Chapter 10
TEN
Tristan
It’s been a while since I lost all restraint like I did with Vance today.
After taking a cold shower, I pace the room naked, trying to recall the look on Poppy’s face when I fucked Vance. She seemed to enjoy having us both that way, which only fueled my appetite for savagery.
My need to fuck and punish her has had me tilting on the edge for days, weeks.
Months, if I’m being honest. I don’t usually deprive myself of the things I desire, but with Poppy, I had refused myself.
Not only because she is my employee so I didn’t want gossip or a lawsuit, but I believed her to be too innocent for my depravity.
I’m so fucking glad I was wrong. That I gave in to the urges.
Now that I’ve had her, things will never be the same again.
There’s something different about her. She’s so pure in her desire.
Running a rough hand through my hair, I exhale a sharp breath and look to the closed door. I want to be out there with them but need punishment as much as I needed that release.
Vance entered my life at a time when I desperately needed someone, a time when I felt like I was drowning. We taught each other how to manage our desires, navigate the precarious balance, and dance on the knife’s edge without sliding off, wounding ourselves on the way down.
He healed parts of me that other people broke, people who were supposed to care for me yet damaged me with their own perversions.
I had a family once, a horrible one, but one all the same. My father was a cruel man who liked to dish out chastisement even if it wasn’t deserved, and my mother was a corrupted soul he found along the way who he molded into his own special kind of abuser before impregnating her with me.
My childhood was one of beatings and sexual abuse, yet my mom’s mistreatment was worse somehow.
Unlike my dad, she didn’t abuse me physically.
No, she preferred mental abuse, offering me affection and then starving me off it on a whim.
Afterward, she’d hand me out to her friends like I was a party favor.
When they both burned up in a fire, I didn’t feel sadness, I felt relief.
That was until I was bounced around from one sick bastard to the next, eventually landing in the clutches of a woman who could smell the fucked-up shadow that lived over me like a second skin, using me to feed and sate her own darkness.
Sometimes, I still hear her voice, even though she’s long past dead.
My hand still curls around the phantom hilt of the blade she would force me to use to slice my penance into my flesh.
It took me years to trust myself with people again, and I’m not that person anymore. But occasionally, I do lose myself to carnal rage, consumed by the hunger to take what I want. When Vance pushes me to the brink of madness, I crave the punishment my fucked-up brain convinces me I deserve.
Collapsing on my bed, I inhale our mixed scents, and my cock twitches. My hands tremble, wanting to take it in my palm, but I don’t.
We’ve never shared a woman in one of our bedrooms before, we always have them sign a contract and fuck in the room we permit them to use while they’re here, then Vance goes to sleep in his room and I go to mine.
We don’t move them in either, only allowing them to stay while we fuck and send them on their way as soon as the fucking ends.
Poppy isn’t like the women before her, though…
She’s different. There are no rules—which both terrifies and thrills me.
She’s like a gift intended for someone else that you accidentally open, realizing you’ve been waiting for it your whole life.
Something you’re not willing to return to the rightful recipient.
I’d skin anyone who tried to take her from us. She’s ours. Mine. And I’m keeping her.
The way she called my name, moaned it like it means something, like I’m worthy of someone as pure as her… I’d never tell her this, but I’m grateful her fiancé prefers cock to pussy since, it means I don’t have to kill him to keep her.
This is a new feeling for me. I’ve always been afraid to want, to have someone touch me and say my name the way she did, in case it’s a trick, and she’ll take it all away in the next breath.
I wonder if Vance realizes that he doesn’t go home and marry any of the women his parents pick out for him because he’s already taken, because he’s mine, and I’m his.
And just like with him, when I truly claim something, it’s forever.
I claimed him a long time ago, and now Poppy will be ours forever too.
I refuse to allow anything or anyone to take them from me.
“Tristan.” Poppy's fingers are stroking down my cheek when my eyes flutter open. I don’t remember falling asleep.
She’s standing by the bed, looking sleepy and mussed in one of Vance’s T-shirts. It’s too big for her, ending in the middle of her delectable thighs.
“Come eat with us.” She phrases it like a question.
I look over to where Vance leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, the veins bulging in his forearms. He’s shirtless, the gorgeous expanse of toned muscles tense, his dark nipples hard. He’s wearing sweatpants, his dark, wavy hair wet and curling around his ears.
I scoot up the mattress and swing my legs off the edge of the bed, head bowed.
“Come on, Tristan.” He jerks his head then pushes off the doorframe. “Let’s eat.”
“Is my punishment over?” I ask, scraping my fingers into the bed sheet.
“This part is,” he tells me.
Poppy’s arms slip around my neck, her ass settling on my lap. I’m still very fucking naked, so my cock takes notice of the skin of her thigh heating mine. Fingers brush over the scars on my back but she doesn’t mention them.
“I missed you,” she whispers into my neck as I clutch her waist, breathing her in. Her stomach rumbles, and she giggles. It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.
Winding my arms under her thighs, I lift her and carry through to the dining room, planting her on a chair before I head back to the bedroom to slip on a pair of sleep shorts.
When I return, Vance has plated up some pasta dish for each of us. As soon as his eyes land on me, he jabs a finger toward the chair beside his. “Sit.”
“Is he always this bossy?” Poppy grins, a beautiful pink flush spreading over her skin. I can’t believe she’s sitting in our apartment, at our table.
A scoff leaves my lips, and he glares at me. “Only when he’s pleasuring or punishing.” I wink at her, and she bites her lip, pushing her food around her plate with her fork.
This is nice. Her in our space. Like she belongs here.
“Eat, Poppy. I can hear your stomach from here,” Vance demands, and her brows raise.
“Yes, sir.” She sounds like she’s army personnel, not using the words the way he intended. I raise my hand to cover my smirk.
“Such naughty fucking brats I have on my hands,” Vance grumbles, tearing some garlic bread then shoving it in his mouth. I moisten my lips, enjoying the way his mouth moves, the tic in his jaw, the undulation of his throat when he swallows.
“Why aren’t there any Christmas decorations up in here?” Poppy asks, steering my focus in her direction.
“Tristan doesn’t like Christmas,” Vance informs her matter-of-factly, pouring himself a whiskey.
Her dazzling green eyes shoot to me, widening like she’s surprised. “Really?”
Christmas reminds me of my parents. The Christmas tree my mother and I decorated when she was in one of her rare giving moods ended up being kindling to the fire that tore through the house while I watched through the window after being locked out for throwing up after a beating.
“It hasn’t been so bad this year,” I say, swallowing a bite of my food. The smile Poppy gifts me warms my chest, and real contentment seeps into my bones.
“What do Christmases look like for you when you're home, Poppy?” At Vance’s question, she sighs, taking a sip of her water before lifting one of her legs and hugging her arm around it.
“Usually, we take turns, spending Christmas with my parents one year and Josh’s the next.
” Her gaze seems far away as she claws at her memories.
“His parents host for his entire family, so it can get hectic. At my parents’, it’s a little more relaxed.
Church then dinner.” She shrugs. “There’s not much I miss about home, but when I lived there, my mom let me put up star lights all over my bedroom for Christmas.
I love Christmas lights.” She smiles wistfully.
“And tinsel.” She raises her fork for emphasis.
“No one has tinsel garlands these days.”
Vance snorts. “My mother fired one of her maids for using tinsel on her tree one year.”
Poppy’s fork clanks onto her plate as she drops it in horror. “Fired her?”
He bobs his head. “Made her cry. She’d worked for our family for years, it was awful.”
“I noticed the tattoo,” I announce, changing the subject because Vance’s mother and Christmas are subjects I hate. “On your hip,” I add, watching her.
She’s intoxicating, and not just the sexual side of her, this side too—just eating and talking about her life. Anyone else might’ve found it mundane, but to me, it’s everything.
I don’t want her to ever leave us.
“My family is religious and practically force it on me. The tattoo was more of a rebellious streak I had in college.” She looks down at her hip, lifting the hem of the shirt and grinning at the cross wrapped in rose vines inked there. “Josh hated it, and so would my parents.”
“I love it,” I reply, looking to Vance who nods in agreement, swiping a hand across his mouth to clean it.
“What about you? I didn’t notice any tattoos, Tristan.” She says it as a question. She must’ve noticed the scars on my thighs and back especially when she touched them earlier.
“None I chose.” I get to my feet and clear our plates.
“Let me help.” She jumps to her feet, grabbing our cups and helping me in the kitchen. Usually, our housekeeper would do the cleaning for us, but Vance gave her the week off. Christmas is in five days, and she likes to travel to be with her family.
After loading our dishes into the dishwasher, Poppy stands beside me, playing with the hem of the shirt she’s wearing. Vance has taken his bottle of whisky to the couch where he’s flicking through channels, the hue from the TV casting him in a blue glow that seems to have Poppy captivated.
“I wanted to thank you again,” she murmurs quietly.
“For making you come?” I pause my loading, dodging her when she swipes out a hand to hit me.
“Well, yes. But I was referring to you allowing me to stay for a few days. I’ll have to go back to the apartment soon to pack my things, plan my next step.
” She looks down at her feet, flexing her toes that are painted cherry red like her fingernails.
My heartbeat roars in my chest cavity at the thought of her going anywhere.
Clearing my throat, I will myself not to make my next words sound like a command. “We can go with you to collect your belongings. You’ll stay with us, spend Christmas here.”
She blinks up at me. “Are you sure?” Before I can respond, her head moves to look over at Vance. “I don’t want to ruin any plans you guys have. But if you’re sure you don’t mind, it’ll only be until I can get a flight back home.”
She is home—I don’t say that though. Truth is, I could charter her a plane to get her home, but I’m selfish and want to keep her. Instead, I push a strand of hair behind her ear, “I’ve never been surer. Now come, let’s watch a movie with Vance.”
Vance grabs Poppy’s wrist when she moves past him on the couch, dragging her squealing body onto his lap. I take the seat at the other end, my heart stuttering when she shifts off his lap and lays her head there instead, spreading her legs until her feet move onto my lap.
This must be what it feels like to have a family.