Chapter 41
Jesse
“What about this one?”
Tris looks up from the two canvases he’s been inspecting, one balanced on each of his thighs, reaching out to take the painting I’m holding out toward him.
His hair is tousled from all the times he’s pushed it back from his forehead, and his eyes are bright and intense with the same spark I’ve seen in them when he plays his music for me.
The two of us are in his apartment, with Tris sitting on the floor, surrounded by a semicircle of his paintings, planning out which ones he wants to take to show Mitchel. Mitchel, who, by the way, is now one of my new favorite people in the world.
Seeing the way Tris’s face lit up and hearing the awed pride under his rather flippant explanation of Mitchel’s offer made the fact that I barely know the man a negligible detail in my instant appreciation of him.
As he takes the canvas out of my hand, Tris tilts his head in concentration, looking down at the painting.
For me though, it’s impossible to tear my eyes away from him as he studies his work.
His lips press together in a focused sort of smile that makes the dimple in his cheek show more than I’ve ever seen it before, and it takes an absurd effort not to reach out and brush my finger over it.
I love that dimple. Love his lips; how expressive they are, how soft and pliant yet demanding against mine when he kisses me…
I won’t let myself distract him though.
The painting I’ve just handed him is of a dark, stormy sky seen through the surreally twisted, thorny branches of some sort of tree with pealing, bleached white bark. In the center of the painting, there’s a single, windblown but vividly red flower trapped amongst the thorns.
“You like it?” He looks up at me, and my heart stutters like I’m seeing him for the first time all over again.
There’s no denying the steady path my feelings have been taking over the weeks I’ve known Tris, yet something—fine, everything—about today at Pike Place with him has sent me into freefall. A thrilling, glorious fall that I don’t even want to try to fight anymore.
I don’t think it was any one moment that did it; there were simply so many.
The warm, expansive leap in my chest as he’d explored the market, capturing scene after scene on his phone to refer to later.
My own imaginings of what those future paintings might look like.
My hope that I’ll be lucky enough to get to see them.
The wonder on his face as he’d stared out at Elliott Bay, and how it made me realize that he was seeing a thing he’d never seen before, even without him having told me yet.
The rightness of his compact body pressed back into my arms as he’d breathed in the sight.
How my heart had swelled at the way he’d looked when I’d finally worked up the courage to invite him to come meet Alex and Ellie and the twins.
My family. The way he’d so unhesitatingly and naturally offered me comfort in the car when the drive had triggered a storm of anxiety I hadn’t prepared myself for.
The Uber ride this morning.
My next breath feels a bit shaky as I draw it in.
What happened this morning has been on my mind all day. Not because of how the intensity of my anxiety caught me off guard, but because I know I need to explain myself to Tris. Partly because I could tell he wanted to ask, mostly because I want him to know me.
The memories that set off my reaction this morning are a part of me, no matter how much, sometimes, I selfishly wish I could just strip them from my mind. Not my memories of him. Never that. Just of that night.
With a jolt, I drag myself back to the present.
I need to tell Tris what happened, just not right now. Right now is about Tris and his paintings, and the way he’s staring up at me, his expression eager and so damn hopeful as he waits for my opinion that it makes my throat constrict.
“I don’t just like it, Tris. I love it. It’s stunning,” I kneel beside him, reaching out to set the canvas gently down on the floor among the other paintings he’s already scrutinized over the course of the last hour. “They all are.”
And that is nothing short of the truth.
“Is that your way of telling me to hurry up and pick already?” He laughs, but there’s an anxious, brittle note under the sound that tugs at my heart. Now that I know they’re there, it’s impossible not to see straight through to the insecurities lurking behind Tris’s seemingly effortless confidence.
“Never.” I lean in, first pressing a kiss to his cheek before moving to his lips, careful not to bump the paintings still balanced on his knees as he sighs against me.
And for all that my lips linger, working their way slowly down from the corner of his mouth and over his skin, my hands twitching with the desire to slip beneath the hem of his shirt and up to explore his tight abs, I mean what I’ve just said. God, I hope he knows it too.
“I love seeing you so excited and happy,” I go on, feathering my lips over the faint stubble along the sharp line of his jaw.
He lets out a soft exhale, leaning ever so slightly into me, and I close my eyes, breathing in the sweet vanilla and peach smell of his skin. “I love that you have this chance to share your work with people, Tris. I love getting to be here with you and help, if I can. And I love your paintings.”
A nervous little twinge of warning runs through me at the use of that word that’s been lurking around the edges of my thoughts more and more often lately.
I pull back enough to glance sideways at him, just in time to catch an uncharacteristically shy, private sort of smile flicker across his lips.
My heart gives a hard, heavy thump that steals my breath for a moment.
“So no, I’m not telling you to hurry. I’d do this with you all night if you wanted.”
“All night, sunshine? Really?” He peeks up at me through the fringe of his bangs, transferring the canvases from his lap to join the others stacked on the floor.
As they meet mine, his eyes glint and darken, and his lips lift in a wickedly teasing smile, all promise and temptation and pure, personified sex. “Nothing else you want to do, hmm?”
I can’t help following his gaze as it drops pointedly to the quickly growing bulge in my jeans, and I’d laugh, except before I have the chance, he plunges forward, catching me off guard and tipping me back onto the floor.
With his knees pinned on either side of my hips, he drops his mouth down to my neck, sending tingles of pleasure scattering through me as he drags his lips across my skin. But—
“I don’t want to distract you from—Jesus, Tris—” My body jolts and I gasp as his hand finds my now fully hard length at the same moment as his tongue swirls over the junction of my shoulder. “You need to choose…which paintings—”
He nips at the base of my throat, turning the rest of my words into a moan as his grip tightens around my dick. “Already did.”
I groan when he wiggles, arching forward to press and grind our erections together. His mouth closes around my Adam’s apple, sucking until I’m panting and digging my fingers into his hips, before he lifts his head back up so his lips are hovering just over mine. “That one was the last.”
Any protest or questioning I might have tried to manage is swallowed when he closes the gap between us and captures my lips.
I open to him on another groan, and he licks into my mouth, deep and fierce and scorching.
His tongue sweeps over mine, erasing my every thought except for the feel of his mouth and body. The need for more of him.
He lets out a beautiful, breathless moan when my hands move from where they’d been gripping his hips to grab his ass. Jesus, I want to hear him make that sound again. Want to make him pant and gasp and beg like last night.
Using the leverage of my grip on him, I drag him closer, high on the way he grinds against me as I arch up to meet him.
He rewards me with another filthy moan, and I can’t keep from moaning back into his mouth as my fingers dig into the firm fullness of his cheeks because, fucking Christ, even through the barrier of his tight jeans, he feels incredible.
Incredible, only now that I know how his bare skin feels beneath my hands, nothing else can compare.
“I want you naked, Tris.”
My hands slip up to his lower back, under the hem of his shirt, and he sits back, dragging in a ragged breath. His eyes are glassy and dark, and the slow grin that spreads across his parted lips makes my dick twitch and throb in the confines of my jeans.
“C’mere.” He tugs at my wrist, guiding me up off the floor with him as he stands with that careless, sexy as hell grace of his. And then he’s stripping off his shirt, pulling the fabric up over his gorgeous body, before shimmying out of his jeans and briefs as I shamelessly stare.
Jesus, fuck— How can every last inch of him be so perfect?
With far less grace, I copy him, tugging off my sweater and jeans, nearly tripping when they tangle around my ankles as I try to step out of them without taking my eyes off him.
The moment I’m down to my boxers, Tris is on me, up on his toes with his arms tangling tight around my neck as our lips collide in a desperate, feverish kiss.
Cupping the back of his head, I drag his bottom lip between my teeth, drinking in his soft whimpers and moans as he arches and grinds against me until the sounds of our gasps and panted breaths fill the room.
Dizzy with the taste and smell and feel of him, I let him drive me slowly back toward his neatly made bed.
Not until he’s pushing me down to sit at the edge of the mattress do we break the kiss.
God, I don’t want to let him go even for a second.
When I try to pull him after me though, he shakes his head, biting his lip as his eyes lower to where my erection tents my boxers, a damp spot already marking the fabric over my leaking slit.
Before I even have time to process what he’s doing, Tris drops to his knees between my spread legs.
For a fleeting moment, I have the impulse to haul him up and take his place on the floor, kneeling for him.
The next moment though, the look of naked desire on his face as he lifts his gaze to meet mine banishes the thought from my mind, replacing it with a blaze of arousal that washes through me like liquid fire.
Fucking Christ, he wants this as much as I do.
Never taking his eyes off me, he brings his lips to the inside of my thigh, just below the hem of my boxers, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to my skin.
The sight of him between my legs, black hair fallen low to partly cover his eyes, his perfect mouth so near my desperately straining length, is everything.
I want to tell him how gorgeous he is, how just watching him like this is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen in my life, but what he’s doing has stolen my ability for coherent speech.
All I can do is watch, my hands fisting the blanket to stop myself from tangling them in his hair to hurry him on as he moves slowly up my leg.
He's kissing over my boxers now, and the feel of his warm, rapid breath and hungry mouth through the fabric sends blazing shivers rippling along every inch of my body. My dick is painfully hard, and with each ever-closer touch of Tris’s lips, it throbs with anticipation.
When he’s a hair’s breadth away from finally touching me, he lifts his head a moment, flashing me another wicked, heart-stopping smirk before lowering his lips again.
“Tris—” His name rips from me in a strangled moan as the heat of his mouth comes down over my crown, teasing along the length of my still covered shaft in a barely-there touch.
My hips lift, body arching up off the bed for a second before I can pull myself back. His lust darkened eyes flash, and slowly, so damn slowly, he extends his tongue, licking a hot, damp stripe up my dick, root to tip, over the material of my boxers. “Oh fuck, Tris—”
“Someone’s impatient,” he hums against me, smirking again as I stifle a groan.
He takes pity on me though, only torturing me for a few seconds longer, mouthing the lightest kisses all the way back down to my balls.
Still, by the time he moves his hands to tug at my waistband, my body is so consumed by arousal that just the brush of his fingers against the skin by my hips has me shuddering, my dick twitching and leaking and my breath catching in my throat.
His knuckles graze across my skin as he works my boxers down, and I lift my hips, breathing out a ragged sigh of relief as he frees my erection to stand between us.
“Fuck, sunshine,” he rasps. Slowly, he drags his palms back up my bare thighs, making heat and need race ahead of his touch, tensing my muscles as a fresh bead of precum gathers at my slit. “Do you have any idea how much I want to taste you?”