by Claire Adams
“Molly,” I said.
She stared at me for a second and then she proceeded to slam the door in my face. I jammed my leg into the threshold, preventing her from closing the door completely.
“Get your foot out of my doorway,” she said in a no-nonsense tone.
“I can’t do that.”
“What do you want, Tristan?” she demanded.
“I just want to talk.”
“The time for that is done,” she said coldly. “I’m not interested in talking now. Nor am I interested in assuaging your conscience of guilt.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Why else would you be here?”
“If you let me in, I could explain,” I suggested.
Her blue eyes were pinpricks of steel, so I searched the rest of her face for some small indication that she might be softening towards me. Her expression was impatient at best, however, and I could barely see the rest of her through the small opening in the door. My leg was starting to hurt a little bit, too.
“Please, Molly,” I said. “I owe you an apology after the other night.”
“Consider it given,” she replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“That’s not all I want to say to you.”
Molly sighed deeply and shook her head. “Why are you doing this, Tristan?” she asked, and her tone sounded hopeless. “Can’t you at least let me leave with some small amount of dignity? Must you drag this out? It’s already painful enough.”
“I’ve hurt you,” I said directly. “I know that, and I need to explain myself. But I would much rather do that face to face, instead of face to…door.”
Molly’s blue eyes flashed to mine for a second. She seemed to be contemplating her options. I could see that stomping on my foot and slamming the door on me was still an option for her. Luckily, her kind nature won out, and she opened the door, allowing me to walk into her suite. I could see part of her room from where I stood, and I saw that her suitcases were out and half packed. The sight of it gave me the encouragement I needed to start talking.
“I’m sorry,” I started.
“You already said that,” she said impatiently.
“I was scared, Molly,” I said honestly.
I saw her expression change a little as she turned to me. “What were you scared of?”
“Of you…of the idea of us,” I admitted. “I wanted you, and I knew I shouldn’t. You’re Jason’s sister. In my head, you were always off limits. Which wasn’t a problem for me—until that one trip we made during Thanksgiving. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” she nodded.
“We stopped by your parents’ house, and I was standing in the backyard, admiring the cornfields when I saw you from a distance. You walked straight up to me and said hello.”
“I remember that, too.”
“That was the moment things changed for me,” I said. “That was the moment I stopped seeing you as Jason’s sister. That was the moment I saw you for what you really were—a beautiful woman.”
Molly looked at me with surprise. “That was two years after we met.”
“Yes.”
“I was sixteen.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I had no idea you even noticed me. Not even then.”
“How could I let on?” I asked. “Quite apart from the fact that you were Jason’s sister, you were also sixteen. I was twenty; there was no way I could have acted on my feelings.”
She frowned at me with concentration. “The Christmas party,” she said softly. “That kiss…”
“I remember it,” I said, finally admitting to the truth after all these years. “I’ve always remembered it. To this day, it was the best kiss I’ve ever had. And I think that was because of you and what you meant to me…even though I hadn’t admitted to myself the extent of my feelings for you.”
Molly looked like she was processing everything I was telling her. “You remember,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” I told her. “I just thought… I knew you expected me to acknowledge what had happened between us. It was the hardest thing in the world to sit across that breakfast table from you and act as though nothing had happened.”
“You were very convincing.”
“I had to be,” I said. “I couldn’t get involved with you. I was convinced that I had a loyalty to Jason to keep, and I needed to stay away from you. But that was just my excuse. The truth is… I was scared of committing myself to one person. I was scared of relationships. I was scared of screwing up with you. I knew I couldn’t afford to take that risk.”
“So you made the decision for me.”
“I’ve since come to realize how stupid and presumptuous that was of me,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for that, too.”
Molly shook her head at me. “Six years,” she said. “Six years you had me believing that that kiss meant nothing to you.”
“I was an idiot.”
“I watched you drive away with my brother that day,” she told me. “Then I went up to my bedroom and cried for an hour. My nose and eyes were so red and puffy that night, Mom thought I had caught a cold.”
I looked down at the carpet for a moment. “I haven’t treated you very well over the years, have I?”
“No,” Molly said bluntly. “You haven’t.”
I nodded. “I understand if you just want to kick me out of your room. I definitely deserve it. I just want you to know one thing before you decide what you want to do.”
“Which is?”
“I want to give this a shot, Molly,” I said, throwing caution to the wind and deciding to be brave. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since you were sixteen. When we had sex the other night, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was just scared of my own feelings, so I pushed you away like I did six years ago. I was lying when I told you I would have slept with anyone that night. There’s no one else, Molly. It’s only ever been you.
“In all these years, of all the women I’ve been with, you have always been the one constant. You were the one daydream I kept going back to. I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at a relationship. I don’t know if I’ll end up breaking your heart. All I know is that I want to give this one real shot, come what may.
“Because I just realized something. It’s worth the risk. You are worth the risk.”
I finished my little speech, knowing that I had just laid my heart bare for her. Now it was up to Molly. I stood my ground and waited for her verdict.
Chapter Twenty
Molly
It was something of a surreal experience to have Tristan standing before me, telling me things I’d been dreaming of hearing for years. The fourteen-year-old girl inside me was screaming at the top of her lungs, ecstatic and desperate to run into his arms. But the woman I was now was weary and cautious. They were beautiful words, but what if that was all they were?
“You don’t really know me,” I said. “It’s taken you this long to admit you feel anything for me; how can I trust that you’re sincere?”
“I do know you,” Tristan said.
I frowned. “No, you don’t.”
“I paid attention, Molly,” he told me. “Maybe that was never obvious to anyone, but trust me, I paid attention.”
“Before now, we haven’t seen each other in six years,” I reminded him.
“I realize that,” he nodded. “But when I saw you when you first arrived here, I recognized you. I looked at your face and knew you were the same person. Yes, you were older; yes, you’d had more experiences, you’d lived a little… But at the core, you were the same person you’d always been: kind, caring, affectionate, honest, and straightforward.”
I almost smiled—almost. “You never gave me any indication that you started seeing me differently.”
“Because you were only sixteen,” Tristan said. “I felt guilty for even looking at you that way. I told myself it was just because you were beautiful…
But it was more than that, Molly. I was interested in your thoughts, your opinions—and you had a lot of them. I remember the marches you used to take part in, the charities and volunteer work you used to squeeze in on the weekends. I remember that summer you practically lived at the soup kitchen.”
“You were only around for a weekend that summer,” I pointed out.
“I asked Jason about it,” Tristan told me. “He was so proud of you for sticking with it, for getting so involved with the community. I was proud of you, too. Neither one of us would have ever devoted our weekends for anything other than purely selfish reasons.”
I shook my head. It was strange to think that the whole time I was infatuated with Tristan, he had harbored some amount of affection for me—and it hadn’t been platonic. I went to the couch and sat down heavily. It was a lot to process, and my mind was so used to taking disappointment where Tristan was concerned that I wasn’t sure how to handle this.
He approached me slowly and sunk down to his knees in front of me. He took my hands gently into his own and kissed them softly, one by one.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t stress that enough. I said things to you that I wish I could erase now.”
I looked up to see his dark eyes were filled with emotion and what I read to be sincerity. It moved me, and I knew I was melting against him. It was inevitable, really; Tristan had always been my weakness.
“I’ve been in love with you for so long, Tristan,” I said. “Practically half my life. The first time I saw you, you were standing in my driveway, and I was staring down at you from my window. And I felt as though something had knocked me over. I could barely breathe, but I couldn’t turn away, either. I knew then that I loved you…and I’ve loved you ever since that moment.”
He looked at me intensely; he didn’t seem scared by what I was telling him, but I wondered how long that would last.
“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t think I can do casual with you,” I said honestly. “Actually, I know I can’t. I can’t just have a fling with you. I can’t just take things slow. Because the truth is I’m already way past all that. I’ve passed the threshold of casual and crossed over into serious. So if you want to try this out, then I need a real commitment from you. I’m not talking about marriage or anything… I just mean a serious relationship, one that doesn’t involve games.
“Because I don’t want to be just another name on your list, Tristan. I refuse to become an ex-girlfriend that’s easy to forget. If we are together, I want it to mean something. I want it to matter.”
“I know,” he nodded. “I understand that—and I want the same thing.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”
“I know I haven’t given you much reason to believe me,” he admitted. “But I do want exactly what you just described. I wouldn’t have wanted it with any other woman Molly…just you.”
I felt a small smile creep onto my face and I felt a burst of joy rush to my chest. “You’re serious?” I asked, scared to feel the full extent of my joy too prematurely.
In answer, Tristan grabbed me and kissed me hard on the lips until the kiss turned into a passionate embrace. I slipped off the couch and landed on top of him on the soft-carpeted floor. His hands were snaking up my body wildly, and I could feel that he was already hard. I could feel his cock digging into my thigh and could feel myself moisten at the sensation.
I started tearing off his clothes at the same time he started pulling apart mine. It was chaos; it was chaos built from limbs and clothes and desperate pawing until we were both naked and panting. Tristan kissed me passionately, before traveling down to my breasts. He massaged them both with his hand, while his lips grazed over the nipples titillating.
I writhed underneath him, desperately needing him to be inside me but wanting the moment to be prolonged, as well. He took a nipple into his mouth and sucked hard. It sent tendrils of pleasure shooting down between my thighs, and I wrapped my hand around his neck and closed my eyes. After a few minutes, Tristan moved further down until he was between my legs. He pushed my thighs apart and lowered his head. A second later, I gasped in shock, as a jolt of indescribable pleasure rocked my body.
This time, I couldn’t control my cries. I moaned and writhed as he licked me until I was hit with a powerful orgasm that came suddenly and without warning. I was still recovering when he rose above me and pushed inside me. I gasped again and held on as he started fucking me with abandon. I could feel the grating of the carpet against my back. Our bodies were moving together in a violent, yet amazing rhythm.
I clung to him, arching my back, closing my eyes, wrestling with my screams until they won out and I was screaming and digging my nails into Tristan’s back. The moment I thought he had reached his limit and was going to cum, he flipped me over and entered me from behind. With his hand on my neck and the other one on my hip, he plowed into me hard. I could hear the pounding of flesh on flesh and felt another orgasm start to develop.
I was just about to cum again when Tristan flipped us around again, positioning me on top of him. Everything was new to me. I realized that this was only the third time I was having sex. And yet, everything felt so natural. It was almost like I’d done this a hundred times before with Tristan. Our bodies were unfamiliar to one another, but somehow instinct took over at the moment, and we were able to find our rhythm together.
I put my hands on his chest and started moving slowly on top of him. I moved back and forth at first until I was comfortable enough to start experimenting. When I was more confident, I started to move up and down until I could feel his cock slide in and out of me. I saw Tristan’s eyes close in pleasure, and I moved faster, riding him hard until I could feel my body tingle again, a prelude to the orgasm that I knew was imminent.
We came together, with my hands on Tristan’s chest and his hands on my hips. Our screams mixed together, creating a symphony of carnal delight. There was something almost poetic about it, and I felt a decade’s worth of longing merge with desire in that one moment. And suddenly, I felt complete. Suddenly, everything that was skewed before now tilted back in the right direction.
We lay in each other’s arms for a long time without talking. We were both entangled in our own thoughts for a while, and the silence was welcome. When I pushed myself up on my elbow, I realized dusk had fallen, and the sun was close to setting. When I looked back down at Tristan, he was staring up at me with a smile on his face. His hand brushed the back of my spine, moving in gentle strokes that left a little trail of fire behind.
I leaned down to kiss him softly on the cheeks. He looked thoughtful, and I sensed there was something on his mind.
“Is there something you want to ask me?” I wondered out loud.
He smiled. “I suppose there is.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “Ask me anything.”
“You’re a beautiful woman…” he started. “And I know you were never short of suitors… I guess I’m just curious as to why you stayed a virgin for so long. It’s not like you didn’t have the choice.”
I smiled. “I’m surprised you have to ask.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“How could I sleep with any other man when all I thought about was you?” I said. “It felt wrong somehow; it felt dishonest. I didn’t want to be one of those girls who just had sex for the sake of having sex. I wasn’t going to do it to fit in. I was going to do it on my terms, when I wanted to, for the right reasons.”
Tristan looked at me in awe. “You are amazing, you know that?” he said. “I’ve always admired that about you. You never caved in to pressure. You never let anyone else tell you how to feel. You did exactly what you thought was right, and you never let anyone else make you feel bad about it.”
“You make mistakes that way,” I said. “I wasn’t willing to make more mistakes than I needed to.”
“What if things had never happened between us?” he wondered.
“Then I would have waited for someone I felt as
strongly about as I did with you,” I said. “Because otherwise it wouldn’t have been worth it.”
Tristan smiled. “Was this worth it?” he asked. His tone was slightly teasing, but I could sense the seriousness underneath the question.
“It was,” I nodded, leaning in to kiss him again. “It was completely worth it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Tristan
“Merry Christmas,” I whispered to Molly as she stirred next to me.
She turned and gave me a brilliant smile. “Merry Christmas,” she replied. “Today’s the big day, huh?”
“In more ways than one,” I nodded.
“Are you nervous?”
“A little,” I admitted. “It’s always nerve-wracking opening yourself up to the public. Things are going to get a lot busier from here on out.”
“Is everything in order?”
“We have been dealing with some staff issues of late,” I replied, remembering my proposal to Jason at the beginning of Molly’s trip. I sat up in bed and looked down at her. Her golden hair was spread across the pillow, and a few strands were lying on my arm.
“What?” she asked.
“I have a job vacancy I need filled,” I said, easing into the topic.
“Oh?” she said, acting as though she didn’t know what I was talking about.
I smiled. “I could really use someone to head my human resources department,” I said. “Do you know anyone qualified enough for that job?”
She thought about it for a while. “I do know someone,” she nodded. “But she’s too expensive for you.”
“Is she?” I asked. “Well, I don’t mind paying well for someone good. But the job comes with one condition.”
“Which is?”
“She has to be willing to sleep with the boss,” I teased. “Often.”
Molly laughed. Then her expression turned serious, and she sat up, too. “But seriously, Tristan,” she said. “I know you made me that offer when I first arrived…”