Chapter 43
Tristan
I’d thought Jesse’s mouth would be warm and plush and amazing? I hadn’t known shit.
My abs are trembling as I push up onto my elbows, 'cause there’s no way in hell I’m about to miss watching my sexy sunshine sucking me so well. And fuck but he’s sucking me well. Deep and slow and tight, and so good that already I can feel my balls drawing up.
And seeing him like this— Fuuuuck. His cheeks are that color I love, and those gorgeous, full lips of his look so damn good wrapped around me that I let out a whimpery-moan as my cock jumps and leaks against his tongue, just from the sight.
He moans back, and holy shit, just the sound of it and the way it hums through me is almost enough to do me in.
When he lifts his eyes to meet mine though, all smoky blue-grey and heavy lidded as his fucking perfect lips curl up in a smile around me—
How he’s watching me watch him? Oh hell yeah. Hot AF.
But it’s not just turned on to the point of blowing down his throat any second that the stare of his big, sexy-sweet eyes makes me feel. No, with those eyes of his on me like this, I feel safe. Seen. Cared for.
On his next pass up my shaft, Jesse hollows his cheeks, sucking harder, a bit faster—
“F-fucking yes, sunshine. Ohhh don’t f-fucking stop.”
I might have sorta screamed it, but really, I have no idea, ‘cause the next moment my back is arching up off the bed as my tip hits the back of his throat. Pleasure crashes through my body and he swallows around me, drinking down pulse after pulse of cum that bursts from me in what has got to be the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had.
Which, after last night, is totally fucking saying something.
I’m still all blurry round the edges when he lets me go, scooting up the bed beside me and wrapping his arms around me as he rolls onto his back, pulling me with him to lie boneless and breathless and totally cum-drunk in his arms.
God, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more right anywhere.
“Damn but you know how to use that mouth of yours, sunshine,” I grin up at him when I can trust myself to form normal words, resting my chin on my hands folded across his chest so I can enjoy the view of his flushed face and puffy lips. “In more ways than just one.”
Every time I think my sunshine’s gone and been as over-the-top adorable as he can get, he has to go and prove me wrong, so of course now is no exception.
The moment those words are out of my mouth, he legitimately scrunches up his face and covers it with his hand that isn’t splayed across my lower back.
“Jesus, Tris. I’m sorry. I don’t know where that stuff I said came from, and I know it was weird and—”
“Hot as fuck?” I suggest, cutting off his muffled nonsense.
Startled, he scoots his hand down, just enough to peek at me over the tops of his fingertips.
Dammit, Jesse. Too fucking adorable.
“You,” he sucks in a nervous breath, “liked the things I said?”
“Yeah. Like, a lot. I—” My pulse gives a fluttery skip. “I like everything with you, Jesse. But what you did just now? So. Fucking. Hot.”
The smile that spreads across his lips does things to my heart. Warm, pounding, leaping things that I’m no longer surprised feel right and beautiful rather than scaring the hell out of me.
“I like everything with you, too.” He dips his head down to press a kiss to my hair, and I swear to god, someone’s gonna have to come and peel me off of him if I’m ever gonna move again. Seriously, I never want to have to unmelt myself from this spot.
“Tris,” he reaches up and cups my cheek in his palm, all soft and sweet. “Thank you for today.”
“You’re thanking me?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “I’m thinking you’ve kinda got that one backwards.”
He laughs softly, shaking his head, and there’s something about the way his thumb’s stroking over my skin that’s making my throat feel a bit too tight and my eyes a bit too full.
“Yes, I’m thanking you.” Another kiss, this one long and lingering. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed a day nearly as much.”
“Me neither, sunshine.” It wouldn’t matter if I could remember every day of my life. Today’s been, hands down, the best fucking day I’ve ever had.
We’re quiet for a while, and because he just feels too damn good not to touch pretty much anytime I get the opportunity, my hands are all over Jesse. Running up and down his sides, up through his hair, down over his hips.
Before being with him, I hadn’t really spent all that much time, or I guess any, really, touching anyone when it wasn’t just straight up about fucking.
Or, for that matter, being touched by anyone.
Ever since that first night I spent in my sunshine’s bed, when he wouldn’t fuck me but wouldn’t stop touching me either, I’ve gotta admit I’ve been a little obsessed with it.
Okay, if I’m being honest, maybe it’s more than a little.
I’m pretty near drifting off—apparently post-sex snuggles with my sunshine have that effect on me—when my hand that’s exploring its way down Jesse’s right thigh meets the faintly puckered indents at the top of the long scar running its length that I’d noticed this morning in the shower.
I’d been about to ask him about it then, except when I’d found it was right about the moment when the two of us had started seriously making out, so my curiosity had kinda taken a back seat to more important things.
“What happened here?” My stomach gives a squirm as I run my finger down to where the scar ends just above his knee. Not gonna lie, I seriously hate the thought of anything hurting my sunshine at all, let alone bad enough for him to end up with a scar like that.
Jesse drags in a deep, slow breath before he answers, and for a moment, I’m worried I shouldn’t have asked. Not like I’m afraid I’ve pissed him off, just that I’ve just come off as nosy. Like it’s not my business—
“I was in a car accident a few years ago.” There’s a little frown on his lips that I want nothing more than to kiss away. “My leg was crushed, and my femur broke in several places. The scar is from the surgery I had after.”
“Fuck, sunshine.” My hand tightens over the scar, gripping his leg, and my heart clenches as the thought rips through me that, if it was that bad already, it could so easily have been so much worse. That I might never have gotten to meet him at all—
Fuck. That. Not even gonna let myself think about it.
And then something else clicks into place. “Is that why you don’t like driving?”
He nods, then shakes his head. “It’s related. It is why I don’t drive anymore. The first and only time I tried after the accident, I got two blocks down the road before I had a panic attack and had to pull over. But usually, I’m alright if someone else is driving.”
“What made today different?”
It had seemed like the way he’d freaked out had caught him off guard this morning. On the way home, he’d held himself together a little better, even though I could tell how relieved he’d been when the Uber had pulled up in front of our building.
Jesse swallows hard before, “You were in the car today.” His voice is choked and low, and there’s no way to miss the little tremble his lower lip gives.
And suddenly, I don’t need to hear what he’s gonna tell me next to understand.
Oh, sunshine—
“Hey,” my hands are on his face, stroking over his cheeks, brushing through his hair, and fuck, my heart aches for him right now. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
He shakes his head. “I want you to know. I don’t want it to be some…thing I’m not telling you. I—Tris, I want you to know me, and no, this isn’t a piece of me I would have chosen, but I still want you to know about it.”
I nod, ‘cause that’s really all I can do. My throat is way too choked up to answer right now.
“I was the one driving the night Stephen died,” he whispers, and god fucking dammit I hate the heartbroken pain in his eyes.
If I could, I’d reach right inside him and strip it out of him and never let him feel it again. No one deserves that, least of all my sweet, kind, beautiful sunshine who’s too damn good for anyone or anything, let alone shit like this.
“They said the accident wasn’t my fault, that the trucker that hit us veered into our lane before I could have had a chance to do anything but—”
Closing his eyes, Jesse rolls us to the side, burying his face against my neck. “Tris, I didn’t love him the way he loved me or the way I wish I could have, but I loved him so goddamn much and I just couldn’t—”
A shudder runs through him, and his hands squeeze tight where they’re gripping onto my shoulders. Like he needs me. Like he’s afraid I might let him go.
Not a fucking chance.
“The car was so crushed and twisted, I couldn’t even get to him. I couldn’t help him— Couldn’t hold him—”
He breaks off with a quiet sob, and for a long while, all I can do is tighten my arms around him, letting my own tears fall silently into his hair. Turns out that, while I can’t and fucking won’t cry over the shit in my own past, this is a whole different matter.
I can’t think of a damn thing to say—but for once, can I really blame myself? I don’t really think there is anything to say. Stupid shit like I’m sorry doesn’t even come close to enough.
Jesse’s tensed-up body slowly relaxes as I stroke my hands in circles over his back, and when I brush his hair away from his temple to kiss him, he lets out a choppy sigh and nuzzles closer into my neck.
Oh, this man. Even as it breaks for him, he still manages to melt my heart right into a damn puddle.
I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it.
“I know he’d want me to live. To be happy.” His voice is hoarse and all muffled, the way his face is still pressing in close against me. “And Tris? I finally feel like I can.”
Holy fuck. He doesn’t mean… ‘Cause of…me?
“It’s just,” he breathes out, long and shaky as he strokes his thumbs over my shoulders. “Now that means I have something to lose again.”
“You were worried about something happening to me today?” Fuck, I don’t even know how I get those scary-ass words out over how hard he’s just set my heart pounding. Doesn’t matter that I already know the answer.
He just nods, tightening his arms around me. Then, “That’s crazy, isn’t it? Weird—”
“Not crazy.” My lips tremble when I kiss him again, and something’s gotta be seriously wrong with me because I don’t even care if he notices. “I told you, sunshine, no one’s ever given a fuck about me before. I—” I love it. “You care about me. It feels good.” It’s everything.
“I do care, Tris.” He lifts his face and kisses me.
It’s one of those sweet, soft Jesse-kisses that messes with my head and my heart and makes me want things I have no fucking right to hope for.
“So much.” One last touch of his lips on mine, and then he brushes his nose over my cheek, down my jaw, back to snuggle his face against my neck again.
Fuck, can he feel the crazy-ass beating of my pulse right now? And why do I still not care if he does?
“Reagan kept calling you my boyfriend,” I blurt, and Jesse goes all stiff and rigid against me. “At work. Yesterday.” I hold my breath, biting my tongue to keep more shit from pouring out, unasked. Let’s at least see what he says to that before I go and fuck things up any farther, right?
“What did you tell her?”
Oh fuck. He’s really not gonna give me anything?
“I told her you aren’t.” Why does that feel so shitty to say? “Only,” I squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath. “I didn’t hate it that she thought you were.”
“You didn’t hate it?”
Shit. Nope. Didn’t hate it.
What I do totally hate is how goddamn neutral his voice is right now. Like he’s making himself not give anything away.
Please sunshine, give me something here.
“I kind of liked it?” Okay, totally not kind of. And totally not a question.
Those aren’t butterflies in my stomach now. No, they’re fucking bouncy balls. Those crazy, neon-colored ones that little kids get that fly around the room all out of control, knocking shit over. Like a fucking thousand of them.
I can feel his smile against my neck and my heart kicks, hard and eager, against my ribs.
“Is that so?” He tilts his head back slightly, grazing his lips up my throat along the way. And ohhh, the look in those grey-blues of his.
“Yeah.”
His pupils blow wide, and the way his plump, soft lips turn up in that sexy, hungry smile makes my cock swell and stiffen between us. Fucking god, I can’t get enough of him.
“Yeah?” he brushes his thumb over my lower lip as I nod.
“A lot,” I whisper. “I liked it a lot.”
The grin that bursts across his face is pure sunshine. Golden and so fucking perfect I never want to forget what it looks like in this moment.
“Good.” He drops a soft kiss against my lips, making my heart and my cock leap at the same moment. “Being with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Pressing up on one elbow, he stares into my face, eyes pinging between mine.
“From the first moment I saw you, you made everything brighter, better. It was like I’d been living under these thick, dark clouds, and you were the sun that broke through them.
You call me sunshine, Tris, but you are mine. ”
Oh, my fucking heart—
“I could listen to you play your music all day, and I could just sit and do literally nothing more than watch you smile. I want you to show me your paintings, and I want to know what you were thinking when you painted each of them. I want you to tease me and laugh at me and make me laugh with you, and I want to kiss you and hold you and show you that you’re right to trust me, that I’ll never hurt you. ”
I’m barely choking back tears—like not just a few, but right on the edge of full-blown ugly crying. And maybe I should care, but the truth is, I really don’t give a shit. All I want is for him to keep looking at me like that.
Like I’m something to him. Something real.
“Can I be your boyfriend, Tris?” He lowers his mouth to mine again, sweeping his tongue between my lips, so hot and lush I can’t keep from moaning as he pulls back. “And will you be mine?”
He kisses me again, hard and deep and greedy, and there’s no way I can answer other than just nod wildly as his hands bracket my face.
Against my lips, I can feel his smile, the way he’s fucking beaming, and it does something to me.
My heartbeat kicks up, skipping and racing so I’m sure he can feel it under his hands as they roam my chest. For a second, something—shit I definitely haven’t thought through—almost comes blurting out of my mouth.
That big, warm, sometimes terrifying, always beautiful feeling put into three even more terrifying words I’m not remotely fucking ready to think, let alone say.
And then he’s thrusting up against me, and ohhhh yes, his cock’s as hard and ready as mine is.
How the hell is this my life now? And how exactly is it not too good to be true?