Chapter Fifteen Tristan
Chapter fifteen
Tristan
Jesus. Christ.
I was a wreck.
A ruined, sweat-drenched wreck with no bones left in my body and absolutely no desire to move. From this bed. From this man. From this moment.
The high was easing. Sliding off me in soft, slow waves and leaving behind a hazy clarity feeling almost tender. A moment of sanity after hours of impossible bliss. I didn’t know what time it was. Could’ve been Sunday already. Could’ve been midnight. Could’ve been next week.
Didn’t care.
Everything beyond this room felt fictional.
Unreal.
Irrelevant.
All I wanted was this bed. This heat between us.
Razor’s arm curled around me. The low hum of his breaths warming my cheek.
I could have stayed like this forever. Sprawled across his chest, one leg hooked over his thigh, our bodies half-wrapped, half-tangled, his fingers tracing lazy lines down my arm, an absent-minded affection people did without realising they were giving themselves away.
We didn’t talk.
We just breathed together, waiting for our thoughts to return to us, and whatever reality waited to roll in and shatter the fragile peace hanging over us.
But there was a sweetness in the quiet. Soft.
Earnest. Almost terrifying. And I curled my fingers against his ribs, not gripping, just touching.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t shift away. If anything, his hand paused for a moment, right over my shoulder, before stroking down my arm again.
Then he brushed his lips into my hair. “You alive?”
I huffed a laugh against his chest. “Barely.”
“Yeah. Same.” He skated his knuckles over my shoulder blade, warm and gentle, and my gut clenched. Soft and painful and unbearably good. “You okay?”
I lifted my head to look at him. His eyes were half-lidded, softened by the comedown.
“Yeah.” I searched his face, bracing myself. “Are you?”
He nodded once. But his fingers went still on my arm, and that told me more than the nod ever could.
I rested my cheek back on his chest, letting the quiet settle.
It hit me then. Maybe this wasn’t normal for him.
Closeness. Intimacy. Just… lying with someone.
He’d told me he only ever paid for sex. And sure, there’d been Levi, but whatever they’d been, I doubted it looked anything like the relationship milestones Ollie and I had stumbled through.
The thought left me exposed. Vulnerable. As if suddenly, I had the upper hand and the disadvantage at the same time. Although Razor might be older, sharper, and streetwise to the point of terrifying, here, in this room, he felt brand new. Untouched. Uncertain. And that made my stomach flutter.
“This is nice,” I whispered.
He grunted. “Yeah. Kinda dangerous, though.”
I glanced up. “Dangerous?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He waited a beat, then lifted one leg, foot bracing on the mattress. “’Cause I’m starving, and my stomach’s in danger of growling you off me.”
A laugh burst out of me, all the tension dissolving. “Didn’t you say something about Greek food?”
“Yeah.” He reached across me to the bedside table, tapping his phone awake. “Four hours ago. Probably cold as fuck now.”
“I am perfectly willing to eat cold falafel.”
He wriggled down beside me, pulling me closer until we were face to face. He slid his hand slid down my back and cupped the curve of my arse, kissing me lazily.
“You’re telling me you, rich kid from Mayfair, eat cold takeaway?” Another kiss. “Don’t you get the butler to heat it up?”
“Heat it up?” I gasped, scandalised. “Christ, no. We’d order a fresh one and sack the butler for even suggesting he microwave it.”
He laughed, though he wasn’t entirely sure whether I meant it.
Then he kissed me again, rolling me onto my back and sliding over me, braced on his forearms.
“Then wait there, Your Highness,” he spoke against my lips. “I shall serve you cold slop.”
I rested my hands behind my head. “‘Your Highness’ is for the King. I prefer ‘Sir,’ or perhaps ‘Lord.’ ‘Your Grace’ if you’re feeling formal.”
He pulled back to look at me, making sure I was taking the piss. I wrapped my legs around his waist and dragged him down for another kiss.
“Tricky’s fine, though.” I kissed him. “I like it.”
He rolled off me with a low groan and pushed himself up. I watched him stretch, long, hard lines of muscle pulling tight over his back, before he padded across the open-plan space towards the kitchen.
“You’re right,” I called after him, voice echoing faintly off the beams.
“Usually am,” he shot back, moving around his kitchen. “About what?”
“The view here is better.” I winked even though he was halfway across the flat.
He glanced back at me as he licked something off his thumb, and Jesus, the look he gave me nearly finished me. There was no doubt how sexy the man was, all tough edges and razor sharp but now with a soft glow. And it just hit me, we’d been making love for over four hours.
Me. Razor. East End thug. Making love.
“Don’t wanna get back to thwack, thwack, grunt, then?” He rummaged through drawers, pulled out cutlery, grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge to tuck under his arm, then sauntered over with the takeaway bag dangling from his fingers.
He climbed back onto the bed, dumped everything onto my chest like I was a tray table, and smirked.
I shifted upright, pushing sweaty hair off my forehead. “Not right now. I’m grunted out.” I peeked into the bag to see the Greek delights inside. Looked like a mixed gyros platter. Chips. Pita bread. Meat strips. Everything I needed right then. “I’ll get back to thwacks and grunting later.”
He chuckled and nuzzled into the side of my neck. “Promises.”
Then he sat back against the wall, completely naked, faint sheen of dried sweat over his skin, and pulled a polystyrene box into his lap as if this was the most normal routine in the world.
I’d eaten takeaway in bed before. Cold, too.
But never like this, slobbing around in the sheets we’d just wrecked, filthy and spent and utterly at ease.
It felt impossibly tender. Domestic in a way that lodged itself under my ribs.
To lie here with him, refuelling after the most devastating sex of my life, laughing, teasing, touching… it felt—
Dangerous, yeah.
He was right about that.
But also…
God. Wonderful.
I tucked into the food, lying on my side propped up on one elbow while he sat against the wall, bare chest rising and falling, dipping cold chips into tzatziki and batting my hand away whenever I reached for anything he was currently hoarding.
The warmth in my limbs was fading. That hazy buzz turning soft at the edges.
And I could see it happening to him too.
The slow slide into the comedown, that quiet where thoughts crept back in.
I popped a piece of chicken into my mouth. “Can I ask you something?”
He didn’t look up. “If you have to.”
“Have you… ever done your own drugs?”
He ripped a chunk of pita, dragged it through tzatziki. “Not how you were asking.”
“But you’ve taken drugs before.”
Razor barked a laugh mid-chew. “Tristan, I’m a dealer.”
The way he used my full name made my stomach flutter. Ridiculous, considering the context. Criminal words wrapped around what sounded almost… fond.
“Yeah, but you said you don’t take your own stash.”
“I don’t. Not often.”
“But you’ve dabbled?”
He snorted. “I’ve done coke. Who hasn’t? Had Mandy a couple times. Smoke a bit of weed now and then.” He turned his gaze on me. “I also ain’t stupid. I see what this shit does to people. Get hooked while working for the Firm? That’s a death wish.”
He wasn’t bragging. Just stating it plainly.
He shoved a handful of chips into his mouth, swallowed.
“So yeah. I’ve taken stuff. Course I have.
Just not… to hide from anything. Or to forget shit.
That’s when it fucks you up.” He paused, eyes cutting to me and I had to look away because that was exactly why I’d asked him to do that with me.
To forget. “But if you’re asking whether I’ve ever used it to…
y’know. For sex?” Another shrug, but this one felt heavier. “No. I ain’t.”
The words hit me harder than they should have.
Not because they were romantic. But because they were Razor.
Blunt and simple and quietly devastating.
He didn’t dress it up. Nor try to impress me.
Just gave me a piece of truth he probably didn’t realise he was giving, and suddenly the room felt warmer again.
Razor, leant back against the wall with his hands folded over his stomach, legs outstretched and ankles crossed, looking almost—God help me—content.
Then, casually, “You?”
I snorted under my breath, dipped a chip into tzatziki. “No.”
He didn’t let it go. “Not even with your ex?”
I shook my head, eyes fixed on the white swirls in the dip. “No. We both know he did… but he never wanted to with me.” A breath left me, softer than I meant. “I’m not really sure what to make of that.”
Razor quirked a brow. I noticed his foot waggling, tapping out a restless rhythm. His head tilted a little, eyes fixed on me as if he wasn’t used to deciphering such things. So I looked up. Met his gaze. Held it. And for a long moment, neither of us said anything.
Then, eventually, because the silence was too sharp to sit in, I asked, “Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
Firm. Immediate.
Thank fuck.
He picked at the corner of the takeaway box, then cleared his throat. “You should call your old man, though.”
I let out a short laugh. “And say what? ‘Hi Dad, I’m not coming home because I’m spending the night with a criminal’?”
“Tell him whatever.” Razor shrugged, eyes on the food.
“But the man’s got cancer. And you were…
you know.” He gestured vaguely towards the bed, towards us.
“Fucked up enough over it to get fucked.” He looked down again, dipping the last chip and tossing it in his mouth, lifting his eyebrows as if to pretend the moment wasn’t nearly as loaded as it was. “Literally.”
I watched him for a long second, trying to decipher not the words but the shape around them.
He wasn’t accusing me. He wasn’t joking either.
He was circling something he didn’t know how to ask.
Didn’t know if he was allowed to ask. Training to be a barrister, and being a son of one, taught me how to hear what’s missing.
How to catch the hesitation. The implied fear.
The space where an answer hasn’t been spoken yet.
And right there, in the gaps between Razor’s words, was the real question:
Did you come to me because you wanted me… or because you were hurting?
A question Razor would never actually ask. Not outright. Not sober. Not ever. And he kept his eyes on the empty box. It hit me then, he wasn’t trying to push me away. He was bracing for the possibility that last night, and today, meant nothing to me… while it might have meant too much to him.
Fuck.
If that was true, if he’d felt something, I didn’t know how to hold it.
Didn’t know what to do with it. This was supposed to be one-sided.
I’d made peace with that. I’d been sprinting headfirst into heartache since the moment I met him.
I’d told myself a thousand times that a man like Razor Slade could never, would never, fall for me.
But if…
“Do you…” I breathed in, steadying myself the way I would before asking a dangerous question in court. “…think that’s why I came to you? Because I was upset?”
“You told me it was.”
“And…there wasn’t any part of you that thought maybe it was a deflection?”
That got his attention. He turned his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I swallowed. “What if that part was just… convenient? A cover. An excuse to see you. To ask for something that got me closer to you.”
His breath hitched, but I saw it.
I pushed on because I had to. Or maybe it was him. Making me. Letting me. “Because maybe, somewhere deep down, somewhere I don’t like to go often, for fear of the consequences, I wanted you. Just you. Like this. Not bleeding. Not angry. Not fighting battles I don’t understand.”
Razor exhaled, narrowing his eyes as he processed whatever the hell I’d just admitted. And my heart raced as if I’d sprinted here, not crawled across the sheets.
“That’s a lot of words,” he finally said.
I laughed under my breath. “Yeah. Occupational hazard.”
I shifted up onto my knees, then over him, straddling his hips. His hands went straight to my thighs automatically, as if touching me was instinctive.
“So,” I stroked my fingers down his chest, “you’re more of a kinaesthetic learner?”
He blinked. “A what?”
“A hands-on learner.” I kissed his neck, and he tilted it for me without thinking. “Role-play. Physical demonstration.”
He made a sound, half breath, half groan, as I kissed along his jaw, then caught his mouth with mine. He looked drunk from it. Not chemically. Emotionally. As if the closeness was its own intoxicant.
Then Razor slid a broad hand behind my head, dragging me closer, and kissed me harder.
He pushed into me, guiding me back onto the mattress, the polystyrene containers of food dropping to the floor, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, hauling him down with me as if I needed his weight to keep from floating apart.
As if he could sink into me and I’d hold him there.
His anchor. His landing place. His mattress.
We moved like that for a while. Heat, breath, mouths catching, his need sharpening with every shift of my hips.
Until he was inside me again. Whether it was leftover lube, tzatziki slick on his fingers, I didn’t care.
All I knew was the slow slide of him pushing all the way in, his forehead lowering to mine, bodies locked together in a way neither of us had planned for, was a feeling I would continue to beg for.
Then he whispered it again. Rough. Quiet. Reverent. “Fuck. You feel so good.” He kissed me. “You’re far too good for me.”
Maybe I was.
But I didn’t care.
And maybe this was doomed.
But I couldn’t muster any part of me to believe it was.
Because I wanted Richie.
All of him. Everything he tried to bury under Razor, everything he didn’t know how to give, everything he thought no one should want.
The man he’d just shown me he could be.