Biker's Virgin

by Claire Adams

  “Will do,” Tristan nodded, leading me straight to the boat.

  I smiled at the men as Tristan helped me into the boat and started up the engine. A few seconds later, we were zooming across the water, and the three men by the beach became little dots in the distance.

  “Okay, seriously,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  Tristan laughed. “You’ll find out in five seconds,” he said.

  I looked out into the horizon, and after a moment, I saw a little island in the distance. It was a tiny mass of land surrounded by shaded trees. I could make out a small structure enclosed within all the green. It looked like something out of a fantasy novel.

  I wanted to ask more questions, but I was so consumed with the view that all my questions dried on my tongue as I admired how beautiful it looked. As Tristan pulled up on the shore, I realized that the house was possibly the only man-made structure on the tiny private island. The house itself was shrouded from view, and I could only see a few white shutters and a large ornamental balcony from my vantage point.

  Before Tristan had docked the motorboat, I jumped out and ran into the island. It was lovely, and as I walked further in, the trees shielded the whole island from the sun’s harsher rays. I realized there were steps leading up to the house, whose architecture was almost Victorian in its intricate little details.

  “What do you think?” Tristan asked, coming up behind me.

  “This place is amazing,” I said. “How did you even find it?”

  “The previous owner was looking to sell,” he told me. “And, I was looking to buy.”

  “You bought the house?” I asked incredulously.

  “The whole island, actually. It’s pretty perfect, isn’t it?”

  “Perfect is definitely one word for it,” I agreed. “I can’t believe you bought a whole island.”

  Tristan looked at me and smiled. “A little extravagant, do you think?”

  “Just a tad,” I teased.

  He laughed. “Come on, let’s go exploring.”

  He took my hand, and we climbed the steps together. The house was a sprawling manor that could have doubled as an estate. “How big is it?” I asked, in amazement.

  “Five bedrooms and seven bathrooms big,” he replied.

  “Looks like more.”

  “The rooms inside are massive,” he explained. “The original owner wanted fewer rooms and bigger spaces. The kitchen and dining room are huge, and the living room takes up half the space on the ground floor.”

  “I can’t believe you bought a house,” I said, shaking my head.

  “It’s an investment,” he shrugged. “And perfect timing, too. I closed this deal shortly before you arrived in Hawaii. Now whenever we need some alone time, we can just come here.”

  I gave him a look.

  “What?”

  “When will we have time to come here, at all?” I asked. “We’re both so busy.”

  “It won’t be like that forever,” he said. “At least, I hope not. We just have to be hopeful.”

  The house’s interior was as lovely as it was on the outside. Tristan had been right about how large all of the rooms were. The furniture was sparse, but it was just enough for a house that wasn’t in continual use. We went through every single room while he went through key points of architecture. He was passionate about it, and it made me wonder why he hadn’t decided to become an architect.

  We circled back to the massive living room, and I settled down on the sofa. “Did you ever think about getting into architecture in college?”

  Tristan sat down next to me. “I thought about it a lot, actually,” he admitted.

  “But?”

  “Dad was grooming me to take over his empire,” he said. “And…I guess I couldn’t turn him down.”

  “Is that one of the reasons why your relationship with him was a little…prickly sometimes?”

  Tristan looked at me and smiled. “I wasn’t aware that you were aware of my prickly father-son relationship.”

  “You forget that I spent half my life watching you,” I said. “I noticed things—the way you spoke about your father was one.”

  “He had a vision for my future, and I didn’t necessarily agree with that vision at first,” Tristan said. “But once I got into his line of work, I realized that I actually enjoyed it. And, I have gotten to dabble in architecture every now and again, it’s just not what I do.”

  “It was lucky that you enjoyed running the empire.”

  “I think about that every day,” Tristan nodded. “If I hadn’t, I’d probably still think about my father with resentment. But as it stands, I just miss him.”

  “I can imagine,” I nodded, thinking about my own parents. “I don’t know what I would do if something happened to my dad.”

  “Before he got sick, Dad was like a machine,” Tristan said, with his eyes far away. “He worked twenty-four-seven. Sometimes, it felt like he never slept. I swore to myself that I would never allow myself to work like he did; but now, here I am, working like he did.”

  “He was probably lonely,” I suggested.

  Tristan turned to me. “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know; I guess I just assume that people who work that much are naturally lonely. Why else would they give their lives over to work?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “I had never considered that before,” he said softly. “And now that you mention it, he never really dated after Mom and he divorced. Maybe that was the reason he was so ambitious. Maybe it wasn’t just ambition. Maybe it was self-preservation.”

  Tristan turned to me and sighed. “We only started seeing eye to eye when we knew we had run out of time,” he shared. “I never got around to asking all the questions that I was curious about.”

  “Like?”

  “Like… Did his career really satisfy him that much?” Tristan said. “Did ambition really fulfill his life? Was that the reason that he and Mom split up or did it come after? He got sick so fast, and afterward it was all about his illness. It didn’t feel right to bring up stuff that was ancient history.”

  I leaned over and hugged Tristan. After a moment, I felt his lips on my head. I turned my face up to his, and we kissed slowly until it turned into a more passionate embrace. When we pulled apart, I could see the hot flame of desire reflected in his eyes.

  “I like talking to you,” he whispered to me. “It’s easy—it feels natural. I’ve never had that before.”

  “You’ve never been able to talk to any of your ex-girlfriends?”

  “No, they were so…removed from my life,” Tristan admitted. “I just couldn’t open myself up to them.”

  “But you can with me?”

  “You’re different,” he said.

  I smiled as he pulled me onto his lap, and his hands pushed up my skirt and started caressing my thighs. I could see his hard-on pressing up against the crotch of his pants, and I slipped my hands down and unzipped him. I lifted myself off his lap so that he could slip off my panties. Then we fucked on the sofa, christening Tristan’s new house.

  After we were done, we embraced one another and lay on the couch, as he played with my hair. “This is nice,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

  “This is all new to me,” I confessed. “I’ve never had a relationship like this one before.”

  He looked at me questioningly.

  “I mean, a relationship that is based on friendship and passion and love and sex. I underestimated how important sex can be in a relationship.”

  He smiled. “That makes one of us.”

  I smirked at him and got off the sofa.

  “Hey,” he called. “Where are you going?”

  “I want to go down to the beach.”

  “That’s a great idea,” he nodded with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Except I don’t have a swimsuit,” I pointed out.

  “This is a private island,” he reminded me. “You don’t need one.”

  He str
ipped down completely and stood before me—naked as the day he was born. I looked him up and down, feeling a little tingle between my legs.

  “Your turn,” he said challengingly.

  I started to strip. When I was naked, Tristan reached out and cupped my breasts in his hand. Then he took my hand and led me out of the house and towards the ocean. I felt like the modern-day Adam and Eve as we waded into the cool water together.

  Once lapping waves surrounded us, I felt a brilliant and inexplicable sense of freedom. It was just Tristan and me, completely naked, surrounded by the ocean under a clear blue sky. It was perfect.

  I felt my desire for him expand once more. This time, I pulled him to me and started to kiss him with purpose. Having sex in the ocean was an altogether different experience. It was harder, clumsier, and unpredictable, but it was also carnal and natural and extremely exciting.

  Tristan fucked me hard as the water pushed us from side to side, and when I came, I threw back my head and screamed without inhibition, without reservation, and without any sense of self-consciousness.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Tristan

  I looked at the pictures lining my wall. They were all pictures of the resorts and hotels that my father had opened before I took over. The last couple of pictures depicted my own projects. They were smaller, modest hotels compared with my father’s, but I had opened them on my own, and for that, I was proud.

  Still, opening a new hotel was never easy, and my first few attempts had not gone smoothly. Which was why I was sitting in my office, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Everything had been going so well lately that I felt as though something had to give soon. I wondered if I was simply projecting my fears about my relationship with Molly onto my career.

  I thought about the last few weeks I’d spent with Molly. I had discovered so much more about her. I already knew she was passionate, kind, and intelligent. But I also discovered that she was decisive, emotional, and fiery. I realized that our opinions about film and art didn’t always match up, and when that happened, Molly would fight to the death to defend her point. She was so good at it that half the time, I found myself convinced. She was persuasive, but she could also be diffident. Just when I thought I had figured her out, she surprised me by revealing another layer of her character that I was ignorant of.

  There were days when everything felt perfect. There were days when Molly was the only person I wanted to be with. She got me; she understood my job and its demands. She never got mad if I missed a dinner date, or disappeared right after sex, or could barely stand still long enough to ask her how her day was. She took everything in her stride. She seemed to enjoy working, and that, too, was attractive to me.

  The flip side of the coin was my fear. The work had still not slowed down. I still had investors I needed to answer to, standards that needed to be maintained, and a chain of other enterprises that needed supervision. Just when I felt as though I were getting my head above water, something came up that pulled me under again. I had been meaning to take Molly back to our private island for a small sojourn, but I’d never managed to find the time after our first visit.

  Some days, I was scared Molly was getting bored with our relationship. Other days, I was scared that I was getting bored with the relationship. Some days, I was simply too tired to be scared about anything. All I knew was that it felt nice to crawl into bed, knowing that Molly was in it, sleeping soundly.

  On a whim, I picked up my phone and dialed in Jason’s number. He answered almost immediately, and the sound of his voice made me instantly regret calling him.

  “Tristan!” Jason said breathlessly. “Long time, man.”

  “You sound like you’re going someplace?”

  “I’ve heading towards a meeting that’s on the other side of this damn building,” he replied. “So I can’t chat for long.”

  “I can call back later?”

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “I want to hear how things are going.”

  “Uh…things are going great,” I said.

  I knew I should have told him about Molly and me weeks ago, but I always managed to find an excuse at the last minute.

  “Molly told me she’s loving the new job.”

  “Oh, you’ve talked to Molly recently, have you?”

  “A couple of days ago,” he confirmed.

  “And what did she say?”

  “Uh…she told me she’s loving the new job,” he repeated, sounding a little surprised by my question. “I’m sure you know that, given you’re her boss and everything.”

  It was obvious that Molly hadn’t told her brother about us. “I don’t see myself as her boss,” I said quickly, avoiding bringing up the topic.

  “Even though you are?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, she’s working with me, not for me,” I said.

  “Whatever you say,” Jason said distractedly. “Did you call to say something specific, bro, or was this just a check in?”

  It was my opening, the perfect opportunity to come clean about my relationship with his sister and yet, I couldn’t do it. I was overcome with this inexplicable sense of fear.

  Once I told Jason, it would be real. There would be no going back.

  It was an irrational fear. Whether Jason knew or not didn’t make our relationship any less real. But sometimes it felt like we lived in a little bubble in Hawaii. It was easy to forget that the same rules applied everywhere else, too.

  “I just called to check in,” I said lamely.

  “Awesome, keep me posted, okay?” Jason said. “I want to know about the resort. It’s just—”

  “You’re busy,” I said, finishing the sentence for him. “Say no more. We’ll talk later.”

  Once we had hung up, I sighed in disappointment. It was silly of me to feel so nervous about Molly. It was just that I’d never been in a relationship like this before. It made me feel weaker and stronger at the same time, and sometimes I wasn’t sure if I liked that. I looked at the pictures on my wall and realized that there were no personal images there.

  My office was cold and business-like, there was nothing personal or warm or intimate about it. Even my desk didn’t have any pictures that we remotely familial. I wondered if I was turning out just like my father. Before he had been diagnosed, he had practically lived in his office. The difference was that he had lost the woman he claimed to love, and I had just found the woman I believed I loved.

  I was trying to sort out my own fragmented thoughts when Ben walked through the door. I could tell instantly from the expression on his face that he wasn’t bringing good news.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, steeling myself for the news. I knew it would only be a matter of time before the other shoe dropped.

  “We have a situation,” he started.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “How bad is it?”

  “It can be controlled,” he said. “But it has to be dealt with fast…”

  “What happened?”

  “One of our guests has come forward with a complaint.”

  “A complaint?” I repeated. “Oh, well, we were bound to have a complaint sooner or later. That’s not so bad; I thought it was going to be terrible—”

  “He’s accused one of the staff of theft,” Ben cut in.

  Immediately I fell silent. Theft was a big accusation, and it wouldn’t bode well for the resort’s reputation if this got out there. The fact that we had just opened made us vulnerable, and bad publicity could very easily break us.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  I groaned and stood up. “What’s he claiming has been stolen?”

  “A diamond choker,” he replied. “Apparently, it’s close to a million dollars.”

  “Are you fucking serious?” I demanded. “The guy’s brought a diamond choker on vacation with him?”

  “He’s claiming to have bought it for his wife,” he said. “For their wedding anniversary.”

  �
�Fuck,” I said again. “This is a nightmare.”

  “I’ve convinced him not to call the police,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “But I don’t know how long he’ll keep to that,” Ben said quickly. “I spoke to him just before coming up here. He looks like he wants to make trouble.”

  “If word of this gets out, we’re not going to fare too well,” I said. “We’re a fledgling resort; we can’t afford any bad press.”

  “How are we supposed to calm the guy down?”

  “Offer him free room and board for…a week?”

  Ben looked at me incredulously. “He’s going to laugh at that offer.”

  “What would you suggest I do?” I demanded.

  “Prove him wrong.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Prove that the necklace wasn’t stolen,” Ben said. “Prove that he or his wife simply…misplaced it.”

  “Then it’ll be his word against mine,” I pointed out. “Which is only going to piss this guy off—if it becomes a he said, she said situation we’re definitely going to be looking at bad press. We’re going to have to handle this quietly.”

  “But I doubt that’ll work for long,” Ben said. “This guy looks like a complete asshole. I think I’ve mentioned him to you once before actually.”

  “Who?” I asked, trying to remember.

  “Mr. Beaumont?”

  I frowned. “The name sounds vaguely familiar,” I nodded. “Why did you mention him to me?”

  “It was the day that the Japanese delegation came in,” Ben told me. “I got here late, remember? Mr. Beaumont was trying to grope one of the staff, a young waitress named Nakoma, and I was handling it?”

  “Fuck, yes,” I nodded, remembering hearing about it from Ben. “This is the same guy?”

  “The very same,” he nodded.

  “And do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know one way or the other,” he said, with a shrug. “Just because he’s a pervert and a cad doesn’t necessarily mean he’s also a liar.”

  “Funny, I would argue that he is,” I said. “Especially considering he has a wife. You mentioned she was aware of the theft, didn’t you?”