Текст книги "Lovely Trigger"

Автор книги: R. K. Lilley

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Even so, people were sharing rides to the airstrip and planes to their various destinations.  It only made sense.

Tristan and I hadn’t flown or driven in together, even though we’d come from the same place.

He could not understand why we couldn’t share on the way home.

He’d actually come to my room to talk about it, charged into the space, sprawling out on the room’s only chair like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I supposed it was better than the bed.

I stayed by the door, determined not to do anything stupid for the five minutes it would take me to get rid of him.

“Stop being pushy,” I told him, arms crossed over my chest.  It felt surreal to be talking to him as though no time had passed, but it was happening so naturally.  “See, this is the problem.  I give an inch, you take five more.  Knock it off.”

He grinned, leaning forward in his chair.  “C’mon.  It will be fun.  We can play some road trip games.  Remember all of our games?”

I sighed.  Of course, I remembered.  “Not this time, Tristan.  I need a few days to think.  Like I said, I’ll call you.  Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“No,” he said casually, his smile dying.  “I do not excuse you.”

He stood and moved so close to me that I backed away.  “I’ll give you a few days, but if I don’t hear from you, I am coming for you.  This is fair warning.”

I glared at him.  “Dramatic much?  I said I’d call, I’ll call.  I said I needed a few days, give me a few days.”

CHAPTER TEN

I told myself that the reason we’d done that idiotic thing was because I’d kept myself too tightly leashed.  If we could see each other more often, but casually, it wouldn’t be like that.  We wouldn’t have to lose our minds, if we weren’t scared that we’d never see each other again.

I didn’t call him right away.  Not because I was a coward.

Well, okay, I was putting it off because our last encounter had left me shaken.  I’d lost my mind.  There was no other way to put it.  And that wasn’t even the scary part.

What would we do for an encore?  It didn’t bear thinking about.

But I did think about it.  Constantly, incessantly, I obsessed about what to do about him.

Even so, it was a month before I saw him again and only then because he forced the issue.

The showing was substantial in size, though not in notability.  Five artists were being featured, each with two rooms in the spacious L.A. gallery devoted to their theme.  It was very involved.  I’d been putting it together for nearly a year.

One of the artists had recently started getting some attention in the media, due to some interviews he’d done, so what had been a promising but obscure event suddenly had some star power.

It was a bit hectic, but I was dealing with it all in stride, calming down the temperamental artists, soothing the fussy celebrities that had shown up for the press.

It was shaping up to be an invigoratingly busy but overall smooth night, when Tristan walked through the door.

He was wearing a tux, hair scraped back and showing off his strong jaw with that fascinating bit of scruff that I couldn’t stop obsessing over.

He looked so handsome it made my chest ache.  The effect of seeing him out of the blue, no warning, looking how he looked, was devastating.

I took a deep breath, prayed for calm, and thanked God I’d decked myself out for the event in a fitted sleeveless crimson lace dress with a high neck and a flared skirt.  It showed my figure off to perfection.

He was alone, which was certainly better than the alternative in one respect, and terrible in another.  He had no one else to focus on, no other reason to be there, but for me.

Well, maybe he’s here for the artwork, I told myself.  But even as I had the thought, he was making a beeline to me.

His expression was unsmiling and solemn as he stopped in front of me

“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice quiet and calm, but it was an effort.

“You never called.”

I just stared at him.

“You said you’d call,” he reiterated.  “So we can do this easy, or we can do it hard.  Personally, I prefer hard.”

“Does this look like the appropriate place to have this conversation to you?  I’m working.”

“I gave it a month.  I ran out of patience.  My supply was fucking depleted to begin with.”

His voice had been loud enough that I glanced around, wanting to avoid making a scene.

“We work in the same building, if you didn’t realize.  Coming all the way here, on the night of a big show, is not the way to handle this.”

“The gallery in the casino is your territory.  You’ve been very clear on how you feel about me infringing on your territory.  Are you saying I’m allowed to come there now?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” I said, to appease him.  Anything to avoid what he was doing right that second, because having him there, talking to him there, was going to turn me into a basket case in the middle of an event I’d been planning for too long to flake out on.  “Now please, you need to let me work.”

In theory, he did back off, just not far.  He didn’t leave, as I’d hoped, but stayed, going through the entire building slowly, room by room, perusing the art thoroughly, always in my peripheral, hovering close enough to be distracting.

I tried my best not to be distracted.

One of the artists had done a series of paintings on large multi paneled room partitions.  They each measured roughly six feet high, and the way they were set around the room turned it into a sort of maze.  It was a striking series.

I’d just shown it to some potential buyers.  I was taking down a few notes about some other work by the same painter that the buyers were interested in seeing before they made a decision.  They had since moved on to the next room.  I always encouraged this.  I didn’t hover, tending to let the buyer find the pieces that spoke to them on their own.

There was a small table at the back of what had turned into the maze room.  It was displaying a series of small painted fans, but had enough free space for me to set my paper-thin laptop on as I typed a few details in.

I was just straightening when big hands cupped my shoulders from behind and started rubbing.

I knew who it was instantly.  Of course I did.  I could smell him.  The warm, spicy scent of his cologne was permanently branded into my brain.

And those hands.  No one else on earth had hands like his.

I breathed in deep, taking him in, trying to get a grip.

One hand left my shoulder, and I felt a teasing finger run the length of my spine through the thin material of my dress.  His touch was so light, his journey from bottom to top so slow, my nipples had tightened into hard peaks by the time he reached my nape.

I shivered involuntarily.

He moved in closer behind me, that wandering hand going to my waist, gripping.  I could feel the heat of his palms, one on the skin of my shoulder, the other through my clothes.  The contrast of the touches made me catch my breath.

A sensitive muscle very low in my belly began to quiver.

He moved closer by infinitesimal degrees, until I felt him leaning over me, head tipped forward.  I thought he must be staring at my features, gauging my reactions.

“What are you doing?” I asked him in a shaky voice.

“You said you didn’t want to have our conversation here.  I’m improvising.”

I shook my head slightly, then froze as, gently but firmly, the hand at my waist moved up and held my breast.  His palm slid softly over the already hardened peak.

“This is not the place for that, either,” I whispered furiously.

But I didn’t move away.

His other hand moved from its scorching grip on my shoulder, covering my right hand, which was clenched into a fist on the table in front of me.

He lifted it, pried it open until he could fit his thumb against my palm, and started to rub.  His touch was so soothing, so fundamentally pleasurable, that my hand fell open like he’d unlocked it with a key.

And that was when he knew he had me.

He continued to fondle me while he straightened my arm, then pulled it behind my back, palm twisted to face him.  Without a word, he pulled it to the front of his pants.  Slowly, leisurely, he rubbed himself into my palm, stroking himself with our connected hands.  Up, down, up, down, each stroke taking its sweet time along his broad length.

My lips were trembling, my body shaking, every single muscle in my belly tight with anticipation.

I felt like all of the nerves inside of me were about to shatter.  And I wanted it.

How was it so easy to fall into this old pattern, of all things?

Still stroking my breast and his cock with our combined efforts, he whispered into my ear.  “If you say no now, I will stop.  But I can’t make any guarantees for after.  Now is the cutoff for no.”

I shuddered.  After everything, the rise and the fall of us, the pain and the aftermath, why did his touch still bring such comfort?  How could it unearth such a sense of security?

I made my mind into a temporary ally with my want, my desire, yet again, and took the plunge.

I felt so out of control that I didn’t even care what happened after.

It was madness.

And yet, completely necessary.

“Yes or no.  I want to hear it.”

My eyes fell closed and I gripped him harder.  “Yes.”

His breath shuddered out harshly, and he fumbled at his pants, working them open.

I gripped and started stroking as soon as he spilled, bare and hard, into my open palm.

I felt him working my skirt up, his other fingers plucking firmly at my nipple through two layers of fabric that I would have liked to make disappear just then.  But there was no time for undressing, not here.

This was a direct access; get at it as fast as you can kind of fuck.  And yes, it had a name.  Thanks to the devastating power of our history together, nearly every damn thing did.

The hand in my skirt lifted it high, and he fit himself behind me, his swollen flesh pressing hard into my thigh.

He pushed the heel of his hand against the throbbing nub of my clit.  It pulsed against him like a heartbeat.

“Oh,” I cried out before I could stop myself.

The hand on my breast moved up to cover my mouth.  I mewled softly into it while he rubbed at my needy flesh.

 “Shh, sweetheart,” he rasped in a hushed voice.  “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten where we are, but this is not the place to make a lot of noise.”

I shook my head, my body shaking, throbbing with unfulfilled need as he shoved my panties to the side and rubbed the thick head of his cock slowly along my wet entrance.

His mouth moved to the sensitive tendon between my neck and shoulder, biting down gently, he plunged in hard.

I bit his hand (not gently) as he started to fuck me in earnest.

I had to brace both hands on the table in front of me.  It wasn’t all that sturdy; it began to shake, clanging into the wall with each movement.

I didn’t give a damn.

A few delicate fans fell off, and still I couldn’t make myself stop, even knowing I’d be sorry later.

That was the all-encompassing, undeniable control he had over my body, the absolute power.

The power to make me forget, and to make me let go.

He stretched me, my flesh clenched around him.  He surged in and out of me, filling me, taking all of the emptiness away for that brief respite.

I throbbed in time to his steady rhythm.  As ever, he played my body to his beat.  Who else?  It had been tuned for his hands alone.  The years apart had only illustrated that fact even further.

In huge glowing neon letters.

His mouth stayed on my neck, licking, sucking, his free hand digging into my hip, anchoring me for his relentless thrusts.

The pressure inside of me built with each sure thrust, until I was biting so hard at his hand that he pulled it away.

I tensed as I felt the wave coming, muscles drawn tight as he continued to pound into me.  I bit back a cry as my entire body began to convulse.

I broke, shuddering, clenching, wave upon wave of pleasure washing over me, crashing relentlessly, again and again.

Like it was rinsing me clean.

I couldn’t quite stifle one tiny sob as I came down from that impossible high.

He was folded against my back, himself shaking and emptying inside of me, as I came back into my trembling skin.  I’d missed the beginning of his release, as I’d been so involved in my own.

“My God,” he gasped.  “Are you okay?”

I nodded weakly.

“Well, I’m not sure I am.”

He started to pull out, and I let out a little involuntary noise of protest.  He hugged me tight from behind.  “Sweetheart, you are going to be even angrier with me if we get caught like this, or I’d stay inside all night.”

His words jarred me into remembering where we were.  I couldn’t quite believe it.  I’d been transported, for a few addictive minutes, into another place, another world.

His pants were fastened, my skirt straightened, when he spoke again, “Can we agree that we need to talk?  Not in a week, not in a month, but tonight.”

“I’m work—”

“When you’re done.  I can wait.  Obviously.”

I nodded, not looking at him, focused on the pile of fans we’d knocked over onto the floor.

I got to work picking them up and straightening them.   None were damaged, thank God, but not for lack of trying.  We’d knocked every single one of them off the table.

Tristan tried to help me, but I waved him off.

“Go away.  Go look around, or mingle, or something.  I can’t get anything done with you around.”

Instead of offending him, that made him smile.  The man was still perverse.

I got back to work, but I was so distracted that I felt like a basket case for the rest of the night.

Every time I turned around, there he was, looking my way, smiling at my annoyed looks.

What was wrong with him, behaving like no time had passed since we’d been close?  Acting as though we still were close.

It was disarming me, and I needed my arms.

After a time, as I did my usual hurry back and forth through the different exhibits, answering questions, handling sales, placating artists, I noticed that he’d stopped following me around.

Somehow, that was even more distracting.

The event was winding down before I saw him again.

I happened upon him in one of the smaller rooms, alone with some woman.  They were laughing together, and as I very nonchalantly moved in for a closer look, pretending to straighten a picture on the wall, I realized that I recognized her.

She had deep red hair and a pale but luminous complexion.  She was beautiful and very young.

She was a famous singer.  I knew the name of at least three of her songs, so she was very famous.  She was one of those young starlets that were always being linked romantically to other celebrities.

And at the moment, she seemed to be very interested in my ex-husband.

I couldn’t recall them ever being linked in the gossip rags.  Though I liked to pretend I didn’t keep track, I was up to date enough that I thought I would have remembered this connection.

The girl was just so young.  Nineteen, if I was recalling it right.

She wasn’t too young to make him laugh, or to appreciate whatever he was saying enough to laugh herself, and to touch his arm several times, and just in general seem ecstatic to have his attention on her.

I turned around and left.  I didn’t need to see that, or hear it, or ever think about it again.

I couldn’t, however, manage to keep my mouth shut for even a second when he approached me again, several minutes later.

“God, it was bad before you were famous.  You must have to beat them off with a stick now.  Or not, I guess.  There’s plenty of you to go around.”

His expression, which had been smiling, wiped clean, becoming very blank.  “I don’t think we want to go there.  Either of us.”

I rolled my eyes, because it was no competition.  His revolving bedroom door and my locked one were not even in the same category.

“Am I allowed to ask if this is jealousy?”

I bristled.  “No, you’re not.  You do whatever you like.  It’s no business of mine.”

I started to move past him, but he caught my arm, turning me slowly back to him.

“That’s quite an invitation.  Anything I like, huh?  Let’s go back to your hotel room.  Right this second.”

I rolled my eyes, jerked my arm out of his hold, and stormed away.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRISTAN

It took her hours to finish up, but I waited patiently.  Better to wait hours here, then days, weeks, months, somewhere else.  And in spite of all that had happened, I had no doubts that it was a very real possibility she would just cut me out again, if I didn’t press the issue now, tonight.

“This can’t be convenient for you,” she told me sassily as I held the door open for her.  Even her walk, limp and all, was sassy.

I felt myself getting hard.

“This isn’t really about convenience, now is it?” I asked her pointedly.

She didn’t answer, just folded her arms across her chest and stared at me.

The gallery shared a parking lot with a Cavendish resort, so I assumed she had a room there for the night, since it was clearly too late for her to make it back to Vegas.

“Let’s go talk in your room,” I said with a smile, watching her face for a reaction that I was way too excited about, considering that I knew it wouldn’t be a positive one.

She gave me a dirty look, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, my cock twitching restlessly.

“I’m so not taking you there.  No way in hell.”

I tried not to let my grin grow too big.  “I saw an all-night diner on my way here, maybe five minutes away.”

She gave her narrow eyed agreement to let me take her there.

We stared at each other across a tiny table and ordered cheeseburgers.  The table was so narrow that our legs would have touched if I hadn’t spread mine wide, letting hers rest between.

It was surreal, just to get to stare at each other under bright, unforgiving lights.

Of course, Danika didn’t need forgiving lights.  She was perfection, even under the harshest of conditions.  So beautiful that my chest was aching enough that my hand had been rubbing at it for a solid minute before I caught myself and lowered it.  And the entire time, I just kept drinking in the sight of her.

There were so many shocking, drastic changes and painful, wrenching similarities between the girl and the woman.  The girl had been playful, fresh-faced, and beautiful as a freshly bloomed flower.  The woman was quiet and elegant, and so heart-wrenchingly exquisite I would have given up another piece of my soul just to keep looking at her.

I couldn’t believe she’d let me have her again.  Even as I clearly recalled the encounter, how she’d let me inside of her, bare; let me come in her, skin on skin; let me empty myself deep inside of her, I almost felt as though I’d dreamed the whole thing.

That was all we did for the longest time, just stared at each other.  I was hesitant to be the first to start talking.  The faster we talked, the sooner this was over, and I was content to drag this out until dawn.

“Does this place even have good burgers?” she finally asked.  “Because I’m warning you right now, I’m not wasting calories on a bad one.”

I smiled fondly at her.  “What, you think I’ll get upset with you if you don’t eat the food you order?  Who do I look like, Ike Turner?”

She stifled a laugh, and then refused to look at me for a while, not talking either, just staring down at her hands in her lap while I marveled at how even the curve of her brow was just lovely.

Very slowly, I closed my legs until my knees touched each of hers.  I reached under the table, cupping her clenched hands in my grasping ones.

Her chest shuddered as she took in a very deep breath.  “So what are we doing here?  Tell me how you see this playing out.”

I wasn’t sure which version to give her, but I didn’t think I should start with the brutal truth.  I sugarcoated the hell out of it, going into pure survival mode.  “I think we should become friendly again.  I come say hi to you at work, we grab a bite to eat, and make each other laugh, etcetera, and so on.”

“And the rest.  What happened at the ranch, back at the gallery.  What’s your solution for that?”

To do it every chance we get, day or night, until we pass out, or hell, fucking keel over and die.

I had a very vivid but too short vision of her sprawled out naked on this very table, taking every inch of my cock, no, not just taking, begging for it.  I figured my chances of fucking her again this very night were slim to none, but a guy could dream.

I smiled pleasantly.  “Ball’s in your court.  You want platonic, I can do that.”

“I think that would be for the best.”

I tried to keep my expression neutral.  “Okay.  I think it’s pretty obvious; I’ll take what I can get.”

“Want to hear my theory on that insanity back there?”

I sighed.  I knew I wouldn’t like whatever she had come up with, but I humored her, “Yeah, shoot.”

“I think it’s some survival instinct kicking in, some biological, physical drive that kicks in when we’re near each other, because we never got real closure, so our bodies want to cling to each other, because we’re worried we’ll never get the chance again.  You can’t cut someone out of your life like that and not have closure.  We need closure.”

I wanted to quote my therapist to her.  He always said closure was a myth, or at least what people had turned it into was, but I stayed silent, because I wanted her to cling to this theory of hers.

This theory was my ally.  It clearly had her changing her tune after all these years.

I mean, I hated the theory, and I thought it was complete bullshit, but I was in no position to dispute it.  If I could have said what I wanted and not scare her off, I would have pointed out that it’d always been like that between us, there had always been the drive to touch, to feel each other in every way one human could touch another, inside, outside, body, soul.

But I couldn’t say what I wanted to say.  Not yet.

Step one:  Get back into her life again.

Everything else was secondary.  The rest would come with time, God willing.

“Maybe we should set up some ground rules, like only go out with a third wheel, some type of chaperone.”

My smile felt like it wanted to crack my face.  I really, really didn’t like that idea.  “Whatever you think is best.”

She sighed, as though conflicted about it.  “We’re two mature adults.  We shouldn’t have to resort to a babysitter.”

Here, here.

“We’ll keep our hands to ourselves.  It’s just that simple.”

The fuck it is, I thought, giving her my blandest smile.  I wasn’t optimistic enough to think I’d get to fuck her again anytime soon, but I spent a lot of time plotting out how I could get her to let me eat her pussy.  She became very receptive after I went down on her for a few minutes, I recalled.

I had a brief and intense fantasy where I buried my face between her legs and made her lose it.  I wanted to taste her, even if it was only for a moment.  I needed to know if I remembered even that last detail as well as I thought I did.  How long did a tongue’s memory last?  I badly wanted to find out.

My mind wandered to our encounter from earlier.  It had been so incredible.  The feel of her hot walls closing on me; God, I needed to get a grip.

I couldn’t believe that, even as I sat there, my dick was still covered in the evidence of what we’d done.  That got me thinking about how it couldn’t be that hopeless of a cause.

I started plotting ways to get up to her hotel room with her.

She was still talking, and I tried to pretend that I hadn’t been daydreaming about the things she was talking about never doing again.

“I don’t need conflict, I need peace.  I don’t need chaos, I need order.  I’m dealing with needs here, not wants, not wishes.  And you need to understand that.  You need to respect it.”

I made her look at me, straight in the eye, when I spoke.  “Whatever you need me to be, I’ll be that.  Whatever you want me to do, however we need to make this work, we will do it.”  And it was as I spoke that I realized that I couldn’t seduce her again so soon, certainly not tonight.

I needed to bind her to me again with more than the most incredible sex of my life.

We needed to become best friends again.  Yes, that was how I would do it.  I needed to become so essential in her life that she couldn’t conceive walking away.

I meant to break her.

Needed to break her.

Whether it be with deceit, subterfuge, cold calculation, or sheer willpower alone, I was set in my course.

She’d built a wall up against me.  A wall that seemed to me to be interwoven into her very soul.

For years, I’d thought that wall was impregnable.  But a few words, a few brief encounters had shown me that the wall wasn’t stone, but glass.

I meant to break it, and her, and anything that stood in my way.  I was going to shatter all of the things she used to keep us apart.

It had become my sole purpose.  And if she failed to give, to yield, I’d break myself in the process.

I was prepared for that.  At this point in my life, with what I’d learned from our separation, I was willing to risk it.

“So it’s pretty obvious you’re never going to call me.  Let’s start with baby steps.  How about you just start to actually answer when I call you?”

She chewed on her lip for a minute and then nodded.

“And we work in the same building, so how about I come by sometimes, and say hi, and you don’t call security, or hell, our boss, to get me to stay away?”

That got me a rueful smile and another nod.

“And you let me walk you up to your hotel room.  We can cuddle for a few hours, no funny business.”  I smiled.  She’d say no, but it would be sassy and cute, so I tried anyway.

She rolled her eyes, a corner of her pretty mouth kicking up.  “Not happening.”

“Well, I had to try.”

Our cheeseburgers arrived, and we ate.  The burger must have been good, because she ate the whole thing, wasting lots of her allotted calories on it.

I finished mine too, but I couldn’t have said if it tasted good.  I was too distracted, too focused on her, to notice I was even eating until the food was gone.  I’d inhaled the thing, the fries too.

She shook her head at me, still working on hers.  “Must be nice to get to eat however much of whatever you want and still have a perfect body.”

I grinned at her, the word body making me think of nothing but what mine could do to hers.  “I do spend two to three hours in the gym every day.  Weights and calories go hand in hand.”  I flexed my arms a bit, loving the way it drew her eyes and made them glaze over.  Only with Danika could workout talk become foreplay.

I ordered a milkshake after she finished her burger.  She declined dessert, though she eyed mine up hungrily when it arrived.

It was banana, not the real banana flavor, but the fake banana flavor.

I knew that was her favorite kind of shake.  I’d only ordered it to stall and draw the night out longer but when I saw the chance to torment her, I took it happily.

I took a long drink, moaning appreciatively, like it was the best shake I’d ever had, though I barely tasted it.

“Want a drink?”

She shook her head stubbornly.

“One drink won’t affect your diet.”

I slid it her way, and she tried it.  Apparently, it did taste good, because she just kept drinking, and as she always said, she didn’t waste calories on sub-par food.

She finished the whole thing, then blamed me for letting her have it.  “Now I have to hit the gym extra hard tomorrow.”

“I could always give you another workout tonight.”  Even if we were in friend mode for the moment, what could it hurt to flirt?

Of course, if she’d taken me up on it, nothing on earth could have kept me from following through.

Unfortunately she didn’t.  Instead, she glared.

I ordered cherry pie a la mode, just to keep dragging the night out, then proceeded to go on and on about how much I loved to eat pie.

Just to make her laugh.

And it did.  And her laugh made me happy, as it always had.

Next I ordered coffee, and she had a cup as well.

I was stuffed, but I ordered an omelet next.

She’d caught on by then, folding her arms across her chest.  “I’m tired.  I need to get to bed, sometime tonight.”

“You want me to go to bed undernourished?  Let me finish this last thing, and then I’ll take you back.”

I finished the entire omelet, and all of the sides that came with it, dragging it out to the last.

“You flying or driving back to Vegas?” I asked her, as I finally took her back to her hotel.

“I have a flight in the morning.  Early.”

I nodded.  I’d driven, as this trip had been a last minute impulse; I’d learned about the show the morning prior.  Also, I liked to drive.  If I thought I had a chance in hell, I’d have put some real effort into getting her to drive with me.

“Well, I drive in the morning.  Let me know if you miss your flight, or just want to sleep in, you can come with.”

She didn’t respond.  I hadn’t thought she would.

I walked her in and got a room there myself.

I tossed and turned all night, obsessed with the fact that she was under the same roof, somewhere.