Deciding against waiting for him inside, I push through the door and meet him halfway through the lot with a tight hug and a kiss to his cheek.
“No Connor?”
“When I last saw him, he was waiting for someone to stop freaking out pre-piercing,” he chuckles. “He says hi, though.”
I bite back a smile as Tripp’s lips meet mine, my arms draping around his neck as his free hand drops to the small of my back.
We’re greeted with whistles as we walk into the salon, and I lower my head, shaking it with a laugh while Tripp eats up the attention on our way back to my office. There are very few women I trust around my husband, especially when they make it known that they’re giving him their attention, but these girls are harmless.
Tripp locks the door behind us as we step into the office, resting his helmet and bag onto my desk before he drops into my spinning chair. Widening the space between his knees, he gestures me forward, and I settle onto his lap, like I always have every time he’s come to visit me here. He reaches ahead of me to pull food from the bag; a lunch that he must have stopped at home to make for me.
Leaning against his body, I rest my forehead against his, offering a soft kiss to his skin. A thumb traces his cheekbone, beneath eyes that look clearer and more well rested than they have all week.
“I’m good,” he assures me with a kiss to the tip of my nose, his fingers pushing through my hair to push it behind my ear as he answers a question that I don’t need to ask him out loud.
While we sit, his hand trails against my thigh, his lips peppering soft kisses against my shoulder. This wouldn’t be the first time that we’d ever locked ourselves back here for a little bit of alone time; if walls could talk, this room would never run out of things to say.
As his hand moves, his fingertips tease the seam between my legs to force a giggle out of me.
“Tripp,” I chide, moving a hand to cover his.
“Mmhmm?”
My hips roll against his hand as he cups me between my legs, now using his thumb to offer friction to the seam of my pants.
“You brought me a homemade lunch and you’re being touchy,” I tell him. “What are you not telling me?”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time, until a knot forms in my stomach as he rests his lips against my skin.
“I broke our code,” he finally admits to me. “I went through your books.”
My head whips in his direction as fire hits my skin. I don’t need to have a mirror in front of me to know how red my cheeks must be; I can feel the heat on them.
Tripp has never been allowed to look at my e-reader or open any of the books stored inside of it. They’re private, they’re personal; a few of them, I might even describe as completely unhinged.Allof them are off-limits, and he knows this.
Before I can open my mouth to tear into him for violating our agreed-upon boundary, he sweeps my hair over my shoulder and presses another kiss to my skin.
“Don’t be mad, it was for a good cause,” he pleads. “I needed to know if you were into something before I brought the idea to you.”
Into what? Sixteen-foot tall extra terrestrials who somehow always make it fit?
“Tripp—”
His phone lands on the desk in front of me with the picture of a cover of one of the books categorized into my ‘favorite reads’ folder filling the screen. My eyes bulge at the image, and I think my heart my drops out of my body.
“Connor wants page two thirty-three,” he tells me. “He’s not gonna ask you for it, because the last person who did it for him was Toni and she…well, you’ve heard the Toni stories. You can fill in the blanks. It’s his favorite thing and he hasn’t done it since. I figure you could do it right for him for his birthday.”
My legs spread as he adds more pressure to the seam of my pants, rolling his fingers back and forth against it to make my clit throb.
Before everything imploded in New York and he left for his spontaneous visit to see his parents, we’d been trying to come up with a plan to make Connor’s birthday special. Almost all of the pieces have fallen into place; dinner reservations, gifts, making sure that our schedules will align.
I’m not sure if he asked outright for this piece, or if this is my husband’s creative thinking, but the idea of it sends a burning heat coursing through my body.
“And you think that if you make me come, I’ll just agree to do it?” I taunt, rocking my hips into Tripp’s palm.
“No,” he chuckles, “I know you’ll agree to it because you put enough highlighter marks on that page that it looks like it’s covered in fucking confetti.” The tip of his tongue swipes across my earlobe before his teeth meet my skin in a nibble, his voice lowering in pitch as he presses his lips to my ear. “And I know you’ll agree to it, because you know I want to watch it.”
“Did you read it?” I brave asking as he reaches for the tack of my pants.
