Lovely Trigger (Tristan & Danika #3)(52)

When I spotted the row of drawers at the head of it, my suspicions were confirmed.  I didn’t even have to open them, though I did.

Handcuffs.  Ropes.  And a shitload of other things that I couldn’t have named, but knew the purpose of.

I moved back to the opening of the bed, swinging my legs out, and just perching there for a long time, my mind racing.

My eyes snagged again on the picture of me.  He must’ve had it for months.  How could that possibly go over well, a sexy painting of your ex looking down on all of your sordid kinky bed activities.

I pointed at the painting.  “What the f**k is with this kinky shit?  I think that’s actually worse than the restraints.  You like my painting to watch you when you f**k other women?”

“Such a pretty girl, such a dirty mouth.”  He sounded resigned, but still fond.

I glared at him.  “Don’t get cute with me.  Explain this messed up shit to me.  Now.”

“I haven’t had anyone in this bed in ages, okay?  There’s nothing for the you in that painting to watch.”  He paused.  “Well, except for copious amounts of jacking off.  But other than that, Painting Danika should have nothing to complain about.  And frankly, in my mind, Painting Danika loves to watch me jacking off.”

Eyes wide, I just kept shaking my head at him.

He shrugged, trying and failing to look sheepish, then looking down while he outright smiled.  “Too far?”

I ignored him, still fixated on those restraints and the comment about no one in the bed for ages.

The comment was easy to reconcile, when I recalled that he had that hotel suite at his disposal.

And the restraints, well, it’d be a lie to say I hadn’t had a clue he was kinky.  I just hadn’t thought it was this essential to him.

The bed reminded me of a lifestyle.

It reminded me of Frankie.

“It was Frankie and James, wasn’t it?  Did those kinky f**ks bring you over to the dark side?”

He started laughing.  Hearing my own words, I started laughing, and neither of us could seem to stop for the longest time.

“It was you, actually.”

That confused the hell out of me.  “How do you figure?”

“It started with you.  The submission, the restraints.  I don’t have a fetish, but I definitely found a preference.  With you.  When I started dating again, my, um, sexual triggers were just desensitized.  Not being able to get high didn’t help, not back then.  I just needed a little extra something, to make things exciting, because it was hard for me to get excited about anything at all, for a very long time.”

I looked down at my feet.  “You know what?  Let’s not talk about this anymore.  I get the picture.  But just to be clear, if you ever try to spank me, I’ll probably knee you in the balls.”

He laughed.  “I don’t spank.  You know what I do.  You like what I do.”

“God, the things that can happen in six years and still it feels like no time’s passed.”

“I don’t know how I even did it,” said Tristan softly.  “Looking back from here, I have no idea where I found the strength to let you stay out of my life for so long.”

I looked down at my fidgeting hands.  “You’re a strong guy.  It looks, from where I’m standing, like you handled it just fine.”

“You were always the strong one.”

My brows drew together.  “Bullshit.”

“Let me finish.  You were.  Just because you’re a girl, and you don’t get into fistfights, doesn’t mean you aren’t tougher than me.  You faced your pain head-on.  You always have.  I can’t tell you how much I admire that.  I wish I were like you.  I have from the beginning.  There is no one I admire more.  You don’t run away from anything.”

I was sitting on his bed, we’d just had sex on his couch, and we were pretending this was friends, and so this made me crane my neck to look at him, my smile wry.  “What do you call all of this?  Being together like this, pretending it’s only friendship?  Don’t you think denial is a form of running away?”

He came and sat beside me on the bed.  Without a word, or seemingly any effort, he plucked me into his lap.  He pulled me hard against him, wrapping his arms tight around me so I was facing forward.  I couldn’t see his face in this position.

“You aren’t in denial, so this isn’t running away for you.  For me, perhaps, but not for you.”

I barked out a short laugh.  “So what would you call it, in my case?”

“Pity.”  His voice was a quiet, reverent utterance.  “You’ve taken pity on me.  And I’m in denial, telling myself that it’s more for you, like it is for me.”

I couldn’t breathe in his arms.  He wasn’t playing fair.  He knew it and I knew it and still, I didn’t walk away.  “We can’t keep doing this, Tristan.  You can’t keep saying these things to me if we’re going to have any hope of staying friends.”  There was more desperation than conviction in my words.

“I can’t stop, Danika.  Please don’t ask me to.  Even if this is the set up for the fall of a lifetime, I still can’t walk away, and I can’t back off.  Don’t you see?  I feel alive now, and I can’t go from feeling this and back to nothing, back to getting by a day at a time, surviving, instead of gripping onto every second that passes, wishing that each day would never end.  Knowing every day that you’re in the same building as me, that you’ll talk to me when I come to see you, that you’ll laugh for me, and make me laugh, and even, if you’re feeling very charitable, you’ll let me hold you sometimes, let me touch you, and even be inside of you.  Don’t you see that I’m living on hope right now, and that hope is sustaining me like nothing else could?  So I’m sorry, but I have to keep doing this.  I’m not strong enough to stop.  I never was.  Like I said, you were always the strong one.”