Chapter 36
KATIE
Itell Seth that something has come up for work and I’ll be right back. He graciously lets me leave and says he’ll wait for me at the bar.
I feel more than hear Tristan as I stride down the hall toward the bathrooms, my heels sending satisfying vibrations up my legs as they tap on the sticky floor. He dogs my steps, heat rolling off him.
“Left,” he says in a low voice, and I turn left into a short hallway that ends in a metal door that says exit only.
I round on him. He doesn’t have the grace to look worried, just gives me a slow smile, his eyes simmering with what I assume is amusement at my expense.
“Bailey,” he says, the laugh evident in his voice.
I fold my arms to keep from strangling him and lean against the wall. He kicks a leg up and leans against the opposite wall, then folds his own arms. His biceps push against the t-shirt. With the ball cap and the boots, he looks like a truck-stop fantasy.
Dirty-hot. And now I know exactly what he was doing that night he snuck out and I tackled him, and I want to scream.
“Come here often?” he asks.
“I’m going to kill you,” I hiss. “And then I’m going to drag your corpse back to Crownhaven and kill you again.”
His eyes go heavy lidded as he gives me a slow once-over. “I don’t know,” he drawls. “I’m pretty heavy.”
I growl, and he chuckles.
“I was having a nice time, Tristan. And then I see you. Here. Playing music. For what I assume is not the first time, and what the fuck?” I clamp my lips shut before I can let more angry words spill out. They press at the wall of my chest, straining to break free.
You lied to me.
I thought I was your best friend.
His eyes are dark as they scan me, his mouth no longer smiling. “A nice time.”
I blink. “Yes.”
“With Seth.” His voice is dark, sending shivers through me.
“Yes. With Seth.”
His jaw flexes. “Were you going to kiss him?”
“Excuse me?”
He’s statue-still against the wall. “Seth. Were you going to kiss him?”
“We’re not talking about me. You broke protocol. You directly defied my orders.” This is so like Tristan, to be in control of everything, to have things his way, to deflect, and right now, it makes me so mad. He lied to me.
He comes off the wall in a rush. “Do you like him?”
“Do you enjoy deliberately putting yourself in danger, or is it just a special treat for me?”
His lips flatten. “I have my reasons.”
“Try me,” I bite out.
“Christ, Bailey. It’s not that serious.” He shoves his hat back, then resettles it, a familiar motion that he must have done a hundred times based on how he’s doing it now, and anger flares inside me again.
“It is that serious,” I hiss.
He steps forward, arms folded angrily over his chest. “You’re paranoid.”
“I care about you, Tristan. If you got hurt—if you—I can’t even think about it.” The words scrape from my throat. His eyes gentle.
“I’m sorry,” he says huskily. His arms drop and he passes a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, Katie. I don’t feel like the spare when I play. I feel—free.” Raw emotion flashes across his face. “Forgive me.”
I knew Tristan had demons, but the spare. I hate that word. I hate whoever made him believe that. “Of course,” I whisper.
His gaze traces my face, and I can’t read it. There’s the usual warmth, the confidence, the humor, but also something darker.
I walked back here in control of the situation, ready to lay into him, and now—I don’t know what this is.
I’m backed against the wall and he towers over me, looking not like my best friend, but instead like a man who might devour me and spit out the pieces.
The tug in my stomach says I might like to be devoured.
“So,” he says casually. “Seth. Were you going to kiss him?”
“Maybe,” I say defiantly. “I thought about it.” I tip up my chin. “I mean, that’s what all our practice was preparing me for, right? To kiss Seth.”
He makes a humming sound, almost a rumble in his chest. “I don’t like it.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t care. You have your dates and I have mine, and this is happening, Tristan.”
For some odd reason, my words make his lips curve, make that dimple flash. He turns the hat backward, looking satisfied and suddenly predatory in a way that makes my stomach flip.
“I want to be the one you practice with.” He crowds me against the wall with his heat and his size, so close that I have to lift my face. “I don’t want it to be Seth.”
“Is that why we’re back here?” My mouth parts. “Because you don’t like Seth?”
His pupils seem to blow, and he chuckles, a brief puff of air with no sound. His hand is pressed flat to the wall, and when he dips his chin, his cheek scrapes mine, all stubble and warm skin. I can’t help the arch of my body toward his.
“We’ll go with that.” He licks under my ear, and I whimper at the sudden lash of his tongue. “You think Seth could do this the way I can?” His tone is nearly conversational.
My body is buzzing.
Seth who? I almost say. It’s never been about Seth. It’s only ever been about you.
I want to be in the back of bars with him and riding shotgun in cars with him and I want to be the one he sails with and I want to claw out the eyes of the women he dates, and I hate myself for it.
I get to have Tristan right now when I just spent an entire date wishing he’d been across the table instead of Seth, and I don’t care how I do it.
It almost certainly makes me a bad person that we’ve agreed this is practice and I have all these messy feelings I can’t even give voice to. Even thinking them is dangerous.
So when I say “Do what?” it escapes from my throat like a panicked bird taking flight.
Tristan doesn’t seem to mind any of my weirdness, because he’s Tristan, and he simply laughs and sucks on the crease of my jaw. “Does he make you feel like this?”
I can’t admit it. I fist my hand in Tristan’s t-shirt, and he sucks harder on my skin before he pushes me against the wall with a hand on my stomach.
My hands drag a greedy path from his stomach to his shoulders.
They’re heavy with muscle, round and firm and made to grab on to while he fucks against a wall.
“Katie,” he murmurs huskily. “Tell me I’m the only one who makes you feel like this.” His mouth meets mine in a soft, clinging kiss, like he’s trying to coax an answer out of me. He tugs on my lower lip.
I make a high, panicked sound in my throat. I don’t know what Tristan’s playing at, but I suspect it’s just his protectiveness and his middle-child tendency to not let anyone else play with his toys, but I don’t care. I just want him to keep touching me, and I don’t want him to know how I feel.
“Please,” I pant.
“Nah,” he rasps. Goose bumps chase from the press of his mouth against my pulse. “I think I’ll have some fun.” His lips graze my collarbone, then he sinks slowly to his knees and fists my dress in both hands. “What about you? Are you having fun?”
“Tristan, I swear.”
He chuckles, and when my hands spear into his silky hair, his lids go heavy. I twist my fingers into the strands, like I’ve always wanted, and he muffles a small noise against my thigh.
“Here’s the thing.” He inches the dress up, chasing each inch of bared skin with the featherlight touch of his tongue.
The slide of silk on skin is butterfly light.
Not enough. Not even close to enough, and yet, my skin prickles and my nipples harden and my pulse is heavy between my thighs.
His mouth hovers, hot and damp, and I’m desperate for him to keep going, to keep touching me, to keep talking, because I want this, and if all I get is practice, I will take it and I will be grateful for it and—
“I don’t want to share these freckles with anyone.
” His lips finally, blessedly, press to my skin and suck lightly, then greedily.
“I can’t stop thinking about them, and I thought about him touching them, licking them, tracing the inevitable path.
” His voice is dark and he punctuates his words with the hot swipe of his tongue.
Need spirals tight in my stomach. “This one’s mine.
” He groans. His hand spasms on my other thigh, and I am drowning.
Surely, it’s not meant to feel like this.
Surely, it won’t always be like this and I won’t be left wanting when this inevitably ends.
“Are you thinking about him now?” he murmurs. His tongue dips against the crease of my thigh, and I tremble.
“Lower,” I whisper, “and then I’ll let you know.”
He chuckles.
There’s a whoop from the hall, and the sound of clapping.
We both still.
Tristan breathes heavily against my thigh. My nails scrape against his scalp. He’s hard under his jeans, and my stomach pulses with warmth.
More sounds filter in. I want to cry. Is this all I get? Ten minutes in a back room? I barely even got to touch him.
“Fuck this,” he mutters, seemingly to himself. He digs in his pocket, comes up with a permanent marker, and sets it against my skin.
“What are you doing?”
He meets my gaze with blown pupils under his heavy lashes and a determined set to his soft mouth.
“This one’s mine,” he repeats hotly. He traces lightly over my skin with the marker, and we both watch the ink bloom in a circle around one of my freckles—where his tongue just was.
He connects the freckles I’ve never even thought to love before. I do now. I cherish them.
“I feel like a groupie.” I huff a laugh. “All I need now is your signature.”
Tristan is grinning.
There’s a crash.
My head jerks up.
I am so not supposed to be doing this. Reality is rushing in, cold and bracing.
Tristan’s still writing. Even from here I can see it’s his name.
Tristan Prince
Crownhaven
Hart’s Hill, Rhode Island
He rises to his full height, still towering over me but not threatening, never threatening, just right, from the warm wall of his chest to the cage of his arms to the slant of his smile.
“I’m not likely to forget where you live, Tristan.”
“You’re going back out there. To him.” He presses his forehead briefly to mine. “Come back to me, Katie Bailey.”
My pulse is leaping in my chest. I don’t know what this is. I haven’t felt this before. Does he feel it too? I don’t dare hope.
There’s a heavy pause. Tristan slides the strap of my dress up my arm.
There’s a gasp. My head whips around.
Two women are staring at us, eyes wide, phones out. I push Tristan behind me on instinct. “He’s back here,” one shouts. A paparazzi follows, bulb flashing.
Adrenaline trickles through my blood. I was kissing Tristan and ignoring the obvious consequences to him being on stage and the social media frenzy that has surrounded the spouse search.
Fool. I am a fool. I need to get him out of here.
“What’s your name?” the paparazzi shouts.
He doesn’t realize I’m not a spouse candidate.
They’re crowding us now, and I feel Tristan tense at my back.
I hold out an arm. “I need you to stay back.”
The paparazzi’s eyes flare. “You’re the bodyguard.” The bulb flashes, once, twice.
A woman reaches for Tristan, snags his elbow, rakes her fingers along his arm. I rip her hand away.
There’s another flash of the bulb. I use the distraction to whirl, shove Tristan in front of me, and run into the night.