Chapter 11
TRISTAN
F lip messages at midnight to say he won’t be home and he’ll meet me at the arena tomorrow—unless I want to join the orgy at some model’s house in Vaughn. I tell him I’m good, but thanks for the offer.
The next morning, I wake up wrapped around Bea.
My cock is nestled in the crack of her ass, I’m cupping one of her boobs, and my nose is in her hair.
I can’t remember the last time I woke with a woman in my bed.
I can count on one finger the number of times I’ve woken up with my best friend’s little sister in my bed, though.
That I don’t automatically want to jostle her awake and make her leave is…foreign. I check the clock on the nightstand. It’s only six thirty. I told Roman he could pick me up at eight and we’d hit the pool for laps.
This means I have time to get inside Bea before either of us has to get up—her for work, me for my pre-workout swim. But I don’t make a move. Not yet. I want a few more minutes like this, with Bea all warm and soft and not annoyed by my assholery.
I made up for being a giant dick last night with my giant dick, which she appreciated. Loudly. With several orgasms. My erection swells and twitches.
“I felt that,” she mumbles.
“How long have you been awake?” I nuzzle through her hair until I get to her ear and bite the shell.
“A minute? Maybe less. What time’s it?”
“Six thirty-three.” I throw my leg over hers and rub my cock on her ass.
“Too early to be poking me in the butt with that,” she grumbles.
I let go of her boob and slap around on the nightstand for my breath strips.
She makes a displeased sound. “Now my boob is cold.”
“Give me a sec.” I find the packet, pop it open, and slide a strip onto my tongue. I pull out a second one. “Open for me.”
She bats my hand away. “I’m not awake enough for you to stuff your fingers in my mouth.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.” I brush the strip over her lips.
She grabs my wrist. “What is that?”
“Breath strip.”
“Ooh. Smart.” Her lips close around the end of my finger.
When she releases it, I reach for the water bottle and take a sip before I pass it to her, along with the cap. While she takes a drink, I reclaim her boob. She puts the cap back on and moves my hand to her throat.
“Why does this one thing make my clit feel like it has its own pulse?” She shifts her hips, and my cock glides between her ass cheeks.
“It’s dominating, but not in a way that makes you feel out of control, maybe.
” I don’t tell her it isn’t a go-to move for me.
That, for reasons I don’t understand, I’m a little obsessed with how graceful her neck is.
That I want to feel her pulse pound under my palm when I fuck her.
That I want to bite her and mark her as mine.
Even thinking it makes me sound like a caveman.
“Maybe.” Her fingers trail over mine. “Why aren’t you fucking me yet?”
I roll her onto her back and fit myself between her thighs. She’s wet already. My cock glides over her clit, and she wraps her legs around my waist, arching. I claim her mouth, rocking against her while our tongues tangle.
And then I kiss a quick path down her body, licking up the length of her and latching onto her clit as I loop my arms around her thighs.
“Oh, God.” She fists my hair, and then it hits her.
The mint on my tongue registers between her thighs.
Her eyes go wide, and she gasps. “Oh my fucking God! You asshole! It burns!” She keeps trying to rip out my hair, so I unhook my arms and grab her wrists, squeezing to make her release.
I keep a firm grip and settle my forearms on her inner thighs, pressing them into the mattress.
“Relax, Bea. You just need to get past the initial shock. I promise it’s going to blow your mind.”
“My pussy feels like it’s on fire!”
“Let me make it better.” I kiss her inner thigh, then lick her again, softly.
“Oh, that’s better.”
And then I blow on her clit.
She jerks and shrieks.
I lick her again, and she moans. I swirl my tongue, alternating between suction, hard strokes of tongue, and cool air.
She comes so hard she bows off the bed. I grab a condom, roll it on, and fit myself between her thighs again.
I push in on one smooth stroke and find an easy rhythm.
We went hard last night, nice and hard, so this morning I take it easy on her. She comes twice more before I do.
When it’s over, I lie on top of her, breathing in her vanilla and citrus shampoo. I consider what it would be like if this was how I woke up every day—not with some random whose last name I don’t know, but with someone like Bea. No. Not someone like Bea...
She runs her fingers through my hair. “Let me up so I can pee and get breakfast started.”
“You always make us breakfast. I’ll make it for you today.” I roll off her, needing space.
“Pouring a bowl of Frosted Flakes doesn’t count as making breakfast.”
“Ha ha. I’ll make egg sandwiches. How does that sound?” I remove the spent condom and tie a knot in the end, tossing it in the trash.
“I do love a good egg sandwich.” Bea stretches and log rolls to the end of the bed, where she pops to her feet.
I hold up a hand. “I’ll make sure the coast is clear.”
Her eyes flare. “I thought my brother wasn’t coming home,” she whispers.
“He said he wasn’t. I’m just making sure.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders come down from her ears. “Okay.”
I poke my head out. The condo is still empty. “You’re in the clear.”
“I’ll get dressed.”
I hook an arm around her waist and pull her against me as she passes, kissing her before I let her go. I watch her ass jiggle as she rushes across to the ladder and quickly climbs to the loft.
Our clothes from last night are still lying on the bathroom floor. Thank God Flip didn’t come home. I gather them and shove them into my laundry basket to deal with later.
By the time I return to the kitchen, Bea is already there, wearing a pair of shorts and one of her tanks, making a pot of coffee.
I pull items out of the fridge so I can start breakfast. Flip was always about easy food.
Before Bea, I made most of the meals, unless I wanted frozen pizza or noodles.
I had to learn how to cook early on, and I resent having to do it sometimes.
But this is different. I want to feed Bea.
Especially since she’s the one usually taking care of meals these days.
And grocery shopping. And almost everything, really.
It’s been nice not to be on the hook for everything the last little while.
“You want peameal, strip bacon, or ham on yours?” I ask.
“Whatever is fine with me. Want me to throw a fruit salad together?” she asks.
“You don’t need to do that.” But she makes a killer fruit salad. She puts things like fresh mango and lime rind into it.
“I don’t mind.” Her fingers glide across my low back as she scoots past me and picks fruit from the bowl. I grab her a cutting board, and she hops up on a stool across from me.
“How’s your new job?” I ask, trying something new. Other than taking shots at each other and exchanging filthy words during sex, Bea and I don’t do a lot of talking. I like this with her. The peace and comfort of doing something normal is foreign, but appealing.
“Good. Better than my last job, for sure. I don’t think it’s my passion, but it pays the bills, which is more important, anyway.” She slices the top and bottom off an orange and carefully uses a paring knife to remove the peel.
I add slices of peameal bacon to the frying pan.
“Is that why you got an accounting degree? So you’d have a stable job?
” It seems like something Bea would do. Rage-quitting her job was out of character.
She normally has a long fuse, except with me.
I know how to push her buttons. She’s the only person I can do that with.
“Pretty much, yeah. There’s room for movement and growth, too.”
I put four English muffins into the toaster and crack eggs into the frying pan. “But you don’t love it?”
She shrugs. “I like it well enough. And I won’t waste four years of university education because it isn’t my dream job.”
Flip and Bea grew up in a tiny house. I spent a lot of time there as a kid.
Mostly, it was an escape from the fighting before my mom left.
But their fridge was always half bare, and they drank powdered milk and ate a lot of Kraft Dinner and cut-up hot dogs.
It must have been hard when I came for dinner.
They had to make double to feed me and Flip.
But they always treated me like family. After my mom left, I had to help out with my brothers a lot, so Flip came to my place more often.
Always having to be responsible for other people could get tiresome.
But my brothers needed someone to take care of them, and it wasn’t their fault our mom bailed.
“If you could do anything, have any job, what would it be?” I ask.
“It’s not as lofty as being a pro hockey player, but I’d be a dietician—plan and prep meals for people.
It’s a pretty linear job, though. Sports nutrition has more room for growth, but that might mean using Flip’s success to further my career, and I don’t want that.
Also, it would definitely mean more school. ”
Memories pop up from over a decade ago. I remember Bea as a kid, maybe six or seven years old at the most, in the kitchen with her mom, helping pack lunches and snacks for hockey practice.
They rarely had fresh vegetables. Mostly they ate frozen.
Except in the summer—they had a tiny garden with cherry tomatoes and carrots.
Bea would cut the carrots into circles and put the ranch dip in a Tupperware container for Flip because it was the only vegetable he would eat without complaining.
“Why wouldn’t you want to use every advantage available to you?” I ask.