Lovely Trigger(38)

“Well I’d take a bad episode of that show over a good episode of anything else.”

We shared a smile.

As though it had been inevitable, I found myself relaxing on the sofa in a cozy media room just off his kitchen and watching the show with him.

He did behave himself at first, even sitting on a different couch, as promised.

But that didn’t last long.

Had I thought it would? Best not to think about.

“Relax, put your feet up,” he ordered, when we were two episodes in, and I was still sitting with my feet flat on the floor, my hands in my lap.

His plush sofa was huge, and it had been a struggle to sit up straight on it. I put my feet up, because it was just more comfortable, and I was starting to feel ridiculous.

We were another episode in, both of us laughing, when he moved to sit at my feet.

I shot him a warning look.

“Oh, relax. I’m not going to attack you.”

I felt silly and turned my attention back to the TV. I was clutching my belly and laughing when he started to rub one of my feet. His touch was firm, hitting just the right spot, so when I looked at him to tell him to stop, my mouth was already a little slackened with pleasure.

“Tristan,” I tried to warn, but it could as easily have been construed as a plea.

He kept his eyes on the screen, ignoring me completely either way, and kept rubbing.

I was basically a relaxed puddle on his couch by the time he moved to the second foot, and when he moved his hand up to rub my bad knee, I was done for.

It was three more episodes in, all the while with his pleasurable hands rubbing my knee, my calves, my feet, when he moved to lay behind me, his arm going over my ribs, hugging.

“Tristan,” I whispered. I didn’t even know what I was trying to tell him, let alone how it was actually perceived.

“Please,” he whispered. “Just for a moment, let me hold you. Nothing else.”

Nothing else, except for everything, I thought, my mind going fuzzy.

He was pressed hard into my back, and so I could feel that he wanted to do more, but he didn’t. He just held me and it wasn’t for a moment, but many moments, and for every second of it, I trembled.

“Thank you,” he said into my hair after a time, kissing me softly on the side of the head.

He got up and went into the kitchen, but quickly returned to sit at my feet. He resumed with the rubbing.

The house quickly filled with the smell of baking cookies.

“Oh God,” I said, somehow hungry again. “Chocolate chip?”

“You know it.”

I looked at him and smiled, and his hands froze.

I started to shake my head when I saw the look on his face, but he ignored that, moving to lay behind me again. He pressed hard against me, one arm thrown over me, and his big hand moved to my stomach and started to rub. To stroke.

He lifted up my shirt and kneaded at the skin over my ribs, then snaked his hand down into my skirt to massage the flesh around my naval. I lay there, stiff but trembling. Eventually, his hand moved low enough to dig into a rope of scar tissue, and that little tinge of discomfort was enough to give me some willpower.

His fingers had begun to feel at the hard ridge of the scar, as though to determine what it was, when I grabbed his hand and pulled it away.

His voice was rough and worried. “Danika, what was—“-“

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

The oven timer began to chime, and I stood, going to sit at the round table in his breakfast nook.

I listened to him as he went into the kitchen, mapped out every move as he took the cookies out, and switched them onto a plate.

I looked down at my hands the entire time.

He joined me at the table, setting the large platter of cookies directly in front of me. He sat down beside me, and the second he did, on the side of my bad leg, he began to rub my knee.

That got me to look at him, which I was sure had been the point.

“What—” he started to ask again.

“No.” I shook my head, and tried to still the hand on my knee. It was persistent, though, and just kept rubbing. “I’m not doing this. We have a relationship with boundaries now, Tristan. I’m not going to give you what you want, every time you want it, just because I’m incapable of telling you no. I’ve changed and you’ve changed, and we need to have some rules, if we are going to be able to spend time together like this.”

“Yes, I know that, but I just wanted to know what that was—“

“No,” I said again, firmly. I would not waver in this. “I refuse to talk about it, and your hands should not be going there in the first place.”

His jaw clenched, and I saw a glimmer of his now rare temper flash in his eyes, but he shut them quickly, hiding it, shutting it down. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll drop it.”

Things were stiff after that. I ate two of the delectable cookies, then told him that I had to go. He didn’t protest, just packing me up a container of cookies to take.

“Oh, you don’t need to—”

“Take them,” he grumbled. “I made them for you. The least you can do is pretend that you want them.”

I nodded and took them. He walked me to the door and then to my car. He opened the driver’s side door for me, but then blocked me from entering.