She rolled her forehead back and forth on his chest, shaking her head no. “Other than I thought I was going to die.”
“I think I did.” He took a few breaths, but he felt his dick beginning to soften and grabbed the base to hold the condom on. “Time to move off.”
She did, and he got rid of the condom in the trashcan he knew was beside the bed. He was just reaching for the lamp when she said, “Don’t turn it on yet. It’s almost like a dream, here in the dark. Don’t end it quite yet.”
So he rolled back into the bed and tucked them both under the covers, spooning around her from behind and wrapping every bit of his body around her that he could.
She snuggled down with him and sighed.
He hadn’t meant to drift off, but he’d had a long day.
Sunlight streaming through the windows and off the ocean woke Tristan the next morning. He was alone in the bed, sated, sticky, and guilty as hell.
He needed to end his correspondence with QueenMod that day.
10
Can We Speak?
Colleen
The next morning, Colleen awoke in her hotel room, a small suite with a bedroom, living room, and wet bar area. It was the first hotel room she’d ever stayed in, and she suspected she was now spoiled. As a kid, her parents had taken them to the annual campground family reunion up at Big Lake or, twice, a car trip to visit relatives in Gila Bend where she slept on their floor.
She stretched in the luxurious, enormous king-size bed that felt like she was sleeping on a plush football field.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand with an incoming message.
When she picked it up, several notification boxes scrolled down the front of it.
Five were from Anjali, asking, pleading, and then demanding to know if Colleen was all right because she hadn’t heard from her since eleven the previous night.
It was only seven in the morning, but the most recent message was Anjali freaking out that she’d turned into her Indian mother, but she needed to know where the HELL Colleen was RIGHT NOW.
Colleen called Anjali back and mollified her with pictures of the hotel room and the view of the corrugated Pacific Ocean from the balcony outside.
“Do you need an assistant?” Anjali asked, and they laughed and hung up.
Most of her other notifications were requests for a moderator’s backup from the Sherwood Forest forums, and then notifications saying that somebody else had already taken care of it.
She was sore between her legs from the previous night with Tristan, a guilty pleasure.
The bruise on the inside of her thigh, where she’d pinched herself in punishment at TwistyTrader’s command, also hurt, and the dotted lines from his teeth and the suction he’d applied to mark her were also tender.
That was why she hadn’t wanted the light on with Tristan the night before, not when she had a thigh hickey from some other guy right next to her flaps. It was just too embarrassing.
Not to mention the very faint welts on her ass and the backs of her thighs. Even the next day, only faint pink lines had marred her skin, but she hadn’t wanted to explain them, either, if he had noticed.
And speaking of welts, bruises, and hickeys, the last message on her phone had arrived only fifteen minutes before she’d awakened. Twist the TwistyTrader had sent a message asking, Can we speak?
Dizziness shook her, and for a moment she thought there’d been a small earthquake. After all, they were in California.
However, the curtains surrounding the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony were not swaying.
Must just be devastating guilt.
Not that Colleen had any reason to feel guilty. When she’d met Twist at the Devilhouse, they’d both agreed it was a one-time deal. He’d even said that he was probably not going to come back to the United States for a long time, and she knew there was no way she was going to get to Europe, probably ever.
Although his dirty texts had been fun, they didn’t constitute a relationship, as he’d even said.
