Chapter 104
Tristan
Los Angeles seems different—or maybe it’s just me.
I’m a different man now than I was when I lived here. I’m older, sure, but I’m also more myself. I love the man I have become, and I am not sure I would’ve become him if I had stayed here.
Nick and I see some of my old friends, but not all of them. It’s nice, introducing him. He’s very different from Warren, and several of my old friends comment on the differences, but they all seem happy for me.
We spend a lovely weekend in Los Angeles. On our last night, we go to a club I never dared to go to when I lived there with Warren. It’s is a high-end fetish club, the sort where you’re required to wear a suit and where there’s a codeword to get in.
It’s dark and sleek inside, with deep bossa nova music and expensive cocktails. Nick looks hotter than he ever has in his black suit, and we dance a slow dance together (as best as we can with my left ankle in a boot), wrapped in each other’s arms.
“Guess what?” I murmur.
His hands travel down my back to my ass. “What?”
“I love you.”
He kisses my neck, drawing a soft moan from deep inside me.
“I love you, too. More than I think you know.” He brings his lips close to my ear. “Do you want to visit their dungeon?”
I think about it. “Actually, how about we go back to the hotel? I think I’m feeling like extremely vanilla sex tonight.”
“Vanilla is a great flavor.”
An hour later, Nick lays me down on the bed in our hotel room.
He lavishes kisses along my neck, takes his time slowly undressing me.
Our brand of vanilla is still relatively spicy, and I shiver when he bites each of my nipples, when his strong hands restrain my arms above my head, when he buries his face in my armpits to smell me.
He is firm, but careful because of my still-healing injuries, even though I tell him that he can be rough.
“I want to savor this,” he says. “And we have all the time in the world to be rough.”
And he’s right. We do.
I count myself lucky.
The Universe has gifted me not just a second chance at life, but a third.
I survived the car crash that killed Warren and the earthquake that took so many lives.
I will never not be thankful for these chances I have had to survive, to fight for my life, to build it into what I want, and with who I want.
Our lovemaking is tender and deep. Nick is slow and luxurious as he pushes inside me, his cock filling me, stretching me.
My body feels like it was made to take him inside me, like I am a lock and he is the key.
We thrust and grind together on the bed, the sounds and smells of sex filling the room.
When we cum, we cum together, wrapped in each other’s arms, gasping and moaning and murmuring sweet, filthy promises of love and desire.
He holds me tightly after we finish, and I am glad to be trapped, naked, in his arms.
There is nowhere else I’d want to be.