16. Winter
WINTER
B ianca rolls her eyes at Tristan, huffing as she flops down on the bed Josh must have been sleeping in.
“Don’t you think our parents will hassle us less if they find all four of us in the same room?
” A funny look crosses her face, and I suspect she’s trying to figure out what exactly goes on between my foster brother and me.
She’ll never know. No one will, because that’s just for us.
“I don’t give a shit. Turn the light off on your way out,” Tristan says definitively, waving them off and then getting up off the bed.
I think he’s going to turn off the T.V. that’s been nothing more than a low hum of voices, but he’s just pacing.
I realize then that he’s still in his head over the night terror I pulled him out of.
I push myself up to a sitting position so my back is flush against the headboard.
As soon as I move, Tristan’s head snaps to the side, his heated gaze pinning me in place.
“I’m not getting caught in Bianca’s room again.
I’m staying here,” Josh says, his voice rippling with what sounds like anxiety.
I don’t know if it’s because he’s worried Tristan is going to beat him up for not jumping immediately to his demands or if he’s remembering a bad experience being caught with Bianca before.
I’m suddenly reminded of the comment she made about him waking her up because he was horny.
I suspect whatever has happened between the two of them isn’t sacred, and I’ll hear about it eventually.
Tristan paces a few steps away and then back toward me.
His entire body looks rigid like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I almost feel guilty when my eyes sweep from his full lips, down his neck and finally to his defined chest and engaged abdomen.
If he doesn’t calm down soon, he’s going to implode. I can sense it.
“Jeez, you’re wound tight.” Bianca says, “What could have happened that you’re this traumatized and Winter seems fine?
” Bianca blurts out, and I cringe, pulling my knees up to my chest. I wish I could melt into the headboard and avoid whatever comes after this.
He’s worked up because he saw his mom get killed and his father injured.
He had to hurt me over and over until he could finally get the opportunity to take a man’s life.
It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever forget, but I can’t imagine what he’s going through.
The guilt he carries is horrible, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Tristan’s eyes meet mine, but he’s speaking to Bianca, “You have no fucking clue what we went through, and I wouldn’t water it down enough to try and make you understand.
” He sits down on the bed in front of me, but he’s not touching me.
Bianca is flipping through channels like she’s completely unbothered by anything that Tristan slings at her.
“I heard your dad say that you killed one of the guys that carjacked your parents,” Bianca says, finally choosing a movie that I don’t recognize and then looking over at us.
My eyes migrate to Tristan, and I see his eyes blinking tiredly.
He hasn’t been sleeping, and I think it’s really starting to get to him.
“I did,” he clips out. “And I’m going to find that motherfucker who got away and crush his fucking skull in.” His voice sounds tired, but his words drip with truth.
“Wouldn’t turning him in be the worst fate? Instead of putting him out of his misery?” Josh chimes in, sitting down on the bed next to Bianca.
“Nothing will ever be worse than what I inflict on him,” Tristan says, and I watch as Bianca pops up off the bed and heads over to flick the light switch all the way off.
The room is dark other than the faint glow coming from the TV, and I hear Josh and Bianca rustling around. They’re bickering about pillows and whose elbow is in the way. I feel Tristan shift in the bed, his hand brushes against my leg, but just as quickly as he’s touching me, he stops.
“Do you want me to sleep on the couch?” I ask as quietly as I can muster, unsure of what he wants from me right now. I don’t know if he needs me in the room so he doesn’t have to worry about someone hurting me.
Instead of answering me, his long fingers wrap around my thigh and yank me to lie down in the bed.
The back of my head hits the pillow at the same time I feel his lightly stubbled cheek scrape against my inner thigh.
I let out a gasp when I feel his mouth press on the scar there, the one he gave me the night our family was attacked.
I don’t know how he found it so easily in the dark, but the feeling of his lips pressing against it sends shivers down my entire body.
He’s so close to the juncture of my thighs that I’m worried he might realize how turned on I am from his touch.
I don’t know how I would even explain that away.
He’s carrying the guilt of taking my virginity and mutilating my body, and here I am shifting my hips, wishing he’d sink his fingers inside me.
“Don’t leave, okay?” He says against my skin. “Even if I fall asleep.” He sounds more like the Tristan I met when I was fourteen and less like the hardened shell he’s become since the attack.
I reach down and run my fingers through his hair, and I feel him relax.
He presses a kiss to the scar one more time before he pushes up on his hands.
He’s hovering over my spread thighs, and he hesitates.
For a moment, I think he’s going to move off of me and take the spot between me and the wall.
Instead, he nudges my legs apart even further and settles between them.
His abdomen is pressed flush against my pussy, with only my shorts and panties between our skin.
He buries his face in the crux of my neck, and one of his hands comes down to grip my outer thigh.
He raises it up to wrap over his hip. I want to know so badly if he’s hard, and I chastise myself for it.
He doesn’t want that. If he did, he’d tell me.
He doesn’t think of me that way. Things are just confusing because of the trauma we share.
“I fucking hate sleeping without you,” he mumbles, and I know he’s in a half-sleep state by the way he slurs some of his words and the way his hand slides up my ribcage to cup my breast over my tank top. I shake the thought away, but I know it’s true…it’s like I was made to fit in his big hands.
I can hear Bianca chastising Josh for asking questions about the movie. She calls him a moron and tells him she hasn’t seen it either. It’s probably better that Tristan is starting to fall asleep because he’d probably throw them both out into the hallway.
His breathing evens out, and I think he’s finally sleeping, but then he pulls hard enough on my top that the thin strap snaps.
His warm, rough palm covers my bare breast, and he pinches my nipple gently before settling his hand back to cover it.
I tell myself that it means nothing to him, and that having some part of me in his hand is calming him in his sleep.
When I shift under his weight, wriggling as I try to alleviate the pent-up pressure building low in my hips, he flexes his fingers on my breast and brushes his lips against my neck.
I still my hips, and he lets out a quiet groan against my neck. We’re both fighting this demon that has us in a chokehold, and we need to destroy it before we end up hurting each other. I turn my head, kissing the side of his head just like I’ve done a million times before.
“Sweet dreams, dushen’ka,” he mumbles against my neck before sleep overtakes him.