Chapter Fifteen Tristan
Chapter fifteen
Tristan
I lay there, having slipped from Razor’s front to his side, our trousers still caught around our ankles, legs tangled, unsure how I was going to peel myself away.
But a more pressing realisation was the room I was in.
Two narrow beds. Pale walls. A stack of folded blankets in the corner. A soft toy half-hidden on a shelf.
A baby room.
I huffed out a quiet breath and thought of Theo Langford’s drunken audacity at Marcus and Eloise’s baby shower when he’d boldly and brazenly asked for a fuck in the nursery.
I’d been genuinely horrified then. Appalled by the setting.
The disrespect. The idea of bringing anything adult and messy into a space meant for something new and unbroken.
Turns out, I was willing to let that slide when it was Razor.
I was willing to let a lot of things slide for Razor.
Especially when he traced soft lines up and down my spine with tender fingertips, an idle touch unperformed. The sort of touch someone does automatically. Because they want to. Because it’s…instinctual.
I closed my eyes.
And it all came down on me.
What I’d done. Where I was. What I’d risked by walking into this house and not walking back out again.
I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.
I’d come here because my day had ended and his hadn’t. Because I needed to see him with my own eyes. To make sure he’d been released. Check he had what he needed. And to remind him about the consultation, the paperwork, and the conditions. Anchor him back into the process. To make this make sense.
Professional. Contained. Sensible.
I’d told myself that was all it was.
But how could I ever have believed it would end any other way?
I shifted closer, pressing my face into his shoulder, breathing him in. Not sex. Not hunger.
Him.
The man I had rearranged my life around. The man the law said I should not touch. Yet my body had already chosen, long before I’d understood the cost.
His hand tightened at my back, as if he’d felt the shift in me.
“Does this mean I need to find a new brief?” He tilted his head, looking down at me, and I looked up at him through the last drifting haze of what we’d done.
He looked different. Not changed, exactly. But… clearer.
Maybe because I wasn’t projecting onto him anymore. Wasn’t responding to the danger he used to wear, or the version of him I’d once shaped to satisfy my hunger for rebellion. I wasn’t attuned to the idea of him now, but to the reality.
And fuck if I wasn’t in love with that reality.
I knew what he’d lost. What he’d endured.
How close he’d come to breaking inside those walls.
I could see the fear he kept buried so deep it had shaped him from the inside.
The gratitude he didn’t know how to hold without flinching.
The uncertainty threaded through everything now that the brutal architecture of his life had been torn away and nothing solid had replaced it.
There was no myth left in him. Only a man who’d survived.
There was a whole human being in there.
And I was so far inside my feelings for him it was frightening.
I pushed myself up onto one elbow, needing to explain why all this was so damn messy.
“It’s not just frowned upon.” I traced the lines of the tattoo on his heart, completely contradicting everything I was about to say but unable to not touch him while I did.
“It’s professionally lethal. A barrister cannot be emotionally involved with their client.
We’re officers of the court before we’re anything else.
The duty is to the administration of justice.
To objectivity. Independence.” I sighed heavily, my breath making the fine hairs on his chest flutter.
“If the CPS even suspects that I’m compromised, they can apply to have me removed.
They can argue conflict of interest, impaired judgment, and improper influence.
They can suggest I’m shaping strategy around my feelings instead of the evidence.
That I’m being directed. That you’re being coached.
That your instructions aren’t truly yours.
” I looked up, met his gaze. “They don’t need to prove it.
They only need to plant doubt. And once that doubt exists, everything I touch becomes vulnerable. ”
“But you were on my team before.”
“I declared a past relationship. Brief. Ended. No ongoing involvement. That’s the only reason I was even allowed near the file. Imogen can manage it then. It’s only between us, but she can be prepared if it ever…leaks.”
The words tasted wrong. Thin. Dishonest.
I glanced down at his chest, at the ink over his heart, and felt the small, sharp twist of it. Those words: brief affair. As if that came anywhere near the truth.
But the truth didn’t protect him.
Procedure did.
“I can’t be the man you sleep with and the man standing between you and a twenty-year sentence.
” I couldn’t help it and I kissed his chest, his hand coming up to stroke through my hair as I did.
“The system won’t allow it. And the names on your file would use it in seconds if they could.
Not because of ethics, but because it would dismantle the defence. ”
I didn’t say the rest out loud. That I didn’t want his future tied to whether he still wanted me.
That I didn’t want to be something he reached for because he was frightened, untethered, grateful, or trapped.
And how I didn’t want to find out, in the middle of a prosecution, that I was merely convenient rather than a choice.
He had a tag on his ankle.
I had his life in my hands.
This was not the ground to test what we were.
“With me on your case,” I rose again, “we only ever get one mistake. And this”—I gestured weakly between us—“would be all they need. And I will not be the reason you lose.”
Razor stayed still for a moment. Maybe pondering it. Feeling the cost of it.
Then he lifted his head and kissed me.
It was gentle. Devastatingly so. Nothing rushed, nothing demanding. His mouth against mine, soft enough to steal the air from my lungs and send my heart climbing straight into my throat.
Then he dropped back onto the bed with a huff. “Can I get someone else, then?” He tucked his other hand behind his head. “So we can still…do this?”
For one stupid, treacherous second, my stomach flipped.
As if he might mean it the way I meant everything.
As if this was want, not release. I had to remind myself he’d been inside too long.
Of course he was carrying tension. Of course he needed somewhere to put it.
And I was here, for the taking. I’d put myself here.
I could live with being that for him. I could.
“If that’s what you want.” I fixed my gaze on his chest instead of his eyes.
He snorted softly and brushed his knuckles along my cheek, the touch almost affectionate, and he slid his other hand up my spine, fingers closing at the base of my neck, holding me there. Not rough, but certain.
“I want you, Tricky.” He let out a resigned breath. “Just looks like I only get to have you one way.”
“That’s… the gist of it. Yeah.” I forced myself to keep going. “And, honestly, even if I wasn’t your barrister, I couldn’t be seen near you. Not publicly. Not while this is live.”
“Right.”
The word was neutral, but his face wasn’t. There was an unmistakable fall in his expression, almost boyishly unguarded. Which surprised me. Our entire relationship had lived in shadows. In back rooms. In silence. It had never been meant to see daylight.
Yet…he looked genuinely hurt that it might have to.
He then rubbed his eyes. “So it wouldn’t make a difference if I had someone else take the case?”
I shook my head, because he deserved the truth. “Though it would make a difference to your case.”
“How so?”
“Other people might not want it. Not once they see the names on your file. And if they do take it, they might not give you the best of themselves.”
His eyes searched mine. “And you would?”
“Not just would but can. There are things my name gives me. Access. Leverage. And a very well-cushioned safety net my father built, whether I want it or not. It makes me harder to lean on. Harder to threaten quietly. To freeze out. Another junior with no backing, no institutional weight, no family shadow? They could be pressured. Sidelined. Reassigned. Or scared. Especially with Wolfe in the background.”
He tightened his grip on my neck.
“And I won’t be,” I finished softly.
“So you’re not saying you’re the best. You’re saying you’re… difficult to manipulate?”
“Exactly. Though I’d probably argue I was also the best.”
A slow smirk tugged at his mouth. “Modest.”
I reached up and kissed that smirk. “It’s honesty. Not modesty.”
“Really? So are you this hard for all your clients?”
I tilted my head, letting my gaze travel down the brutal line of him before returning to his eyes. “Only you. My other clients get my semi.”
Razor laughed. Then he shifted, pushing himself up to sit, pulling me with him. He kissed me. And he stayed there, mouth warm and certain, before drawing back and resting his forehead to mine.
“Always had a thing for men who don’t scare easily.” He ran a thumb over my lips. “Especially when they’re as pretty as you.”
I felt my mouth curve, wanting to swoon at the compliment, but then I winced.
“Then this can’t happen.” I looked down. “Not again.”
He held my face, then nodded once and let me go.
Which was perfect timing as vibrations rattled the walls as the front door opened and closed downstairs.
Razor stood and dragged his jogging bottoms back into place.
I did the same with my suit trousers. We dressed with less haste than we’d undressed.
Sliding back into our reality. And Razor straightened the room without really doing anything to it.
Tugged the sheet smooth. Righted a pillow.
As if order could undo what we’d done or protect us from it. I slipped my coat back on.