by Wild, Nikki
Still, I had to make an effort. “You know we can’t. We’ve already crossed a line. If we go there again, things will get… complicated. I love what you do to me, Tristan, but we can’t continue on like this. Not if we want to make it out unscathed. Not if you’re going to get…” I swallowed thickly and averted my gaze so he couldn’t see the wet sheen in my eyes. I’d scared him off like that once before, back when I was a stupid girl who believed we could be together in a way that meant more than physical bliss. “…married.”
“Where does that leave us, then?” he asked me, propping himself up on one elbow, his eyes searching my face. “I’ll leave it up to you this time, Gwennie. Do you want to go, or stay? Whatever you choose, I’ll protect your reputation. Keep you safe from any of the fallout, should it ever come to that. But I want you to choose. Go, or stay?”
I wet my lips. They were suddenly dry, cracking. My mouth was parched. I knew Tristan’s kiss would sate it, quench the deep thirst rising up inside of me.
But I didn’t know the answer to his question. Go, or stay?
My stepbrother was trouble. Clearly. Always had been. Maybe always would be. He had a knack for making a mess of things, but that was, in some sick way, part of his charm. He was so careless, yet his touch was so gentle. He was so arrogant, so damn cocky, and yet now here he was humbling himself to me, letting me choose.
Letting him go would rid myself of a complication I didn’t need, one of the biggest ones there was. Letting him go would be playing it safe, would ensure that I didn’t get tangled up in my heartstrings again, that I didn’t fall head over heels for a man I could never, ever have, except in secret.
But staying with him would be paradise. At least, for my body. And maybe I could pretend that there was something more there, that we had a future together, until we didn’t. Until it came time to accept that I was never going to be the woman to tame Tristan Wolfe.
And then what? A mental breakdown? Would I become the wino cat-lady, the newest incarnation of all women spurned by their true loves who had come before me? Weren’t there enough of those in the world already?
Either way, it seemed this couldn’t end well. When taken to their natural conclusions, neither option seemed appealing. But maybe, somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, there was a third in there somewhere. My heart leapt at the prospect. I wanted there to be. I wanted a version of me and Tristan that worked out okay, a version I could talk about with our grandkids someday.
I wanted it all. Him. Us. A future worth having. But was it in the cards?
Tristan grazed his thumb across my lower lip. “Go, or stay?”
“Tristan,” I whispered, pulling back. He pursued me, moving with me, his body lithe and powerful against mine, so warm beneath these soft sheets.
“Tell me you want to go, Gwennie,” he murmured, the words oozing from his mouth like hot molasses. “Tell me you want to leave, and I’ll let you.”
I couldn’t. But I moved back again. And again, Tristan moved with me. There was no escape. My pulse was pounding. My sex was burning. My thighs ached to spread.
“Tell me no,” he said as I teetered on the edge of the bed. “Tell me no, Gwennie, and I’ll stop. For good. Once and for all.”
I stared at him helplessly. I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to.
He bent his head, and when his lips devoured mine, I surrendered. No more fighting. I’d been doing that for years. No more struggling and seething and holding on to the worry and anxiety inside me. It was time to let it all go. Start something new.
However long that might last.
I reached up to put my arms around him, lacing them around his neck as he held my waist. Slowly he moved his hands to my hips, cupping their supple roundness, brushing his thumbs against the bones until I gasped and squirmed. I could feel his cock hardening, coming to attention between us, prodding into me. The cold steel of his piercing was a wordless desire, a command: Fuck me, Gwennie. Fuck me.
I drew in a shuddering breath through my nose and let go of it in a whimper. Tristan growled in reply, and as I arched against him, he took the opportunity to dip his hand between my legs. I let my pussy reply in silken, sopping tones: Yes, Tristan. Yes. Anything you want. Anything…
Tristan plunged his fingers between my slick folds, into my opening, his thumb positioned firmly on my clit. He stroked and rubbed and thrust his fingers in and out of me, and I tilted my head back and moaned, digging my nails into his back, his shoulders, his neck as the sheets fell away from us to reveal our naked, entangled bodies.
Everything that had happened over the past few days was crazy. Insane. And yet this, this one thing, felt right. Good. Peaceful. But like it would tear me apart at the same time.
I welcomed it. Only Tristan knew how to do this to me. We fit together so perfectly. How could it be wrong? In my haze of lust, all I could think was that I was made for this man—his status as my stepbrother be damned.
Tristan teased me, pleasuring me yet depriving me of what I wanted, what I needed: his enormous cock. I whined and pulled at him, hands shaking as I stroked his hard, muscular flesh. “Please, please, please…”
“You want my cock, Gwennie?” he asked. God, how I hated that name, and the frustration that boiled inside me only made me want him more. I bit down on his shoulder in reply, and he chuckled. Always the master. Always in control. “I suppose that’s what I’ll give you, then.”
“Yes,” I hissed, waiting for that sweet sensation of being completely filled.
But the bastard—the literal bastard—fooled me. Instead of plunging inside where I need him most, Tristan slid his cock up into my slit, letting his piercing nudge and flick against my wet clit.
“Oh, God,” I grunted, moving my hips, falling into a rhythm. I locked my legs so hard around Tristan’s waist I was sure I’d break his ribs. “No chance this thing vibrates, does it?”
Tristan brushed aside my auburn locks and looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “Not this one,” he said, looking impressed. “But that could be arranged. If I’d known…” He sawed back and forth, tantalizing my most sensitive spot, filling me with such an ache I almost sobbed. “…that you would want it so badly…” I cried out and he grinned, lessening the pressure, pulling me back from the edge he’d just taken me to. “…then I would have prepared.”
My eyes rolled back. I was so heady with desire now that I’d become some sort of wild animal, clawing and beating at Tristan’s back, whining like a whore, desperate to have him inside of me when I came. If he even let me come—the way he was torturing me, I wasn’t so sure.
Just when I thought I’d reached the brink of madness, Tristan pulled me onto his cock, my knees high around his hips, toes curled, ankles crossed.
And then he was inside me. Oh, God, he was inside me. He filled every space, every nook, every inch of me with his hot, royal prick, and yet all I wanted was more, more, more…
Tristan pistoned into me, his fingers leaving little welts in my flesh while he pounded away. I held on for dear life, shrieking and wailing my ecstasy. He kissed me, hard. His lips were like fire, bruising and violent, making my mouth swollen and sore. His kisses were like acid. Like a hit of X in the dark. He was the brilliant strobes of a nightclub. The laser lights. The thrumming bass. He vibrated through me and shook me to my bones.
My breasts heaved against the last remnants of the sheets between us. He liberated me from them. My back spasmed and arced. He pressed me harder, closer to the edge of the bed behind me. I screamed his name and scratched long trails of desire over his body. He gave me more.
And when the bomb detonated inside me, he made the explosion go on and on and on…
I writhed and wiggled as he picked me up and dropped me over and over onto his rigid dick, spearing me, impaling me, sending me into rapturous torment. I slapped and clawed him, my inner muscles pumping around him, begging for that seed he’d given me before so carelessly. We didn’t stop to think about the consequences. I
wanted his cum the way he’d taken mine from me. And I was going to have it, too. He wouldn’t deny me. Not now, when I needed him so badly.
“I want you!” I gasped. “Oh, please, Tristan. I want you!”
And sure as the sunrise, Tristan let go inside me, snarling into my shoulder and holding me tight as rope after rope of his sticky jizz pooled in my womb. I bit his lower lip and kissed him, wiped the sweat from his brow with my hands, and pulled his hair back from his face so I could look into his eyes, the brilliant eyes of my Tristan, my stepbrother, my lover.
His whole body was shaking. His jaw was clenched. His pale skin was flushed. And there was an undeniable smirk upon his lips, especially when he said:
“We can make this work, Gwendolyn. Do you trust me?”
I nodded lazily. It was the only thing I could do.
How could I say no to Tristan ever again?
As it turned out, that question was answered for the moment my stepbrother opened his stupid mouth.
“Well, I suppose there comes a time in every young, royal man’s life where he must take his first mistress…”
Then he laughed. The arsehole actually laughed. And he kept laughing as I stared at him, jaw sagging, in utter disbelief of what he’d just said.
“Your mistress,” I said. It wasn’t even a question, just a hollow repetition of the words that had just dropped out of the mouth that had kissed me. “You… you think I’d ever agree to that?” I said, my brow furrowing so hard it made my face hurt. “You think that I’d ever stoop that low—that I have no respect for myself?”
“Oh, come on, Gwennie,” Tristan said, that petulant smirk still on his face. “All the royals have them. Why not me?” When I didn’t share in his good humor, he tried to pull me close. “Come now, don’t get yourself all in a tizzy…”
“Shut up, Tristan,” I hissed, pushing him away. “For once in your life, shut up. Your mistress?! For Christ’s sakes, your dick is still inside me!”
“I was joking!” Tristan said, his grin fading as I forced him out of my cunt and halfway across the bed. My bed. Christ, the audacity! “Gwennie, come on…”
“Stop calling me that!” I shouted. “How dare you, Tristan? How dare you insinuate that I would ever do something like that—be the other woman, the homewrecker, the…” My voice broke and hot, angry tears welled in my eyes. “How could you think I’d ever become my mother?”
Tristan’s face softened immediately, but that only made me angrier. “You dolt,” I whispered. “You blithering dolt. You didn’t even think about that, did you? You didn’t even consider…”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Gwendolyn, I was making a joke. It wasn’t meant to hurt you.”
“But it did,” I snapped. “It did, Tristan. Whether you meant it to or not. And that makes you an ass—an inconsiderate ass who doesn’t get to decide if you hurt me or not. That’s for me to decide—the one who’s feeling the pain.” I shook my head at him. “You didn’t think… but you should have. I’m not one of your girls you don’t know anything about. You know everything about me, my life story. You’re the only one I ever told about what my mother did to me, how she conned your father, and how she used me to…” I trailed off, lost for any more words on the subject. “Maybe you didn’t think about that because you didn’t want to. Because you didn’t care to.”
“No, Gwendolyn, that’s not… I didn’t…” But he couldn’t come up with any defense. His mouth worked, but his usual Tristan charm and diplomacy was gone. Not even a master manipulator like him could weasel his way out of this one.
“You’re right, you know,” I said at length, covering myself with the sheets. “That’s all I’d ever be to you, isn’t it? I could never be anything else. Nothing official. Nothing that came first.” I snorted. “Not when your money and title occupy that space, anyway.”
“Please, Gwendolyn,” Tristan began, “I can make this right. I was a fool, but what I said doesn’t mean…”
“Get out,” I told him. When he didn’t move, I said it louder: “Get out!”
Tristan’s face crumpled. His eyes were pleading. “It was… just a joke…”
“It wasn’t funny. It was cruel. You are cruel. Now get out!”
Tristan gathered his clothes and put them on outside of the bedroom without a word. I waited until I heard the door close to start sobbing in earnest. I’d risked everything for a few moments of pleasure. My business. My reputation. All of it was on the line. And for what reward? Memories that would haunt me the rest of my life? Pleasure I would never feel again?
This isn’t a Disney movie, Tristan had told me once, when I was young. I’m not your Prince Charming, or your knight in shining armor. I’d thought that was just bad boy rhetoric, that if I could make him see the light, he’d somehow change. But he hadn’t, and he never would. Not until he got married, and some other woman bore his children and made him into the man I’d always wished he would be.
I covered my face with my pillow to muffle the insufferable sounds of my grief. Tristan wasn’t the fool here. I was.
Chapter 74
I had royally fucked myself over twice in a single span of twenty-four hours—a new personal record, to be sure. I couldn’t believe what an ass I’d been, and to Gwendolyn of all people. I couldn’t remember a single time that that girl hadn’t treated me well, and I had joked about how I would make her my mistress. Idiot.
After I’d been so forcefully ejected from my stepsister’s bed, I called myself a taxi to take me home. I hated the look on Gwendolyn’s face, that look of embarrassment and shame. I knew that I’d messed everything up in a way that I’d be hard pressed to fix if this plan was going to work.
I was almost shocked when I felt my cellphone buzz in my pocket, hardly expecting anyone to be calling me, at least not this early in the morning. I pulled the phone out of my pocket, surprised to see my father’s number glaring at me from the bright screen. I almost didn’t answer, uninterested in the idea of hearing that old bastard’s voice to disrupt what was already a perfectly terrible morning. Despite myself I swiped my thumb across the screen and put the phone to my ear.
“Father, what a delightful surprise,” I said, making sure my tone was almost too chipper. “You hardly ever phone me anymore. How are you?”
There was silence across the line and I knew that I’d thrown him. He’d expected anger or annoyance right out of the gate. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction; and besides, I so enjoyed toying with him.
“I’m more than fine, Tristan,” he said, his tone suspicious. “In fact I just came back from the sonogram with your mother—”
“Stepmother,” I reminded him in a song-song voice.
“Evenlyn’s child is growing quite nicely,” he said, his own voice becoming almost… kind. It had to be a trick. “I thought you ought to know, since you’ll be a brother soon.”
“What is it you really want, father?” I asked, “We both know you don’t ever call me unless you have something to gloat about.”
“The fact that I’ve won isn’t enough?” he laughed, that same crowing laughter that put a chill in my gut every single time. “My son will grow up to be a duke, and you’ll be left in squalor… that is unless you’ve begun looking for a wife.”
My stomach clenched as those words curled through the labyrinthine maze of my mind. He had found out—somehow, someway he had figured out my plan to take the title from his “legitimate” heir. But how? How had he figured it out? Surely Gwen didn’t tell him, or her assistant, Tina. But then who else could have known?
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, trying to play the fool and see if he was merely fishing, or if he’d truly been able to figure out what I had thought was such a brilliant plan before it had time to come to fruition.
“Don’t play dumb with me, boy,” he snapped, his familiar anger returning in force. “I’ve seen the pictures of you and that woman. Who is she?”
“I was on a date, Father. Is that so un
usual?” I asked.
“It is when your only hope of taking what rightfully belongs to my true son is marrying whatever harlot will have you,” he snarled. “I won’t have you ruining this, Tristan. We both know that you don’t go on dates with women unless you want something from them. Dating and courtship imply commitment, something you sorely lack.”
“I’m hurt, Father,” I said, hoping to anger him to the point that he would slip up and reveal just how he figured out where I had been the night before. “How could you say such a thing about your own son?”
“You are no son of mine!” he shouted over the receiver. “My son is growing in the womb of my wife! You are an abomination!”
“Oh, Father,” I said wistfully, “I so love it when you bring out the old names from when I was young.”
“Don’t try to play cute with me!” he roared. “I will make you rue the day that you were cut from your mother’s unclean womb! So help me if you try to steal my son’s inheritance I—”
“I only want what I’m entitled to, father,” I interrupted, doing my best at keeping my voice level. I didn’t need to him to know how frustrated I was, though I found it hard to keep the edge out of my voice. “I’m your eldest son, and I will do what I must to make sure that I am the only viable option for your inheritance when the time comes—a time I hope comes sooner rather than later—when you shuffle off this mortal coil and I take everything you ever had as mine.”
“Never!” he barked. “I’ll make sure it’s all burned before you ever touch it!”
“Then I will be a duke of ashes and dust,” I said, “but a duke none the less. And your new child will not even be that.”
“It’ll never work,” he hissed. “You aren’t enough of a man to keep yourself from a life of sin. You’ve always been a failure, and you’ll remain one. You’ll see.”
“I think you’re wrong father,” I said, making a point to sigh loudly. “I have a whole list of women who are prepared to become the next Mrs. Tristan Wolfe, and I really must be getting back to sorting through them all.”
