by K. M. Scott
"So, have you thought about what might work on this wall?"
"No, but I know I want it to be something that says 'Tristan Stone lives here' instead of something so gorgeously common and expensive that it could be in anyone's home."
"And what would this piece say about me?" he asked, his interest obviously piqued.
"The man who lives here is intelligent—a man of few words but those he does speak are meaningful."
"I knew I'd like your choices in this. I look forward to seeing what you have to offer, Nina. I'll leave you to your work and be back at five sharp. My hotel and my home are at your disposal. When you get hungry, simply call the concierge and they'll take care of you."
He stood and I moved to kiss him, as I would any other boyfriend of mine who was leaving for work, but he merely nodded and silently walked by me as I stood watching him leave. All I could guess was that I was truly on the job now.
Chapter Nine
By five o' clock, I'd narrowed the potential choices for Tristan's room to three, and I was surprisingly tired. While I hadn't done any physical work at all, my mind had been working overtime all day about what piece would be perfect for the man who lived in this expensively furnished yet characterless penthouse. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to show him that he hadn't made a mistake having faith in me. Most of all, I wanted to give him something that would show what he was in my eyes.
He returned right on time at five sharp looking exactly as he had when he'd left all those hours earlier. Never wrinkled or rumpled, he looked as he always did in his suit, even though that day's was black instead of the variety of shades of grey he tended to wear. The tan dress shirt was different too, but whatever he wore, he looked gorgeous.
"Did you have a good day at work?" Tristan asked in a teasing voice as he walked into the bedroom loosening his tie.
"I did, dear. And how was your day at work?" I asked as I sat on the bed watching him get more comfortable.
"You know how it is. Another day, another dollar."
Opening the closet, he removed his suit coat and tie and turned to face me once again in just pants and a shirt. "What would you like for dinner?"
"Don't you want to know about the choices I have in mind for your blank spot?" I was eager to see what he thought about my ideas.
He shook his head. "No. Once five comes, I don't want to think about work anymore. All I want to think about is you. I don't want you thinking about work anymore either."
Jesus, when he said things like that, my stomach did somersaults. He didn't want to hang out and watch TV. He didn't want to play video games. He didn't want to go to some place with his friends and never consider if I wanted to really go.
He wanted to think about me. Just me.
I was lost. And damn, I didn't want to be found.
He knelt in front of me, running his hands over my thighs and nearly driving me crazy with his touch. "So what should we have to eat? One of your favorites or something new you've never had? Feeling adventurous?"
He looked up at me, his eyes searching mine. The old me, the me before I met Tristan, would have chosen one of my favorites, but as he knelt there looking up at me, I wanted to be someone different than who I'd always been. I wanted to be worthy of feeling sexy and desirable.
"Let's try something adventurous."
"Next question—eat in or out?" he asked as he dipped his head to place a single kiss on the inside of my thigh.
My head was swimming, but I found the ability to squeak out, "In."
He nipped at my skin, sending shivers of pleasure racing up my body. Against my leg, he murmured, "In it is," before he stood and disappeared from the room. A rush of heat covered me and I crashed back onto the bed, barely able to breathe.
The way he was made me crazy. Crazy for him. Crazy because of him. Fucking crazy. He'd left this morning without a word or even a gentle brush of his hand against mine to say goodbye, and he'd returned wanting nothing but me. What was with this guy? How did he do it? I could barely keep my hands off him, and there were times he stood close enough to touch me and never did.
It was maddening. And I loved it. Without force or any restraints, he'd taken over my every thought and feeling, and I was helpless to fight against it. Hell, I didn't want to fight against it. I wanted to let my mind and body give in to everything he offered.
"I ordered seared duck," he whispered as he slid up my body until his lips met mine in a gentle kiss. "I wasn't really in the mood for too much adventure in my food tonight. Do you like duck?"
"I've never had it. What does it taste like?"
"Chicken."
I opened my eyes at his answer. "Really?"
Smiling, he licked his lips and kissed me again. Against the corner of my mouth, he whispered, "No."
"Oh. Will I like it?"
He hovered above me looking down into my eyes. "Yes, I promise you'll love it. My chef makes it with a fig sauce that tastes incredible."
"Are we going down to the restaurant to eat?" I asked, praying to God he'd say no.
He moved his body up mine until his mouth was next to my ear. "We can, if you want. Do you want to leave, Nina?" His voice was a slow whisper that made a delicious ache coil in my belly, and I would have given everything I owned to not leave that spot.
"No," I said quietly as he pushed his hips forward, sliding his hard cock against my panties. "I think here is perfect."
"Good. Have anything in mind for what we should do until dinner comes?" he murmured in my ear as he pushed his hips toward me again.
"You're such a tease."
He lifted his head and smiled that wicked smile I'd only seen once or twice. "Tease? You want me to tease you?"
"No. I hate being teased."
Tristan rolled off me and propped his head up with his hand. He looked down at me, still smiling, and ran his finger over my lips. "You're cute when you pout."
Cute. That was definitely not what I wanted to be thought of. Cute was for puppies, kittens, and little girls. Now I really pouted.
"Oh, more pouting. I must have said something wrong. Let me guess. You don't want me to call you cute."
He was teasing me, and I didn't like it. "I'm glad I'm amusing you, Tristan. Maybe I can dress up like some little girl and you can pick on me like some bully on the playground."
"Someone's touchy tonight."
That was it. I didn't like this Tristan. He reminded me too much of every other guy in the world. That bothered me. He was supposed to be more, better. Now he was nothing but a guy who seemed to have forgotten how to treat me.
I sat up and stood from the bed. "I'm going to take a bath. Let me know when the food gets here."
As I walked toward the bathroom, I felt like crying. I didn't know why either. I knew I was probably overreacting, but something in Tristan seemed less special now, and I hated that. If he was just an ordinary guy with lots of money, then somehow I felt less, like I'd let myself be fooled.
I slid into the tub and let the water run until it nearly overflowed. I wanted to get lost in that water until everything around me disappeared. Behind me through the massive windows the scenes of the city played out, but I didn't want to see them either. I just wanted to close my eyes and pretend nothing had happened.
The water soothed my body, but my head and heart still ached. I sat there with the bath water up to my chin and fought back the recriminations. My insecurities had reared their ugly heads again, and as the water cooled around me, I silently admitted that this wasn't about Tristan.
This was about me. This was about my feeling like I didn't belong here, just like I'd felt that first night when I'd flubbed Tristan's test.
I heard the door open, and he walked silently past me. I didn't want to open my eyes, hoping that if I didn't, I wouldn't have to see the look on his face.
Tristan crouched down behind me and slid his hands over my shoulders. "Nina, I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by what I said."
That only made
it worse. I had caused the problem and now he was apologizing. "Don't. It was all me."
I opened my eyes and looked down at his hands stroking my arms. This situation was desperately in need of some lightening. "This is some bathtub. I think my dorm room was this size."
He chuckled behind me and slipped his hands from my body. "And I bet you shared a room too."
Leaning back to look at him, I watched as he stepped out of his pants and boxers, leaving them in a heap on the floor. I moved forward in the tub to accommodate his body, sending water flowing over the sides, and he slid into the water behind me, taking me into his arms.
Still hoping to lighten the mood, I joked, "I don't remember being this close to my roommate in college. Maybe our dorm room was a little bigger."
Water sloshed against the sides of the tub and more spilled out onto the floor as he wrapped his legs around me. All the times we'd been together, I'd never noticed how long his legs were. They barely fit inside the tub.
"Do you know this is my first time in this bathtub?"
"That makes sense since your legs are almost too long for it."
I ran my palms over his knees and down his shins, feeling the soft hair against my skin. I'd always loved how masculine men's legs looked when there wasn't too much hair so they looked like grizzly bears or too little that I'd wonder if my legs had more when I forgot to shave for a few days. His had the perfect amount in all the right places.
"I think the designer naturally thought we'd sit the other way since the real view is out the window," he said as he moved my hair off my shoulder. "I like this way better."
"Staring at an empty shower?"
He gently pulled my head back to rest on his chest and ran his fingertips across my forehead. "With you."
Two words and he made me want to forget all my insecurities, all my worries about not being enough. He kissed the top of my head, and almost as if he could read my mind, whispered, "I like how you make me feel, Nina."
I said nothing, knowing he probably wanted to hear me say I liked how he made me feel. I wanted to say something—to tell him that I'd never felt anything like how he made me feel—but I couldn't. If he rejected me there, as I sat naked in his arms, or worse, said nothing in return, everything I feared would finally be true. I couldn't handle that.
His arm rested across my collarbone, and I bent my head to place a kiss on his wrist. I hoped he understood how much I loved hearing that I made him feel something good or special. Closing my eyes, I let myself enjoy his body pressed against mine and his strong arms around me. We sat so still the water stopped moving, as if we both wanted to stop time and just revel in this one moment. Finally, he sighed deeply and a tiny ripple slowly moved the water forward until it lapped against the front of the tub and the tops of our feet.
"I could sit here for the rest of time," he whispered in a faraway voice.
I brought his fingers to my mouth and kissed the fingertip of his forefinger, which had begun to wrinkle in the water. "I think you'd get all pruney."
He chuckled and kissed the top of my head again. "Then we'd be pruney together."
No matter how I tried to make the situation light and easy, he always brought it back right to center, right to the core of who he was. Either he said little and indicated less, or he spoke and made me want to forget everything else in the world but him.
He'd been right about the duck. It was delicious, and I did love it. I wondered if things happened the way he wanted them to simply out of his sheer desire to have them happen that way. Some people seemed to be able to manifest their desires like that. In the short time I'd known him, it had merely taken him expressing his wish for something to make it occur. Over and over, I'd seen him get what he wanted, but I couldn't say it was due to power or manipulation.
Life just seemed to give him what he desired.
And what he desired that night was me. We'd barely pushed aside the plates when his mouth was on mine, urging me to meet his passion with my own. My body was thrilled, but my mind found his changeable ways confusing. As we'd eaten, he'd said no more than five words, acting more like my boss than my lover. When I expressed how much I liked the duck, he merely smiled, saying nothing in return and continuing to eat. Then, like someone had turned on a light inside him, he looked over at me and he was that man who couldn't get enough of me again.
He led me over to stand in front of the floor to ceiling windows in the living room, and the view of the city below took my breath away. I stood just inches away from the wall of glass, my usual fear of heights pushed aside by the beauty of what lay before my eyes. High above Manhattan, the entire city seemed to be laid out in all its glory. "It's gorgeous, Tristan. It must be impossible to get to sleep knowing this is here all for you to see every night."
His arms held me tight, and he looked up from kissing my neck. "I never look at it, to be honest."
Turning in his hold, I said, "How can you not? It's so stunning."
He kissed me on the lips and pushed my hair behind my ear. "I don't have the artistic eye like you do. It just seems like a million little ants scurrying around to me."
I traced a line from his Adam's Apple to the hollow right above his sternum, drawing circles in that place where his skin was so soft. His pulse beat lightly under the skin, and I stared at the gentle throbbing against my fingertip. "Everyone has the ability to see beauty. It's just a matter of letting it in. There's beauty in everything. That's art."
"I doubt that."
I looked up, intent on proving I was right. "Do you see where my finger is? Just under the skin is evidence of your heart beating. It's just a tiny pulsation, but it's beautiful."
"And this is art?" he asked, not convinced.
"What's more beautiful than the beating of the human heart?"
He took my finger from his neck and kissed it. "I knew it from the first time I saw you. There's something special in you, something light and good that drew me to you."
His words made me blush, and I felt my cheeks warm. No one had ever spoken to me like this before, and to have someone who could have anyone in the world as he could say this to me was thrilling and overwhelming at the same time. My emotions became jumbled again, and before I knew it, words were spilling out of my mouth letting him know everything in my heart.
"When you talk like this, I think that you might truly care for me. Do you know that? Then I let myself believe it and you turn off your feelings as quickly as they came on. I'm not like that. My feelings don't turn off, even when I wish they would."
"I love that you don't try to censor how you feel, Nina. It's one of the things that makes you so incredible."
His compliment was genuine, but it didn't help.
"I want to be able to censor them, though. I want to be able to do what you do. I want to be able to stand next to you and not want to touch you, like you can do with me."
A tiny look of sadness crossed his face for just a moment and then it was gone.
"You wouldn't be who you are if you repressed your feelings."
"How do you do it, Tristan? How do you control what your emotions do to you?"
He leaned down and kissed me softly on the lips. "I told you. This is how I must be. It's who I am. Can you live with that?"
"Can you promise me I'll always know what's in your heart, no matter what?" I asked, laying bare my fears for the first time.
Cradling my face in his hands, he pressed his forehead to mine and whispered, "No matter what you see on the outside, no matter what I say, what's in my heart will always be just what's there at this moment. You."
He took me there, in front of those windows—in front of the entire city—my body pressed up against the glass as he thrust into me again and again. I clung to him, first to calm my fears that I'd fall through the glass and plummet to the street below and then for the very happiness only he could give me. His hands held me to him, protecting me as he invaded my body with his cock and my heart with his words so passionate I wo
uld have believed them even if they were blatant lies.
We laid on the floor near where we'd made love, his hands worshipping my body as I tried to force my heart to harden over for the next time he shut off his feelings. I'd accepted who he was. Now I needed to accept who I'd have to become to love him.
Chapter Ten
I was sorry to see our time at Tristan's penthouse end. We hadn't done much except make love and eat, and I couldn't remember a weekend I'd enjoyed more. We'd talked about so many things, yet I didn't believe I knew him any better after all those words between us. In truth, he'd gotten me to speak more than he had, but as he'd hung on every word, I felt safe and opened up about my past. My tales of life in a small Pennsylvania town seemed to enchant him, so I'd told him likely more than anyone would like to know about growing up as the younger daughter of a father who was a writer. By Sunday night we were back in the country, me in my part of the house and him in his until night when I once again slept next to him. As always, he was gone when I awoke the next morning, and there was a note waiting for me.
Dear Nina,
Tonight when I return, we'll discuss the piece you've chosen for my bedroom in the penthouse. I look forward to seeing what you believe represents the man I am and have faith that your artistic heart lets you see what no one else can.
Love,
Tristan
I'd made my final decision before even returning to the house, so my day was spent in searching for it. After hours of looking through gallery and art retailer sites, I found exactly what I was looking for. It wasn't priceless or even expensive, but I was sure it was right for him. My heart soared at my success. If I could choose a piece so perfect as to show the man he was, I could do the job he was paying me for and do it well.
Tristan returned shortly before five and found me waiting for him in his office. Like any other employee, I was dressed and ready to impress my boss, sure my first assignment would end in a great success.
Dressed in a pale grey suit and sapphire blue shirt, he sat down behind his desk and straightened his tie. I waited for him to begin, barely able to contain my excitement at my finding. As I watched him attend to paperwork, the thought of how his other female employees saw him crept into my mind. A tiny flicker of jealousy sparked at the idea of someone like me sitting across from him studying his dress and mannerisms like I did. Did she love to watch his mouth as he spoke, wishing to feel his lips on her skin? Did she notice his hands, the long fingers and strong grip of the pen as he wrote a note to himself? Did she find how incredible he looked in his clothes as fascinating as I did, desperately wanting to loosen his tie as she ran her lips over his strong neck?
