Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
LEXI
Somewhere inside me, there’s an echo of the vulnerability I felt five years ago, when I asked him to kiss me the first time. I’m not sure if I heard him right. “Because I know what I want. What I’ve always wanted but you weren’t ready for five years ago.”
This is pure lust, and I bet it’s the same for Tristan.
But as for five years ago…what if he felt the same but didn’t—couldn’t or wouldn’t—act on it because I wasn’t ready?
I pause, trying to be rational as my heart pounds wildly with the notion that maybe, just maybe, he’d wanted me too but did the gentlemanly thing—
Fact is, I’m no longer a teenager in the throes of an infatuation, albeit one that’s stood the test of time. I’m a woman who knows what I want, and three months is a long time to stare at the goods locked out of reach in a glass cabinet.
This might be lust, but Tristan’s eyes don’t shine like those of a guy who’s just gotten the green light to fuck his one-night stand. That look I know well.
Instead, Tristan’s gaze is soft and tender as his fingers find my hips, nudging me closer.
I can’t think straight. All I can do is follow my body blindly.
I slide my hands up his arms, mimicking what he did to my legs minutes ago.
I trace over the roadmap of his veins, over the hills of wrist bones, the collection of leather and twisted metal on his left wrist, up his forearms to his elbows, drawing him closer.
Somehow he has slipped to the floor on his knees in the space between the sofa and the coffee table, but even like this, he is taller than me.
And he’s so close, I can see the amber flecks in his warm brown eyes.
“What games are you playing, Lexi?” His lips ghost over my hairline. His stubbled cheek grazes mine and reminds me that he’s a man who probably fumbles less with sex and love than I do. Tristan is, after all, a scientist; he’ll have a hypothesis, method, and conclusion at the end of this.
“One that needs two players only,” I breathe as his lips caress a spot beneath my ear that makes me shift and cling to his shoulders, all hard and muscled.
“And what are the rules?” His mouth covers the short stretch to my jaw, and a galaxy of tingles runs over my skin. His hands move up my sides, firming their hold on my body. My nipples are hard and jutting out, seeking attention from his fingers, his lips.
The Lexi O’Reilly Short Compendium of Happy Work Rules flits through my mind, and somehow none of them apply here. Male co-workers are off the menu? I’m engaged to one.
Stick to company policy and obey the rules? To be honest, since landing on this island, I’ve been confused. Small places like this come with their own challenges, and what works here will never work in New York and vice versa. To be honest, I’m a bit befuddled. Must be the heat.
As for bending the rules with caution, it’s the breaking part that comes with hazards…
“Rules don’t apply in paradise,” I murmur as he trails kisses down my neck. I lean my head to the side, opening up for him. “Except that it’s game over when we leave here. No regrets. No expectations.” And no falling irreparably in love.
I need to keep this light and easy. It’s just lust. Just sex. Nothing more. Tristan isn’t the commitment kind, and I don’t blame him. Being with someone for three months can never change a lifetime’s exposure to infidelity and indifference.
He follows a hot lick of his tongue with a slow and sensual chain of kisses that starts at the dip of my collarbone and proceeds all the way to the corner of my mouth.
Oh. My. God. I can’t hold back. I open my legs wider and press my body flush with his, my sex snug against his erection—holy fuck, he does want me—as my fingers desperately rake into his hair to keep him close.
Tristan’s thumb brushes a soft sweep against the underside of my breast. “I’m in,” he murmurs.
Then his lips close over mine, and I open for him, our tongues connecting in a languid twist that soon turns passionate and deep. As we kiss, Tristan strokes my breast, shifting from the underside and homing in on my nipple. I moan and reach for his hand to pause him.
His hand stills, and our breathing is haggard as we break away.
“I’m a bit tender,” I whisper as his somewhat drugged gaze searches mine. “Kind of all over…places.”
The gears seem to shift in his mind, and he drops his hands to my hips. They hold me anchored, and I want to rub my pussy against his erection in a very wanton way.
“Sorry, angel, it slipped my mind for a moment there.”
Angel. I love that.
With a groan and a deprecating chuckle, he moves a few inches backwards, breaking our physical connection as my period puts a pause on proceedings. Which is maybe a good thing. Only fools rush in…
“So there are rules.” Tristan’s tone is teasing as he cups my cheek.
“Only this one,” I say on a sigh. His whisper-soft touch is not helping me put a stop to things.
“Fine by me. That kiss was, in any case, not one for the public eye.”
“No.” I smile. “I suspect we might’ve been tossed out of Heathrow Terminal Five if we’d carried on like that.”
“Good thing I have work to do,” he says.
“Good thing I have a book to read.” As if anything could distract me from him.
Holy Mother of God and all the saints in a row…
I’ve been trying so freaking hard to keep that wall between us since that day he arrived in Miami.
But my defenses have weakened. The sight of him, of his cock straining in his fist, was the final breach.
“Why is it so hot in here?” he groans, placing an innocent kiss on my forehead.
“I closed the windows against the bugs since I kept the lights on?”
“You know what I mean. Airflow has nothing to do with it.”
He stands and reaches for my hands to pull me up, and the gesture is so sweet and so Tristan, my arousal-weakened legs almost refuse to straighten. Any other man would have pushed me to blow him by now, disrespecting my body and need for space.
As soon as I’m up, he hugs me close, his chest hard against my breasts, the warm cotton of his Beaumont-branded T-shirt soft against my hands as I circle my arms around his neck. He cups my butt and pulls me up against him, and with a chuckle I perch my feet on his. “What are you doing?”
“Tucking you in. To bed with you,” he says as he walks us across the room. “And no Great Wall of Goose Down tonight, okay?”
“Great Wall of Goose Down?”
“That pillow you thought would ward me off.”
“It was more to ward me off.” I’ve been ready to climb over and ride him cowgirl style for the past few nights, and I’ve had a few dreams that were too real with him so close.
“I see…” He nods with a dry chuckle. “Evan would skin me alive if he knew I so much as looked at any part of you lower than your forehead.”
We’ve reached the bed, and the backs of my thighs are pressing against the high mattress.
“Really?” I remember again that Evan asked me if Tristan was behaving. I’m still waiting for a response to my “define behaving” question.
“Uh-huh.”
“Good thing he’s on the other side of the world and doesn’t need to know what’s happening here.” Are you really breaking rules if no one is watching?
He searches my face for what feels like a very hot minute. “Goddammit, Lexi.”
“What?”
“This wasn’t the plan. I—”
“I know,” I interrupt him. The plan was a three-month stint in paradise without getting into each other’s hair—never mind pants—but we’ve been in deep waters since arriving at this cottage.
Still, I don’t want him to go into any explanations.
I know Tristan. I’ve seen Tristan for years via his social media profiles.
I’m familiar with his modus operandi, and it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
“I can change my plans.” For better or worse.
For a moment he stares at me, then shakes his head. “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
“Been there, done that.” Didn’t exactly get the T-shirt, but who would want to brag about being rejected by Tristan?
Not me. But we can move on from that now.
I’ve moved on. I mean, I’m a liberated twenty-four-year-old woman with needs.
When it comes to sex, he’s clearly feeling differently about me too these days. We can have a fling and walk away.
His hands drop away from my body, and he takes a step backward, digging his fingers into his hair.
“Fuck, Lexi. You were barely nineteen and tipsy at my fraternity’s farewell for me.
I wasn’t even staying there anymore and leaving for Hawaii—” He breaks off, clinching his hair tight in his fists.
“It was nothing but a fucking dirty frat piss-up, something I’ve totally outgrown, and seeing you there—”
I swallow against the sudden tightening in my throat and sink my butt into the mattress, not trusting my legs. I still went there with the hope of seeing him one last time, before he left forever. “I came for you, Tris—”
“But you were one of only a handful of girls there and… Jesus Christ, Lexi.” Tristan pulls in a ragged breath and groans.
“Do you know what type of guys those frat boys were? Who they probably still are? People don’t change.
I was going to fucking kill someone if they even looked at you, never mind touched you. ”
“And yet all I wanted was for you to look at me…see me.” Differently.
No longer as the gangly girl who hung out with him and Evan, making jokes, fooling around, part of a lopsided bunch of kids treading the waters of adolescence as best we could, but as the girl who wanted to be his in every way possible.
Tristan drops his head back, palms hiding his face. “And I did. I watched you grow up, Lexi. Ever since I became friends with Evan, I watched every single transformation, but—” He lowers his face, and drags his hands down his cheeks with a frustrated grunt.
“I get it. I was like your little sister. The one you always wished for.” So he wouldn’t have to be so alone and forgotten by that mishmash family of his who all seemed to have time for everything but him.
“No! You were never like a sister to me. You were always Evan’s sister and off limits.”
Oh.
That didn’t stop us though.
That night he bundled me up in his car and drove me home, walked me to the front porch. Mom wasn’t there; she was in New Orleans. Evan was still at the frat party, oblivious. And then, when Tris pulled me in his arms for a final goodbye hug, I asked him to kiss me. And he did. And then—
“Things went too far, Lexi.”
I can still see it. Feel it. Us stumbling through the front door, kissing, tugging at each other’s clothes, me dragging him upstairs to my room between kisses that were so hungry, you’d think we were starved for each other.
My single bed, in my childhood bedroom, Taylor Swift posters on the wall. So fucking juvenile. So teenager.
Tristan’s hands on me as he helped me rip off my cocktease black dress, his hot kisses on my skin, his hands on my naked breasts, his thumbs on my nipples, his tongue flicking at them and my body contracting at the novelty, the sensations his touch released, the wet and sticky heat between my thighs.
His fingers as they slipped into my panties, how I nearly came as he circled my clit and fingered me.
Until he froze. Pulled back. Sat up. Heaved as he dropped his head into his hands.
“Fuck, Lexi,” he groans. “Never mind that I was twenty-five and way too old for you. Being with you—taking your virginity, as I knew you wanted me to that night—would have been a fucking dick move. And cruel. Don’t you see that?”
I shake my head, every moment of that night, every sensation hurtling back as if it happened minutes ago. “What you did was much crueler.”
“Jesus Christ!” He drags his fingers through his hair.
“I was hurting at the thought of leaving you behind. How would you have felt if we…” He takes me by the shoulders and lowers his face to mine, searching my eyes.
“Lexi, when it comes to pussy, the male bar is disgustingly low. Any one of those guys at that frat party would have fucked you, anywhere. Drunk or not. High on whatever drugs were making the rounds or not. Virgin or not. Against a wall, on a vomit-baptized mattress, who the fuck knows. You would’ve gotten hurt so badly, angel.
I rescued you from that frat house as if I was a fucking hero, saving you from being preyed upon, and then I went and used you just like any other prick who’s only interested in a one-night stand. ”
It felt more as if I was using him, desperate for his attention, his love. Clearly none of that was coming from his side. He walked out and never looked back once. Five long years of silence stretching to snapping point. And here we are, going on since December as if that night never happened.
The rejection and abandonment of that moment cast a shadow over my life for years after. Me, men, and idiocy. The perfect trifecta.
Why is it that I’m still not over him? That I keep getting attracted to guys who only use me like Brent Fisherman did? You’d think I would have learned a thing or two, but no, I like to wallow in heartache.
I wipe my cheeks, wishing I could hide. On this stupid island there is no place to run and hide, to digest the truth I’ve suspected deep down but hearing it from Tristan finally makes it real.
He only wanted me safe that night. He never wanted to hurt me, and he had to walk away to ensure that.
The thing is, if he hadn’t walked away then, he would have walked away a couple of months later because that’s how he rolls.
Bottom line: he didn’t want me enough. I know that now. I know how he operates. At twenty-five a man is fully formed, apparently, brain and all, and Tristan hasn’t veered off his usual path. His track record holds. He is the ultimate playboy and who could blame him. So actually, he spared me.
“You know how to kill a guy slowly, don’t you, babes?” Tristan whispers as he pulls me to stand again and hugs me to his chest. “Come here.”
We stand like that for a moment, me stiff in his arms, trying not to break down into a sobbing mess like I did five years ago when he walked out.
“With the wedding, the next week is going to be mayhem,” he murmurs. “Maybe that’s a good thing…simply because I don’t think this is a good idea.”
All I can do is nod. We need to let this tension between us cool off. Thank God for periods. At last they make total sense.
Eventually he pulls away and takes my hand, only to lead me to the bathroom. “You do what you need to do. I need some fresh air.”