Chapter 60
KATIE
“This is totally my superpower.”
Tristan groans and runs soap along my neck. The hot water rains down. His shower, not mine, because mine is tiny, and a two a.m. scamper across the lawn was worth it for the multiple jets he has in here.
“Seriously, Tristan. You’re hard. Again. I think we need electrolytes.” I soap his chest, testing the density of his pectorals with my nails, then scraping them across his stomach. His body stiffens. His cock jerks.
“I have to,” I whisper, as I sink to my knees. “I have to have you again.” I take him in my mouth. Under the lingering soap and the hot water, he still tastes like Tristan.
Something smug and hot pulses inside my chest as I watch him watch me. Dark, drugged eyes, arms braced on the tile, hips moving helplessly. He’s thick inside my mouth, stretching my lips, hitting the back of my throat.
“Katie,” he groans. His hand is on my jaw. I scrape my teeth on the underside of his dick and he comes, pulsing into my mouth. His mouth is slack and his sound of pleasure is everything.
“I love doing this to you.” I clean him and he tangles a hand in my hair. “I’ve never felt sexier. It was on my list of goals.”
“So I should think of this as a personal favor to you?” He leans his forehead against the tile, shuddering. “Fucking hell, Bailey. I think you’re going to break me.”
I laugh, feeling wild and sexy and confident. As I rise up, his lids flutter open. His hand traces my waist, then higher. His lips grasp my nipple, making me gasp. “Not if I break you first,” he growls.
“I think I’m freaking out,” I whisper an hour later.
Tristan’s smile crinkles his eyes. We’re face-to-face, arms under our heads, our pillows right up against each other. Tristan is shirtless. I’m in his bed. He smells so good and he’s so warm, and he traces patterns on my arm with his finger.
Truly, I think I might die.
“No freaking out.”
“Pinch me,” I demand.
He tugs my bottom lip between his fingers, a devilish light in his eyes. “Still dreaming?”
“Totally still dreaming.”
“You need bigger dreams,” he teases. I shove at his chest, and he laughs and hauls me closer.
“Katie three years ago would freak out knowing this was in her future,” I admit. “Like a celebrity suddenly recognizing you, or a mythical creature suddenly appearing on your doorstep.”
His eyes are warm, and I fear I’ve admitted too much. “You don’t think I see you like that? You don’t think I wanted you too?”
Actually, no. I still can’t believe it. “It feels impossible. Not because I have low self-esteem, but just—gah. You know everything about me and you still want—” I sweep a hand between us. “I’m a weirdo.”
“I know,” he says dryly. He tugs on a wayward strand of hair. “You dirty freak, Bailey. Lusting after your employer. Good thing he was lusting after you too.”
I scowl, and he laughs brightly. “I was dying of jealousy that day you were at the bar with Seth.”
My eyes widen. “You. Were jealous?” I marvel at the fact. I’m a girl Tristan Prince is jealous over.
“So jealous. I wrote my name on your leg. Was that not enough of a clue?”
I laugh and bury my face in my hands. “We’ve been fools.”
He hums his agreement and passes a warm hand over my spine. “I realized how much I liked you that day when you were at that cocktail bar trying to pick up guys.”
I lower my hands, thirsty for all his secrets, wanting to fill in all the gaps of our history and rewrite our story the way it’s meant to be.
“I was sitting with the bartender and she accused me of liking you, and I told her that I’d proposed and you rejected me. That I’d survive liking you and watching you date other people.” He snorts. “I wanted to kill every guy who texted you.”
His words come out as a low, possessive growl that makes me shudder. He’s Tristan Prince, CEO, not just Tristan Prince my friend. A man who goes after what he wants. Who might seethe with ambition under his careless exterior.
It puts the last few weeks in a whole new light.
I lever up on my elbow. “You were pursuing me because you wanted me.”
His smile is wry. “Took you a while, Bailey.” The smile falls. “You gutted me,” he admits roughly. “When you said it was practice on the dock.”
My stomach squeezes. We’ve hurt each other so much. It feels impossible that we’ve ended up here. “I was scared.”
“I know, baby.” He kisses my neck, pulls me down over him. “We did it.”
“I can’t believe it.” I rest my whole weight on him, spreading my arms out and relaxing into his chest. “Do you think it will ever feel normal?”
He hums and sifts his fingers through my hair. “To me, it already does. But I like having something to prove.”
I turn my head against his chest. “What does that mean?”
“Every day I make you fall a bit more in love with me. For the rest of our lives.” He rolls me, presses me into the mattress. “In fact, I think I’ve waited long enough.” He growls the words into my neck, and I laugh.
“I feel like I’ve won the lottery.”
“Piss-poor prize,” he mutters.
I kiss his neck. “The only prize I’ve ever really wanted.”
His teeth find the lobe of my ear. “How much do you love me today, Katie, baby?”
“About twenty percent.”
He hums. “On your back, wench. I want it to be at least fifty percent by morning.”