Kiltless

by Melissa Blue

  Keri shook a test tube and then placed it into a machine. “You've been very quiet.”

  Exhaustion should have pulled at his limbs. It was well past three. But his thoughts refused to let sleep settle in. “I'm taking it all in.”

  The lab was filled with beeps, whirs and the tapping of computer keys. It was cold too. Storage bins covered one wall. He was sure they were filled with relics.

  “Not what you expected?” she asked.

  “It's exactly what I expected. Somewhat quiet and cold.”

  “Cold?”

  “Heat is known to ruin certain relics, screw up tests.”

  She looked impressed. “What else do you know?”

  “My brother would get smashed and start waxing poetic about everything he'd done or seen whenever he visited.” He hesitated. “My mother was also an archaeologist. I didn't pick up the relic bug.”

  There was the faintest interest in her gaze at the mention of his mother. “And your father runs a pub. Huh. Interesting family.”

  He wondered how long it would take her to get the courage to ask about his mother. “I used to own a stake in it until I sold my half.” He'd sold it to Ian so he could pay back the money he'd taken. He shrugged. “Learned everything I know from my da. He's a cheapskate. Didn't see the need to hire someone to fix or build this or that as long as his hands still worked.” He smiled and leaned forward on the table. The chair was uncomfortable as shite, but it'd do.

  She frowned, looked hesitant. “I don't remember Jocelyn ever talking about her mother-in-law. Or complaining about her.”

  His heart grew as cold as the room. “My mum's not around.”

  “Another long story?”

  His jaw hurt from the sudden clenching of his teeth. He breathed out, relaxed. “That one's short. She left. I made sure of it.”

  Her hands never lost their steadiness, but she appeared shaken by his confession. “You don't seem like the homicidal type. I'm going to guess she's alive, just not...active in your lives.”

  Aye. He accepted his mum was shite. Didn't make it any easier to talk about her. “My brother, I think some part of him still wishes she was the mother we needed. I know better. I knew better even as a kid. She wanted an out so I told her we didn't need her around, much less want her. She'd come home after some trip.”

  He rolled his shoulders, disgusted with the memory, disgusted with what he let himself become over someone who'd walk away from her child. “She listened to me, her son, who was being a little shite. She left and made another family. I consider her my first con job and it was all downhill from there. To answer your question, you can call that not active.”

  He could see her brain working, cataloging his words behind her gaze. The woman and the scientist wouldn't be able to do anything else. He felt stripped of everything and all he could do was wait for her reaction.

  “I don't say this word often, but I think it fits. Your mother is a foul bitch.”

  He laughed, surprised at her frankness. “Thank you?”

  “You're welcome.” She grinned at him. “Her choice says more about her than it does you.”

  “Maybe.” His shoulders tightened, because despite his shite mum, he had still chosen to hurt people and justify it. “Your mother?” he asked to head off any questions she might have.

  “My mother? Huh.” She pressed a button on a round metal machine. It began to twirl at the speed of light. He knew it was separating particles and that would take a few minutes at best.

  “Aye, your mum.”

  “Is this some—” She abruptly stopped and leaned on the other side of the table. “My mother didn't screw me up. She was eccentric, flighty. She dated a ton of men but I never met them.”

  “Your da?”

  She laughed. “I feel like I'm being interrogated.”

  “I'm curious about the woman standing in front of me. She knows her place in this room, detailing facts and figures, putting them into compartments. She has the patience to write out a long report about her findings and has the balls to state them based on what she's found.”

  He shifted, uncomfortable. He wasn't ready yet to talk about himself, every ugly confession. But this wasn't a con. He wouldn't leave her heart in shambles.

  “Well, I'm normal,” she said, seeming to notice his discomfort. “My parents split. My father was there. He always seemed the happiest when I was winning this or that award for science.” She swallowed and then busied her hands.

  A sore spot. He had more than enough so he avoided the subject for her. “But why science?”

  “No idea, but I think it was the experiments that swayed me the most. Scientists always seemed to have fun. What does it take to blow up something? A scientist knows. If they don't, they figure it out. In the process you get to blow up something.” She laughed. “I had a head for math so that worked out in my favor.”

  Made sense. “Why relics?”

  “I love stories too.” She picked up the bronze statute that forced Jocelyn to call her in the middle of the night. She gestured to the box of latex gloves.

  He slid some on without much more encouragement and took the offered statue. After getting a decent look, he said, “Looks to be about seventeenth century, but it reminds me of Rodin's work because of the nude woman.”

  He flipped the statue over to look at the bottom. He ran his hand along the small scrapings. “That one's yours because it looks fresh. These other two are older. The outcome of those tests should be in the paperwork you received. You'll confirm what you've found and if it's not a fraud, the results should match up.”

  “But what's the story?” she pushed.

  “You tell me.” He handed the statue back to her.

  “You're right. The method does mimic the seventeenth century, but it was made by a student in the late nineteenth. No one famous, just passionate about the time period. Since it's a naked woman doing something vaguely racy, apparently the student was a fan of Rodin.”

  He wondered how much of the story came from the files and how much she made up, but that wasn't the point. Every relic had a story. It wasn't just facts in a report or placard in a museum. “Why only a passionate student and not someone famous?”

  “Why?” She smiled. “There's over 160,000 members of SAG. How many of those actors do you actually hear about? Not all of them are talented or passionate, but you hear about them. There are many ‘Shop Girl Number Ones’ but you'll never know their names. Doesn't mean they aren't talented or passionate. They haven't had a lucky break or never will.” She tilted her head. “But you know stuff like that. The con man, who needs to know a little bit about everything. You just wanted to hear my answer. Why?”

  This woman wasn't pretending to be vivacious, funny and open. She had intelligence, wit, and that made her sexy right down to her pristine lab coat. She wouldn't buckle beneath the truth. She'd take it, notate it and file it away. It made him want her in just her lab coat. And heels. He'd grown a terrible fondness for her dainty feet in heels.

  Cons involved lies and he never wanted to tell her any. “You know I planned to leave this afternoon. I had...reservations.”

  She blinked. Her way of taking, notating and filing. “About me?”

  “About what you—” Made me feel. “About what we were getting ourselves into. I'm not a man you should invest a future into.”

  “You are a different breed of man,” she said slowly. “I'll admit that, but—I don't know.”

  His gut tightened. “And what do you need to know about me?”

  “I get a say?”

  “This goes both ways or it's no fun.”

  “So do I want to have more sex with you?”

  He hadn't meant sex, but of course that was what she'd want from him. “Aye,” he said low.

  “That's a hefty question, especially after learning you planned to leave without so much as a bye.”

  He balled his fist against the table. “Now I'm worried again I might break you, no matter what we
do. You deserve better.”

  “Now I'm worried that you think saying goodbye means something much deeper and profound. It's...polite. You did it well the first time...in the stairwell. Or, well enough that I wouldn't have questioned it until a few weeks down the line.”

  She stripped him bare with just a few words. He unclenched his fists. “You're not dumb. So you know the likelihood of us being anything more than sex. The question is, do you want to?”

  “You made me come.”

  “Aye.” Again, she was talking sex. His jaw tightened but he waited for her to finish.

  She licked her lips, her eyelids getting heavy from just the memory. “You're incredible at sex. Don't let that feed your ego too much.”

  Her honesty appealed to him, even though his stomach refused to unknot. “Of course it will.”

  She glanced down but he could see the smile and he smiled in return. She cleared her throat and met his gaze. “You being able to make me come counts for something. I don't need you to hold me when I'm hurt. Right now wanting you is good enough. I only ask if you break things off or you get bored or tired, you tell me goodbye. It's polite.”

  The condition seemed fair on the surface, but the words dug in his gut, his conscience. Could he have ever walked away from Keri without being straight with her? He had that first time. Could he now, after seeing her in her element? No. He may have wanted to slip away, more than once, but something had stopped him every time. Telling her goodbye if and when they ended went past polite for him. He could admit that to himself.

  “Aye. I'll say it.” He started to tell her the ugly truth, but she let out a relieved breath. Soft enough that if he wasn't paying attention, he would have missed it. Not yet.

  “So we're staying for the rest of the conference? You'll ignore the out you managed to get with Montgomery?”

  “How'd you—” He stopped because she didn't have the instinct of a con, but she had enough know-how to align facts with a cold mind.

  Tristan took in Keri. Could he call her cold? He wouldn't have until he saw her in the lab and knee-deep in her element. Would she measure their outcome with facts? She could, and the knots in his stomach refused to ease.

  Right now that wasn't a problem. Right now he didn't have to confess. He'd take the reprieve. “We'll stay until the end,” he reassured her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  This pretending to be a different woman was getting easier. She'd talked about the end of their sexual relationship with a cool head and no heart. Relationship. She scoffed at the word because they were back in the hotel and getting ready for bed, in the middle of the afternoon. He'd used his brother's clout to borrow a work laptop from the museum. Though he did pay for Wi-Fi. Once the test results came in, she could fire it away in a timely manner.

  Relationship. She pulled back the covers to get onto that stiff mattress that only God knew how many bodily fluids... She shuddered. They didn't have one. A relationship, that is. They had sex. They were in over their heads trying to pull off the lie of their lives as a married couple in love.

  She was in over her head. For a reckless moment she thought he was asking her to be in a relationship. But then she'd come to her senses. He'd planned to leave just that afternoon. Nothing had happened that could have possibly changed his mind. So, she'd bargained for more time. She wouldn't call it anything else. She could bluff him, but her thoughts wouldn't let her believe the lie.

  She curled onto her side and waited for Tristan. He wore a tank top, boxer-briefs and socks. It felt like a uniform and just another lie between them. Tristan was a single man. Who did he need to get covered up for before going to sleep?

  “You're wearing a lot of clothes,” she pointed out.

  He didn't bother to pull the cover up. Cupping one hand behind his head, he turned to look at her. “I think so every time I get ready for bed. I'm going to suffer from night sweats if this continues.”

  Her heart thumped. “Wear what you normally wear to bed.”

  He seemed gauge her words in glance, just like he had when they stood in a too-cold lab while she ran tests that would prove what her gut had told her—it was real. By “it” she meant the statue, not their non-relationship.

  “Socks,” he said.

  Her brows rose. “Don't you ever get cold?”

  “Only during blizzards.” He shifted closer.

  He was a touch away, but not really. Amazing that a man could reveal what he had about himself and still be untouchable. He smiled but that openness didn't crack the surface. People smiled to make you think everything was okay. Smiled until it hurt too much. You couldn't possibly smile if you were bleeding on the inside, could you? Somehow he did. It was probably why being a con came naturally to him. He could bury all that he was just so others could see what he wanted them to see.

  She wore the same kind of smile whenever her father showed up for yet another award ceremony. She was happy to see him, that wasn't a lie. Would she be happier if he showed up just to see her? Yes. But what cut ran so deep that Tristan had learned to be charming in everyday life? A mother abandoning her little boy could turn a man into something cold, but that couldn't be all of it. There was more, she could feel that in her gut. She didn't know the hurt, but she ached for him just the same.

  She shouldn't have, but Keri reached out to cup his cheek. “You still have on too many clothes.”

  “You still look like you're trying to find my genospecies.”

  She was trying to figure out his story. “Because you could tell the differences in bronze art by centuries. You're more than a carpenter.”

  He looked stunned. “You want to know more about me?”

  “I want to pick your brain.” Partly true, but almost a full-on lie, because he reached beneath the covers and placed a hand on her waist.

  He snorted. “It's not my brain you want.”

  “Haven't you heard that being smart is sexy?”

  “Unless you're daft as fuck.” He raised his hand and began to massage her breast.

  He was doing his best to distract her and the misdirection started to work. She pushed out the question before she forgot it. “Are you calling yourself dumb?”

  He leaned forward and rasped his teeth over her nipple through the nightshirt. “Said no such thing.”

  “Implication.”

  He bit down, catching all of her nipple between his teeth. He pulled back, making sure to tug the taut nub with the action. “Big word.”

  His mouth went back to work. What he could do with a shirt in his way deserved a moment of admiration. Did it matter that he talked about leaving in a clear, concise tone? She'd met him days ago. Maybe coming had mushed her brain into something unusable, but that couldn't be the single reason.

  What was she doing thinking, anyway? Her shirt dampened beneath his artful mouth. He suckled her until the material was wet and then he licked her through the thin fabric. The cotton clung to her erect nipple, somehow heightening the sensation of his tongue flicking the beaded nub. His hand sneaked under her nightshirt. He murmured something incomprehensible. She hadn't worn underwear.

  “Dirty words,” she whispered, guessing what he likely had said.

  He laughed and yanked the shirt over her head. She tried not to get caught up in his laughter. His charm was a mask but the damn thing was impenetrable and contagious.

  As though he knew her thoughts, he let his fingers feather beneath her breast, but her sex didn't ache. She giggled.

  “Ah,” he said. “There it is again. That girlish sound. Who'd think Keri Pearson could giggle?”

  She leaned forward and touched the tip of her tongue to the corner of his mouth. “I don't giggle.”

  “You scream also. I've got bruises on my back from you too.”

  He trailed his fingers over the curve of her breast and stopped at her nipple. He pressed his thumb against it for a second and then dragged the digit down.

  “You masturbated in the shower after I went to sleep,” she
said to keep her mind less focused on the pinpricks of pleasure shooting through her every time he petted her nipple.

  “A man's gotta do...” He pinched her softly.

  She gasped. “What did you think about? When you masturbated?”

  He captured her tongue with his teeth and sucked. She moaned, forgetting the word foreplay because his mouth deserved another moment of mental praise. He didn't have tricks, didn't need them. And she honestly didn't know what it was that made his tongue, his teeth, something akin to getting hit with a jolt of pure desire. Chemistry or alchemy. Her brain sided with biology, but her body felt drugged by something undefined between them.

  “Tristan.” His name rolled from her tongue and washed over her. She'd said it, but there was power in a name.

  He dragged his mouth over hers and then lifted his head. “Turn over. Face the window.”

  She tried to understand the simple command and couldn't. “I'm worried.”

  He tutted. “Don't be.”

  “Yes, because that's solved nerves before.” She mimicked his accent. “Don't be.”

  He dipped his head until his lips hovered over hers. “If you turn over, I promise you'll thank me afterward.”

  “I'll thank you?” Hadn't they run through his repertoire? Still he had moves she'd thank him for? “Now, that's interesting.”

  He pushed her shoulder. She huffed, turning to her side, facing away from him. She closed her eyes when he pressed his warmth, his hardness against her back. A fluid tension gripped her stomach. Anticipation. He kissed her shoulder blade and reached forward, grasping her breast. His calluses rasped over her.

  His scruff created a friction as he raised his head to her ear. She shivered. He worked his long fingers over her nipples. The tentative ministrations turned them into aching points. His breathing feathered along her neck, adding to the full-body seduction.