28. Tristan
TWENTY-EIGHT
TRISTAN
“Was the food bad?” Nadia whispered the next morning as I helped her wash the dishes. “Sebastian said I’m a good cook.” She pushed her chest in front, and I handed her the last plate after I threw the rest in the trash.
Haelyn barely got a few bites of her scrambled eggs and salad before she abandoned the food, sitting next to us while we ate.
I looked over my shoulder where Haelyn and Sebastian were sitting in their chairs at the table, engaging in a conversation I couldn’t hear from here. She had her hair tied into a bun, curls pointing out from every part while deep bags rested under her eyes. Haelyn covered a yawn with her hand, then nodded at whatever my friend said before her gaze slipped to me. I gave her a small smile and she returned it, a blush creeping on her cheeks as she looked away.
Last night was… I couldn’t even find the words to describe how she made me feel. I’ve never in my life stopped before I ended up having sex with the woman under me. Still, Haelyn was different. I wanted to see how she’d curl up and moan when the orgasm was about to hit, I wanted to witness the sweat dripping from her forehead as she recovered from the wave of pleasure and I forgot everything else that included taking the ache in my cock away.
As much as sex was about both of the parties’ pleasure, it didn’t seem to matter to me when she shivered under my touch or when she soaked my hands. That was fucking enough, though I couldn’t recognize myself.
Since when did I put the needs of a woman first? Sure, it wasn’t like until now I was a dick and simply fucked—no, I took care of every woman I had—but in the end, it was my pleasure that mattered.
Fuck. I couldn’t even not stare at her like a creep.
A fist bumped into my shoulder and I moved my attention back to Nadia, who glared at me.
“Does you talking directly to me mean I’m forgiven?” I crook a brow at her.
Nadia dried her hands with a towel, then supported her hip on the sink, a hand falling on her waist. “No.” She shook her head. “But I like her and you’re the only one who knows anything about her, so I thought I should ask, but forget it.” Nadia tried to walk past me but I caught her by the elbow.
She didn’t leave, but she didn’t come back to face me either.
“I’m sorry, Nad,” I murmured. “I promise I’ll never push you away like that. I—I just didn’t know what else to do, it’s not like I lost my father before. It was all new to me and I had no idea what to do with everything I felt. But I’m truly sorry.”
Sebastian and Nadia were everything I had besides my brothers. They were family and when my father Callum died, I lost sense of reality. No one was able to understand me and even though most would think that my brothers went through the same thing, I couldn’t disagree more.
My father and I had the closest relationship. Kai might have lived with him and taken care of him, but I was the one talking to him on the phone until morning. I was the one who couldn’t wait to come back to New York just to see him.
His loss hurt them as well, but it sure as hell didn’t dig the hole it dug into me. So yeah, my way to cope was to lock myself in a room and drink myself to sleep. I wasn’t saying it was the right thing to do, I was saying it was the only thing I knew.
Her shoulders dropped and she threw me a sympathetic gaze, her head tilted to the side. “I forgive you, Tristan.” She sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that alone.”
I nodded, then wrapped my arms around her, squeezing her tightly.
“Tristan!” She napped at my arms.
I loosened my grip and looked down at her. At my friend who I missed more than I thought. “Thank you for naming him, Callum,” I murmured, my chest tightening at the idea of a little one running around the house.
Maybe hearing his name so often was going to sting, but the gesture was the greatest thing someone had ever done for me. I knew they were coming from a good place.
She huffed. “It’s a beautiful name.”
I smiled and we both returned to the table, Haelyn’s eyes immediately rising to me. I kept my gaze pointed to Sebastian, not wanting to show the effect on me—that one when I feel her every time she looks my way or when she’s in the room.
“So are you two friends again?” Sebastian asked his wife as she rounded the table, and then sat on his lap.
Nadia stole a glance at me before scrunching her nose with a smirk. “Not yet.”
Nadia wouldn’t be Nadia without playing hard to get. After all, that’s why Sebastian married her in the first place. She kept him chasing after her for years, even though she wouldn’t even kiss him in the first year they dated. Still, he wasn’t allowed around any girls.
“I’m going to pack.” Haelyn sat up, but before I could reach her, she turned around and went into her room.
I sighed, feeling my chest heavy.
The roads weren’t closed and she was about to find that out soon.
Was I really going to drive her home? After all the way here? After… last night?
No, I couldn’t let her go, but I also didn’t have any more options. If she wanted to leave, what was I going to do? Tie her on the bed?
My blood purred at the idea of having her naked and helpless on my bed, but I buried the thought away and leaned down on one of the chairs with my hands.
“Can I ask a question?” Sebastian asked, his tone reluctant.
I squinted my eyes. “Depends.”
He looked over at the couch, then placed his arms on the table, bringing his face closer to me. “Did you two fuck?”
God, talk about being blunt.
I shook my head. “If by two you mean me and my hand, then yes.”
Sebastian tilted his head to the side. “Man, after you dropped your phone ”—he raised his hands in the air and gestured quotation marks with his fingers—“I went out to grab something to eat and you were hugging your sweet assistant to your chest.” He closed his eyes, then wrapped his arms around Nadia.
“Stop.” Nadia laughed and slapped him over his arms.
My bones chilled in my body. I wasn’t mad about the fact that he saw us, I was mad about a completely different reason. “If you care about your eyes, I hope you covered them away from her body,” I warned, my jaw twitching as I walked toward Haelyn’s door.
“God, possessive much?” I heard Nadia laugh.
“I think he’s in love,” my friend said just as my hand landed on her doorknob.
“Fuck off,” I murmured, then walked into her room and closed the door behind me. Her eyes shot up from where she stood crouched in front of her small bag, holding the green lingerie between her fingers.
She threw it back in and zipped the bag, shooting upwards to her feet. “Hi,” she breathed out.
My eyes were still fixed on the bag and my cock woke up in my pants, then I let my gaze travel from the naked tips of her toes to the tight pair of leggings hugging her curves and all the way to the sweatshirt she was wearing.
She was fully dressed and she still managed to take my breath away.
“Hi,” I said, the memories of last night flooding to my mind.
After I made her come four times in two hours, she fell asleep on my chest just like Sebastian said and left before I woke up without giving me a chance to say anything else. What could I have said anyway?
I liked fucking you with my fingers? Or your face when you come is the best thing ever? Or can we do it again?
Yeah… There wasn’t anything appropriate to say.
“Haelyn,” I started, stepping to her and letting my hand fall over her arm. She closed her eyes, breathing me in before looking me in the eyes again. “Stay one more night with me,” I suggested, caressing my fingers over her elbow.
She hesitated for a moment, then shook her hand. “If I stay, I’m afraid it will happen again.” Her voice was small as she spoke and instead of disliking the idea, I found myself hiding a smile because it meant she didn’t have control over herself around me.
Neither did I.
“I won’t touch you if that’s what you’re afraid of,” I told her, looking down into her eyes. “Let’s… take advantage of this day. I have a feeling some tougher ones will be coming.”
Haelyn glanced down at our touching feet, biting the inside of her cheek. A small but not genuine smile crept over her lips and the urge to wipe away any battle that may happen inside her struck me.
“Yeah… I have that feeling too,” she said, and I hated how distant she felt compared to last night.
I wasn’t talking about not having her naked body glued to mine—I was talking about how close she felt as a person when the darkness filled the room and how out of reach she seemed now.
My lips curled and I tightened my left hand in a fist. “Then stay,” I urged her, sneaking a finger under her chin. “Please.”
Her eyes lifted to mine. She blinked softly, almost as if she woke up from a daze and my heart jumped in my chest as I waited mouth open for her reply. “Just tonight, then we go back to Los Angeles.”
I tried to hide away the relief sweeping through my bones, but it was impossible. For some reason, hearing that she was going to spend another night here made me feel at ease. She didn’t know, but if she left, I would’ve left too.
“Just tonight,” I agreed.
“Come on, you just have to push forward a bit and press your feet into the ground,” I instructed Haelyn, right after we were equipped for a day at the ski resort one hour away from The Mountains.
Both of her palms were around my arm as her legs shook in the skis. She bit her lip and I kept my foot behind us for stability, then she took a deep breath while she followed my suggestion. Her knees bent forward which made her shoes slide over the snow just a bit, but then she arched her back and stopped, clinging harder onto me.
“No, I can’t do this,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’ll wait for you.”
“Woohoo!” Sebastian flew past us, the wind of his speed knocking our bodies. I kept us still and watched how Nadia quickly followed him.
The ski resort was the best thing around the Mountains, apart from the silence and privacy of the small town, and when Sebastian asked if we were going to respect our tradition, Nadia screamed from the top of her lungs in excitement. Haelyn tried to convince me she was better off at home, but that was out of the question. I wasn’t going to leave her alone in the house, so I somehow managed to talk her into doing this.
“You can do it,” I said, and her head snapped to mine.
I couldn’t see her well through the glasses and the hood on top of her head, but I had a feeling it wasn’t a pleasant face hiding underneath it. We were both dressed from our toes to the top of our heads and I hated the clothes for taking away her warmth from me.
A smile rose on top of my lips. “Try again, I won’t let you fall,” I promised.
She released a sigh before taking a deep breath, putting some strength back into her muscles. “Lean down,” Haelyn murmured, executing as she spoke. “Press your feet into the ground,” she repeated my words. “…and go.”
We both glided on the snow and I continued to hold her tensed body into mine, feeling how each one of her bones shook in fright. She inhaled deeply and it felt like we were going miles per hour when in reality, we barely moved from the place we started.
“Faster?” I asked the moment she relaxed.
“I don’t know,” Haelyn croaked out and I took it as my cue to skim the foot behind us to increase the speed. “Whoa.” She almost flipped behind at the sudden pace, but I planted my hand on the small of her back.
A strange feeling hooked its way inside me—something that made my chest buzz with so much fullness that I almost shouted from the top of my lungs. It was an overwhelming feeling, the kind of one you don’t know what to do with besides… living it. I couldn’t completely understand what was happening, but I accepted it.
I glanced at the woman in my arms and my heartbeat accelerated. Was she the one making me feel like this?
The rush of thrill was always present when I went skiing with my friends, but what I was feeling right now was unknown to me.
“Oh my god.” Haelyn laughed. “I can’t believe I actually let you convince me. My heart is beating so—” Then before I knew it, we were both twisting in each other’s arms, trying not to flip over.
Haelyn fell on her back and clung to my hand with a scream which made me land right on top of her. The arms I had sank into the snow were the only ones keeping a distance between us.
She breathed harshly and I arched my finger under the material over her face, then took it out to help the air get inside her lungs. I did the same with mine, but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to release her from the cage of my body just yet.
Her hair buckled over the white blanket, the black curls in contrast with the light color underneath us. She blinked a few times, adjusting to the sunny sky above my head while I stared at her red cheeks and opened lips that begged me to take another bite.
Just another one.
“You lasted more than I did on my first time,” I told her and removed a small strand of hair from on top of her left eye.
She moved her attention to me, laughing. And her laugh was feeding my soul in a way that nothing could compare with it. No cars, no wealth, no partnership. Nothing could compare.
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better about myself.” She planted her palms on my chest but didn’t make any move to push me from on top of her.
“Nah, I was really bad,” I admitted, recalling the first time Dad took me to ski. “My dad was a pro and he wasn’t as patient as I was with you. He stood right behind me, but let me crash into every tree I could find.”
Haelyn gave me a smile, that kind of smile I wasn’t growing sick of seeing. “Did it help you learn?”
“Yes,” I told her, brushing my thumb over her cheek. “I was mad at him for letting me—a seven-year-old kid—fall so many times, but then he showed me a scar on his shoulder and said that’s the main thing that made him run away from trees like they were goddamn burning.” I smiled at the memory.
Dad was patient, but he knew how to choose his moments. He taught me how to be a man and gave me lessons over lessons. I was the only one who actually listened and couldn’t sleep until he finished a story about his childhood and what he learned from it.
He was my model, but after he died my mind refused to see him like that anymore. Maybe, I should’ve remembered the good things he did, not only the way he left this world.
“And what did you do?” Haelyn asked.
“I got up, ignored every bone that hurt in my body, and taught myself how to ski. Three years later, he couldn’t keep up with me anymore.” I couldn’t help the smirk finding its way on my face.
Dad screaming at me to slow down was a picture I could never forget. He laughed with his eyes and lips, a thrill running in my veins at the thought of finally outdoing my father. He wasn’t upset or jealous, he clapped me on the back and gave me a shot. I thought it was alcohol, but it was water. That day, I felt like I won the lottery.
Her lashes fluttered on her eyelids, the tips of her mouth turning down. “I’m sorry,” she said, and I furrowed my brows, not understanding what she would be sorry about. “About your father,” Haelyn explained.
I looked down at her. “Me too.”
The sympathy in her expression was too much to handle. I gulped then jumped to my feet, stretching a hand so she could stand up. She took it through her gloves, her chest landing on mine.
“What’s your favorite food?” I asked.
She tilted her head to the side. “Pancakes, why?”
“Come on.” I nudged her. “If you get to the bottom I’ll get you some pancakes to celebrate.”