Seven
EZRA
I wasn’t sure how I’d ended up being volunteered to pick up dinner, but Tris was doing exactly as he’d promised when I pushed through his office door—working.
He was set up at the table he used for student consultations, papers spread out before him.
His laptop was to one side and a tablet on the other.
Boxes sat on the floor with papers stacked neatly on top of them.
His smile was genuine, if a little tired, when he looked up and saw the Thai I was carrying.
“Hope you’re hungry,” I remarked, swallowing down the instant lust that spiked in my veins merely at the sight of him.
“Starved.”
I was too, but not for food.
Tristan closed the folder in front of him and cleared a spot on the table for us to eat on. “Thanks for picking it up.”
“Thanks for buying,” I replied, trying desperately to stay on topic.
“Least I could do,” he murmured, his voice deep and rumbly like warm caramel being poured over a chocolate fudge brownie. “Ez?” he asked, pausing until I blinked out of my stupor. He held his hand out for the bag I was carrying and asked, “You okay?”
I cleared my throat, willed my dick to deflate, and pressed my lips into a smile. “Yeah, I’m good.”
I slid in next to him and immediately regretted my life choices.
I could still smell his aftershave on his skin, something spicy with citrus undertones.
I wanted to press my nose to his throat and breathe him in.
Then I wanted to lick every inch of him, inhaling his scent as I worked my way to his cock.
Once would never be enough with him, but it had to be.
Tristan dished up our food, and we ate in a comfortable silence. Well, he seemed comfortable. I was struggling not to shove the table out of the way and straddle his lap.
“How was the charity ball?” he asked.
It had been interesting, that was for sure. The ball itself, Zali buying me the golf weekend, watching her dance with Flynn and Ry—I’d been captivated the whole time. I didn’t mention any of that, though. But it was a good reminder that I needed to get my head on straight.
I nodded and said, “You missed a good night. You would have liked the ball. They had decent whiskey on offer.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “I’m sorry I missed it, then. I spent the night pouring over that.” He gestured to the boxes on the floor, and by unspoken agreement, we shifted gears, moving into work mode.
“Tell me about what you’ve found,” I encouraged, grateful for the reprieve.
Tristan detailed everything he’d discovered. The lust that had been ricochetting around my body morphed into a sinking feeling in my gut that grew with every word he spoke.
“What did you say the name of the company was again?” I asked, silently begging him not to repeat the one I’d both read and heard him say.
“ReimagINC.”
Fuck.
My ears started ringing, and my throat closed. Bile churned in my belly, the food sitting like a lead weight in there. He couldn’t investigate ReimagINC. It was the one company I didn’t want him anywhere near. There were reasons—fucking good ones—for him to stay away from it.
Zali-sized reasons.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I cleared my throat, trying to get my voice to work. “I don’t know, Tris,” I hedged, desperately trying to sound dubious. “It seems like a stretch.”
Tristan launched into his explanation again, and that lead weight turned into battery acid eating away at me.
It was obvious he’d dedicated months to this line of research.
He’d uncovered more than most people knew—even the ones working there.
He’d drawn some of the same conclusions I’d come to when I’d looked into the company.
He had a great plan for the research and its publication, too—creating a subject where students would research and help put together a podcast. It had such the perfect amount of data-driven detail and tragedy that it could blow up into a major sensation.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Panic seized me. I needed to do something.
I needed to stop him. But Tristan was persistent and a true researcher at heart.
He wanted the truth. I could see it in the way he lit up when he talked about the project.
Simply telling him to back off would only intensify his curiosity.
He was stubborn as fuck and would demand more than what I could tell him.
“Everything you have is circumstantial,” I challenged weakly.
His green eyes flashed, and my dick stood up, taking notice of the way he suddenly seemed larger than life. “Criminal cases are tried on circumstantial evidence. Juries have convicted too,” he shot back.
“I thought you wanted me to play devil’s advocate?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and subtly adjusting myself.
He barked out a laugh and shook his head. “Are you, though?” He raised a brow and counted off on his fingers as he said, “Your arguments have consisted of: ‘I don’t know,’ ‘It’s a stretch,’ and ‘You don’t have solid proof yet.’”
I hesitated, mulling my words over. I knew I needed to tread carefully. There was more to this than Tristan being interested in a research project. Looking into ReimagINC had real consequences—ones that affected numerous people I cared about.
Tristan tilted his lips up in an arrogant smirk. He thought he had me. He knew I was struggling to come up with something, anything, to discourage him.
If I couldn’t stop him, I needed a way of monitoring him. But how?
I swallowed, watching his cocky confidence as he tapped the table with those dexterous fingers.
I knew what they could do. I’d had them on me, inside me.
Desire slammed into me. I couldn’t think.
I tugged my tie, loosening it, and undid the top button of my shirt.
Jesus bloody Christ, he was too hot for words.
Tristan’s coal-coloured hair shone against his charcoal shirt, and I found myself wanting to reach for him and mess it up. I wanted to feel the brush of his perfectly trimmed beard between my legs.
He tilted his head, waiting for me to answer. The movement drew my gaze down to his collar. He was at home dressed in a suit. But now, looking at him, I was reminded of peeling him out of jeans and a tee and the hours we’d spent naked together.
I cleared my throat and lifted my chin. “It sounds like you’re trying too hard to make a case out of something that was nothing more than a tragedy and bad luck.”
“Seriously?” he asked, scoffing at me. He knew he was on to something.
We then debated back and forth for what felt like hours, and he was the clear winner. But I had a plan. One that I needed to put into effect immediately.
I held my hands up in defeat. “If you’re going to do this, you need real investigators on board too. I have someone who you’ll benefit from having on your team. Find a way of letting her enrol in the subject.”
“I won’t be able to pay her without paying the other students,” he hedged.
“Let me worry about that.” I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. I had no doubt that it was going to blow up in my face spectacularly. I was setting myself up for one pissed-off cyber investigator to tear me to shreds. But it was the only way to protect her too.
The worry sat like an anvil, weighing my entire body down and sapping my energy levels to zero. But I was buzzing, too, a mixture of dread, fear, and arousal pulsing through me. What was wrong with me?
Finally, I stood up and stretched. My neck cracked as I rolled it, and I shook out my shoulders, trying to loosen the tension. Tris was on his feet and crowding me before I could blink.
I stepped back, not out of fear, but some kind of misdirected sense of self-preservation—I needed distance between us to be able to resist him. His smug smirk reappeared. He knew exactly what I was doing.
“I’ll get that funding,” he taunted. Tristan stepped forward again, and I moved back once more. “And then I’ll find out exactly what happened.” His voice was a purr, dark and dangerous. He stepped forward again, and I repeated my retreat. “I’ll blow the lid on the company.”
Before I could even shake my head, Tris gripped my hips and pushed me against the wall. I gasped, my cock throbbing in my suit pants.
He leaned in, pressing his larger body against me, his thighs bracketing mine. I bit back my groan, but it came out sounding like a whimper instead, needy and strung as tight as I was.
He shifted his big hands around to my arse and squeezed tight. Our hard dicks lined up, and I cried out, my hips grinding against his of their own accord.
He growled, a low noise deep at the back of his throat. It was the sexiest sound I’d ever heard. “You know how I get. I’m like a dog with a bone. I can’t let anything go.”
“You can’t,” I rasped, gripping his shirt and holding him close. Tristan thrust his hips forward once more and punched the breath out of my lungs.
He brushed his lips over my jaw, and I groaned, my body warring with my conscience. But now there was even more of a reason to stop myself. “Tris, no hookup.”
“Come on a date with me,” he demanded, then sucked on the skin at my pulse point. There was no doubt he felt the flutter of my heartbeat there.
“I can’t,” I breathed, but I couldn’t let him go either. I slid my hands around his shoulders, drawing him closer to me.
He flicked his tongue over the spot he’d sucked on and moaned. I threaded my fingers into his hair, holding him there. I was losing this battle. My will had the strength of a house of cards in a hurricane.
“Or won’t?” he asked, his lips still against my skin.
“Both,” I admitted, unable to fathom how I could still speak with Tristan massaging my arse and nudging my cock with his steel-hard one.
Then he was gone, a gulf remaining between our bodies in his wake. My dick tenting my pants was obscene, but I took solace in his being just as obvious. We were both breathing hard, and I was shaking like a leaf.
“This isn’t the end,” he growled.
My eyes fluttered closed, and I sucked in a breath. My heart hammered in my chest, and my cock ached for release. He was right. It wasn’t the end. Not by a long shot.