23
Demi
It’s after eight, and Nick still hasn’t shown up.
He really didn’t seem like the type that would ghost a gal like this, but I don’t exactly have the best intuition when it comes to men. My most recent ex is an aimless pseudo-stalker, and the guy I can’t stop thinking about is dead.
Still on for tonight? I text.
I don’t think he’s been involved in anything life-threatening, because his read receipts are on, and my message is read almost immediately. But he doesn’t respond. Maybe he got a late start, ran into traffic, and has a strict rule against texting while driving.
Maybe he took one look at my haunted house and turned around.
Or maybe he’s just another disappointment.
I’m sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, facing the door and waiting for Nick in a way that’s feeling increasingly pathetic.
Smoothing my dress over my thighs for the three-dozenth time, I sigh, watching the tracks my fingers make in the burgundy velvet.
This is a really ?good dress, and I feel like I’m wasting it.
My phone buzzes, and I nearly jump out of my skin, a faint rush of hope warming my cheeks. See? Maybe I wasn’t waiting in vain, maybe there was a misunderstanding or an accident.
But it’s not my date who’s texting, it’s my sister .
Blue: I don’t think your location is updating. It still says you’re at home.
I sigh again, this time more heavily. My shoulders sag under the weight of it.
Me: Because I am. My date hasn’t shown up.
Before she texts back, I know exactly what’s coming, and I brace myself for it.
Blue: What a piece of shit. Want me to come over?
Me: No, it’s fine.
Blue: I can come over.
Me: I know you can. But I’m fine.
Blue: Want me to go hunt him down?
Me: And do what?
Blue: Idk. Probably a murder.
Me: Just a casual Saturday night murder.
Blue: A nonchalant beheading.
Me: Great. Good plan.
Me: For l egal reasons, I need to be clear that I’m??? j oking and not actually asking for you to do a murder.
Blue: Cool. For legal reasons, I need you to remember that I was with you between eight p.m. and two a.m.
Me: Six hours for a beheading? You’re slowing down in your old age .
Blue: I’m including clean-up time.
Blue: You sure you don’t want me to come over and keep you company?
Me: I’m sure.
I give it another ten minutes, until eight-thirty, before I finally give up. What a waste. Wasted time, wasted energy. Worse, wasted feelings. I was hopeful and excited about going out on a date—my first since leaving Owen. At the same time, I’d spent most of the day feeling conflicted.
Tristan has feelings for me. I don’t think there’s ever been anything more evident in the history of the world.
He’s stoic and reserved, but I saw the look of hurt in his eyes when I told him someone asked me out.
And ever since, he’s been floating around the Manor looking sadder than usual, which is saying a lot.
If I’m being honest, the idea of going out with Nick made me a little sad, too, because I’ve been feeling things for Tristan, and Tristan can’t take me out. He can’t even leave the property. He’s not even alive.
It’s hard to reconcile this person who feels so human with the truth that he’s a ghost. The more time I spend with him, the more difficult it is to remember.
And that’s a dangerous thing. I’m so comfortable with Tristan, so drawn to him, so attracted to him, that forgetting his true nature will lead me to nothing but heartbreak.
I could fall in love with a guy like him.
A ghost like him.
Shit.
Unzipping my boots, I pull them off and then pad barefoot over to the front door. I place my shoes next to it, then lock it. There’s a candle burning on the credenza, and I blow it out before flipping the first-floor light switch and making the trek upstairs.
Proof that Tristan’s influence is rubbing off on me. So responsible.
I walk past the library toward my bedroom when Tristan’s voice stops me in my tracks.
“Back already?” he asks .
Pivoting, I turn back and stand in the doorway.
Tristan is sitting in the chair behind the desk with an open book in front of him.
The low light casts all the right shadows on his features, making his jaw sharper, his corded forearms impossibly more defined.
He runs his hand through his hair, pulling it back from where it’s fallen over one eye.
Goddamn, he’s beautiful.
“Never left,” I reply, feeling the itch of embarrassment crawl up the back of my neck.
A line forms between his eyebrows. “What do you mean, you never left?”
“He never showed up.”
“Ghosted?” Tristan asks gently.
“Ghosted.”
He shakes his head. “What an asshole.”
“Something important must have come up for him.”
“Something more important than you?”
I shrug. “I guess.”
“That’s fucking impossible,” he says, his consonants sharp as a crackling fire.
His tone makes everything inside me stand up straighter.
It pulls me into the library, draws me nearer to him, until my feet have brought me all the way to the desk and I’m standing next to it.
I look down at him where he’s sitting in the chair, his knees spread, and I have the distinct urge to sit on his lap, to wrap myself around him.
“Impossible?” I repeat.
Tristan’s gaze drags down my body like a slow, firm caress. I watch the way he takes a sharp inhale as he lingers on my breasts, the way he swallows when he takes in my bare thighs.
“A woman like you…” He says, and my god, his voice dips into a low timbre that I can feel in my core. “Is the most important thing in the world.”
I reach out, I can’t help it, and touch his cheek.
My fingers catch on nothing but mist and energy, but I try to imagine what his short beard might feel like, the warmth of his skin.
He closes his eyes, and I know he’s imagining it, too.
When he opens them, the gray depths are somehow darker, and somehow ablaze all at once.
“I would never do something like this to you. I’d never dream of standing you up,” he says.
“I know,” I reply. What hurts the most is that I know it’s true. I know that Tristan Beaumont would be so good to me; he’d ruin me for all other men. I know that if things were different, we might be perfect for each other.
His hands move toward me. For a split second, he hesitates and looks up into my eyes. Whatever he finds there must give him courage, because his hands are on my thighs and he’s leaning closer, looking at me with so much yearning that I think maybe my heart stops for a moment.
“I’d never make you feel bad about yourself,” he says. “I only want to make you feel good.”
“Tristan…” I say, but I don’t know why. It’s the only word that could possibly come out of my mouth when heat blooms inside of me and all over my skin. Heat from the look on his face. Heat from his words. Heat from the filth those words make me imagine.
“Do you want to feel good, Demi?” he asks, his voice just above a whisper.
My knees buckle. I nod .
Tristan’s throat works on a hard swallow, and he keeps his eyes on me as he moves the book he’s reading. He pats the surface of the desk. Once. Twice.
“Sit here,” he says.
More heat, and it pools between my legs.
I do as I’m told. Sitting on the desk, I face Tristan, my knees pressed together as my skirt rides up higher on my thighs. He notices. Licks his lips.
“The things I would do to you…” He says.
“Tell me.”
Tristan leans back in the chair, hands clenching and unclenching on the arms of it. “If I started at your neck and kissed you there, would it make you shiver?”
My body knows. His words are enough to spark the feeling, his warm mouth against my skin, the scrape of his beard, an exhale against my pulse point. A shiver moves through me, and I nod, unable to find my voice.
“Show me where,” he says.
When I bring my hand to my throat and collar it with my palm, Tristan’s eyes flare. Then I show him, dragging a finger up my neck from my collarbone to just behind my ear.
“Is this okay? Can I keep going?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, but I want to scream it. Yes, don’t stop. Yes, keep going .
He blows out a slow, trembling breath and nods.
“And those pretty tits, if I touched you there, would you let me?”
As if on command, my nipples pebble and press against the fabric of my dress. He stares with dark, hungry eyes.
“Yes.” My pulse is a hummingbird, fast and wild .
“Tell me you want me to touch you there,” Tristan says. His commands are low and rough, but his tone is gentle and coaxing. The combination presses an ache between my legs, deep inside me.
“I can’t stop thinking about your hands on me.”
“Where, Demi?”
“My tits.”
“Show me,” he says. “Show me how you like to be touched.”
Oh, my god.
Shaking, I move my hands over my ribcage and cup my breasts.
Then I palm them and squeeze. They swell around my fingers, and I can’t help but think that my own hands are too small to contain them, but Tristan’s hands…
Christ, Tristan’s big hands would swallow them up.
The nerve endings beneath my skin ignite, and I squeeze my tits again.
“Fuck, they look so soft,” Tristan says. “I would give up everything to touch them.”
I press my thighs together to try to ease the ache between them, but it’s no use. A soft whimper falls from my lips, and Tristan goes rigid at the sound, his jaw clenching so hard he could crack a tooth. I brush my fingers over my nipples, teasing them with torturously delicate caresses.
“You like it like that? Soft and slow?” he asks, his voice half-broken, his eyes lit with primal fire.
I nod. “I like it rough, too.”
Tristan groans. “Show me.”
With my eyes on his face, watching the shadows of need collect in his features, I roll my nipples between my fingers, then pinch them. Hard enough for my eyes to flutter shut, hard enough to pull a rough gasp out of Tristan’s mouth as he watches.
“I wish they were between my teeth,” he growls.
“Fuck, Tristan,” I breathe.
“What do you need, baby?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Where else do you need to be touched, Demi?”
Meeting his gaze, I say, “You know where I need it.”
“Say it.”
“My cunt.”
It’s his turn for his eyes to roll to the back of his head. He licks his lips, clenches his hands into tight fists.
“Your cunt.” The word in his mouth makes my brain short-circuit. Tristan seems to take a moment to compose himself before continuing, like he’s hanging onto his restraint for dear life. “Spread those beautiful thighs for me.”
I move a little closer to the edge of the desk, a little closer to him, and open my legs. He looks up my skirt, his eyes fixed on the panties I’m wearing, which are without a doubt a complete mess by now.
His gaze flicks up to my face. “Are you wet for me?”
“Yes.”
“God, Demi. You’re killing me,” he says, then taps the arms of the chair he’s sitting in. “Put your feet here. Lift up your skirt.”
I can barely breathe, I’m so turned on. Everything in me and around me is hot.
The way Tristan is looking at me now is the way every woman wants to be looked at.
His desire is all-consuming and transparent on his face.
He’s not hiding one ounce of how badly he wants me, and that alone is almost enough to make me combust.
So, I do as he says, and put my feet on the arms of the chair while hiking up my skirt around my hips.
“Can you slip your hand in your panties, then bring it back out again, baby? Show me how wet you are?”
Jesus fucking Christ. The way he calls me baby. The gentle yet commanding way he tells me what to do. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone as badly as I want Tristan Beaumont.
I dip my fingers into the fabric of my panties and immediately feel how sloppy he’s made me. When I pull my hand out, my fingertips are glistening.
“Look at that pretty mess you’ve made for me,” he says, his breath shaking. “I want you to show me how you touch yourself.”
Slipping my hand down my panties again, I spread myself open and press my fingers to my clit. The new pressure brings a moan out from the depths of me, and my head falls back.
“That’s it, let me hear it,” Tristan says.
It’s not going to take me long. Between the way he’s watching me, the time he spent building me up, and the tension that’s been between us for weeks. I’m a powder keg ready to go off.
“You like the way I sound?” I gasp, fingers rubbing tight circles.
“I love the way you sound,” he says. “I’ve listened to you at night.”
Why is that so hot? To know that he’s heard me when I’ve touched myself, alone in the dark ?
“I think about you sometimes,” I admit. “When you hear me like that.”
“Fuck, Demi. You do?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t stop rubbing, pretty girl.”
With that, I descend into the basest version of myself to chase my pleasure. I rock against my fingers. In my head, it’s Tristan’s hand, which is easy to imagine because he’s right there with me, talking me through it.
“Look at the way you grind those hips against your hand. You’re so close, aren’t you?” His voice is full of gravel and smoke.
“So close,” I pant.
“Give it to me, Demi.”
I feel it, I’m at the edge of the cliff, ready to fall.
“Eyes on me,” Tristan says.
My eyes open, and I look at him, and the desperate need on his face does me in.
“That’s it, Demi, come for me.”
A wave of pleasure crashes against me so hard that I lose all rhythm, all thought; I lose everything except Tristan.
My legs shake, and my vision goes cloudy.
All I can see is him. The orgasm slams into my body and moves through me like a lightning strike.
It’s the best, most catastrophic thing I’ve ever felt, and I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from it.
“Keep going, baby. I want all of it, all of it,” he says, and I do.
I’m seeing stars, and I’m wringing myself dry. For him. All for him.
“Oh, that’s my girl,” he sighs as the last aftershocks move through me .
Soon, everything is quiet; the only sounds are my hectic breathing and the ringing in my ears. Tristan and I sit and stare at each other across the small space between us that’s so thick and charged with the boundaries we just crossed.
And then he smiles at me, and my heart skips.
“That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says.
The only thing I’m sure of in this moment is that I need more. More of him. And as a ghost, what he can give me will never be enough.
When it comes to Tristan Beaumont, I realize I want it all.