Bad Things (Tristan & Danika #1)

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Bad Things (Tristan & Danika #1) Page 27

by Lilley, R. K.


  “Deal,” he said softly, drawing me to him. “Let’s start fresh, and forget about all the mistakes I’ve made.”

  “We’ve made,” I chided, letting him pull me close.

  We were in the middle of a casino, slot machines clinking in the background, and I didn’t care. I let him kiss me. I’d let him kiss me anywhere.

  It wasn’t a light kiss. It wasn’t a romantic kiss. It wasn’t innocent, or casual, or appropriate for public.

  It was a down and dirty, suck at my mouth kind of kiss, demanding, hungry, and perfect.

  By the time he pulled back, I was clutching at his shirt, and shaky at the knees.

  His mouth went to my ear, his voice rough and unsteady. “I need you. Now. I can’t wait even a minute to be inside of you.”

  That had my brain go fuzzy as I tried to figure out what he could mean. He didn’t keep me in suspense for long, pulling me into the nearest women’s restroom.

  It was huge, with marble floors and counters, and stalls with doors that went floor to ceiling, covered in opaque glass that frosted as you locked the door.

  The stalls were so big, in fact, that they could accommodate a beast of a man like Tristan.

  One woman gave us a strange look as she walked out, and we walked in, but luckily for us, she was the only one we came across before we were locked away.

  Tristan pushed my back hard into the door of the stall.

  I licked my lips as he worked himself loose from his jeans, his cock already huge and throbbing for me. He bunched my skirt up at the waist, running a finger over my cleft. He sucked in a breath when he found me wet.

  He didn’t even take off my panties, just shoved the thin thong aside, both hands pushing my skirt up, and lifting me. He pushed into me with a hard stroke, and a rough groan.

  “If anyone comes in, they can see our shadows through this door, so I need to make this quick. I need you.” Each word he said was a rough pant into my ear.

  I moaned, gripping at his shoulders as he ground into me.

  He was in a hurry, but even then, he still saw to my pleasure with a soft touch on my clit, and hard thrusts into my core.

  “I love you,” I cried as I came.

  With a rough cry, he followed me.

  It was a hell of a walk of shame through the casino to the valet. “I need a shower,” I muttered, tugging my skirt down as far as it would go.

  He squeezed my hand. “We’re just lucky it’s so late at night that no one came into the bathroom.”

  “True. I doubt we could have pulled that off if it wasn’t nearly four in the morning.”

  He kissed my hand, giving me his wicked smile. “We could have. We just would have gotten ourselves arrested in the process.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I think I fucked the drunk out of you. I’ll have to remember that little trick.”

  I giggled, because I was way more sober than I’d been when we’d started, so it was kind of true.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  My next jealous fit had a different start, but the same ending. Of course, everything between Tristan and I seemed to end with sex. Good sex. Great sex. The best sex.

  A few weeks after Dean and Tristan moved into their apartment, they threw a huge house warming party. The place was packed, so packed that once I lost sight of Tristan, he stayed lost for a good thirty minutes.

  I should have known something was up when Dean cornered me in the kitchen the second we were separated.

  “Chinese and English,” was how he began, reminding me once again why I didn’t like him. I knew what he meant with the vague start, because I’d played this game way too often. It was the ‘guess Danika’s race’ game, and I loathed it. One of my favorite things about the Vega brothers was that neither had ever played this stupid game with me.

  “Wrong and wrong,” I told him, my tone flat.

  “Swedish and Vietnamese,” he tried again with a greasy smile.

  “Wrong and wrong.”

  “Why don’t you like me, Danika? You’re dating one of my best friends. You should try to be nice.”

  “Ditto.”

  “You never even smile for me. I smile at you all the time.”

  I gave him a forced smile that was all teeth. “Better?” I asked.

  He nodded, not acknowledging my sarcasm. “Japanese and Norwegian.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Close enough. Japanese and Russian.” It was always an awkward subject for me, since I’d never know the other half of that equation.

  “That’s a fucking hot mix, let me tell you. Between your body and your eyes, I’d say you got the best of both.”

  “Gee, thanks, you sweet talker.”

  “Sassy piece of work. My favorite kind. I bet you fuck like a wildcat.”

  He was crowding me into the counter, and I pushed on his shoulders, officially done with the conversation.

  He didn’t budge, just pushing closer.

  “What is your problem? Why do you thrive on stirring up shit?”

  His smile was huge. “Do I need a reason? Don’t you ever like to light things up just to watch them burn?”

  I shoved him hard, getting past him and away, troubled as to whether I should tell Tristan about how Dean had just acted. It seemed like a lose-lose scenario to me. Either it would get Tristan mad at his friend and bandmate, or at me. Lose-lose.

  I found Jared passed out on Tristan’s bed, Cory in the living room making out with some chick, and Kenny in the hallway chatting with people I’d never seen before. No one knew where Tristan was, and the apartment was not that big.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out that he had to be out on the balcony, or gone.

  The balcony that attached to the apartment was small, and sat right off the living room. The blinds were drawn, making it look like no one was out there. I checked anyway.

  Tristan was out there, and he wasn’t alone.

  I’d only met Natalie once, but I recognized her even from the back and with dim lighting. Apparently she’d made an impression on me.

  I stepped out onto the balcony oh so quietly.

  Tristan’s profile was facing me. He was leaning against the rail, drawing on a cigarette and giving his ex his inscrutable smile.

  She had both of her hands on his chest, leaning into him, her voice low and earnest as she spoke quietly to him.

  Her nails were bright red, and so it was easy to follow their movements as she stroked them over his chest to punctuate her words.

  Her voice was soft, but I caught a bit of what she was saying.

  “I saw your new girlfriend. What is she, like, sixteen? What the hell, Tristan?”

  Tristan’s mouth twisted into his bitter smile. “Well, she’s not sixty, so I can see why you’d be confused.”

  She smacked his chest, lightly, and her tone was more playful than offended. “When are you going to get over that? And when did you start robbing the cradle?”

  “Jealous, Nat?”

  Every word they exchanged denoted a sense of their history. The fact that both of their voices held a strange note of affection amidst the catty things they said to each other told me a lot of things that I really didn’t want to hear.

  My heart twisted in my chest.

  “Of course I am! We were each other’s firsts, Tryst. That’s not something you forget. Or do you?”

  “Of course not, Nat.” His tone was gentle, almost tender, and I thought I might be sick.

  “So tell me what a sixteen-year old can do for you? You know I’m single again, right? Don’t you miss me? I know you remember what I can do for you.”

  His wicked smile showed me that he was more than a little drunk, but that was no excuse for his revealing reply. “I remember very well.”

  I couldn’t bear to hear another word, and I was moving, striding to them, gripping a hand into her hair to wrench her away from him before he’d finished his sentence.

  I used even more force than I intended, sending her sprawl
ing somewhere behind me. I glared at Tristan, feeling jealous and hurt and betrayed.

  He straightened. “Danika—”

  “What is she doing here?” I asked him, wondering just how deep this went, but knowing that, even if it was shallow, it still felt like a deep cut.

  “Dean invited me!” Natalie said, out of breath as she got back to her feet behind me. “You know I went to high school with them, right? That was about the time you were starting kindergarden.”

  “Fuck you, Twatalie,” just sort of slipped out.

  “Danika—” Tristan began, his tone annoyed. With me.

  I exploded.

  “You two can have each other! Have fun being whores together!”

  I tried to storm away, but Tristan stopped me with a hug from behind. “Danika,” he said again, squeezing hard enough to get my attention.

  “Nat,” he addressed his ex. “Give us some privacy, please.”

  She didn’t say a word, just walked back inside, looking putout. That was fine with me. She was lucky that all she lost was a handful of hair.

  Tristan’s mouth moved to my ear, and I elbowed him hard in the abs. I didn’t even get a satisfying grunt of pain out of him, which infuriated me, too. In fact, I didn’t think there was anything that could calm me down just then, though I would have liked to throw some plates.

  “Whatever you’re thinking that was, you’re wrong,” he explained very quietly.

  A bitter laugh burst out of me. “You know who else said that to me? My ex, right after I caught some girl with his dick down her throat.”

  He squeezed me again, both arms pinned to my sides. “Don’t compare me to him. I’ve never lied to you. I’m not a liar, and I’m telling you that was just two people who used to be friends talking.”

  “You’re still in love with her,” I accused, not keeping any of my pain at the notion out of my voice. “I could tell just by the way you talked to her. You wanted her to be jealous of me. Is that why you invited her here? To make her jealous, so she’d want you back?” My voice was shrill by the end of my little tirade.

  His arms tightened again, his voice a frustrated growl in my ear. “You’re being ridiculous. We were talking, and that was it. I don’t have feelings for her. I haven’t for years.”

  “You were flirting with her,” I snapped.

  He moved his lips to my neck, pressing there so softly that it made me shiver. “Maybe I was, but it was harmless.”

  “Harmless?” I tried to elbow him again, but my arms were locked down tight, so I tried kicking my heel back into him. He didn’t even seem to notice when my shoe made contact with his shin. “How was it harmless? It wasn’t harmless to me. It hurt like hell to see you flirting with your ex!”

  His hands were on my arms, and he started stroking softly, a soothing motion, his face nuzzling into the spot just behind my ear. “I didn’t think of it like that. I thought it was harmless, because it didn’t mean anything to me, but I’m sorry if it hurt you. You’re right, that’s not harmless, and it won’t happen again. Just understand this, even if we weren’t together, I’d never go near her again, not like that. I know that woman too well to ever want to lay a finger on her, okay? And I don’t need anybody but you.”

  I took a deep, trembling breath, finally convinced that what I’d seen hadn’t been two exes that still wanted each other.

  “But, sweetheart, listen carefully, when I say that I don’t need anybody but you, what I mean is that I never have. I need you. I’ve never needed anyone or anything the way I need you. I need you in a way that would break me if I lost you. Being with you makes every part of my life better. Every second I get with you is the best second of my life. I’m not good at expressing myself, not like you are, but I treasure this thing between us. Don’t think I don’t.”

  I nodded, my heart racing. He’d never said anything so revealing to me before, and I savored every word like it was a feast. And I’d been starving.

  His mouth moved back to my neck, kissing and biting at that tender flesh.

  I gasped.

  “I need you. Now.”

  “I think you might just enjoy it when I have jealous fits,” I told him.

  “I just might,” he murmured, biting down on that tendon between my neck and shoulder. “But let’s not pretend I don’t want to fuck you just about every waking moment, regardless.”

  “Let’s not,” I agreed, almost laughing now. The man could give me serious mood swings.

  “I need you right here, right now.”

  “Here, here?” I asked dubiously. “Here as in the balcony, in the middle of a party?”

  “Here, here,” he affirmed, his hands sliding down my arms, gripping onto my wrists, pulling them out from my body.

  He nudged me forward two steps, wrapping each of my hands carefully around the top of the metal rail that ran the length of the balcony. Even his touch on my hands was a caress.

  “Hold on,” he warned.

  I gripped hard, instinctively obeying the command in his voice.

  It was a hot summer night in Vegas, and so I wasn’t wearing much. He slid my little khaki cargo shorts and panties down my legs with one smooth motion. I stepped out of one leg, not bothering to step out of the other side of the shorts. Hell, I didn’t even kick off my flip-flops. It wasn’t that type of a fuck.

  Tristan’s hands ran up my body, starting at my ankles, up my calves, over my ass, across my naval, finally going to the front clasp of my bra to snap it open. He freed my breasts from their confines, but left my little white tank, and even the straps of my bra on. It wasn’t that type of a fuck, either. This was a direct access, get at it as fast as you can kind of fuck, and I was right there with him.

  His knee moved between my legs, nudging them a few inches farther apart, and I heard him unfastening his own shorts, and pulling himself free. He rubbed his bared erection along my already slick sex, over and over.

  I stared over the balcony’s railing, thanking God that it was dark, and that his apartment was facing away from the other buildings. We were on the third floor, but even in the daytime, I would have only been looking at a large concrete wall and the desert field beyond.

  His mouth was at my ear, telling me in detail just how good I felt, as he worked himself into me. One of his hands slid up to pluck at my breast, his other moving to grab my hip hard as he seated himself to the hilt. We both let out a low groan as his hips made solid contact with my ass.

  Balcony sex should have been a quickie, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t a rough race toward the finish. He brought me over twice in a row, with his perfect strokes and his magic hands, and the sexy things that came out of his mouth. He took his time with me.

  At some point, someone began to open the sliding glass door. The door itself was quiet, but the racket they made moving the blinds out of their way was loud enough to give us warning.

  “Go back inside and shut the fucking door!” Tristan barked out, not even slowing his strokes. Sure enough, that worked like a charm.

  And strangely, hearing that rough command in his voice, that raised voice he almost never used, brought me over with a helpless little moan.

  That had him moaning and jack-knifing into me, shouting out my name with his own release. “You like it when I yell at people, huh?” he panted into my ear as he leaned hard against me, both of us recovering.

  I didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge the question. I wasn’t sure what to think of it myself.

  He nuzzled his face into my hair as he pulled out of me, doing it slowly, making me want him all over again just from the long exquisite pull of him.

  I turned into his arms after he’d gotten loose, throwing my arms around his neck, and then, when he hugged me back hard, lifting me slightly, my legs around his waist.

  I kissed his ear. “I love you,” I said, never able to hold back the words.

  He squeezed me, kissing my cheek in the sweetest way. “Thank you for that, boo.”

  I tr
ied not to let myself be hurt by that all too neutral response to my nowhere near neutral feelings.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The words he didn’t say started to weigh on me more and more as time went by. I knew that I’d fallen way too fast for him, but as we approached the one month mark of our relationship, it started to feel like, if he didn’t feel it yet, then he never would, and that thought consumed me.

  I had seen how easy he was with his ex. The sort of careless flirtation, the easy affection he felt, just seemed so brutal to me the more I thought about it. I never wanted to be that to him—a woman who he’d owned completely and would never want again.

  She’d cheated on him, and then he had moved on. I knew this, just as I knew that I would never do that to him, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he could never love me like I loved him.

  I became almost clingy in my affections, which I’d never been before. I’d get upset about being clingy, and become withdrawn, which drove him insane. Clingy, he could deal with, withdrawn, not so much.

  We kept the crazy club hours, and I became worse and worse at my day job, which I beat myself up about often. I loved the kids, loved Bev and Jerry. They’d done so much for me, and had helped me out a lot with school and just general employment, and I knew that I was becoming a bigger flake by the day. Still, I couldn’t seem to keep away from Tristan, not even for an evening, and the man couldn’t stay home for one damned night.

  The band started playing every other weekend at Decadence, and that was both heaven and hell for me.

  I loved to watch Tristan on stage, the way his presence seemed to suck the very breath right out of a crowd.

  If the place was so packed that the room got warm, he’d whip off his shirt, tucking it into his belt, and boy did that get a reaction. I saw him naked all the time, spent hours staring at his beautiful body, but even I was blown away by the sight of him, tattooed and huge and toned within an inch of his life, the cut of his abs even more stark when he was belting out a song. That was the heaven. That and his voice washing over the throng in deep, intoxicating waves, making me warm all over.

 

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