Chapter 27
TRISTAN
We’re sticky and sun-warm and slaphappy when we get home. Katie keeps muttering “be the pineapple” under her breath, and it sends us into peals of laughter.
This is my favorite version of her. Where she forgets to be the bodyguard and stops worrying and just is. She turns and spreads her arms wide. “What do you think the essence of pineapple really is?”
I lean weakly against a lamppost, my shoulders shaking. “Bailey, you’re just mad you’re not a pineapple and never will be.”
“Excuse me?” She gives me a mock-outraged glare. Her fiery hair shakes over her shoulders. She’s in the extra sweatshirt I always claim is for me but is always secretly for her. It covers her to mid-thigh. It looks like she’s been in my bed, and my body tightens.
The memory of the kiss is there every time I make eye contact.
I push off the lamppost and fall into step beside her. “You’re more of a strawberry. A strawberry with teeth.”
“Hmm.” She squints at me with one eye shut. “I’ll take the teeth part. Nice save.” She bumps me with her shoulder and tries to get ahead of me on the path. I edge her into the bushes.
She darts ahead and jogs backward. “I should tackle you right here, but it wouldn’t be sporting.”
Her eyes are devilish. I can tell she’s trying to control her laughter, but every time she rolls her lips to keep it inside, I can feel it ballooning between us and stealing the air.
“I’ll show you sporting,” I growl, and she shrieks, and we pound down the path back to the security center. She slaps the wall first and leans against it, her laughter ringing over the grass.
“One problem,” she pants.
I lean next to her, one shoulder braced against the stone. I am weak from adrenaline and too much sugar, and I’m drunk on her smiles.
“Problem?”
“Yeah.” She gulps air.
I fight a grin. This is how it always is with her. She’s the only person in the room, the magnet that draws my gaze. When she smiles, I feel it in my chest. Even better, when she gives me those narrow-eyed glances and pretends to be annoyed.
“Nothing about that was date-like.”
I blink at her, my thoughts stopped in their tracks.
“What do you mean?”
I think that’s how I’d want a date to go. An endless day of summer sunshine and good music with the person who finishes your sentences and knows all your quirks. And when it ends? That sticky kid at the beach feeling from when you were little.
“We did friend stuff. Not date stuff.”
She sounds annoyed and I huff a laugh. “Okay, what would you do if this were a real date?”
Her eyes go unfocused briefly, before she settles on, “Take him up to the roof.”
There’s a hot, twisting sensation in my stomach. “You’d take him to our spot.” I am jealous of this other fictional man. He doesn’t even exist, and I want to push him off the roof.
She rolls her eyes at me. “Well, right now, that guy is you.” Her tongue dips out against her bottom lip. I remember exactly how plush it was against my own. I had that bottom lip for thirty-seven seconds and I’d give up all my earthly possessions to feel it for five more.
Hell, one more.
“What would you do? If this were a real date?”
My stomach plummets.
Easy, Tristan.
“Probably something corny,” I say lightly.
Her eyes gleam with amusement. The brown eye looks like gold under the lamplights. “Like what?”
“Ah, I’d probably say you were made for me.”
She giggles. “That’s a line if I’ve ever heard one.”
I bump her with my shoulder, even as that hot, twisting feeling from earlier goes screw-tight in my stomach.
“Try it.” She giggles again. “Try it on me. I want to see what I’ve been missing. The Tristan Prince magic at work.”
Her lips are pressed flat in an effort not to laugh too hard at me. I push off the wall and plant a hand over her head. The line of her mouth softens.
Her breath hitches.
I let my mouth drop to her ear, where she’s warm and the lemon-sun scent of her is concentrated. It’s pure serotonin. A shot to the brain that makes my body tighten.
I want her to know what she’s been missing, but I want to know if I’ve been missing something too.
“Katie,” I murmur.
She arches. My blood seems to sing in my ears.
“Don’t you think a date should feel like this?”
“Like what?”
She’s breathless. I hear it.
“Like I’m a kid again and I’ve just spent a day on the boat. Like everything is sunshine. I feel like nothing can go wrong.”
The words tumble out of me, like song lyrics I’d strum in private.
Her lashes flutter against my cheek.
“I dreamed about days like that,” she whispers. “I read about them in stories.” I feel the words in my stomach. She didn’t have them, she means, but she’d never say that. She never complains, and every time she accepts less than she deserves, it makes me want to give her the world.
I press closer, rub my cheek against hers, like I can heal the past.
“But you make it sound magical, Tristan.” Her voice is wistful. “Like opening all your Christmas presents at once.”
The words twist through me. “Have those days with me,” I urge softly, desperately. I can’t bear the thought of her not getting everything she wants.
“I have been for years. I’m in your orbit, Tristan Prince.” She turns her mouth against my neck and my skin electrifies.
“Fuck.” I don’t mean to curse, but it slips between my teeth. Her breaths are shallow. Mine are harsh. I fist the material of her shirt. Her stomach is trembling under my hand.
What I mean to say is the line I uttered earlier.
What comes out is, “Katie, I was made for you.”
Her mouth goes slack against my pulse. A sound pulls from her throat.
Soft, needy, and damp against my skin. I turn my face to the left, hoping our mouths will connect, praying the corner of mine will find the edge of hers and I can say it was an accident, that I don’t want this more than I want to keep breathing.
She must feel it too, because her face tilts and the soft edge of her lip finds my jaw. Higher, then higher, until finally our mouths brush and our breaths hitch in unison.
“Can we?” she whispers. “Is this part of it?”
The deal, she means. Practice with me.
It doesn’t feel like I’m the professor right now. It feels new and hesitant and fumbling. Like a first kiss in the back of a car.
“Do you want to?”
“Tristan.” My name is a plea.
“We can do this too,” I say huskily, even as I know that two kisses stretches the limits of our deal. But we aren’t kissing yet. I’m still on the precipice.
My tongue flicks against the edge of her lips. My blood is thick. My body sings.
A millimeter more, uncertain, seeking and sweet, until we connect. Her bottom lip so soft against mine, then my tongue slipping between her teeth. Her breaths that I swallow.
Her hand in my hair. My palm pressed to the wall hard enough to hurt.
My fist tightening in her shirt, pulling her closer. Our mouths slipping against each other.
The sounds.
God, the sounds.
Like she’s dying every time I shift, like I’m killing her slowly. A little whimper when I bite her, a soft, pleased exhale when I soothe her lower lip with my tongue. A groan that comes from my throat and she answers.
My blood is thrumming. I’m hard under my pants and thought is rapidly fleeing.
Her hands are skimming over my sides, sending shivers up my spine.
“Tristan, can I—”
“Yes,” I bite out. “Whatever it is, yes.”
She laughs against my mouth and slips her fingers under my shirt. Her fingertips dance lightly over my stomach, then grow greedy. I like that best. She touches me like she’s trying to memorize the shape of me. I want to burn hers behind my eyes.
I can’t be gentle. I feel too needy, too tight. My thumbs turn as greedy as hers—grasping and pressing at the flesh of her hips.
“I like this part,” I say hoarsely. “Am I allowed to say that?”
She laughs again, and the sound spreads light as air down my throat. “Yeah, Tristan.” She scratches her nails gently against my chest. “You can say that. You don’t need to ask permission.”
“Stop laughing at me,” I admonish gently.
What I mean is never stop laughing at me.
She snorts like she knows I don’t want that.
I pull her bottom lip into my mouth. My hands on her hips turn into my hands skimming her waist, finding the sleek curve under her clothes.
Her skin trembles. She makes a noise in her throat.
A sound that says this is both painful and necessary to life all at once.
I know exactly how she feels.
Her hands rove, grasping, pressing, pulling shivers to the surface. It feels like the first time I’ve ever done this. It feels like sunshine is dissolving into my blood.
“Tristan,” she pants, half begging, half pained, like she’s surprised how much she enjoys this and doesn’t want me to stop. She arches and follows my mouth with hers as if she wants to meld us together.
“Don’t worry,” I murmur. “I won’t stop unless you tell me to.
” I slip two fingers under the thin band of her bra.
Her skin is so soft. Especially here—under the pad of my thumb that is surely too rough.
Or maybe—based on the way she gasps—just rough enough.
I skim the underside of her breast, watching her face.
Watching as she watches me, teeth in her lip, eyes hazy.
This moment feels like magic. Like I’ve only just discovered something I was always meant to have.
“Tristan,” a voice calls.
I’m certain it’s not real. Only Katie and this wall and the moon above are real. Her silky skin, her soft noises of desire, and best of all the way she can’t stop herself from taking and taking with me.
All I want with her is to give.
I kiss her again, wild and open-mouthed. She groans into my mouth.
“Tristan.” That voice again. Closer than before.
I don’t want this to stop. I want to keep going. I want to take this as far as she’ll let me, as much as she’ll have me.
This is the best kiss of my life. Maybe the best kiss I’ll ever have.
The thought stops me short. I pause. We share panting breaths.
What the fuck am I doing?
I take an unsteady step back.
Katie’s lids are heavy. Her eyes are glazed until she blinks slowly. I think I turned her on. Maybe more than I realized. My best friend.
This is what she looks like when she’s turned on.
The thought sizzles up my spine. Her hair is wild. Her breasts push against her sweatshirt in shallow pants. Her lashes are heavy and her lips are deliciously swollen. There’s no way she’d be able to hide what she’s been doing. I like that.
Shit.
I like it way too much. I take a swift step back, shove my hands into my pockets.
“This is what you’d do on a real date?” There’s a small smile playing at the edges of her mouth. “Your line worked, by the way.”
My thoughts are spinning, trying to catch up. Practice. Right. This is practice and everything is fine. I didn’t cross a line. It wasn’t real.
“Ah, good.” I push out an unsteady breath.
“Tristan,” that voice calls again. My head jerks to the left. Nour rounds the corner, slowing from a jog, eyes darting between us. “You’re late for a date.”
My stomach sinks. I want to tell her that I won’t go. Katie takes a step back. There’s a funny little smile on her face. One I can’t read.
“Go ahead,” she says. “Have fun.”
My hand clenches and unclenches as I watch her jog up the stairs to her apartment. I feel like something is crumbling. The last bits of my restraint, maybe.
This is practice, but I don’t think anything real I find in the future will ever measure up.