touching one of those calamitous dimples. “Well, yes, of course I would. God, Danika, I’ve missed you, even just to see you laughing again.”
I looked down at my hands, the laughter dying a bit. “I think you’re right. I think you’ve always been right. We should be friends. I miss that, too. I know you’re worried that I’ll never speak to you after this—after that little scene back in the forest, but you don’t need to worry. That was insanity, and it does not need to happen again, but we can be adults here. I…won’t be a stranger when we get back to town. I’ll give you a call. We can sit down for coffee, or, you know, something.”
There was a very long pause on his end, and I wondered which part of what I said was eating at him.
He didn’t address that though, instead said, “Do you mean it this time, or are you just blowing me off like last time?”
I sent him a rueful smile. I hadn’t meant it last time, and I had blown him off. But I found that, shockingly, I’d had a real change of heart. “I mean it this time.”
I did mean it but, while I didn’t avoid him for the rest of the weekend, I also made sure our contact was limited. It was necessary. I needed time to think, to have a battle plan before we started to transition into this friendship idea.
We’d been at war for way too long for me to delude myself that a battle plan wouldn’t be necessary, even when we were playing nice.
I was packing to leave for home, the happy couple already having ditched the party and jetted off to God knew where, to do God knew what kind of kinky shit, when I noticed something odd.
My perfume was missing. I did a quick search of the bathroom, but there weren’t that many places it could have gone, and I’d thought the small bottle was sitting right on the counter.
I was annoyed. I loved that perfume, and it wasn’t cheap, but I shrugged it off. Some lost perfume was really the least of my problems.
Tristan managed to corner me one last time before I took off.
The wedding’s location was remote, and so all of the guests had been flown to the nearest airstrip, and driven in limos the rest of the way. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around how expensive that must have been, but there was no doubt that James could afford it.
Even so, people were sharing rides to the airstrip and planes to their various destinations. It only made sense.
Tristan and I hadn’t flown or driven in together, even though we’d come from the same place.
He could not understand why we couldn’t share on the way home.
He’d actually come to my room to talk about it, charged into the space, sprawling out on the room’s only chair like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I supposed it was better than the bed.
I stayed by the door, determined not to do anything stupid for the five minutes it would take me to get rid of him.
“Stop being pushy,” I told him, arms crossed over my chest. It felt surreal to be talking to him as though no time had passed, but it was happening so naturally. “See, this is the problem. I give an inch, you take five more. Knock it off.”
He grinned, leaning forward in his chair. “C’mon. It will be fun. We can play some road trip games. Remember all of our games?”
I sighed. Of course, I remembered. “Not this time, Tristan. I need a few days to think. Like I said, I’ll call you. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
“No,” he said casually, his smile dying. “I do not excuse you.”
He stood and moved so close to me that I backed away. “I’ll give you a few days, but if I don’t hear from you, I am coming for you. This is fair warning.”
I glared at him. “Dramatic much? I said I’d call, I’ll call. I said I needed a few days, give me a few days.”
CHAPTER TEN
I told myself that the reason we’d done that idiotic thing was because I’d kept myself too tightly leashed. If we could see each other more often, but casually, it wouldn’t be like that. We wouldn’t have to lose our minds, if we weren’t scared that we’d never see each other again.
I didn’t call him right away. Not because I was a coward.
Well, okay, I was putting it off because our last encounter had left me shaken. I’d lost my mind. There was no other way to put it. And that wasn’t even the scary part.
What would we do for an encore? It didn’t bear thinking about.
But I did think about it. Constantly, incessantly, I obsessed about what to do about him.
Even so, it was a month before I saw him again and only then because he forced the issue.
The showing was substantial in size, though not in notability. Five artists were being featured, each with two rooms in the spacious L.A. gallery devoted to their theme. It was very involved. I’d been putting it together for nearly a year.
One of the artists had recently started getting some attention in the media, due to some interviews he’d done, so what had been a promising but obscure event suddenly had some star power.
It was a bit hectic, but I was dealing with it all in stride, calming down the temperamental artists, soothing the fussy celebrities that had shown up for the press.
It was shaping up to be an invigoratingly busy but overall smooth night, when Tristan walked through the door.
He was wearing a tux, hair scraped back and showing off his strong jaw with that fascinating bit of scruff that I couldn’t stop obsessing over.
He looked so handsome it made my chest ache. The effect of seeing him out of the blue, no warning, looking how he looked, was devastating.
I took a deep breath, prayed for calm, and thanked God I’d decked myself out for the event in a fitted sleeveless crimson lace dress with a high neck and a flared skirt. It showed my figure off to perfection.
He was alone, which was certainly better than the alternative in one respect, and terrible in another. He had no one else to focus on, no other reason to be there, but for me.
Well, maybe he’s here for the artwork, I told myself. But even as I had the thought, he was making a beeline to me.
His expression was unsmiling and solemn as he stopped in front of me
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice quiet and calm, but it was an effort.
“You never called.”
I just stared at him.
“You said you’d call,” he reiterated. “So we can do this easy, or we can do it hard. Personally, I prefer hard.”
“Does this look like the appropriate place to have this conversation to you? I’m working.”
“I gave it a month. I ran out of patience. My supply was fucking depleted to begin with.”
His voice had been loud enough that I glanced around, wanting to avoid making a scene.
“We work in the same building, if you didn’t
realize. Coming all the way here, on the night of a big show, is not the way to handle this.”
“The gallery in the casino is your territory. You’ve been very clear on how you feel about me infringing on your territory. Are you saying I’m allowed to come there now?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” I said, to appease him. Anything to avoid what he was doing right that second, because having him there, talking to him there, was going to turn me into a basket case in the middle of an event I’d been planning for too long to flake out on. “Now please, you need to let me work.”
In theory, he did back off, just not far. He didn’t leave, as I’d hoped, but stayed, going through the entire building slowly, room by room, perusing the art thoroughly, always in my peripheral, hovering close enough to be distracting.
I tried my best not to be distracted.
One of the artists had done a series of paintings on large multi paneled room partitions. They each measured roughly six feet high, and the way they were set around the room turned it into a sort of maze. It was a striking series.
I’d just shown it to some potential buyers. I was taking down a few notes about some other work by the same painter that the buyers were interested in seeing before they made a decision. They had since moved on to the next room. I always encouraged this. I didn’t hover, tending to let the buyer find the pieces that spoke to them on their own.
There was a small table at the back of what had turned into the maze room. It was displaying a series of small painted fans, but had enough free space for me to set my paper-thin laptop on as I typed a few details in.
I was just straightening when big hands cupped my shoulders from behind and started rubbing.
I knew who it was instantly. Of course I did. I could smell him. The warm, spicy scent of his cologne was permanently branded into my brain.
And those hands. No one else on earth had hands like his.
I breathed in deep, taking him in, trying to get a grip.
One hand left my shoulder, and I felt a teasing finger run the length of my spine through the thin material of my dress. His touch was so light, his journey from bottom to top so slow, my nipples had tightened into hard peaks by the time he reached my nape.
I shivered involuntarily.
He moved in closer behind me, that wandering hand going to my waist, gripping. I could feel the heat of his palms, one on the skin of my shoulder, the other through my clothes. The contrast of the touches made me catch my breath.
A sensitive muscle very low in my belly began to quiver.
He moved closer by infinitesimal degrees, until I felt him leaning over me, head tipped forward. I thought he must be staring at my features, gauging my reactions.
“What are you doing?” I asked him in a shaky voice.
“You said you didn’t want to have our conversation here. I’m improvising.”
I shook my head slightly, then froze as, gently but firmly, the hand at my waist moved up and held my breast. His palm slid softly over the already hardened peak.
“This is not the place for that, either,” I whispered furiously.
But I didn’t move away.
His other hand moved from its scorching grip on my shoulder, covering my right hand, which was clenched into a fist on the table in front of me.
He lifted it, pried it open until he could fit his thumb against my palm, and started to rub. His touch was so soothing, so fundamentally pleasurable, that my hand fell open like he’d unlocked it with a key.
And that was when he knew he had me.
He continued to fondle me while he straightened my arm, then pulled it behind my back, palm twisted to face him. Without a word, he pulled it to the front of his pants. Slowly, leisurely, he rubbed himself into my palm, stroking himself with our connected hands. Up, down, up, down, each stroke taking its sweet time along his broad length.
My lips were trembling, my body shaking, every single muscle in my belly tight with anticipation.
I felt like all of the nerves inside of me were about to shatter. And I wanted it.
How was it so easy to fall into this old pattern, of all things?
Still stroking my breast and his cock with our combined efforts, he whispered into my ear. “If you say no now, I will stop. But I can’t make any guarantees for after. Now is the cutoff for no.”
I shuddered. After everything, the rise and the fall of us, the pain and the aftermath, why did his touch still bring such comfort? How could it unearth such a sense of security?
I made my mind into a temporary ally with my want, my desire, yet again, and took the plunge.
I felt so out of control that I didn’t even care what happened after.
It was madness.
And yet, completely necessary.
“Yes or no. I want to hear it.”
My eyes fell closed and I gripped him harder. “Yes.”
His breath shuddered out harshly, and he fumbled at his pants, working them open.
I gripped and started stroking as soon as he spilled, bare and hard, into my open palm.
I felt him working my skirt up, his other fingers plucking firmly at my nipple through two layers of fabric that I would have liked to make disappear just then. But there was no time for undressing, not here.
This was a direct access; get at it as fast as you can kind of fuck. And yes, it had a name. Thanks to the devastating power of our history together, nearly every damn thing did.
The hand in my skirt lifted it high, and he fit himself behind me, his swollen flesh pressing hard into my thigh.
He pushed the heel of his hand against the throbbing nub of my clit. It pulsed against him like a heartbeat.
“Oh,” I cried out before I could stop myself.
The hand on my breast moved up to cover my mouth. I mewled softly into it while he rubbed at my needy flesh.
“Shh, sweetheart,” he rasped in a hushed voice. “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten where we are, but this is not the place to make a lot of noise.”
I shook my head, my body shaking, throbbing with unfulfilled need as he shoved my panties to the side and rubbed the thick head of his cock slowly along my wet entrance.
His mouth moved to the sensitive tendon between my neck and shoulder, biting down gently, he plunged in hard.
I bit his hand (not gently) as he started to fuck me in earnest.
I had to brace both hands on the table in front of me. It wasn’t all that sturdy; it began to shake, clanging into the wall with each movement.
I didn’t give a damn.
A few delicate fans fell off, and still I couldn’t make myself stop, even knowing I’d be sorry later.
That was the all-encompassing, undeniable control he had over my body, the absolute power.
The power to make me forget, and to make me let go.
He stretched me, my flesh clenched around him. He surged in and out of me, filling me, taking all of the emptiness away for that brief respite.
I throbbed in time to his steady rhythm. As ever, he played my body to his beat. Who else? It had been tuned for his hands alone. The years apart had only illustrated that fact even further.
In huge glowing neon letters.
His mouth stayed on my neck, licking, sucking, his free hand digging into my hip, anchoring me for his relentless thrusts.
The pressure inside of me built with each sure thrust, until I was biting so hard at his hand that he pulled it away.
I tensed as I felt the wave coming, muscles drawn tight as he continued to pound into me. I bit back a cry as my entire body began to convulse.
I broke, shuddering, clenching, wave upon wave of pleasure washing over me, crashing relentlessly, again and again.
Like it was rinsing me clean.
I couldn’t quite stifle one tiny sob as I came down from that impossible high.
He was folded against my back, himself shaking and emptying inside of me, as I came back into my trembling skin. I’d missed the beginning of his release
, as I’d been so involved in my own.
“My God,” he gasped. “Are you okay?”
I nodded weakly.
“Well, I’m not sure I am.”
He started to pull out, and I let out a little involuntary noise of protest. He hugged me tight from behind. “Sweetheart, you are going to be even angrier with me if we get caught like this, or I’d stay inside all night.”
His words jarred me into remembering where we were. I couldn’t quite believe it. I’d been transported, for a few addictive minutes, into another place, another world.
His pants were fastened, my skirt straightened, when he spoke again, “Can we agree that we need to talk? Not in a week, not in a month, but tonight.”
“I’m work—”
“When you’re done. I can wait. Obviously.”
I nodded, not looking at him, focused on the pile of fans we’d knocked over onto the floor.
I got to work picking them up and straightening them. None were damaged, thank God, but not for lack of trying. We’d knocked every single one of them off the table.
Tristan tried to help me, but I waved him off.
“Go away. Go look around, or mingle, or something. I can’t get anything done with you around.”
Instead of offending him, that made him smile. The man was still perverse.
I got back to work, but I was so distracted that I felt like a basket case for the rest of the night.
Every time I turned around, there he was, looking my way, smiling at my annoyed looks.
What was wrong with him, behaving like no time had passed since we’d been close? Acting as though we still were close.
It was disarming me, and I needed my arms.
After a time, as I did my usual hurry back and forth through the different exhibits, answering questions, handling sales, placating artists, I noticed that he’d stopped following me around.
Somehow, that was even more distracting.
The event was winding down before I saw him again.
I happened upon him in one of the smaller rooms, alone with some woman. They were laughing together, and as I very nonchalantly moved in for a closer look, pretending to straighten a picture on the wall, I realized that I recognized her.