As much as he was enjoying her suddenly flirtatious attention, Sebastian couldn’t help feeling it was somehow for the priest’s benefit. To make him jealous?
But that would just be weird.
Teeth gritted, Tristan bent down and placed his lips a hair’s breadth from Kady’s ear. “Don’t make me ask you again.” His rumble was wrapped in a whisper too quiet for Sebastin to hear. Then with slow deliberation he straightened, turned his back on her, and strode toward his table. “I’ll be waiting, Kadence.”
Trying to keep her anger wrapped in a neutral expression, she slid off the barstool and told a perplexed Sebastian, “I’ll be right back.” Then scurried after Tristan, reaching him just as he sat down. “How dare you,” she hissed.
He pulled out a chair for her. “Have a seat,” he returned pleasantly. He was suddenly feeling so much lighter now that he’d regained control.
“I’ll stand, thank you. I don’t plan on this taking long.”
“Sit down.” When she crossed her arms, he let out a sigh. “Please, Kady.”
“Okay fine!” She slammed herself in the chair.
“Thought you said you weren’t seeing him.”
“Who?”
“Don’t start.”
“We’re just friends.”
“Friends with benefits?”
She glared at him. “Now who’s starting?”
“Don’t fool yourself, Kady. That boy isn’t for you. He wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do with a woman like you.”
“What’s that suppose to mean, a woman like me?”
“A woman who likes it passionate and raw and unrestrained. Who likes being told what she needs and how she needs it. A woman who gives as good as she gets. A woman like you…” He leaned toward her. “Needs a man like me.”
Kady blinked at the audacity, the arrogance of the man. She’d be incensed if she weren’t so flabbergasted. Not able to come up with a single thing to say to that, she shook her head. “What do you want, Tristan?”
He sat back in his chair. “I want…” You. “For us to go back to the way we were.”
“The time before or after you first fucked me in church?”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“Oh that’s rich coming from you.”
“I made love to you.”
“If that’s what you tell yourself…”
“Kady, Christ…” His hand raked his hair a little too roughly. “What is it you want?”
“I asked first.”
He shoved out a breath. “Kady, Christ…”
“Now you’re just repeating yourself.”
He stared at her hard, not recognizing this feisty woman before him. The mouse that roared. “I just told you what I want.”
“Which is to have your cake and eat it, too,” she muttered.
“And just what does that mean?”
“You figure it out.”
“The only thing I want to eat, sweet girl, is you,” he growled.
Kady’s eyes rounded. She made a small sound in her throat and opened her mouth as if to say something.
“Don’t speak.” He reached over and shushed her lips with his finger. “You asked me what I want, I’m going to tell you. C’mere.” He dragged Kady’s chair toward him so they were sitting side by side. “I want between your thighs. Now.”
Stunned speechless, she just stared at him. Might’ve made a small squeak at some point.
“I want to open your legs and…”
Watch the moist petals of your cunt separate as my hands spread you wide. I want to bury my face in your golden curls, inhale your sweet-musky scent and taste the sweet tang of your essence. I want to kiss you and lick you and love you until you see stars. And I want to do that every single day for the rest of my life. That’s what I fucking want.
“…rub my face all over that crack pussy.”
Before the gasp was halfway out Kady’s mouth, a large masculine hand was pulling apart her thighs. Feminine instinct spurred her into action and she grabbed his arm. “Tristan, no,” she grunted, trying to pry him off her. She was using both her hands but it was like trying to bend rebar. “Damn you, not like this. Not here!”
“Don’t go all shy on me now. I know how much you love getting your clit licked.” His mouth slanted in wicked amusement. “But you can relax, I’m not going to eat you out in public. Not today.” Kady stopped struggling but didn’t release her hold, and despite what he’d just told her, she noticed that neither did Tristan. “But… If I were to have my way with you right now… I would start with a kiss… right… here.” His thumb strummed the inside of her thigh. “Then my mouth would work its way to your pussy… like this…” His long fingers began crawling upward like a slow moving tarantula.
For the briefest of moments her grip on his arm tightened. “Don’t.” It was cursory at best, a last-attempt plea no one took seriously and that went largely ignored.
“When I got there, I’d pull aside the crotch of your panties… like this…”
Kady sat up in her chair stiff as a board. Her eyes darted around to nearby tables, out of nervousness and embarrassment or just to make sure they were alone she didn’t know which.
“Then I’d start lapping up all of your sweet honey…” Tristan’s fingers stroked her like an imaginary tongue. “Mmm, but you keep making so much of it I can barely keep up.”
Her sex gushed. Her breath hitched. Letting go of his arm, her hands fell to her sides in defeat and surrender. “I hate you,” she murmured.
Tristan knew exactly how she felt. “You hate what I do to you.” He cupped her pussy. “Now spread for me,” he growled.
On a tortured groan, her thighs splayed open and her eyelids slid closed. While strong masculine fingers relentlessly caressed her, Kady began a low moaning that sounded like she was humming. Up and down, along her slick folds, grazing her clit just enough times to keep her teetering on the edge. As Tristan pleasured her with his one hand, the other was wrapped around his beer mug. If prying eyes were to glance over, they’d never suspect there was something indecent going on under the table.
“Feels good, baby, doesn’t it? But it’s not enough I know.” A callused pad began lightly circling her sensitive nub. “You want my tongue on your clit… like this… You want me to swell it up nice and big, swirl it until it grows, until I can suck it into my mouth.”
Too far gone at this point to care if anyone heard, Kady let out a groan that came from the depths of her belly.
Tristan’s voice lowered to a deep, seductive rasp. “Yeah, that’s right… My sweet greedy girl likes when I do that, don’t you? You like it when I get that precious little bud of yours all hard and swollen… like this…” He rubbed her, his touch light but assertive. “You want me to make it bigger so I can take it between my teeth… so I can suckle it like I do your nipples. Suck on it hard and for so long you don’t think you can take much more but you do, don’t you? Everything I have to give, you take.”
On the outside he may have appeared calm and collected but Tristan was white-knuckling his beer glass like Kady was the edge of her seat. His heart was drumming in his chest, his dick close to busting out of his jeans. And what had started out as a game, a lesson to bring her to heel, was threatening to backfire on him big time. He knew he had to finish her off and had do it quickly or risk coming himself.
When he plunged a finger into her wet core Kady almost shot of her chair.
“Keep still,” he grated. His objective was no longer to tease and arouse but to get her to explode. He slipped in a second finger. Her thighs came together. “Open them.” She obeyed like a mindless puppet, the strings, her own desire. “That’s better. No shame in liking to get finger fucked. And you do like it, don’t you, my sweet dirty girl? Tell me again how much.” Kady showed him by grunting like an animal with every thrust. It was erotic music to his ears.
She didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to come like a wanton whore in a place where
getting caught was a possibility. And especially not just because Tristan deemed it so. Yet that’s exactly what was happening. Her fingers clutched her chair so fiercely her arms were trembling, as the rest of her body would soon be doing. Her eyes were scrunched. She felt the pressure building. She was going to fly apart.
“Oh, oh, oh no… oh please… oh please…”
He was breathing just as heavily. “Yeah… yeah… time to come, baby. You know what you need to do now. How to come. Oh yeah, just like that. Hard. The way I like it.”
Lessening the effects of her orgasm was like trying to suppress a sneeze. Next to impossible. The only thing she could do was clench her jaw to keep from crying out. Nothing, however, could stop her body from jerking uncontrollably like she was getting electrocuted as she rode out her orgasm for what felt like minutes but was really only seconds.
It took longer than usual for Kady to come back to herself. She was still shaking but from something else entirely now. When her eyes finally fluttered open Tristan saw moisture gathering there. “How could you?” she choked. “How could you do that to me?” She clamped her thighs together and yanked her dress down.
Her devastated look confused him. “Kadence…? I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. That’s the problem.”
“Baby, did I hurt you?” He reached for her but she pulled away violently.
“Don’t touch me!”
His brows collided. “You liked my touch well enough a minute ago. Or did your sopping wet pussy and all that oohing and aahing mean something else?”
As a veil of hurt fell over her face, Tristan regretted his dick response. “Shit. I’m sorry.” He pulled at his hair. “It’s just that I don’t know what’s going on right now.”
“You used me,” she told him. “Turned my body against me to prove a point.”
“You enjoyed what we did. Looked like it, anyway,” he couldn’t help adding.
“No, you enjoyed what you did. That was all about you, Tristan. That was to confirm just how much of a pathetic fool I really am.” She swiped at her cheek.
“I won’t deny it. I enjoy setting you off like Fourth of July fireworks. But I didn’t tie you to that chair and force you to do anything you didn’t want to have happen. You could’ve left at any time. But you didn’t because you needed that as much as I did.”
Her face wet with tears, she wiped away the evidence, her dejected expression telling him she couldn’t disagree with anything he just said. The admission seemed to devastate her more than what happened. Kady realized she was playing victim again. But victims don’t have choices, and like the arrogant man so eloquently pointed out, she did. And choosing to get fingered in public over walking away with her dignity intact revealed a side of Kady she didn’t want to know about.
Her lack of a rebuttal didn’t make Tristan want to gloat. That forlorn look on her face erased any feeling of victory. That he had put it there twisted his gut. “Kady, Christ…”
“Is that the only thing you can say to me?”
“I’d apologize if I knew what for.”
“For making me hope,” she murmured so softly he almost didn’t hear.
For making me hope my love would be enough.
“Kady?” Neither had noticed Sebastian’s approach. “Everything okay?” He was looking with concern at her flushed face. “You’ve been gone awhile.”
“Everything’s fine,” Tristan said a little too snappishly.
Without taking his eyes off Kady, Sebastian said evenly, “I was asking Kady, father.”
“Trsitan,” he muttered under his breath. “Not father.” If he recognzied the Freudian implication of that, he was able to chuck it.
As Sebastian continued to stare at her, Kady worried he could smell sex in the air. Scent the cream in her panties. Know she’d just come in her chair. Hard. She crossed her legs. “I’m fine. Sorry I took so long. We were just… I was just getting ready to go.”
Sebastian looked disappointed. Tristan looked smug. They were going together. Taking out his wallet he told the barkeep, “You can put her iced-tea on my tab.”
Eyes still on Kady, he returned, “On the house.”
“It’s all right, I’ve got it.”
“I told you, it’s taken care of.”
“I insist.” Tristan tossed a twenty on the table. “Keep the change.”
Sebastian leveled a glare at him. After a couple of beats, grudgingly swiped the bill from the tabletop. To Kady he said, “You left your hoodie at the bar. I can get it for you.”
“No, I’ll go back for it. Meet me there? I’ll just be a minute this time, promise.
The small smile she bestowed had the same effect on Sebastian as if she’d thrown herself into his arms and declared her undying love. “Sure thing, Kady,” he said lightly. “Your wish is my command.” He exchanged a curt head nod with Tristan before heading back.
“I’m going back to Portland.”
Tristan’s head snapped to Kady, her sudden yet quietly stated disclosure crashing over him like a tsunami of emotion.
“My dad’s first round of chemo ended and the next cycle isn’t for another month. There’s no need for me to stick around right now. I’ve got to get back. Check on my dog, see if I still have a job.”
He felt himself being dragged under. Shock and despair and panic filling his lungs like water. He couldn’t breath. Only stare at her, wanting to scream but not able.
After waiting an eternity for Tristan to say something, Kady pushed herself away from the table and started to rise. His hand shot out to stop her, grabbing her wrist so roughly she winced. “You can’t leave.” Desperation made him angry. Unintentional or not, he strong-armed her back in her seat, literally. “You can’t leave,” he said again, his thunderous brow belying the softness of his delivery.
“Give me a reason not to, Tristan.” Not a challenge but a plea.
Fuck. He wanted to wrap his arms around her like gauze around a mummy. Prevent her from walking out the door. He wanted to take her home and lock her away in a closet and keep her with him forever.
Instead he asked, “When are you leaving?”
“My flight’s booked for Thursday.”
His stomach dropped like he’d just been told he had an incurable disease with less than twenty-four hours to live. “That’s… tomorrow,” he said tightly.
“I’ve got an early morning flight.”
“You were going to leave without saying goodbye?” His hold on her tightened to the point of pain. “If I hadn’t followed you here…”
“I was going to leave you a note.”
“That a fucking joke?”
“Tristan, you’re hurting me.”
He instantly relinquished his hold. “Fuck.” Her skin was red from where his hand manacled her wrist, and when she began rubbing out the soreness he screwed his eyes shut to block out the sight. “Fuck.”
“It’s all right. I’m okay.”
Tristan dropped his elbows on the table and hung his head between them, hands clutching his hair like he was going to rip it out. He murmured something but his voice was so low and muffled Kady wasn’t sure she’d heard right. It sounded to her ears like he’d just asked her to—
“Stay,” he repeated.
Stay. The little word that started it all. The word he’d uttered at St. Ben’s less than three weeks ago that changed everything between them. At the time, Kady had asked him why. Why did he want her to stay? And his answer had come in the form of a cathartic kiss that gave her goosebumps even now recalling it.
“A reason, Tristan. All I need is one.”
He didn’t lift his head, didn’t say a word, and the deafening silence became so loud Kady thought her eardrums would rupture. “Thought so,” she said quietly.
Her heart weighted down with grief, Kadence go to her feet. How many times could she say goodbye to this man? And why could she never say it and mean it? She looked down at the top of his head, and with all
her might willed it to lift. But it stayed where it was, cradled in his trembling hands. Goodbye, she mouthed, and started walking away.
“Running…” she heard him say to her back. Her step faltered but she somehow managed to keep going even as her vision blurred with tears.
No, Tristan… This time it’s you doing the running.
Chapter
The days were getting longer, and even at five-thirty the sun was still high in the sky. But as Kady looked out the passenger side window she knew it was evening by the tinges of purple in the clouds. They looked like cotton balls with their edges dipped in watercolor.
When they left O’Malley’s, it was at the start of Happy Hour and by then Tristan was long gone. Sebastian was needed to help man the bar but got one of the servers to cover for him so he could drive Kady home. She tried to refuse, or course, like the last time he offered her a ride. And just like last time, he persisted until she accepted.
“Bet Kevin will be happy to see you.”
“You’d lose that bet. He’s a canine curmudgeon. Not happy about most things.” Kady smiled to herself knowing she was soon going to be reunited with her best friend and confidante. Cantankerous he may be, but that old pug loved her unconditionally. “Probably going to give me the cold shoulder for leaving him so long.”
“Hope I get to meet him someday.” Sebastian cringed. Might as well have added a hint-hint at the end, brah.
“You’d like him,” Kady said non-committedly. “Seeing how you’ve got a temperamental pet of your own.” She gave him a small smile and turned back to the window.
Her sinuses began to burn. So what if Tristan will never get to meet her dog. His loss. She sniffed hard. Great, now her nose was runny. “Allergies sure bad this time of year,” she murmured, face glued on the scenery.
Sebastian didn’t know what that priest said to Kady to get her so upset but there was definitely something going on between those two. She’d only mentioned him a couple times in passing but it seemed they had a closer relationship than what she was letting on. Their interaction today felt like they were a couple.
FATHER: Men of the Cloth - Tristan (Forbidden Priest Romance 1) Page 22