His hands and the warm water soothed her, unknotting the muscles of her shoulders and around her eyes. He stroked conditioner into her hair, and Colleen closed her eyes to lean back against his firm chest.
The pressure from his caresses dragged over her shoulders, and he was almost supporting her weight as his hands dipped lower. His fingers stroked over her shoulders and down to her breasts, where he tenderly slid his fingers around her nipples, the gentlest touches that fluttered slow ripples of pleasure through her body.
He held one of her breasts in his hand, still drawing lazy circles around the peak with his thumb, and his other hand slid down her tummy.
The delirium of his hands and his muscular body held her helpless as his torso pressed against her back. She raised her arms above her head and looped them around his neck like she was dangling bonelessly from his shoulders.
His lips and softening five o’clock shadow brushed her ear as he whispered, “You are absolutely stunning.”
The ache in her heart was almost physically painful, a yearning for all this and more. His tenderness made her other encounters with men look fumbling, and the feeling of peace was something she’d missed her whole life. The yearning for his touch and his words became loneliness, a recognition of how alone she was in the world.
No one would come to Colleen’s rescue if she texted red flag. If she were absolutely in dire straits, she might be able to call her parents or her siblings, but it would be an admission that she’d been wrong even to try to go to college and do something other than be her parents’ retirement plan and full-time caregiver in their future old age.
After these days were over and Tristan moved on with his life, she would be alone in this crappy apartment again, talking to her internet friends she’d never met.
His fingers crept lower, caressing her and then deepening the soft circles until he was stroking her clit and slipping his fingers inside her. She arched, gasping softly as he quietly, expertly, strummed her body and brought her to another throbbing, mind-blanking orgasm.
While the world was spinning, Tristan moved, and then she was gasping against his chest as he cradled her, murmuring as he turned off the water. After he toweled her hair and body, he pulled her jammies over her head and held her while she stepped into the shorts, and then he carried Colleen to her mattress on the floor and knelt to lay her on it.
“You should take the bed,” she whispered.
“You’re not allowed to say that,” he said, stroking her hair back from her forehead. “What do you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And shall I join you?”
“Yes, please,” she whispered, already drifting off because she was so tired.
After a moment, the lamp clicked off, and then Tristan slid onto the twin mattress beside her, curling his strong body around hers. His arms and chest were thick with muscle, and when he laid his arm across her waist, his weight comforted her.
His lips brushed her temple as exhaustion took over and dropped Colleen into sleep.
She breathed, cradled in the darkness by his steady warmth.
But the following day, she was ready for battle.
In the corner of her apartment with the kitchen, she fretted about the few supplies she had on hand. “I’m sorry that I don’t have bacon or sausage or anything—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Tristan said, yawning.
“But I have cereal, and there still should be some milk in there. I only left here the day before yesterday.”
“That’s great. I’ll have something delivered if we’re going to be here more than a few hours.”
She flipped the cereal box out of the cabinet and caught it. “And while we’re eating breakfast, Tristan, you are going to tell me exactly what was in that goddamn letter that has you so riled up. I want to know everything.”
16
Tristan King Explains It All for You
Tristan
Colleen was glaring at him, her fists braced on her hips while they stood in the corner of her apartment that served as a kitchen, demanding to know what was in that damned letter that had screwed up his life.
Tristan sighed. “Yeah. I suppose it’s time.”
He found a second cereal bowl on a high shelf in the back corner of the cabinets and waited while Colleen played hostess, setting out the cereal and milk on the tiny patch of countertop. At any other time, he would have insisted on taking her to a fine hotel and ordering room service, but these were not normal times.
The studio apartment, which appeared to be fifteen feet wide and about as long, didn’t have a dining table and chairs to eat at, so Colleen rearranged her computer desk, piling the keyboard and mousepad to the side near the desktop system. She said, “I don’t have dinner parties. I eat while sitting at my computer, moderating the Sherwood Forest forum and some other boards. You sit in the chair. I’ll stand. There’s plenty of room on my desk for the bowls.”
“Why don’t you have a monitor?” he asked, settling himself in the computer chair because arguing with her seemed ridiculous. He had every intention of pulling her into his lap when they were done eating anyway. The chair creaked a little under his weight.
“I lent it to Anjali while I was gone. Anjali’s monitor is dying. It’s got stripes, and it flickers.”
That made sense.
Colleen chewed a mouthful of the cereal and swallowed. “Okay, Tristan. Seriously, we didn’t finish talking about the letter. Out with it. There was a letter.”
He poked his spoon into the bowl. “Yes. There was a letter.”
“And you didn’t tell your friend on the phone about it yesterday on the plane,” she said, watching his eyes as she asked.
“No,” he admitted.
“So what was in the letter, Tristan?”
He hadn’t told Blaze what he was being forced to do, and he hadn’t told Micah. If Logan called, Tristan wouldn’t tell him either.
But Colleen—
Because she had been with Tristan in LA and was still with him, she was in harm’s way. She deserved to know.
Not good enough. He could make sure she was out of danger within hours. He could just dump money on her and tell her to get lost, though Micah had a point about them being safer together.
So if they were together, if she might be able to help Tristan with what he had to do, then he needed to tell her.
But he didn’t want to involve her in it.
Because it was immoral. And depending on how he did it, it toed the line of being illegal.
Because the best ways to do it were entirely illegal.
And afterward, when he transferred the stock to the Malefactor’s estate at an artificially depressed price, that was definitely going to be illegal.
But he didn’t have to involve Colleen in that. Indeed, that was a few keystrokes on a computer. Tristan, alone, would do it.
But she was knowledgeable about both computer programming and the financial markets. She could help him.
Rationales for not telling Colleen flashed in his head, each one more desperate than the last.
She would worry.
She would judge.
She would throw him out of her apartment and lock the door, as she should.
And she should have all the information about him so she could make that choice for herself.