“Fine by me. That kiss was, in any case, not one for the public eye.”
“No.” I smile. “I suspect we might’ve been tossed out of Heathrow Terminal Five if we’d carried on like that.”
“Good thing I have work to do,” he says.
“Good thing I have a book to read.” As if anything could distract me from him.Holy Mother of God and all the saints in a row… I’ve been trying so freaking hard to keep that wall between us since that day he arrived in Miami. But my defenses have weakened. The sight of him, of his cock straining in his fist, was the final breach.
“Why is it so hot in here?” he groans, placing an innocent kiss on my forehead.
“I closed the windows against the bugs since I kept the lights on?”
“You know what I mean. Airflow has nothing to do with it.”
He stands and reaches for my hands to pull me up, and the gesture is so sweet and so Tristan, my arousal-weakened legs almost refuse to straighten. Any other man would have pushed me to blow him by now, disrespecting my body and need for space.
As soon as I’m up, he hugs me close, his chest hard against my breasts, the warm cotton of his Beaumont-branded T-shirt soft against my hands as I circle my arms around his neck. He cups my butt and pulls me up against him, and with a chuckle I perch my feet on his. “What are you doing?”
“Tucking you in. To bed with you,” he says as he walks us across the room. “And no Great Wall of Goose Down tonight, okay?”
“Great Wall of Goose Down?”
“That pillow you thought would ward me off.”
“It was more to ward me off.” I’ve been ready to climb over and ride him cowgirl style for the past few nights, and I’ve had a few dreams that were too real with him so close.
“I see…” He nods with a dry chuckle. “Evan would skin me alive if he knew I so much as looked at any part of you lower than your forehead.”
We’ve reached the bed, and the backs of my thighs are pressing against the high mattress.
“Really?” I remember again that Evan asked me if Tristan was behaving. I’m still waiting for a response to my “define behaving”question.
“Uh-huh.”
“Good thing he’s on the other side of the world and doesn’t need to know what’s happening here.” Are you really breaking rules if no one is watching?
He searches my face for what feels like a very hot minute. “Goddammit, Lexi.”
“What?”
“This wasn’t the plan. I?—”
“I know,” I interrupt him. The plan was a three-month stint in paradise without getting into each other’s hair—never mind pants—but we’ve been in deep waters since arriving at this cottage. Still, I don’t want him to go into any explanations. IknowTristan. I’veseenTristan for years via his social media profiles. I’m familiar with his modus operandi, and it’s a risk I’m willing to take. “I can change my plans.”For better or worse.
For a moment he stares at me, then shakes his head. “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
“Been there, done that.” Didn’t exactly get the T-shirt, but who would want to brag about being rejected by Tristan? Not me. But we can move on from that now. I’ve moved on. I mean,I’m a liberated twenty-four-year-old woman with needs. When it comes to sex, he’s clearly feeling differently about me too these days. We can have a fling and walk away.
His hands drop away from my body, and he takes a step backward, digging his fingers into his hair. “Fuck, Lexi. You were barely nineteen and tipsy at my fraternity’s farewell for me. I wasn’t even staying there anymore and leaving for Hawaii—” He breaks off, clinching his hair tight in his fists. “It was nothing but a fucking dirty frat piss-up, something I’ve totally outgrown, and seeingyouthere?—”
I swallow against the sudden tightening in my throat and sink my butt into the mattress, not trusting my legs. I still went there with the hope of seeing him one last time, before he left forever. “I came for you, Tris?—”
“But you were one of only a handful of girls there and… Jesus Christ, Lexi.” Tristan pulls in a ragged breath and groans. “Do you know what type of guys those frat boys were? Who they probably still are? People don’t change. I was going to fucking kill someone if they even looked at you, never mind touched you.”
“And yet all I wanted was foryouto look at me…seeme.”Differently. No longer as the gangly girl who hung out with him and Evan, making jokes, fooling around, part of a lopsided bunch of kids treading the waters of adolescence as best we could, but as the girl who wanted to behisin every way possible.
Tristan drops his head back, palms hiding his face. “And I did. I watched you grow up, Lexi. Ever since I became friends with Evan, I watched every single transformation, but—” He lowers his face, and drags his hands down his cheeks with a frustrated grunt.
“I get it. I was like your little sister. The one you always wished for.” So he wouldn’t have to be so alone and forgottenby that mishmash family of his who all seemed to have time for everything but him.
