Chapter 34
Jesse
I’m just getting my mind relatively focused on the nuanced differentiations between popularly accepted medieval folk superstitions, church-endorsed rituals, and the seemingly arbitrary line that divided them from practices deemed to be witchcraft, when the jarring noise of a phone sounds from the kitchen.
Tristan’s, since mine is on the desk beside me.
For a moment, I wonder if I should wake him and let him know, but it’s just two buzzes of sound. Probably texts, and regardless, whatever it is can’t be worth disturbing him over, no matter how much I might wish he was awake.
Fortunately, none of my ideas seem to have been lost to my frequent slips into memories of what Tris and I did last night—or my unstoppable daydreams about all the things we haven’t yet done—and, after some significant effort to keep myself on track, I realize I’ve typed out a good two and a half pages of my thoughts.
More, I have to admit, than I’ve managed to do in the last four weeks of self-reproachfully staring off into space, trying desperately to force myself to just come up with something.
I’ve just finished tapping out the last of my unexpected flood of ideas, breathing out a sigh that’s one part satisfaction and two parts relief that I’ve actually accomplished not just a little, but what I think might actually be a significant breakthrough, when I look up to see Tristan leaning his hip and shoulder against the wall across from me.
And Jesus Christ, if I thought he was devastating before while he was still asleep, nothing can describe him now. His black hair is tousled, almost curling in places, just begging for me to run my fingers through it.
Through it, and then down across his bare chest to the line of his hips, where the sweatpants he’s slipped into hang low in dangerous enticement.
It’s the look on his face though that sets my heart skipping and leaping and my stomach swooping.
His eyes are fixed on me, their expression every bit as soft and easy as it was when he was asleep, and the way his lips lift in just the littlest hint of a curve makes me wonder if he even knows he’s smiling.
Until this second, I hadn’t realized that a part of me had been worried that Tris might feel uncomfortable or regretful after all he told me last night.
It seems now though, going by the way he’s looking at me, that the opposite is the case.
He looks lighter and more genuinely comfortable than I’ve ever seen him, and suddenly I realize that the practiced ease that had struck me when I’d first seen him was just that. Practiced.
This, what I’m seeing on his face now, feels real and…my heart leaps again…mine.
“You’re sexy when you think, sunshine. Did you know that?” The left side of Tris’s lips lifts higher, pressing his dimple into his cheek as he pushes off the wall and crosses to my chair.
His seductive grace makes my head spin, and I respond without pausing to think through the implications, “And you’re sexy when you sleep.”
He stops just out of reach, his face unreadable as he stares down at me. “You were watching me sleep?”
A cold wash of embarrassment floods me, tempered only by the amused twitching of the corners of his mouth.
“No,” I answer, far too quickly to be remotely believable, only to be hit with another wave of embarrassment.
The transformation of his smile into a smirk reassures me that he’s not creeped out by my accidental admission.
And then the next moment, we’re both laughing until, in a quick movement, Tristan’s standing between my legs, leaning forward to pin one hand on either side of the chair, caging me in as he quirks an eyebrow.
Any lingering embarrassment is gone, obliterated by the far stronger pull of desire at his nearness and the cocky way he’s trapped me here.
“So, you think I’m sexy?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” I breathe out, trying and failing to keep the hand that’s not balancing my computer in my lap from lifting to run along the lean, tight muscles of his stomach, down to the waistband of his sweats, mesmerized by the way those muscles quiver under my touch.
“Yeah, maybe so.” He smirks the admission even as his breath catches at the way my fingers brush over his skin, tossing his head to the side lightly to move his bangs out from where they’d fallen across his eyes. “That doesn’t mean I don’t wanna hear it from you anyway.”
Under his smirk and despite the outward confidence of his words and stance, there’s a flash of something that I suddenly recognize as insecurity.
The realization brings me back to last night; to his admissions about his past certainly, but even more strikingly, to before that.
To the way his eyes had gone wide and hungry and his breath had caught every time I couldn’t hold myself back from telling him how perfect he was as we kissed and touched.
Now, as the awareness hits me that maybe praise is a thing he desperately needs, I promise myself to tell him, as often as I possibly can, how stunning he is. How it’s so much more than his appearance that makes him that way.
“You’re not just sexy, Tris,” I whisper up to him, not letting my eyes leave his, even as nervousness churns through me, tightening my throat and making the words feel clumsy on my tongue.
“You’re incredible. Not just your body, but you. You’re funny and sweet and kind and resilient—”
There’s so much more I want to tell him, but the look on his face makes me go quiet; a confused line pulling between his brows as the smile falls away from his lips. For a moment, my heart sinks because either he doesn’t believe me, or I’ve said something wrong—
Before I even realize he’s moved, his lips crash into mine, hard and desperate and breathtaking. At the first sweep of his tongue over my lower lip, I open to him, letting him kiss me long and deep until he breaks away, his breath coming in hard, fast puffs.
“Fuck, Tris,” I gasp out as he stares down at me through dark, glassy eyes.
“You don’t have to say things like that to make me want you,” he pants, shaking his head like he’s trying to clear it, and then his eyes go wide, like he hadn’t meant to say what he just said.
“Is that what you think? That that was all that was?”
Hoping I sound light and teasing as I try to hide the fact that the dismissive shrug he gives in answer is enough to shatter that piece of my heart where he’s taken up residence, I say the first thing that comes to mind, hoping it’s the right thing.
“Well, it wasn’t,” I push up from the chair, pausing to brush a kiss over his cheek as I crowd past him, pulling away before he has a chance to lure me into anything more.
“And to prove it, I’m not going to let you touch me now.
Instead, I’m going to make you breakfast and we’re going to sit together and eat it, and sometime, I’m going to tell you the rest of what I had to say, because that wasn’t even the half of it. ”
For several seconds that leave me crawling with uncertainty, he just stands there, staring after me as I attempt a confident looking stride into the kitchen that feels more like a retreat.
I have my head stuck in the cupboard, pretending to search for the oatmeal that’s right in front of me, when I hear his voice, all self-assuredness and humor again. “I’ve got two things to say about what you just told me, you know.”
“Oh?” I answer, hiding my grin of relief as I continue to pretend to search the cupboard because, even if he blows me off about it, this somehow feels like I’ve gotten through to him, at least a little.
“Yeah.” And I swear I can hear him smiling too.
“First, there’s no way in hell I’m eating your boring-ass oats for breakfast. And second,” his voice shifts, making me imagine his smile transforming into that heart-stopping smirk of his as the sound of it grows closer, “even after last night, I still say you’re still a fucking tease, sunshine. ”
The sudden touch of his fingers on my lower back, reaching up under the hem of my shirt makes me jump, smacking my head against the side of the cupboard.
“You’ve got to stop making me do that,” I grumble, straightening up and rubbing my head as I turn around, only to find Tristan, deliciously wicked smirk in place, so close that I can feel the warm exhale of his laugh against my neck.
“Thought you weren’t going to let me touch you,” he murmurs, lifting up on his toes to press a kiss beside my ear. God, the enticing warmth of his lips nearly makes me drop the container of oats as my entire body seems to melt into him. “How am I supposed to believe anything you say now, hmm?”
And then, before I can answer, he bounces away, presumably to get whatever he’s planning to have for breakfast. Probably a good thing too, because, though I most likely wouldn’t have been able to come up with a comeback anyway, the parting graze of his lips against mine completely did in any possibility of me having formed any coherent sentence, clever or otherwise.
It turns out that Tristan’s alternative to my so-called boring-ass oats is a box of kids’ cereal, retrieved from his own apartment, containing squares so coated in sugar and cinnamon that I can literally see the sugar diluting the milk he pours over them.
Somehow, he manages two heaping bowlfuls. How he has the perfect body and impeccable teeth he does if that’s his usual breakfast—and even more baffling, if this is an indication of the general category of food he eats when left to his own devices—I have no idea.
He's just finishing his last spoonful of what, now that he’s gotten down to the bottom of the bowl, looks like liquified sugar, when his phone starts to buzz. A call this time, it seems like, not just a single text.
The effect on him is instant. A tightening of his shoulders, his spoon clanging against the ceramic of his bowl as it falls from his fingers. With none of his usual grace, he jerkily scoots his chair back, nearly tipping it over before he makes it to his feet.
His phone is still buzzing against the counter as he snatches it up to check the screen. And just as instantly, his shoulders relax and the lines of tension smooth from his face.
“Hello?” His voice is pure coffee-shop Tristan as he answers; perky and bubbly, and sure enough, “Oh, poor thing! Course I can come in early. Just give me twenty and I’ll be there for you, kay?”
“Work?” I question after he hangs up, my mind still replaying the way he’d looked before he’d realized who was calling.
“Yeah,” he shakes his head, returning to the table to gather up his bowl and spoon.
“The girl I usually work with was doing a double this morning, but she just got a call from her kid’s daycare saying he’s sick, so she wanted to know if I could come in early to cover for her so she can take him home. ”
He pauses partway through rinsing his bowl, looking back with a half-hopeful, half-wicked expression playing on his lips. “After work though…” He pauses, letting his lower lip slip from between his teeth as he lifts his brows. “If I come back over here, do I still not get to touch you?”
“Would it matter if I said no?” I shake my head at him, completely unable to keep a smile from splitting my face at the way he’s just invited himself back tonight.
He tilts his head consideringly for a moment before breaking into a grin of his own. “Nah. But only ‘cause I know you want me to.” And then, so suddenly so serious that I can’t help taking a step toward him across the kitchen, “You do want me to, right?”
“Jesus, yes. Of course—”
“Oh, well in that case,” all traces of seriousness are gone in an instant, replaced by the most shit-eating smirk I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face as he stalks toward me, reaching up to catch me around the shoulders and pull me down for a slow, deep, cinnamon-sugar kiss I can feel humming through every nerve in my body.
His hands end up tangled in my shirt, and only when both our chests are heaving and my dick is so hard and desperate for more that I’m unable to keep from rolling it against him with each sweep and suck of tongues and lips, does he pull away, darkened eyes glinting with mischief.
“Too bad for you that teasing’s a game two can play, sunshine,” he grins at me, slipping out of my grasp to saunter away to the bathroom, only pausing to grab the neatly folded white long-sleeved shirt and black jeans he’d left in the one available spot on the top of my cluttered dresser.
Tonight suddenly seems like a very long time away.
Even so, it’s with a heart at once lighter and fuller than it’s felt…Christ, maybe ever, that I stare after him, long after he pulls the door shut behind himself.