Chapter 17 Tristan #3
He squinted at me. “Didn’t you get rid?”
“Of one of them. Well, two now, actually.” I sighed. “Two left. Could still be like dominoes. We’ll see.”
Razor breathed out a laugh that turned into a wince. “How’s he know how to do all this?”
“He’s training to be a doctor.”
Razor snorted. “Course he is. Doctor, lawyer… what else you got in this place?”
“Technically neither of us are those yet. We’re learning. And Zara’s learning how to be a politician.”
He gave a low hum of disbelief. “Christ. It’s like Eton threw up in here.”
“Harrow,” I corrected automatically. “Though Zara went to Westminster.”
Razor gave a faint huff of amusement. “Sounds like I turned up at the right gaff.”
“If your plan was to get patched up badly, receive half-baked legal advice and a closing statement on how you had nothing to do with anything and it was all the previous leadership’s fault, then absolutely you hit the right address.”
Razor ignored me to lean forward and fumble with the edge of the gauze.
I pushed upright. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Checking the damage.”
“The damage is being corrected. Don’t touch that.”
I swatted his hand away, but he caught my wrists.
His grip wasn’t cruel, but it held. And he locked his eyes on mine.
For a second, I swear the air between us stopped moving.
His pupils were wide, breath shallow, chest rising against the bandage I’d wrapped.
Yet he looked at me with such heat, I was stunned into submission.
“You wanna know what happened to the last bloke who tried hitting me?”
I swallowed hard, pulse tripping. “I’ll assume he didn’t have the fortune to find a house with a practising doctor.”
Something shifted in his face then. Pain. Or maybe regret. He let go, sinking back against the headboard. I stayed where I was, my wrists still tingling from his touch. Then I settled in beside him, our shoulders brushing.
“What happened?”
“Best you don’t know.” Razor scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“I don’t doubt it.” I chewed my lip. “But you are in my bed. Bleeding on my sheets. Fixed up by my mate. Surely, I’m owed something.”
He exhaled, tipping his head back against the headboard. It wasn’t exhaustion. It was restraint. As if he was trying to decide whether silence could save us both. For a moment, I thought he might tell me everything. Then his jaw clenched, and he rubbed a thumb over the gauze on his ribs.
“That rival crew I mentioned?” He glanced at me, biting his lip. “They happened. I was meant to sort it. Instead, I got knifed, shot at, and—fuck.” He thudded his head back onto the soft headboard. “I ran. That won’t earn me any stripes.”
He said it like confession. Quiet, heavy, ashamed.
And I turned to him, close enough to see the tremor in his jaw, the muscle ticking as he swallowed down the truth he didn’t want to say.
The man who’d looked indestructible the other night now looked as if he was holding himself together with sheer stubbornness.
So I said, “Maybe survival’s worth more than stripes.”
He looked at me then, and for the first time neither of us had a clever line to hide behind. “That’s not how this works.”
I nodded, though we both knew I didn’t understand.
How could I? I’d read about lives like his, written essays on systemic failure, but that wasn’t the same as living it.
Bleeding for it. And I didn’t know if he’d chosen this life, or if it had chosen him.
What I did know was that a man like Razor didn’t show up at a stranger’s door unless there was nowhere else he could go.
And maybe that was the part that got me.
The idea that I wasn’t the safe choice, but the only one left.
I should’ve pulled back. Instead, I reached for the edge of the bandage, checking it hadn’t slipped. My fingers brushed his skin, warm and rough beneath mine. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t move at all. He watched me with those sharp, unreadable eyes, as if I was the one bleeding.
“Why here?” I asked, voice lower than I meant it to be, eyes catching on his. “Why come to me?”
He swallowed, throat working around words he found hard to say. “Couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather bleed out than on your expensive floor tiles.” He lifted his eyes, meeting my gaze. “Would be a nice place to die.”
Jesus.
Christ.
That hit somewhere it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t a compliment, but it landed all the same.
Right beneath my ribs. And I couldn’t help it.
Maybe I was high myself. Maybe I’d inhaled too much of the antiseptic Henry had been using or had been downing the vodka instead of water.
Maybe it was just pure adrenaline. Whatever it was, I couldn’t fight it.
How could I fight this man? He’d never let me win.
So I leant up and pressed my lips to his.
And, God, he met me halfway. Tight at first, almost cautious, before his hand came up behind my head, threading his fingers into my hair, and dragging me closer.
The kiss deepened. Messy. Desperate. He was trembling, bloodied and hurt, and I was too gone to stop.
Too lost in the heat of him.
He kissed me through the pain, breathing hard into my mouth, until somehow he was over me, limbs tangled with mine, heat pressed to heat, breath shuddering between us. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t even really a kiss. It was a collision: frantic, fevered, two people clinging to the same ledge.
And God, it felt like air.
As if he needed me to breathe.
As if letting go of me meant slipping under for good.
I let him hold on.
Between kisses and broken little winces, he shoved down his borrowed underwear for me to wrap my hand around his thick, hard cock, nothing subtle about it. And when he tipped his head back, a choke caught in his throat, pleasure cutting clean through the pain.
Then he tore at my boxers, dragging them down with shaking hands, pressing his cock to mine, sliding our lengths together until our breaths fractured in the same ragged rhythm.
“Tell me your real name,” I breathed against his mouth.
A beat.
Only the tremor of his breath. Then, “Richie.”
I smiled, soft, almost reverent. “Richie.”
He shifted above me, guiding the tip of his cock between my legs. “Say it again.”
This time it wasn’t a whisper. It was a surrender. “Richie.”
His breath left him hard, nostrils flaring. “Ask me for what you want.”
I swallowed, brushing my fingers up his neck and into the short bristle of his hair. “I want Richie to fuck me.”
He held my gaze.
And yeah, there was fear there. Threaded through all that want. But the truth was I needed it. Needed him. The real him. No mask. No blade. No bravado. Just Richie. So I reached for the drawer, fumbling it open with shaking fingers. “In there.”
He pushed up onto his knees, and for a moment I could do nothing but stare at him.
The wreck of him. Bruised. Battered. Blood drying in dark streaks along his ribs.
And still… beautiful. Brutal in a way that felt almost sacred.
And I watched him, the brute force of him, violence held together by sheer will, power simmering under skin torn open in places, and I couldn’t believe any of this was real.
That he was here. In my room. My bed. In obscene pain and still wanting me with that single-minded hunger making my chest ache.
He reached for the condom and lube, bit the wrapper open, and rolled the condom down over his pulsating cock.
Then he slicked his palm and spilt lube down both of us in a messy, careless slide, holding my gaze.
His eyes blew wide and dazed; pupils dark as ink.
And in that split second, I realised I wasn’t the only one caught in this delirious, impossible spell.
We were both gone.
Drowning.
And choosing it anyway.
Then I lifted my knees and he pushed forward. Slow, controlled, the blunt heat of him breaching me. And every coherent thought I had dissolved into that sensation. To him. Easing me open. Stretching me. Filling me. Taking me like he meant it.
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned, voice breaking as he shuddered and braced an elbow beside my head, the other arm trembling with the effort of holding himself up and my legs apart. “This…really…fucking… hurts.”
The sound wasn’t dramatic.
It was real. Raw.
A man trying to stay upright with a knife wound pulling at his ribs.
“You want to stop?” I asked, breathless but serious.
He dropped his forehead close to mine, our breaths mingling in short, uneven bursts as he edged deeper, inch by inch, gritting his teeth through the pain. “No.”
Relief hit me so hard I laughed. “Thank fuck.”
Razor snorted a quick, pained puff of amusement, then froze halfway in, muscles locking as the movement tugged across his bandaged side. “Christ…” His voice dropped to a rough whisper. “You’re tight.”
I gasped at the stretch, grabbing behind my thighs to open myself for him, heat sparking everywhere he touched. “Cause I’ve been riding a less-than-mediocre cock for two years.”
He barked a laugh. Real, breathless, almost disbelieving, and immediately winced as it tugged his wound. “Yeah,” he managed through clenched teeth. “Saw the video. Felt bad for you.”
He then jerked his hips in a shallow thrust he couldn’t fully commit to, pain flaring on his face. But he didn’t pull out. Didn’t retreat. He held himself there, inside me, trembling, as if the pain was secondary to how much he wanted this. Me.
“Yeah?” I panted. “That what this is, then? A pity fuck?”
He froze. Every muscle went still, except the pulse hammering in his throat. His eyes met mine, and suddenly the joke died between us.
“I don’t know what this is,” he said, voice roughened at the edges, like truth scraping free. He swallowed. “Just that it feels so fucking good I can’t stop. Even though it really… fucking…hurts.”
My chest cracked wide open. It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it.
As if he couldn’t remember the last time anything had felt this good and didn’t trust it now that it did.
So I reached up, slid my hand to the back of his neck, scratching my fingers through the short bristle of his hair, and pulled him closer so our noses met.
“Same,” I whispered. “I want you to hurt me.”
He didn’t move. He stayed there, inside me, head bowed, arms trembling, as if savouring the moment.
Our breaths tangled. His rough and uneven, mine caught somewhere between wanting and disbelief.
And when he finally started to move, it was slow.
Careful. As if testing what he could take.
What I could. And even though I knew it was because he hurt, I couldn’t stop myself from believing it was something else entirely. That for once, it wasn’t just sex.
It was him letting himself feel.
But that gentleness didn’t last. Couldn’t.
Not with the hunger living between us. Every thrust was deeper, harder, his body shaking with the effort, with pain he refused to show.
And I couldn’t stop watching him. The way his jaw locked.
How his eyes, dark and fevered, never left mine.
He wasn’t just looking at me. He was looking through me.
Stripped bare, every wall between us dissolving in sweat and sound.
He kissed me again, rough and desperate, swallowing the groan breaking from my chest. I clung to him, to the heat and weight of him, the whole world narrowing to this one impossible point where want and ruin met.
“Richie,” I breathed, the name breaking on my tongue.
He shuddered, unravelling, and his hand caught the back of my neck, holding me still, our mouths inches apart, breaths spilling between us.
“Say it again,” he demanded through gritted teeth.
“Richie.” It came out like surrender.
He drove forward, deeper, harder, the rhythm breaking apart. Pain and need blurred until they were indistinguishable. Pulse, pressure, heat. Then he dropped his forehead to mine, his body locking up, breath tearing out of him in a low, fractured sound filling the space between us.
I came apart with him, caught between his heartbeat and mine, between everything I shouldn’t want and everything I couldn’t stop craving. Then he spilled inside me with a feral groan, and I made more of a mess between us, neither of us caring enough to stop it.
For a long time after, there was only the sound of our breathing. The room heavy with heat and something close to quiet. He stayed there, body trembling, forehead still pressed to mine, dick wilting inside me. And, with a shaky half-laugh against my lips, he whispered,
“You’re still Tricky.”