Chapter Nine Tristan #2
He tore at my tee, shoving it up my chest, dragging his teeth along the line of my ribs enough to make my head snap back. His breath was hot, uneven. Not lust alone. It was deeper than that. He was hurting. So I untucked his shirt, undid the buttons as he invaded my neck.
“Fuck, Tris…” he muttered, voice cracked, as if he was shaking apart inside.
That was the first time he’d uttered my name.
Not Tricky. Not some little throwaway tease.
My name. And it punched straight through me.
Left me dizzy. I grabbed his waist, dragging him down, pulling him between my legs.
And he pressed in, denim grinding against cotton, heat meeting heat, skin meeting mine.
The rug beneath the coffee table bunched as he pushed us both down, half on the sofa, half sliding onto the floor with my papers in an avalanche around us.
He cupped me through my boxers, rough and sure, squeezing hard enough to knock a sound out of me. My hips arched helplessly.
“Jesus. Richie…”
He grunted, low and wordless, dropping his forehead onto my shoulder as he shoved my boxers down far enough to get a fist around me, hot and desperate.
No hesitation. No finesse. Just pure need.
So I fumbled his jeans open, pushing past the waistband, closing my hand around him.
He hissed through his teeth, hips jerking forward so sharply that the papers slid under us again.
Then he was moving, sliding down me, tugging my underwear off with rough impatience. Before I could gather myself, before I could fix the indignity of being half-spilt onto the floor, his mouth was on me, wrapping his lips around my cock as if it was oxygen. The only thing keeping him upright.
“Fuck, Rich—” I tried to shift, to get leverage, but he was relentless. He sucked me hard, obscene, unapologetic sounds filling the room. Then he hummed when he slipped off, the vibration ripping through me, as he devoured my balls, mouth wet and greedy while his hand worked me in ruthless strokes.
“C’mon, Tris. Lose it for me.” He pulled back long enough to breathe the encouragement against my skin before sealing his mouth around me again.
I gripped the edge of the sofa, knuckles white, tipping my head back as the papers beneath me tore and slid, contracts and careful arguments shredded under my spine. My body tightened, pleasure coiling sharp and fast, no room to think, no room to run.
“Richie…fuck, Richie…I’m close—”
He slapped my hip, urging me on, and I snapped, coming with a choked sound I didn’t recognise, spilling into his mouth as my whole body shook.
He took it all. Licked me clean as if he needed to prove to himself he could.
Then he was up and over me, straddling my hips, his cock in my mouth before I’d even caught my breath.
“That’s it,” he groaned, threading his fingers through my hair. “Fuck, yeah.”
He braced his hands on the cushions either side of my head and fucked my mouth hard, desperate, chasing something far past pleasure.
I looked up at him through my lashes and knew immediately that he wasn’t here.
Not really. His eyes were closed, his face tight, as if trying to outrun whatever clawed at him from the inside.
And he was using me to do it.
The realisation didn’t hurt. It settled. Because whatever he was fighting, he needed this. Needed me. And that mattered more than anything my mind was screaming at me to be afraid of.
“Jesus, fuck, Tristan…”
He came with a strangled groan, jerking his hips tight as he spilt into my mouth, pulling out at the last second so he dripped down my chin. Then he collapsed forward, forehead pressed to mine, breath shuddering between us.
He stayed there.
Breathing.
Shaking.
I didn’t move. I waited.
When he finally slid down, he took me with him, dragging us both fully onto the floor and he curled into my chest and went still.
Too still. Not spent. Not satisfied. But perhaps…
empty. Then I felt tremor under his skin.
Not from the orgasm. From whatever had been gnawing at him long before I opened my door.
So I wrapped my legs around his waist. Slid my hands under his open shirt and up his back, feeling the strength there, the tension, the tiny shudders he couldn’t stop. And I held him. Quiet. Careful. Knowing if I spoke, he might break apart completely.
I’m almost certain I heard him sniff.
Just once.
I didn’t say a word.
Because if I did, if I shifted even an inch, he’d retreat behind the hard edges he lived within. And I’d never felt more honoured in my life than I did right then, with him shaking in my arms, letting himself be held.
It felt like hours, though it could only have been minutes, when a steady thwack… thwack… thwack drifted through the open window from my bedroom beyond. Familiar. Comforting. Background noise. To me.
Razor jerked at each sound, a full-body twitch. Then he pushed himself up to look at me, eyes bleary, confusion rolling off him like heat.
“What the fuck is that?” He tried to glance over his shoulder, though my legs and arms pinned him to me. I didn’t want to let go.
Ever.
God, I was so fucking delusional.
“Tennis,” I said.
He stared at me. “Tennis?”
“Yeah.”
The confusion on his face made him look younger. Softer. More Richie than Razor. “You tellin’ me you live on top of fucking Wimbledon now?”
I snorted. “Queen’s Tennis Club, actually.”
Thwack… thwack… thwack.
Razor narrowed his eyes at me, then, unfortunately, peeled himself out of my hold and followed the sound.
I pulled my boxers up, yanked my T-shirt back into place and, using the sofa for leverage, I pushed myself upright.
By the time I caught up, he was standing in my bedroom, shirt open, jeans undone, gazing out of the window.
Below us, the grass courts gleamed under the late sun.
White lines, neat hedges, players grunting with each shot.
Thwack. Grunt. Thwack. I stepped up behind him and, stupidly, naively, catastrophically, slipped my hands around his waist and skimmed the strip of warm skin beneath his shirt with my fingers, brushing the soft hair of his snail trail.
Then I dropped my chin onto his shoulder.
Had to rise on my toes to do it. That’s how much of an idiot I was. How much I wanted this.
He didn’t stop me.
Didn’t step away.
He was mesmerised by the view, and a world he’d never been allowed near.
“You know what I could see from my bedroom window growing up?” he asked quietly.
I brushed my lips along his shoulder blade. “I’m going to guess it wasn’t the Ladies’ Singles Final.”
He huffed a breath heavy with meaning, then bowed his head. “Burnt-out cars.”
I froze, then kissed the back of his shoulder, tasting sweat trapped in cotton.
“Mum used to tell me not to look down. Said it’d make me think the world was smaller than it was. I’d stare anyway. Pretend the metal was gold. That I lived somewhere that didn’t stink of piss and smoke… with blue lights and sirens the only lullaby I knew.”
I closed my eyes, and God, I hurt for him.
But I couldn’t say that. He didn’t want my pity. Nor did he need it.
Because this moment, this confession, wasn’t about guilt or privilege.
He wasn’t trying to make me feel bad. He was telling me because he wanted me to know.
Who he’d been. Who he was beneath the Razor edge.
Who I was already falling for, even though I’d been caught by the man he’d had to become a while back.
So I whispered, “Stay.”
He snorted softly. “And watch tennis with you? You got strawberries and cream lying around? Pimm’s on ice?”
I did actually.
But I assumed that was a question not meant to be answered.
Especially when he did up his fly. He didn’t step away though. He turned in my arms, shirt still hanging open, letting my hands slide around to his back, allowing me another stolen look at the ink carved into him.
“Don’t you have work in the morning?” he asked, then kissed me.
“I do.” I kissed him back. “Though we might’ve ruined half my prep back there.”
“Shouldn’t be so messy, should ya?” He kissed me again. Soft, sweet, and heartbreakingly normal. A kiss that could unmake a person. Me. “Keep your line clean. My motto.”
I tilted up, kissed him deeper, sliding my tongue against his, and it hit me how close I was to falling so catastrophically under that I might never crawl back out.
He felt it too. I knew he did. Because he clamped his hands on my arse, pulling me flush to him, holding on as if he didn’t know how to let go.
“Stay,” I whispered again. “You can’t be working tomorrow. It’s Monday.”
“Laundry day.” He kissed me again.
I knew he wasn’t talking about clothes. Bed sheets. A trip to the launderette. No, he meant money laundering. Moving the weekend’s cash. The part of his life I couldn’t touch. Not even with clean hands.
He kissed me again. Lingering. Languid. And it hurt in a way sex never had.
“You don’t want me staying.” He pulled back for the air between us to cool. “I’ll ruin your perfect palace.”
Then he traced my jaw with his thumb, giving one soft, dangerous stroke, making my chest tighten, before stepping fully out of my hold.
I watched him button his shirt, tuck it in, piece himself back together as if the last five minutes hadn’t unravelled him completely.
He met my gaze. Took a breath. Heavy. Chest rising.
Then leant to steal one more kiss before walking out of the bedroom.
I followed him through the flat to the door where he hesitated long enough to kiss me again, as if he couldn’t help himself.
Then, he was gone.
Down the stairs.
Out of my building.
Out of a moment that could have shifted everything.
Leaving behind the taste of him on my tongue, the tremor of him still in my bones, and a week’s worth of case files crushed under a man I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover from.
But he was wrong.
Not about ruining my perfect palace.
About me not wanting him to.