by Kate Morris
“What is this? Are these…are these scars?” she asked, feeling the grooves.
He nodded, his eyes unable to move from her. Avery wasn’t looking at him, though. She was staring down at the places her fingers were touching all up and down his arms, which caused his muscles to jump.
“From war?” her light eyes darted up to meet his, and Tristan shook his head. “What from?”
“Cigarettes, cigars,” he admitted before his brain could stop his mouth. It was only the second time in his life he told anyone about them. The first had been to her mother. He told other people they were from working on cars, doing construction, or other dumb excuses. Avery just looked back down at his tattooed arms. She shook her head. Great. She hated his tattoos. He knew that. He wished he’d never gotten a single one. What she did next couldn’t have surprised him more. Avery lifted his thick forearm to her mouth. Then she pressed tender, sweet kisses on those scars, healing them and his internal ones at the same time.
“Avery,” he said in a husky tone and slid his hands from her hips into the hair at the side of her face. There was an ocean of sadness in her beautiful eyes. He hated it was there and wanted to make it go away. “Don’t be sad,” Tristan said.
“I hate that someone hurt you like this,” she said softly as a tear slipped down her cheek.
He whisked it away, then pressed his forehead against hers. “It’s okay. Just don’t be sad.”
“Help me, Tristan,” she said as he leaned away from her again. Her hands clenched his forearms more tightly this time as he rested his forehead against hers again. “Make me not sad anymore.”
He drew an unsteady breath and nodded. Slowly, Tristan lowered his mouth toward hers and pressed a soft kiss against her slightly parted lips. He’d never kissed a woman like that before. Usually, it was just fast, hurried, rushed, and each taking their own pleasure. With Avery, it was all different. All he wanted was to take away her pain and replace it with bliss.
Her delicate intake of gasped air made him grin. She was so innocent and sweet. His mind argued that Avery probably wasn’t wanting him to kiss her to make her not sad. Her eyes were telling him something else, though. He knew only one way to help her. Tristan pulled back and then leaned in again. This time he kissed her more deeply, getting a soft little moan from her in the process that was adorable yet sexy. He wanted to kiss her like this every morning.
Tristan pulled back and pressed his forehead to hers again to cool his heels. This was not the time or place. The kids needed them, Spencer was on his way, and the timing was just bad. She had surgery two weeks ago. The list of reasons not to just kept compounding, but she was not plagued with indecision. She ran her hands up his chest, exploring his pecs. Avery Andersson, good girl, gripped two fists full of his t-shirt and pulled him closer again. The kids could wait a few more minutes.
“Kiss me again, Tristan,” she implored quietly.
He gripped the back of her head and ravished her thoroughly and invaded her sweet mouth with his tongue. His other hand slid back down and landed on her bare thigh. As if the heavens above just opened, so did her thighs, and he settled between them. It wasn’t enough. He needed her against him, so Tristan gently slid his hand around her bottom and pulled her until she was snug against his erection. She gasped beautifully again, like he knew she would.
In a turn he would not have expected in a thousand years, the sweet girl in his grip, reached behind her head and tugged his hand free. Then she trailed it down over her shoulder and lower until he was cupping her breast. She nodded and held her breath when he squeezed. She was perfect, as if she were made just for him.
Her own hand was sliding between them to grip him through his jeans. Tristan’s eyes popped open with surprise. Then he grinned against her mouth and continued the onslaught of plundering her mouth for everything he could take. He kissed her neck and shoulder and lower. Next, he kissed her breast through the sheer lace of her naughty little bra, one of so many he’d had to wash the last week.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, now. Please.”
He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant until her fingers were working the button on his jeans. Tristan’s brain wasn’t working as well as she was managing that button, though, because he didn’t stop her. She had him free in the next moment and bit his neck. Damn. She was kind of a vixen. This girl was not who he thought she was. He’d never underestimate her again as her hand moved up and down on his length.
She moaned low in the back of her throat and leaned her head back, giving him the most intoxicatingly sexy view he’d ever witnessed in his life. Tristan kissed her neck and trailed back up to her mouth. His hands were everywhere. Literally all over her body. He squeezed her nipple through her bra, getting another soft cry. His hand was touching her through her panties and gently massaging her.
“Yes,” she said throatily. “Yes, Tristan. Don’t stop.”
He had no intention of stopping. Clearly.
Tristan’s other hand skimmed over her hip and up her waist. Then he ran into the staples. Damn. The staples. He needed to apply the cream and cover her wound again. But she felt so good, and she was making the cutest, sexiest little sounds.
“Tristan,” she whispered, and that was the sexiest sound of all- his name on her mouth. “Please. I want this. I want you.”
“I want you, too,” he said. That was pretty obvious by what she still had in her hand. “But not like this Avery.”
“What?” she asked, her mind not registering.
“The kids,” he said.
“Lock the door,” she answered with her head back again and her eyes closed as he slipped his fingers under the barrier of her panties. Her logic did make sense.
Part of him wondered if she was just depressed about her family and was looking for escape for even a few minutes. He didn’t want it to be minutes, though. He wanted her for hours. He didn’t want to be an emotional bandage. He wanted all of her.
However, she was angling herself toward his tip.
“Tristan, now,” she begged and ran her other hand up under his shirt and over his nipple. Now he was groaning. Then her nails dug in. It hurt, but not in a bad way. Where had this side of her come from?
“Avery, we need to stop,” he said like a dumbass sissy.
She was having none of it. It was like some sort of weird college frat party role reversal scenario. What the fuck? Was he trying to save his virtue? Jesus, she was begging him.
“No, no, don’t stop. I need you,” she said. Her eyes opened, and she looked at him with a flash of anger, “Now.”
“Fuck it,” he swore and kicked off his jeans. Then he lifted her, pulled her legs around his waist and carried her to the bedroom. He laid her gently on the bed and locked the door. When he came back to the bed. She was naked. He blinked hard. Well, shit. That was fast. She really was serious.
“Hurry,” she urged. Damn, she was kind of bossy in the sack. “I need you. Now.”
Tristan needed no more encouragement, though. He came down over her carefully so he didn’t hurt her or her stitches. Then he ran his tongue along her neck. She was so damn sexy in that lingerie but lying before him nude was even better. He’d thought about seeing everything under those naughty bits of lingerie. Thought about it a lot. He wanted to lean back and stare for a while, but she wasn’t in the mood for slow.
“Hurry. Now,” she demanded and took him in her hand again and lifted her hips until they were touching.
Tristan snatched her hand away and held it above her head. Then he rolled his hips against her, teasing her. His head was pounding. The noise loud and solid. She was clinging to him with her free arm and had one leg hooked over the back of his thigh. The restraint was killing him. He reached between them and pushed an inch inside of her tightness.
“Tristan and Avery! What the hell?” Kaia was calling and pounding the door. That was the pounding. It wasn’t his head.
He cleared his throat and called back, even though Avery did
n’t seem to care because she was kissing his neck and still trying to pull him down against her bare chest. “Yeah! We’ll be right down! I’m just…helping Avery with her bandages.”
“Fine. Shit! Renee and Spencer just called. They’re ten minutes out. Hurry up!”
He could hear her sister’s feet on the stairs again. Tristan ran a hand over his face, still poised at her entrance, which was slick with her passion. He moaned when she arched her back.
“They can wait,” she whispered and kissed his mouth again, licking his top lip, which made him groan with frustration. Tristan closed his eyes and plunged his tongue into her mouth like he wanted to do with other parts of his body into her body. She did, too. Avery raised her hips again, trying to take more of him, but he pulled his back a little.
“We need to go down,” he said. “You don’t want the kids to know what we were doing.”
She was panting, ready, perspiring like a Swedish goddess all spread out on the burgundy satin sheets. She was a picture. He couldn’t help himself. Tristan smiled widely.
“There’s always later tonight when they go to bed,” he said and kissed her lightly on the mouth. Then he rested his mouth at the pulse point of her neck where her heartbeat thumped rapidly against his lips.
She cooled slightly and nodded. “Promise?”
“You better lock that damn door if you don’t want me coming up here tonight.”
She grinned. “I’ll hold you to that.”
God, he wanted her. He didn’t want to go downstairs. He could hear classical music piping through the sound system down there, but his body was screaming for release. She’d told him once that this room was soundproof so their father could rest and recover from jet lag. He doubted the kids could even hear them.
She cupped his face and kissed his chin. Then she went back to gliding her long fingers across his chest and abdomen.
“Why are you doing all this for us? You left the military. You haven’t once said you want to find your own family. You just take care of us. Why, Tristan?”
“Not us, you,” he corrected and leaned his forehead against hers where he took a deep inhale of her intoxicating scent. His thumb worked circles against the center of her nerve endings between her legs. She panted so sweetly against his mouth. They were both highly aware that he was still pushed just barely inside her body. He was also not wearing a condom, something he’d never done with a woman before. Her fingers tangled in his hair as she licked the base of his neck. “I love you, Avery Andersson.”
Avery’s head snapped up. “Y-you do?”
“Yeah, I do. I love you. I’ve never been in love before, so I know this is the real thing. I think I’ve known for a while. I just didn’t want to admit it. I wanted to leave. Get outta’ here as soon as I could get deployed again. These feelings scared the shit outta’ me, but not anymore. When I thought you were…” he groaned. “I went crazy. I don’t want to lose you.” He paused and kissed her mouth just once. “I love you.”
She reached up and pulled his head down roughly, kissing him with everything she had. Then she lifted her hips and yanked Tristan forward with her strong legs. He couldn’t hold back any longer. She wanted him to finish what they started, and his mind and body were in perfect synch with hers. Maybe it was the mixture of confessing his feelings and just completely surrendering to that, or maybe it was the fact that she wanted him to finish consummating their relationship right this second. Either way, he wanted this, too. He gave up and allowed her to pull him inside of her and helped by pushing his hips forward.
The resistance of her barrier gave way as if it, too, knew he couldn’t be held back by it. He groaned into her neck at the feel of himself fully embedded to the hilt and relished the fact that he knew he was the only man ever to have done this with her. He wanted to ask her what happened to their plan of waiting until tonight, but at the moment, all he could think was how good she felt, how tightly her body hugged him, how slick she was with passion for him. This was no time to talk, and he began the ritual of making love to her. He’d also never made love to anyone, not in the truest sense of the phrase. With other women, it was all about himself, and they took whatever they could get. Wanting to take it slow, because he’d felt her barrier put up a fight a few seconds ago, Tristan moved carefully so as not to hurt her further. She didn’t seem to want that. Avery pulled him forward harder and down onto her quickly with her thigh muscles wrapped around the backs of his legs. That had to have hurt, though. He was certainly not an undersized man. Anywhere. He knew it was supposed to be painful for a girl the first time. She didn’t seem to agree with that.
“Yes, yes, Tristan,” she said in a lower register than she normally spoke. “Don’t slow down. Please.”
He sped up, touched her everywhere, sucked at her flesh, and slid his hand between them to continue his onslaught on her bundle of sensitivity. And finish she did. She damn near exploded. He had to cover her mouth as she clenched him tightly everywhere and inside, too. Then he grinned and finished, too, with a hard moan that he had to stifle in her neck and hair and pillow.
It was brief, not what he wanted with her at all, had lasted less than ten minutes tops. He’d wanted to languish for hours over her, kissing and teasing and playing. That plan went out the window. Mostly she tossed it out.
That made him grin as he kissed her neck and then her cheek. “What happened to tonight?”
“Tonight is still on,” she panted with a terribly feisty grin. “Definitely on. And tomorrow, too.”
Tristan kissed her slow while still also grinning like a fool.
“Unless you can’t do it that often,” she asked.
He chuckled, “I can do it as often as you can keep up with it. I don’t think you want to try that theory, either, Angel. You’re gonna need to walk again eventually.”
Her glittering eyes told him she was up for the challenge.
He just wanted to stay where he was and linger with her in bed, explore her body further, and make her climax again. Instead, he pulled back and said, “We need to go down.”
“Right. Suspicion and all,” she teased and pressed her hips upward against him.
“No, geeze,” he reprimanded, pushed her hips back down with one hand, and withdrew from her as he felt himself growing hard again already. “I’m not a machine.” He could be for her.
“It feels like you are.”
“You’re awfully demanding. And…surprising,” he said as he pulled his shirt over his head, retrieved his other clothes from the bathroom and pulled those on, too. Instead of round two, he grabbed a washrag to clean her up.
She was still on the bed languishing in the afterglow as he swiped the washcloth gently against her, “Surprising. Why?”
“I just didn’t expect that,” he said and leaned over her, pressing his hands into the pillow on either side of her head. “You’re a little hellion in bed, Avery Andersson.”
She bit her lower lip and grinned. Tristan kissed her grin away. He didn’t care if this was the first time she’d smiled in the past week. If sex was going to help her get through her depression, then he was signing up to fill the position of sex slave. That new title worked just fine for him.
“Take your time,” he said and kissed her again. “I’ll tell them you…”
“Just had the best sex ever?”
He chuckled, “How would you even know, homeschool girl? It’s not like you have anything to compare it to.”
She smiled widely and rolled to her side, “Oh, I know.”
“Maybe I’ll tell them something else,” he teased and kissed her forehead. She was right about the sex, too. It was the best he’d ever had. All that bullshit about sex being better when you were in love really was true, after all. Who knew?
She laughed as he left and closed the door behind him.
Damn.
Tristan leaned his back against the closed door for a second and considered what just happened. If he thought the world had fallen apart quic
kly, his relationship with Avery just blew those stats out of the water. They went from zero to finish line in the span of less than an hour, and he wasn’t even sure how it happened. Before this morning, he wasn’t entirely sure she even liked him as a person, let alone was attracted to him. He’d never even tried to kiss her yet. There were many times he’d wanted to but hadn’t attempted it. She was so above him in every single way.
It wasn’t until he was outside greeting their friends that he remembered he didn’t help her cover her stitches. She could probably manage, though. He’d only been doing it for her because she was in a depression slump and didn’t seem to want to take care of herself. The same reason he’d been getting her out of bed and damn near dressing her every day.
“Ready for tonight?” Spencer asked him.
“Yeah, you?” he got a nod in return from his friend and now most trusted ally.
“Where’s Ave?” Renee asked.
“Coming. She’s just finishing taking care of her bandages and getting dressed.”
Renee frowned and said, “Is she any better today?”
“Yeah, uh, a little,” he said and had to fold his arms over his chest and cover the lower half of his face with the palm of one hand. He hoped it came off as studious and not smug. He was trying to hide a smile as he remembered her naked beneath him. Yes, her mood was certainly better today. Sexy Avery clawing his back was better than zombie Avery moping around in yesterday’s clothing.
“We need to talk,” Renee said, and her eyes darted to the house. “When Ave…oh, there she is.”
“Let’s go in,” he offered and sent a wave to Kaia, who was throwing her knives with Finnegan. She returned it, silently letting him know she’d watch her little brother. He showed Spencer and Renee inside. “Have a seat. Let me get her.”
