Bad Things(109)

“Let’s not,” I agreed, almost laughing now. The man could give me serious mood swings.

“I need you right here, right now.”

“Here, here?” I asked dubiously. “Here as in the balcony, in the middle of a party?”

“Here, here,” he affirmed, his hands sliding down my arms, gripping onto my wrists, pulling them out from my body.

He nudged me forward two steps, wrapping each of my hands carefully around the top of the metal rail that ran the length of the balcony. Even his touch on my hands was a caress.

“Hold on,” he warned.

I gripped hard, instinctively obeying the command in his voice.

It was a hot summer night in Vegas, and so I wasn’t wearing much. He slid my little khaki cargo shorts and panties down my legs with one smooth motion. I stepped out of one leg, not bothering to step out of the other side of the shorts. Hell, I didn’t even kick off my flip-flops. It wasn’t that type of a f*ck.

Tristan’s hands ran up my body, starting at my ankles, up my calves, over my ass, across my naval, finally going to the front clasp of my bra to snap it open. He freed my breasts from their confines, but left my little white tank, and even the straps of my bra on. It wasn’t that type of a f*ck, either. This was a direct access, get at it as fast as you can kind of f*ck, and I was right there with him.

His knee moved between my legs, nudging them a few inches farther apart, and I heard him unfastening his own shorts, and pulling himself free. He rubbed his bared erection along my already slick sex, over and over.

I stared over the balcony’s railing, thanking God that it was dark, and that his apartment was facing away from the other buildings. We were on the third floor, but even in the daytime, I would have only been looking at a large concrete wall and the desert field beyond.

His mouth was at my ear, telling me in detail just how good I felt, as he worked himself into me. One of his hands slid up to pluck at my breast, his other moving to grab my hip hard as he seated himself to the hilt. We both let out a low groan as his hips made solid contact with my ass.

Balcony sex should have been a quickie, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t a rough race toward the finish. He brought me over twice in a row, with his perfect strokes and his magic hands, and the sexy things that came out of his mouth. He took his time with me.

At some point, someone began to open the sliding glass door. The door itself was quiet, but the racket they made moving the blinds out of their way was loud enough to give us warning.

“Go back inside and shut the f*cking door!” Tristan barked out, not even slowing his strokes. Sure enough, that worked like a charm.

And strangely, hearing that rough command in his voice, that raised voice he almost never used, brought me over with a helpless little moan.

That had him moaning and jack-knifing into me, shouting out my name with his own release. “You like it when I yell at people, huh?” he panted into my ear as he leaned hard against me, both of us recovering.

I didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge the question. I wasn’t sure what to think of it myself.

He nuzzled his face into my hair as he pulled out of me, doing it slowly, making me want him all over again just from the long exquisite pull of him.

I turned into his arms after he’d gotten loose, throwing my arms around his neck, and then, when he hugged me back hard, lifting me slightly, my legs around his waist.

I kissed his ear. “I love you,” I said, never able to hold back the words.

He squeezed me, kissing my cheek in the sweetest way. “Thank you for that, boo.”

I tried not to let myself be hurt by that all too neutral response to my nowhere near neutral feelings.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX





The words he didn’t say started to weigh on me more and more as time went by. I knew that I’d fallen way too fast for him, but as we approached the one month mark of our relationship, it started to feel like, if he didn’t feel it yet, then he never would, and that thought consumed me.

I had seen how easy he was with his ex. The sort of careless flirtation, the easy affection he felt, just seemed so brutal to me the more I thought about it. I never wanted to be that to him—a woman who he’d owned completely and would never want again.

She’d cheated on him, and then he had moved on. I knew this, just as I knew that I would never do that to him, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he could never love me like I loved him.