“It’s too much,” I gasped, one hand flying up to grip at his hair, the other reaching for the coffee table.
I could just reach the edge of it.
I scored my nails across it, and the soft dark wood finish gave under my fingers.
He’d have a bitch of a time hiding the damage.
He brought me over like that, with that torturous circling and his relentless fingers.
I was still clenching on his cock as he shifted, rolling me until I was pinned flat on my belly below him, his hand pushing down hard on my shoulder.
He began to move with purpose then, deep thrusts that pounded me into his couch.
“Fuck, Danika.
Do you have any clue how often I think about this?
It’s a wonder I get any fucking thing done, when my mind is always right here, buried in this divine cunt.
Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed this?
Missed you?”
I whimpered, but he wasn’t done bombarding me—with his thrusts or his words.
He kept at it, cursing, praising, rutting, caressing.
Meanwhile, I could barely get a breath in, my face was being pounded so deep into the sofa.
He shouted, his voice rough and low, as he came, grinding into me at that perfect angle.
I was close to coming again too, so close that I started cursing him as he pulled out.
“Shh, sweetheart.
I got you.
Let’s go to bed.
I’m not even close to being done.”
He got off me and helped me up from the couch.
I pulled my pants up awkwardly, feeling disoriented.
“I stood up too fast,” I told him.
You couldn’t go from facedown, ass up, to upright and not have to pause to get your bearings.
He pulled me close, propping me against him, his arm thrown around me.
He nuzzled into my hair, into the sensitive spot just behind my ear.
“Come to bed with me,” he said very, very quietly.
I didn’t respond, didn’t think I needed to, since he’d already begun to tug me with him to the stairs.
I paused in the door of his bedroom, needing a moment to take it all in.
The huge painting on the wall, of me, was of course the first thing I focused on.
I still couldn’t believe he’d done that.
Who the hell bought a ninety thousand dollar painting of their ex and put it in their bedroom?
It was so twisted.
And dammit, some part of me thought it was the sweetest thing he’d ever done.
After a time, my attention shifted to the rest of the spacious room.
I sized up his bed.
I wasn’t pleased with what I saw.
It was intimidating.
It was huge and red and built more like a miniature house than a bed.
I shot him a look.
“That your torture chamber?”
“It’s a modified reproduction of a Chinese wedding bed.”
“That didn’t exactly answer my question.”
He began to undress me, starting with my slacks.
When his hands went to my panties, I moved away.
“Let’s get in bed,” he urged softly.
I shook my head, still staring at that bed, getting more agitated by the second.
“Why do you have a bed like that, Tristan?”
“Come on.”
He grabbed my hand, trying to tug me toward it.
I shook him off.
“Is there anything you want to tell me?”
I licked my suddenly bone dry lips.
“Any
surprises
you have for me?”
He sighed deep, ran a hand through his hair, and just stood there, looking very uncertain for a man with a bed that looked like it belonged in a BDSM playground.
I set my jaw and moved to it.
When he tried to follow me, I held up a warning hand.
“Stay there.”
My voice was cold.
It was beautiful in a way, painted red and carved intricately.
Determinedly, I climbed inside.
The mattress was soft.
It didn’t even hurt my knee as I crawled across it.
When I spotted the row of drawers at the head of it, my suspicions were confirmed.
I didn’t even have to open them, though I did.
Handcuffs.
Ropes.
And a shitload of other things that I couldn’t have named, but knew the purpose of.
I moved back to the opening of the bed, swinging my legs out, and just perching there for a long time, my mind racing.
My eyes snagged again on the picture of me.
He must’ve had it for months.
How could that possibly go over well, a sexy painting of your ex looking down on all of your sordid kinky bed activities.
I pointed at the painting.
“What the fuck is with this kinky shit?
I think that’s actually worse than the restraints.
You like my painting to
watch you
when you fuck other women?”
“Such a pretty girl, such a dirty mouth.”
He sounded resigned, but still fond.
I glared at him.
“Don’t get cute with me.
Explain this messed up shit to me.
Now
.”
“I haven’t had anyone in this bed in ages, okay?
There’s nothing for the you in that painting to watch.”
He paused.
“Well, except for copious amounts of jacking off.
But other than that, Painting Danika should have nothing to complain about.
And frankly, in my mind, Painting Danika loves to watch me jacking off.”
Eyes wide, I just kept shaking my head at him.
He shrugged, trying and failing to look sheepish, then looking down while he outright smiled.
“Too far?”
I ignored him, still fixated on those restraints and the comment about no one in the bed for ages.
The comment was easy to reconcile, when I recalled that he had that hotel suite at his disposal.
And the restraints, well, it’d be a lie to say I hadn’t had a clue he was kinky.
I just hadn’t thought it was this essential to him.
The bed reminded me of a lifestyle.
It reminded me of Frankie.
“It was Frankie and James, wasn’t it?
Did those kinky fucks bring you over to the dark side?”
He started laughing.
Hearing my own words, I started laughing, and neither of us could seem to stop for the longest time.
“It was you, actually.”
That confused the hell out of me.
“How do you figure?”
“It started with you.
The submission, the restraints.
I don’t have a fetish, but I definitely found a preference.
With you.
When I started dating again, my, um, sexual triggers were just desensitized.
Not being able to get high didn’t help, not back then.
I just needed a little extra something, to make things exciting, because it was hard for me to get excited about anything at all, for a very long time.”
I looked down at my feet.
“You know what?
Let’s not talk about this anymore.
I get the picture.
But just to be clear, if you ever try to spank me, I’ll probably knee you in the balls.”
He laughed.
“I don’t spank.
You know what I do.
You
like
what I do.”
“God, the things that can happen in six years and still it feels like no time’s passed.”
“I don’t know how I even did it,” said Tristan softly.
“Looking back from here, I have no idea where I found the strength to let you stay out of my life for so long.”
I looked down at my fidgeting hands.
“You’re a strong guy.
It looks, from where I’m standing, like you handled it just fine.”
“You were always the strong one.”
My brows drew together.
“Bullshit.”
“Let me finish.
You were.
Just because you’re a girl, and you don’t get into fistfights, doesn’t mean you aren’t tougher than me.
You faced your pain head-on.
You always have.
I can’t tell you how much I admire that.
I wish I were like you.
I have from the beginning.
There is no one I admire more.
You don’t run away from
anything
.”
I was sitting on his bed, we’d just had sex on his couch, and we were pretending this was
friends
, and so this made me crane my neck to look at him, my smile wry.
“What do you call all of this?
Being together like this, pretending it’s only friendship?
Don’t you think
denial
is a form of running away?”
He came and sat beside me on the bed.
Without a word, or seemingly any effort, he plucked me into his lap.
He pulled me hard against him, wrapping his arms tight around me so I was facing forward.
I couldn’t see his face in this position.
“You aren’t in denial, so this isn’t running away for you.
For me, perhaps, but not for you.”
I barked out a short laugh.
“So what would you call it, in my case?”
“Pity.”
His voice was a quiet, reverent utterance.
“You’ve taken pity on me.
And I’m in denial, telling myself that it’s more for you, like it is for me.”
I couldn’t breathe in his arms.
He wasn’t playing fair.
He knew it and I knew it and still, I didn’t walk away.
“We can’t keep doing this, Tristan.
You can’t keep saying these things to me if we’re going to have any hope of staying friends.”
There was more desperation than conviction in my words.
“I can’t stop, Danika.
Please don’t ask me to.
Even if this is the set up for the fall of a lifetime, I still can’t walk away, and I can’t back off.
Don’t you see?
I feel alive now, and I can’t go from feeling this and back to
nothing
, back to getting by a day at a time,
surviving
, instead of gripping onto every second that passes, wishing that each day would never end.
Knowing every day that you’re in the same building as me, that you’ll talk to me when I come to see you, that you’ll laugh for me, and make me laugh, and even, if you’re feeling very charitable, you’ll let me hold you sometimes, let me touch you, and even be inside of you.
Don’t you see that I’m living on hope right now, and that hope is sustaining me like nothing else could?
So I’m sorry, but I have to keep doing this.
I’m not strong enough to stop.
I never was.
Like I said,
you
were always the strong one.”
My eyes were shut by the end, my lips trembling.
“Oh Tristan, what are we going to
do
?”
“Whatever you want, sweetheart.
Whatever you allow.”
I knew I needed to leave, to get out of that house before it went too far, but I didn’t have the strength to try to break free of his arms just then.
They weakened me, not with their strength but with their tenderness.
I let him hold me for a very long time, but sometime in the night, I did find the strength to get up and leave.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DANIKA
Tristan was either suddenly very interested in one of the Vegas gallery’s featured photographers, or he’d found a new approach to getting me to spend more time with him, because he set up a private showing after hours in the gallery the following Thursday.
I’d been putting him off, so I tended to think it was the latter.
The alarming thing about that was my reaction to it.
I felt giddy with anticipation even after all of the things he’d said that should have had me running in the opposite direction.
It was the evening of my day off, and since I was the only one that handled showings like this, I found myself getting dressed up and coming in to work at nine p.m.
I dressed seductively and not subtly so.
This was not an outfit I could have gotten away with on a normal day at work.