by Melissa Blue
His finger glided in and out, a tease, almost a taunt because he denied her what she craved. She bit into the comforter in an attempt to halt the wanton words that itched in the back of her throat and threatened to spill out in her next moan.
Tristan wouldn’t relent on this torture, no matter how his dick strained and begged for relief. His cock pressed against her thigh, a steel reminder that he could and would make her come until she was soaking wet. Her sex tightened around his finger; he pressed it deeper and held still. He wouldn’t give, and the knowledge provided something akin to relief.
She turned her face away from the cover. “T-Tristan, it’s not your finger I want.”
“No. It’s not.”
Her sex felt so swollen and achy. She licked her lips, sure he’d penetrate her now, but he cupped her ass with both hands and his weight shifted lower on her legs. He replaced his finger with his tongue.
She couldn’t see him fully but could catch a glimpse of his biceps flexing as he tongue fucked her. His breath was hot, but his tongue felt soft and rough at the same time. He dipped it into her sex, down to her clit, and did it again in a steady rhythm. She bit into the comforter again but it couldn’t hide the strangled moans.
If and when she could think again, she’d be sure to tell him it felt wonderful, but it wasn’t… “Right there. Don’t stop,” was muffled but he must have heard the plea in her tone, because he fucked her faster, stiffening his tongue. In. Out. Against her clit. In. Out.
She buried her face into the mattress, too mindless to be embarrassed about the keening moan. She shuddered and gripped harder, reaching for that familiar euphoria from an orgasm. She let it drag her under. Her climax slammed into her and she moaned louder. When the world stopped being fuzzy around the edges, she could still feel his breath against her left thigh.
“More?” he asked.
How much would it take for him to break? Probably somewhere between how she felt now and on the brink of death from coming too much. “Fuck me,” she begged.
The words weren’t anywhere close to a whisper, but the shift between them was soundless. He took the same position to straddle her thighs, but he pressed his cock to her sex. The broad tip nudged at her entrance and nothing could compare to the full-body tingle that rushed through her. She tilted her hips up to take in more.
He hissed, sank deeper and pulled out enough to make her whimper. He chuckled. “Oh, no, Keri. I’m not done. You promised to come on my cock, remember?”
The warmth of his hands settled on the arch of her back. He rolled his hips, sinking deeper, but not quite all the way. He felt thick and hard. She was wet enough for him to enter her fully, but his hips weren’t snug against her ass.
He lightly tugged her waist down until it felt like she could be in control of how much she took. She raised her hands above her head, balled her hands into the comforter again and pushed back. Her ass seated flush against his thighs. She tried to catch her breath. Her body wasn’t yet used to him, so full the sensation kissed pain but the pleasure reached out to her. She pulled away, pushed back again and was rewarded with the soft sound of their skin slapping together.
Tristan shifted more of his weight onto her back. “You forgot something else, lass.”
She could barely remember her name. “Yeah?”
“You wanted me to fuck you,” he said and then thrust hard into her. Once he got a rhythm, the spring of the bed worked with him. The headboard banged against the wall in the same staccato beat.
Heat enveloped her chest because he was so deep and pounding into her so hard. The buildup of this orgasm didn’t feel remotely the same. More intense. It seared through her limbs. All she could do was feel. His hands on her waist, a steady grip. Sweat dripping down her spine. Her breath panting out.
Within a few more punishing, delicious strokes, Keri realized it wasn’t an orgasm but just the position and his girth that left her mindless. He quickened his pace, never losing that deep stroke. A long pull started in her stomach and she curled into it. She tightened as the heat in her chest overwhelmed her. She let out a soft sob as her entire body shuddered. He stilled behind her. He made a sound of appreciation and rolled his hips.
She surprised herself, because she didn’t think anything other than a moan could come out, but Keri laughed. “You sound so damn proud of yourself.”
He grasped her elbows, unstraddled her legs and spread them instead. “I’m the first man to make you come with penetration. Of course I sound pleased. Validated even. You might want to hold onto my forearms for the next one.”
“Bragging.” She laughed tiredly, charmed despite the cockiness on display.
“You’re only being sarcastic in one-word sentences. That’s more than enough to feed my ego.” He tugged on her elbows and her ass slapped against him.
The laugh disappeared on a moan. She grabbed hold of his forearms. “Okay. Just the next one. Any more might kill me.”
He thrust again but didn’t agree. She leaned forward and bit into the cover. Keri was going to need it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A sense of male pride filled him. Keri was right where he’d left her after taking a shower. She slept, hogging most of the bed, just as always. Would he drag her across him again?
No. The less he engaged, the better for the both of them. He glanced at his luggage and the toiletries, a forgotten mess on the hotel’s carpet. Leave or stay?
Leave.
She was better off without him. It was why he didn’t have a close relationship with his brother. No one should need him for anything. He drifted through life and he liked it to stay that way. His past precluded him from normal, satisfying happiness. He’d paid back every cent he gained by ill means, but that didn’t redeem him. He’d taken more than money, and there was no amount of anything he could use to give that back. She deserved better, more from a man than the ability to make her come.
Tristan bent to put the luggage at the end of the bed where Keri’s leg didn’t take up room. The phone rang. Not their mobiles, but the hotel’s phone. He checked the clock display on the nightstand. Two in the morning—it could only be one of two people.
But if it was someone from the hotel or association…how would his brother answer? They both had their share of traveling the world, but Ian had done his with a purpose. He’d graduated from Cambridge and done lectures at places like Stanford. His brother had experienced the world in a professional capacity. Yeah, Ian had affairs, but living like that did something to a man. It smoothed out his rough edges.
Tristan had smoothed his out of necessity, conning to feed his family. Then conning because there was nothing he knew better even with a basic college education. He pretended to be refined, gentrified. The real him held those rough edges he’d grown up with while living in a home with nothing but men.
He finally answered with, “Mr. Baird.”
“Where’s my cousin?” Jocelyn didn’t bother to greet him with warmth.
“She’s asleep at the moment. Would you like me to wake her?” Silence. He sighed. “Give me a minute.”
He placed the phone on the nightstand and settled onto the bed. Keri had fallen asleep on top of the covers. Her skin was sticky from sweat. His groin tightened, because he could go for another five. He shook her shoulder until she moaned, turning her head toward him.
“Hmm?” she answered with her eyes still closed.
“Keri,” he urged. “Your cousin is on the phone and sounds like she’s in a pish mood.”
She grabbed a pillow and put it over her head. He laughed and picked up the phone. “Can she call you back?”
“No. It’s important and time sensitive.”
He sighed, ripped away the pillow and put the phone up to Keri’s ear. “Hey, Jocelyn.” Her voice was raspy and her words slurred. “No. No. You woke me.”
Her eyes popped open and she grabbed the phone out of his hand. He rose from the bed, caught between concern and his plans to leave. She scooted to th
e end and pulled the comforter up to cover herself.
She met his gaze and mimed writing. He grabbed a pen and paper from the small desk in the corner. She nodded her thanks as she took them. “What do they need tested?” She scribbled down the answer, nodding some more as she wrote. “What’s the timeline I need to get this done?” Her brows rose. “Okay. Won’t be a problem.”
A few more minutes of bobbing her head and then she returned the phone to its cradle. She ran a hand over her hair. “I’ve got to go.” She blinked, looking as shocked as he felt by the announcement. “Ian needs me to head to the Langston Museum and do testing.”
“Isn’t that where Jocelyn works?”
“Yeah. Maybe an hour from here.” She rose, her hand like a vise on the comforter. “I need my clothes.”
He gestured toward the closet. “I’ve hung them up.”
“You what?” She fought with the cover, trying to face him.
“Before you went out today, you’d strewn your clothes over the bed. I hung them up.”
She bit her lip for a second. “Your socks are paired, so I shouldn’t find that surprising.”
He snorted. “Are you calling me fussy?”
“I’d say no such thing.” She dragged the cover with her to the closet. “I can’t wear this stuff to the lab. They’ll think I’m crazy.”
“You’re going right now?”
“Yeah. It’s a rush order they need, which is still slow for the test they want me to do.” She flicked through her selections, shaking her head at each one. “I can’t show up dressed like this. They won’t take me seriously.”
Just moments before he answered the phone he’d planned to walk out the door and not look back. But there’d been a possibility that she’d wake, look at him with her doe eyes wide and vulnerable. He could and would have likely changed his mind. It wasn’t like he wanted to leave. It was just best if he did. His gut twisted. This was the end. His out from attempting to be a better man and failing. Much worse, hurting her in the process. “How long is it going to take you?”
“Maybe a day. So make excuses for my absence. We still have to suffer through this charade.”
A thought, a need, took hold and he couldn’t shake it. “We are stuck with each other for the next few days. I’ll keep you company and we can come back together.”
Her hand dropped from the dress. “You don’t have to.”
“It’s our honeymoon. I’d rather not chance it that folks see us leave separately.” He jerked one shoulder. “If I get bored, I can go to my brother’s flat for a while.” He paused. “Call me curious. I want to see what my brother does.”
“He’s never taken you for a tour?”
He’d kept his distance from his brother for his own good too. “We aren’t close. Anymore.”
“Oh.” She bit her lower lip. “What happened?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “Long story.”
“One of those.” She yanked a dress from a hanger, glanced down at the comforter and let it drop.
Whatever thought he had vanished. Her brown skin defined perfection. Smooth, supple, and he wanted to lick her all over again. What had he been thinking of walking away? Who cared if he had a past? She didn’t need to know he used to fuck women for gain. His actions had fed an insecure beast of a man he used to be. A boy abandoned by his mother and just looking for an explanation, and any one would do.
But you’d know.
Was he still that man? No. He used to look at every woman—everyone—as a potential mark and catalog what the mark could do for him and the best way to get it. A hard habit to break, but he had. Yet he still had that skill. It’s why he had flings instead of relationships. No woman stuck around for long the moment he confessed the full truth.
“Aye. One of those.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Well, we have a few hours if you feel the need to confess.”
He looked at his luggage still on the floor. Leave or stay? Staying meant he’d have to tell her all of it. All the ugly. Omitting the truth was as bad as lying, and he wasn’t that man anymore.
Fuck.
He told himself to step forward, grab the luggage, but couldn’t seem to leave her. That meant he had to confess eventually, but not now. Not while she still looked at him with such vulnerability. He sighed and opened the drawer to get dressed, turning away from her questioning gaze.
*****
Tristan had never been in a museum in the middle of the night. Mannequins, statues, belongings of the long dead on display just didn’t give off an educational or interesting vibe. They stood as a reminder that those who once lived were gone. It made him think of his own mortality.
And it was doubly interesting to see this as Keri’s element. The moment she accepted the visitor’s pass and donned the white lab coat, she walked differently. Not once had she fidgeted or rambled. The security didn’t bat an eye at him following along. He knew his brother had worked here for weeks. What kind of impression did Ian leave behind that they didn’t question Tristan’s presence?
The thought shifted something inside him as they settled into the laboratory. White walls, with blander and uncomfortable chairs decorating the space. No personality to the room except for the woman commanding the tools in it.
He tapped his fingers on the countertop, content to watch her at work because his mind kept running through all the ways he could confess, and why he suddenly wanted to. Only one explanation came to mind—his brother had turned him daft and soft in two conversations.
Not surprising. Before Ian’s marriage to Jocelyn, Tristan had worried his choice to stay away from his brother had been an exercise in futility. They both were doomed to be the kind of men women fucked. A kind of existence that was okay for him but not for Ian, who had craved more. He’d never spoken the words, but his brother’s actions told Tristan the truth. So he cut himself off from Ian, hoping the less contact, the less his brother could admire bad habits.
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 archeologist. 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 li
ves.”
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.”