Chapter 51
KATIE
Tristan’s lips are bruising in their intensity before he breaks the kiss to take a ragged inhale. I nip at his bottom lip. A soft curse slips between his teeth and into the space between us.
“Fuck. Katie.”
“I know.”
He kisses me again, hard and deep, and I dig my fingers into his chest. His hand is on my hip, his palm hot against my hipbone, his thumb digging in. His fingers contract as I kiss him back, like he can’t decide whether to push me away or pull me closer.
“I told myself I wouldn’t do this.” His voice is rough. He breathes against my mouth shakily, his chest shuddering under my palm.
My stomach pinches. “What do you mean?”
“I told myself that I would wait. I told myself I’d take things so slow with you. Slow enough that you’d be addicted to me.”
Sparks skitter up my spine. I feel like I’m in free fall, and I’m so scared to be honest. So scared he’ll pull away. But he’s been admitting things all day, and I can admit this too. “I’m already there, Tristan.”
He kisses me, a reward and a promise. My tongue slips over the seam of his lips and he lets me inside on a shuddering breath. Our teeth scrape. He chuckles.
“No laughing at me,” I whisper before I spear my hands into his hair and tug him closer. His hair is damp, warm silk under my fingers. Tristan likes it, groaning into my mouth as my nails scrape his scalp. He spins me, until my back meets the warm plaster of the wall.
“I’ll never stop laughing at you,” he pants. “This is how sex should be.”
“Wait. Is this sex?” I whisper back, and he laughs into my neck, and then our mouths meet again and there’s no talking anymore.
Just Tristan trying to press me into the wall and me trying to get taller so I can reach more of him.
He’s hot and hard against my stomach through his bathing suit, and I wrap a leg around him.
His soft, pleased sound is swallowed by my mouth as he goes off balance.
More. I need more.
I wrap a second leg around his waist and the contact with his erection makes me gasp.
“Tristan.”
“I know, baby.”
Baby. I feel like I’m melting when he calls me that. It makes me deepen the kiss and tighten my hands in his hair.
He’s wild now, his mouth ravenous, his grip on my hip bruising as he rocks himself against me. His lips drop to my neck on a muttered curse and I arch, trying to get more friction, more heat, more of him and the undone way he makes me feel.
He sucks on my neck, making broken sounds.
His teeth make me moan.
I feel like I’m unraveling. I’ve never felt like this with anyone else, like Tristan’s touch is as necessary as breathing, like I’m barely human. Instead, I’m just a creature made of heat and need. So much need that when he tries to pull away, I claw at his shoulders and press closer.
“Katie.” He sucks on my neck again, right at the crease of my shoulder. “Baby.” A gentle bite that slices through the haze in my brain. “Unless you want me to fuck you against this wall—”
“Please.” That sounds great. I barely recognize my own voice, so rough and lust drunk that it sounds like a growl.
He laughs before he pulls back, eyes fever bright, and holds out his hand.
We run, slipping on the sand and laughing into wind gusts that tear our sounds away.
He pauses to press me up against a tree and kiss me hard.
We tread water for thirty breathless seconds with my tongue in his mouth and my hands in his hair and my legs wrapped around his waist as he sidestrokes for the boat and fails.
“Hurry,” I beg as we separate. We’re panting on the deck when he rolls over me. His weight anchors between my legs, his mouth finds the pulse in my neck. His thumb is on my nipple, and I arch under him.
I skim my fingers up and down his spine, in awe of his body. Strong, warm, but best of all, his. Round, heavy shoulders. Bunched, taut arms. Even the corded muscle of his neck is sexy to me. “You have an incredible body, Tristan.”
He laughs again, his happiness drawing something tight up through my chest.
“All for you,” he teases.
I respond by fumbling with the ties of his bathing suit, and he bats my hand away.
“Cushions,” he growls.
“Too far. Here.”
He hoists me up, mouth fused to mine, arms banded around my body like steel cords.
“Tristan. Right here. Please, here. Please—”
He takes the two steps down to the seating area and we fall onto the massive cushion together. His weight is heavenly, pushing me into the soft leather in delicious promise of how he’ll feel when he’s inside me.
The thought makes heat spear between my legs.
I claw ineffectually at his bathing suit.
He chuckles into my neck and slips seeking fingers up my thighs and under my bikini bottoms, then higher, to the clasp at my back.
He sucks on the skin of my collarbone as he undoes it, slowly, so slowly, like he’s unwrapping his last Christmas gift.
“Off,” I grunt, pulling at the drawstring of his shorts. “Tristan. Off.”
He laughs again, then stands as I scramble to lift my top over my head. His hand stills at the waist of his shorts. His eyes are hot and pupils blown wide as he looks at me.
“How is it possible that you look like this?” He swallows.
My skin prickles in the breeze. “You saw me the other night.”
“Not like this,” he says thickly. “Not in sunlight.”
“That good?” I tease. I shift on the cushion, feeling needy and vulnerable and sexier than I’ve ever felt with a man.
“Like every fantasy I’ve ever had. If I shut my lids, you’re what’s behind them. And yet, I’m too scared to blink for fear that you’ll disappear.” His smile is small and my heart beats double time in my chest.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I push my bikini bottoms off. I’d never be this bold normally, but with Tristan it doesn’t feel like a risk. It feels like no matter what I do, he’ll like it. No matter how high I fly, he’ll catch me.
He passes a hand over his erection, squeezing so hard it looks painful. “Fuck, I could come from the sight alone,” he says ruefully.
“You should probably be inside me,” I tease.
He laughs breathlessly and sets his hands to the waistband of his bathing suit.
His hands are shaking.
Oh my god.
Tristan is nervous. My heart swells. I feel myself melting into the cushion. He’s nervous. I make him nervous.
Another chamber unlocks inside my heart.
His stomach ripples as he exhales hard. “I need you, Katie.”
“I need you too. I feel like I’ll combust from wanting you.”
His lips curve. “Poor baby,” he croons. He hooks his thumbs under the waistband. “Let me fix that for you.” He pushes the suit to the floor in one smooth motion.
The breath empties from my lungs.
He looks like that.
My best friend.
He’s broad and tan from the summer. Long arms and capable hands. His stomach and chest are hard peaks and shallow valleys, leading to a trail of dark hair. My eyes dip lower, trace his groin. He’s hard and the single step he takes toward me makes his erection tap his stomach.
“Katie.” His voice is hoarse. “Keep looking at me like that and this will be over sooner than you’d like.”
“You have a very nice dick,” I protest. “I can’t help it.”
He gasps a laugh and crawls onto the cushion.
“Let me show you how I use it.” His mouth finds my nipple and I giggle. I can’t help it. He’s sexy and he’s funny and he turns me on more than I ever thought possible. I arch under the hard pull of his lips. His scraping teeth pull a moan from my throat.
I’m right back to where I was earlier. Panting. On edge. Melting under his attention.
I tug on his hair. “Foreplay later.”
He ignores me and pulls my other nipple into his mouth, then lets it go with a sound of approval.
“You have the most incredible body, Katie.” His eyes meet mine, the deep green soft and hazy under his heavy lashes.
“I’ve wanted to touch it for so long.” As if to prove his point, he licks a hot line down my stomach.
“So sexy,” he rumbles. His long fingers cup one of my breasts. “So, so sexy. Everything I want.”
My heart is pounding in my chest and between my legs as his hot mouth travels downward.
“And this,” he says, wonder in his voice. His tongue flicks against my thigh. “Never thought I’d see you like this.”
My thoughts are scattering. I fight to keep my lids open so I can watch Tristan’s face. “This okay?” he asks gently.
I nod, and a slow, devastating smile crosses his mouth before he pushes my legs wider.
“Katie,” he breathes, his shoulders bunched against my thighs.
“What?” I push up on my elbows.
“You’re drenched for me, baby.” He looks awed and smug and when our gazes meet, my cheeks blaze. I shift against the sun-warmed leather, and his hand lands on my stomach in warning. “I like it.”
His tongue slips through my pussy and I make a gasped, garbled noise.
“Fuck, I really like it.”
He spreads the wetness between my legs with his tongue, playing with me like he did the other day, slowly, savoring. At least I think that’s what he’s doing with the long, loving licks. I can feel myself getting wetter. When he tongues my clit, my stomach contracts.
He makes approving sounds when I clutch at his hair and grind against his face.
“Sorry,” I gasp. “Sorry.”
He lifts his head. His eyes are a green so dark they’re nearly black. His lips and chin are wet. “Fucking drown me in it,” he growls.
I clench at his words before he sucks on my clit, and a moan looses from me, high and desperate.
“Tristan.” I shift under his mouth, feeling my orgasm building behind the hand he has on my stomach.
The heat pooling there feels good and way too soon.
I want to arch and pull away at the same time. “Tristan, please.”
He wrenches himself away, then rises to his knees.
There’s precum on the tip of his dick. He smears it almost absently with his thumb and my stomach shivers. His gaze meets mine. He swallows hard, then fists his dick.
I arch. He slips through the wetness of my pussy.
So close to where I need him. So close. His hand clutches at my thigh. He’s breathing hard now, his shoulders taut, his neck straining.
The tip of his dick brushes my clit, and I moan. It’s a feral sound that I barely recognize as coming from my throat.
“Katie,” he says hoarsely. His hand squeezes his dick in one long ripple of muscle from his wrist to his shoulder.
“I need you.” I arch under him, panting.
He squeezes my hip, looking agonized. “Tell me to stop.”
“What?”
His teeth grit. “There’s no going back for me, Katie. Not after this. I’m going to fuck you bare and I’m going to come inside you and it’s going to wreck me.” He’s at my entrance now.
My stomach flutters.
“Tell me to stop.” His words are broken, and when his gaze lifts from my body, I read how much he needs this.
I feel like I’m floating, even as my fingers clutch for purchase on the smooth leather. There’s no going back from this. “I’d really like to be wrecked by you.”
His breath shudders out. His lids lower as he pushes inside.
It is everything.
The stretch. The mingled panting sounds we make as I try to work myself onto him and he forces me to go slow. The way he fills me.
“Am I hurting you?”
“More.” I arch.
“Okay.” He’s all the way inside now. My thighs squeeze his legs.
He circles his hips and I choke a sound.
“Good?”
“Incredible.”
His exhale is heavy. “For me too.” His first thrust is messy and perfect and makes me gasp. “Fuck.” He does it again before his hand finds mine and he squeezes, like he’s going to come apart and I’m anchoring him.
I arch to meet his thrusts with rocks of my hips. He seems to like it, so I keep going. Sex with someone the first time is supposed to be weird. It’s supposed to be awkward.
And sure, some of this might be weird and awkward, but to me it feels indescribably right. It feels like our bodies know each other, and as his pace increases and I meet his thrusts, it feels like we were made to do this.
I’m being stretched and fucked and made anew under Tristan’s hands and I love it. My body pulses with need. My orgasm is building, making me thrash and arch, until Tristan leans over, his mouth meeting my neck, his hips still pumping.
“Breathe out.”
I exhale and whimper as the pleasure spikes.
“Again.”
I push all the breath out of my body, my pace faltering. Tristan’s thrusts deepen and I come. Hard. I can feel my body clenching around him. My nails scrabble at his back. My mouth opens on a silent scream. The desire twists up my spine and makes my legs shake.
He fucks me through it, groaning into my neck, keeping pace.
“Good, Katie?”
Pleasure is still washing through me, so all I manage is a helpless sound.
“You need more?”
His right hand is clutching at my waist now, his mouth open against my neck. I shake my head.
“I’m close, baby.” He rears up, planting a hand on my stomach. His thrusts are heavy and deep and increasingly sloppy. His eyes are half-lidded and glazed. “Can I come inside you?”
I nod as another orgasm rises, hot and sharp behind my belly button. It’s the sight of Tristan coming that makes it crest. His head jerks back. His lips part.
His guttural groan sends me over the edge.
My hips arch helplessly as I clench around him.
I feel him thickening inside me, feel him losing control in helpless, messy spurts. I clench harder, gasping at how hard the pleasure releases inside me, how it seems endless, unfurling in shimmering waves.
He comes for longer than I thought possible before his thrusts turn gentle and he slumps over me. “Katie.” He captures my lips in a brief, soft kiss. “I don’t want to leave you.”
I wriggle against him. “So don’t.”
He chuckles against my mouth. “Okay.”
He does eventually leave me. He slips out with a look of satisfaction at the mess he’s made. He slides a finger through the wetness on my thigh.
“Proud of yourself?” I push up onto my elbows.
His dimple pops. “I did wreck you.”
I flop back, laughing as he collapses next to me on the cushions. “Who wrecked whom?”
“Fair.” He tucks me against his body, turning me and arranging me until I’m cocooned by the cage of his arms, my forehead to his collarbone. I trace his chest. His heartbeat is a steady pulse under my hand.
“What did you think?” His words rumble against me.
I can’t think, actually. What’s floating in my brain are downy feelings that drift like clouds. Fading starbursts, as if I traveled to the sun and back while he touched me.
Somehow, I say, “I think we should have been doing that for years.”
He chuckles and passes a hand over my spine.
“What did you think?”
He drops a kiss on my shoulder. “I think you should marry me.”