Chapter 34 #2
For such a proud man who was forced to endure so much pain, Tristan wears his feelings for me like a jagged, open wound, never shy to show me the soft heart that beats underneath the hardened exterior.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Better now.”
Holding my ear to his chest, I listen to the solid thump, the sound blending with the early-hour hoot of an owl somewhere in the distance.
“I keep replaying it,” he says. “The sounds and chaos right before everything just…stopped. Then nothing. No bright light or angels or demons came to drag me away to the afterlife. Just…nothing. Like an abyss of unending emptiness. And then you appeared, reaching for me, begging me to stay.”
My breathing constricts. “I’m glad you listened.”
We hold one another just a little tighter. The thought of losing him—I don’t think I would ever recover. How can your heart continue to beat when part of it is unexpectedly and cruelly ripped right out of your chest?
“I hate that it was that close. We just found each other again, Red. We have a child. I haven’t even had the fucking chance to be the husband and the father I promised I’d be.” His voice breaks, shattering me in the process.
Fighting the sting of tears, I lift my head and take his gorgeously stubbled face between my hands. “You kept your promise. You came back to us.”
“What if I can’t next time?”
I refuse to accept that possibility. “Wherever you are, I will find you. Gheobhaidh mo chroí do chroí.”
Our lips meet, our kiss filled with desperation as the horizon brightens with the first streaks of dawn. A new day. One I might not have had with him if Aleksander hadn’t…don’t go there.
As if sharing the same thought, Tristan says, “I owe Aleks my life. It’s a debt I need to pay back with blood.”
Aleksander already feels a shit-ton of guilt. He blames himself because Tristan almost became collateral damage in a feud between the Petrovs and Androvs that has gone on for decades. All because of greed. More power. More money. More territory. It’s a recurring theme we can’t escape from.
“He doesn’t expect anything from you. You know that.”
Tristan’s eyes cinch closed when he tips his face skyward. “I treated him like shit, even after I found out he and Aleksei were my brothers. I never gave them a chance, and now I can’t with Aleksei.”
Because of me.
Aleksander and Tristan aren’t the only ones harboring a mountain of guilt.
“I’m so proud of you and Aleksander for taking that leap of faith.”
Tristan pulls me fully on top of him, his wide palm settling on my hip. “I don’t think it would have happened without you.”
My eyebrows wrinkle with confusion. “If you haven’t noticed, no one can make either of you do anything that you don’t want to do.”
Tristan’s grin goes a little smirky. “And if you haven’t noticed, Red, you’ve got us wrapped around your finger. We can’t say no to you.”
I brush my nose up his neck. “Oh, yeah?”
“Pretty much.”
Taking advantage of that, I sit back on his legs.
The throw slips from my shoulders as I pull the long-sleeved nursing shirt over my head and undo the padded bra.
Not the sexiest things to wear, but a necessity during the cold nights while I’m still breastfeeding.
The crisp early dawn air puckers my nipples, but Tristan’s fervent gaze and the way his whiskey browns eclipse into midnight set me on fire.
“Touch me.”
“With fucking pleasure.” His large, calloused hands mold over my swollen breasts, possessive and reverent at the same time. “Still tender?” he asks, lightly swiping the pad of his thumb over the milky bead of liquid that pearls.
“A little.”
Sitting up, his lips are brushstrokes of gentle kisses across my collarbone.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” he whispers, his fingertips eliciting tingles of goose flesh as his sensual caress lights sparks along my skin as they travel down my torso.
When he gets to the scars and old grafts that trail up my left side, he says, “Beautiful chaos.”
My thoughts transport to the memory of when he first said that to me. It was the first time I let him touch me. A life-altering experience. Whenever I looked in the mirror, all I saw was the ugliness of the scars that marred my body. But Tristan never saw them that way. All he saw was me.
“There’s this rare orchid in Australia, Rhizanthella. Its flowers are pink and quite lovely, but unless you know where to look, you don’t see them.”
Intrigued, I ask, “Why?”
He kneels behind me, and our gazes meet in the window glass.
“Because they grow completely underground. You have to dig just below the surface to find one.”
His hand reaches around and grips my neck. It’s nothing like the way Hendrix grabbed me. Tristan’s thumb tenderly caresses under my chin as he gradually tips my face until I’m gazing at myself in our dual reflection.
“Do you see the orchid, Syn?”
The pressure around my neck tightens when I swallow. It’s not painful. The opposite. The slight constriction is unexpectedly…pleasurable.
“I don’t understand,” I rasp.
The heat of his breath on my neck incites my senses even more.
“Tell me what you see.”
His eyes shimmer off the clear glass and bore into mine. I try to avert my gaze, but his hand holds fast and refuses to let me look away.
Ugly. Damaged. Unworthy. Freakish. That’s what I see when I look at myself.
“Chaos,” I answer.
His lips tease my outer ear. Such a simple thing that sends my nerve endings off-kilter.
“Beautiful chaos. Every damaged, broken piece of you is beautiful.”
What he says makes it almost impossible to breathe. So many emotions well up inside me. Constantine said I was beautiful. Now Tristan. I want to believe them. Am desperate to, but…my hand curls around the rough flesh of my left arm.
Tristan shifts so that I can see him fully in the window through eyes blurred with unshed tears.
“Do you trust me?”
My mouth opens to say no, but something stops me. I’m terrified to trust anyone. Alana is the only person I’ve truly let in. I’m scared that if I let Tristen see me, the real me, he’ll be disappointed. Or worse, he’ll look at me with pity.
“I can’t,” I admit truthfully.
“You can, Red. I’ll show you every day that you can.” His hand moves down the length of my neck, but his eyes never leave mine in the reflection. “Downstairs, you told me not to touch your left side.”
Careful of my bandage, his lips brush across the top of my shoulder. Filaments of desire slowly unfurl like the petals of a flower after they’re kissed by the first rays of the sun. My eyes close, and I shudder out a breath when his lips trail back up my neck to my ear.
“I will never take from you without your permission.” His nose buries in my hair at my temple, and he breathes in deeply. “You can trust me, Syn. Tell me to stop, and I will.”
I’m overwhelmed by him. Seduced by his promises. So, when his hands begin to move down my arms, I’m powerless to speak that one word.
Because I don’t want him to stop.
He positions me so that he takes my weight, my back flush with his chest.
“Lean into me and close your eyes.”
My head nestles into the crook of his shoulder as my body turns to putty under his exploring fingers.
He starts at my hands, tracing the outside of each finger.
“How does that feel?” he asks.
It’s strange, but oddly familiar, like a phantom memory.
“It tickles a little. What cologne do you wear?”
The long-sleeved button-up I was wearing yesterday carried his scent. With my eyes closed, my other senses take over.
“L’Homme.”
“I like it.”
He slips his hands under mine, threading our fingers together. With my eyes shut, I can feel how much larger his hands are compared to mine, and I marvel at the juxtaposition.
“I’m moving to your wrists.”
Tristan waits a second, allowing me time to say no, and when I don’t, his fingers curl around each wrist, his thumbs creating soothing circles that feel like brushstrokes on a painter’s canvas.
“More?”
“Please.”
“Your skin is so soft. Can you feel me?” he asks when he gets to the uneven, discolored part of my left arm.
The explosion of sensations that erupt everywhere he touches is indescribable. God, yes, I can feel him. I shouldn’t be able to, but I do.
His muscled arms band around me, and he buries his face between my breasts. “I love you so much, Aoife.”
I’ve noticed whenever his emotions run high, he reverts to calling me Aoife.
“Whatever you need, just tell me.” Sinking my fingers into his thick, dark-brown hair, I just hold him. Tristan is the foundation of our family. He’s a fixer and a protector. He carries so much responsibility on his strong shoulders, but even the strongest man can bend under such a burden.
“I just need you.”
Sliding off him, I get to my feet and slip my cotton pajama pants down my legs. Tristan watches my impromptu striptease with rapt attention, his carnal perusal causing tingles to radiate from my head to my bare toes that have nothing to do with the cold.
“I’m yours,” I tell him, my words a breathy whisper as I speak them.
He slowly rises from the lounger, all six-plus feet of him. The sunrise crests the horizon behind him, the light bending around his profile. He always tells me that I’m beautiful, but Tristan Amato takes my goddamn breath away.
Grabbing the back of the collar of his black T-shirt, he pulls it over his head, revealing the tanned, hardened plains of his chest and the floral tattoo inked above his heart.
He recently added another on his back. It covers the old wounds left by Francesco’s whip.
An angel with intricately detailed wings holds my name and our son’s name in her hands. He said she carried his whole world.