Pride and Pancakes

by Ellen Mint

  Beth broke away, panting as she breathed in the masculine heat of Tristan’s body. At this rate, she was going to wear him down to a puddle, but a satisfied one. Still, as she drew her fingers to the rising standing ovation, Beth wondered how many condoms were left.

  “We don’t need this.” She moved to pluck the guitar off his lap, but Tristan reached for it.

  “Wait, wait.” While he held it in his arms, he darted a guilty look to her. She couldn’t be mad—he’d put in a lot of exhausting work over the day—but she couldn’t escape the disappointment either. Time was not on their side.

  Tristan extended the guitar above him with one hand and curled the other over her hip. “Here,” he said while pulling Beth into his lap. Just as before, when he’d tried to teach her how to play, she fit perfectly between his thighs. Though, this time she savored the stiff cock prodding against her spine.

  When the guitar slotted into her lap, Beth looked over her shoulder. “What am I going to play this time?”

  “You’re not,” Tristan said and took up the tune. This one Beth knew in an instant, as did every girl who’d worn scrunchies and watched TRL after school. She rested her fingers on the top of the guitar’s body, uncertain where to go as he played with purpose.

  “You recognize it?” he asked while seeming to know she did.

  “My Half, your…song.” Beth didn’t want to belabor how it was his best-known one, as he seemed to hate that fact.

  “It’s not a love song as everyone assumes. Well, not a romantic love song, anyway.” Tristan waited for that idea to bubble in her brain, Beth trying to remember the lyrics. “It’s for my sister. I had a twin sister.”

  “Had?”

  She felt his nose burrow through her hair, Tristan careful to avoid the lump as he pulled Beth tighter into his grip. Rather than dwell on the past tense of his statement, he said, “Tabitha and I were inseparable from day one. The Harty Terrors, our babysitters called us. We’d always try to trick people into thinking we were the other one.”

  “Had to be hard to pull off.” With the other half being a girl.

  “Not really. She’d keep her hair short, or we’d wear hats. I think people mostly looked at the clothes anyway. God, she loved putting me in the pink tutus our great aunt would send her. And I’d always go along with it because Tabby swore it’d be funny.”

  Beth laughed along with him at the memory, her brain trying to conjure the image of stern Tristan in something so frilly. But in doing so, it slipped, placing the lean body into a black leotard, his graceful limbs forever at his full command.

  “There was an accident,” Tristan said, yanking Beth back to reality hard. “A truck t-boned us. Tabby, she…she always took the left side in the back, me the right. But that day, that day we switched. I walked away and she…” His tear-stained voice struggled to form the words. Beth parted her hands over the top of his fingers as if she was directing the music.

  Pulling in a breath, Tristan gasped out, “She didn’t. For a long time, I thought it was wrong. God got it wrong. Tabby was the real star, everyone knew it. Skilled at the piano, much better voice. Hilarious and charismatic, born for the spotlight. But all that was left was me and blood-stained glass.”

  Beth spun on his lap, her palm curling to his cheek. The guitar thudded with a twang to the couch as Tristan embraced her. Salty tears dripped to her hand, Beth ignoring them as she tried to focus on the man ripping himself to the core before her.

  Pulling in a breath that stung of glass, Beth said, “Survivor’s guilt is…” Images flashed through her mind, not of the war-torn refugees fleeing from the missiles, but the families after. When they’d been washed, dressed, fed, covered in a shell of normalcy. But underneath they were screaming, one half begging to move on, the other unable to leave.

  “I know, I’ve heard that quite often. A few discount therapists here, some higher-degreed ones later. Mostly after Sasha.”

  That must have broken him, to carry so much blame in his heart only to lose another girl he thought it was his job to protect. No wonder he’d fled from not only celebrity and California but music in general.

  Beth wrapped her hands around him, tugging Tristan deeper into her embrace. She wanted to comfort him, to soothe away the years of pain, but there was little a near-stranger could do. Even his closest friends and family seemed to struggle with it.

  Why is he revealing this?

  “I thought that…” he whispered, his forehead nestled against her neck. Each puff of breath curled down the wide neckline of the borrowed sweater. “You probably wanted to know.” As he raised his cut hand, the white bandage she’d finally knotted around it visible, a wagon-load of truth struck her.

  This had nothing to do with the song. It was a symptom. It was his cracking when the ice did, that fire of panic that feared she might be consumed the same as his sister. Same as Sasha. For someone he’d only known for three days.

  Tristan rose from her forced hug, using his wounded hand to try to tame his wild hair. It was almost impossible after it had dried in a haphazard fashion, but Beth leaned closer to help. She wasn’t a settler, had forever chased that next spark of interest in her younger days. Trained to hide her emotions when she’d learned how to tie her shoes, she had no true self to show. Other people did the confessing—to her father, to her. That’s what being a good interviewer is, removing yourself from the subject as much as possible.

  But she’d told him things about herself she hadn’t whispered to anyone. Only Madeline knew about the book, Beth’s father trying to change the subject whenever she broached it. And about her mother. God, she hadn’t thought of her mother in years. Certainly not the pain, the fear that Beth was tainted. Forever tagged as the child then woman that no one could want.

  Why did you tell him?

  “So now you know. Sorry.” Tristan winced as if he was trying to hide away. Even while naked, his shell struggled to reform, like climbing inside a statue of himself. Marble never cried. “The song, I mean. It, um, puts people off to learn the truth.”

  Beth smiled. “It’s beautiful.”

  His eyes opened wide in shock, the blue depths glimmering by firelight. “What is?”

  “Your song,” she explained, fearing he thought she was referring to his pain or loss. “The truth, hearing it and the depth, it makes…it makes it more beautiful, not less.”

  Beth bent over to pick up the guitar. Tristan brushed his fingers against her back until she scooted into his lap. His warm chest supported her, the arms slotting around her body as she situated the guitar. “How about you teach me how to play it?”

  Tristan leaned closer, hot breath tickling down the nape of her neck. His “It’ll take a while” admitted to how novice she was. If he’d said as such upon their first meeting, Beth would have ripped into him about his sometimes rudimentary poetry. Now, after just two days of peeling back the protective layers, she snuggled against him.

  Tipping her head up so she could stare along the line of his jaw, she said, “We have all night.”

  * * * *

  To his surprise, Beth was deadly serious about learning his song. With only the fire to keep time, he had no idea how much passed with his legs enveloped around hers and her warm body leaning against his chest, but he’d guess at least an hour. While the occasional butchering of a song he knew inside and out would bring a flinch to his face, the adorable cursing from the woman holding the strings made him smile.

  “Damn it,” she muttered for the hundredth time, restarting the tune once again as if she’d sworn on her own grave that she’d get through it without a dropped note. A foolish endeavor as there was a guitar solo in the middle that he hadn’t taught her, but Tristan wrapped his forearm around her waist and nuzzled the back of her neck. The scent of the forest rested in her hair, pine trees and crackling bonfires, of Christmas in the mountains.

  “Mmm.” The strumming slowed, Beth leaning back into him. He dodged to avoid her bump, which thankfully seemed to
be deflating. “Is my teacher not paying attention?”

  Tristan trickled his fingers from the warm wool of his sweater piled around her belly down to the naked thighs below. There wasn’t much flush skin to find, the rest cut off by his guitar, but the warm pull intoxicated him. “I am enraptured,” he whispered against her nape and goosebumps pricked off her thigh against his resting fingers.

  “Good, because I’m going to get this,” she assured him while beginning once again. Beyond Tristan’s natural abhorrence of singing when not at work, the fact that he’d have had to warble the same first verse endlessly kept his lips shut. There was also the delight of pressing said lips to her shoulders, often using his chin to expose the soft flesh below his cruel sweater. His sweater kept her body from him, his guitar her legs. Why were his own possessions in league against him?

  Chuckling at the thought, he glanced to the crackling fire. Her lacy bra and panties dangled off the mantel like stockings waiting to be filled by jolly St. Nick. He’d certainly like to fill her panties three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

  Fuck’s sake, Harty. What is wrong with you?

  Chastised by his own conscience, Tristan tried to focus on the music, but his thoughts of her glistening ass cupped in his hands had an unsurprising effect. Rising as if it intended to strike the stars, his dick found itself ensnared between his thighs and said tempting derriere.

  There were two options available to him—release his grip upon her body and pull himself free, or try to picture his old music teacher Mrs. Bellheim in a bikini. Tristan chose avenue three and slid Beth forward on the couch.

  “What are you…?” she stuttered, clearly mad about losing the song, when he guided her back. As her rounded cheeks cupped against his erection, she said, “Oh.” Tristan could hear the blush in her words even if the physical evidence was hidden by that damnable sweater.

  While there were few sights sexier than a woman fresh from bed and dressed in only his long sweater, he wished he could remove said obstacle and toss it onto the fire.

  Her panties were on the mantel.

  A lascivious grin wrapped around his lips as he curled his left hand over the body of the guitar. The right found itself at the apex of her thighs, waiting for an invitation inside. “What are you doing?” Beth asked, annoyance in her tone, but as he began to stroke his fingers back across her pubic hair, her breathing increased to a pant.

  Placing his chin on her shoulder, he said, “Helping.”

  “I can do this,” she insisted, even as he felt the gates to heaven cracking open.

  “Of that, I have no doubt,” Tristan purred, his words forming kisses against her neck. “But I’d really enjoy”—he jerked once with his hips, reminding her of the effect she had on him—“fingering along with you.”

  “That…” Beth gulped, her beautiful head jerking to a fast nod. “I’d love that.”

  “Begin with tab three,” he said. His left hand was on auto-pilot, trailing along to match Beth’s haphazard tempo. His right hand held his full attention, Tristan gliding his fingers back and forth atop the crest of her thighs. Was it his imagination, or were they quivering?

  To his surprise, Beth’s quick lesson stuck, her notes keeping him on his toes. As she shifted to the chorus, Tristan slipped a finger straight down through her slit. Curling it back in, he dipped the tip inside, soaking it in her rising wetness before circling around the aroused lips pressing against him.

  Gasping, Beth dropped a note, her fingers scrabbling to keep up just as Tristan glissaded to her clit. That deserved all the attention in the world. Smoothing over the hood, he took his time savoring the rising pulse of the pleasure entrusted to his care. A moan from deep in her chest did wonders for his self-esteem, but it did throw off the song again.

  Slowing his left hand, Tristan whispered, “Best be careful.”

  “Oh?” Beth gulped, her body trying to rub against his exploring fingers in the tight quarters.

  “Dropping a note would lead to punishment by my teacher,” he said, pressing kisses back and forth across the nape of her neck, all while keeping both his hands busy.

  “God,” Beth gasped, struggling to shift down the neck of the guitar in time as he ramped up his trilling. The gentle swirls were increasing in tempo, the panting bouncing her ass against his straining cock. One or both of the sensations caused her to drop her hand fully from the guitar, Beth crying incoherently as he dipped back in for another turn.

  “So…” She shivered as the final notes of the guitar rang out through the cabin. Swallowing twice more, she looked upon him. “Do you intend to punish me?”

  It was Tristan’s turn to gasp, her question freezing him as he churned over the possibility. Hurting her was…he never wished to do such a thing. But if she enjoyed it? “Would you want me to?” he asked, his mouth dry even as he dove to the wettest place on earth.

  Beth’s unrestrained moans and gasps provided a distraction, Tristan dipping his mouth to suck on her shoulder. The bite was little more than a pinch, but she clamped tight around his finger, her body trembling. “Perhaps another time,” she admitted, the words struggling to escape as he danced his fingers up and down her thighs.

  Pivoting her head, she stared deep into his wild expression. “When I really deserve it.”

  Holy hell.

  Tristan pulled his hand from the guitar and dove under his own sweater across her warm body. Gliding it up her trembling belly, he curled his hungry palm and kneaded into her breast. As her head dropped back to his shoulder, Beth’s exquisite eyes shut in bliss while he strummed her nipple. All the while she tried to grind on his fingers, the index drifting from her clit to inside. She strained to open her legs wider to let him dive deeper, but they were trapped between his.

  Raising his leg from the couch, Tristan twisted his calf around Beth’s and pulled. Her cry of surprise was quickly overrun by a moan as he extended both legs outward. Now he had more than enough room. While plunging first one, then two fingers inside, he danced his thumb against her clit. All the while, he cupped one breast then the other, darting across her nipples in an unending chase.

  Beth squirmed to try to match his pattern, their locked-in legs sinking toward the floor to drag their bodies with them, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “God, God,” she babbled, raising her hand from the couch to rustle through his hair. She dug her fingers in, pulling him to her whims.

  Dipping down with her yank, Tristan placed another kiss to her shoulder, circling a figure eight over her clit with his thumb.

  “Please, please. Fuck, I love that callus!” Beth cried while rocking her hips with him.

  Just as he plunged his fingers as deep as they could reach, he bit her shoulder. A hiss rocketed through Beth’s lungs, her nipples straining from between his pinch as she pleaded for more. Or relief. Or salvation. He couldn’t tell as most of it was incoherent.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she whispered, her breath whiffling as she tipped back against him. In an instant, her entire body crumpled inward, her cunt pulsing around his fingers. He slipped out, resting his hand on her thigh as Beth succumbed to her orgasm. All the while she babbled like a woman possessed, her abs crunching her in and out as she did sit-ups on his lap.

  “Fuckin’ hell.” Beth finally returned to him, her wild look fading to the warm browns he knew.

  Drawing back the hair that had fallen from her convulsions of pleasure, Tristan whispered, “How was that for punishment?”

  “I think you’re trying to encourage me to fail.” She laughed, her face radiant as she abandoned that stalwart guitar and spun to lie on his stomach. God, the feel of her breasts pooling on his naked chest, her belly caressing his groin, reminded him of how hard he’d got strumming her.

  Tristan tried to shake it off, focusing on the woman stretched out on him. “I’m afraid my teacher credentials are in question…” He began to laugh it off when she scratched her nails along his thigh. His very naked thigh next to his crotch, all without a stit
ch of clothing impeding her requests. The firelight danced in her eyes and Beth licked the edge of her lips as she began to slide downward.

  He moved to sit up on instinct, as if to follow the draw of her chin down him. All the while, she beamed up at him, daring him to look away, but Tristan couldn’t. He was entranced, watching as her lips parted. With the softest whisper of touch, her bottom one lapped around the crown of his cock.

  Oh, God! A groan escaped from his lips, the image of her tasting him far more erotic than the light shiver of pleasure from his penis. A puff of hot breath bounded against his cock, Beth finding her undoing of him funny. He wanted to join in, but her tongue lolled out and slicked clear around the tip.

  Her heat sent waves crashing up his spine, the wetness driving his hips thrusting out to pursue the promised land. But Beth dipped lower, starting the flat of her tongue at the base. She flitted right above the nest of hair, gliding his tightening skin over the hardening core with just her lips.

  Tristan held on for dear life, his toes clenching in anticipation as she climbed ever higher. But, right at the crest, she paused, listening to him suck in breaths as if he’d run ten miles.

  Did she want him inside her? That could be a problem.

  Why did I only carry two condoms?

  Because the chances of being trapped with a gorgeous woman you can’t stop fucking for days with no way out seemed rather unlikely. So much for always being prepared. His brain churned through a thousand problems, his tongue falling slack as he tried to work up the nerve to tell Beth it couldn’t happen.

  Flicking her tongue off her front teeth, she opened wide and plunged him into her mouth.

  Fuck! She swirled her tongue around him as she pulled him to the back of her throat. A perfect cacophony of warmth and wetness drove Tristan to bite on his own lip. Every roll of her mouth, Beth twisting her head back and forth to increase the friction, sent him babbling.