Colleen stood up and said more loudly, “Okay! Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Excellent!” Tristan said, laughing. “Now for your first decision as the CEO of GameShack.”
“Oh, Jesus. What?”
“As the CEO of GameShack, you can live anywhere in the world you want. You can live on a ranch outside of Phoenix, or in a penthouse in New York, or in a high rise in Hong Kong.” Tristan looked out to the Mediterranean Sea again, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Or on a yacht in Monaco.”
Colleen chomped down on her lower lip so she wouldn’t crack up. Oh, that sweet, sweet man with abandonment issues. “Like, what? Like, maybe I should buy a yacht right next to yours?”
His glance back at her was sharp, but he was smiling. “That sounds like such a waste.”
“I know. But what else could we do?” she asked.
Tristan wrapped his arms around her and bent to kiss her temple. “I suppose, if you wanted to, there might be enough space on the Ark Nemesis.”
She snuggled into his arms and squeezed him around his chest. “Well, I suppose.”
Tristan’s hand slid up her back and into her hair as he pressed her face against his chest, and they stood there in the buffeting sea wind and Mediterranean sunshine.
Making sure that it was loud enough for him to hear over the wind flapping their clothes and the red and white Monegasque flags flying in the breeze, Colleen said, “I love you.”
Tristan’s arms tightened around her, and he bowed his head to kiss the top of her head as he murmured, “I love you, too.”
Helicopters took off from the heliport half a mile over the harbor far below, and cars drove by on the road around Monaco Ville.
Tristan bent a little farther and whispered in her ear, his voice low, “Good girl.”
60
Four Poster
Colleen
They ate supper with Anjali and Jian on the yacht that night, and then they watched a movie together in the second-floor living room, where the long, curved couch might have seated eight people. A television rose out of a cabinet with the touch of a button on a remote.
They talked and laughed, and it began to feel real that the kidnappings and mercenaries and frantic dashes to an airplane to get the heck out of Dodge were over. Everyone seemed better.
That night, Colleen and Tristan chatted while they got ready for bed, showering and throwing on pajamas.
Tristan reached for her when they got under the covers, stripping her pajamas off again and throwing them on the floor.
She’d thought he might be sweeter this time, but instead, he seemed ravenous. There was a note of command in his hands and mouth, an insistent domination of her body, from the way he pinned her wrists above his head and took her mouth with his, to how he grabbed a tie from a drawer, wrapped her wrists, and lashed them to one of the posts of the four-poster bed.
He took her with his mouth first, kissing and nipping softly at first and then plundering her with his tongue, sucking, until waves of pleasure rippled up her body.
With one swift yank, he untied the bonds from the bed before flipping her over and lifting her to her hands and knees so he could explore her body, slipping his fingers in to pinch her nipples and running his hands over her ass and thighs as he kneeled behind her.
Her arms and legs trembled, barely holding her up. If she’d tried to touch him or move away, she would have fallen.
He must’ve known that as his hands caressed her shivering thighs.
Her folds were still so sensitive from her first orgasm that his fingers slipping inside her were torture, oh such exquisite torture, and she leaned back for more even as she thought her overloaded mind would burst.
When she was panting with wanting him, needing him, her head hanging and arms and legs racked with shaking, Tristan picked her up in his arms, kissed her as he held her against his chest, and then laid her down on the bed to take her, grabbing another condom from the nightstand drawer.
There was no sweetness or reticence in this, either. He pushed his way inside of her, harshly whispering in her ear, “Take it, princess. Take it all like a good girl.”
She was swollen and wet from his mouth and his fingers, and when he filled her, the friction deep inside dragged her upward to another level of ecstasy.
He lunged into her, bracing his knees between hers and his elbows over her shoulders so she couldn’t slide away. When he rocked into her, he pressed at the end, grinding against her clit.
Every voracious thrust drove her closer to release, a rough ascension that torqued inside her until her mind was blank with a desperate need for him. And one last shove into her and a throb and a grunt near her ear drove her through the darkness and into the relief and bliss of the waves he forced through her body.
Afterward, she lay in his arms, spent and consumed.
Tristan rolled off her and got rid of the condom, and then he was right back, holding her and murmuring to her.
“Good girl. You are such a good girl when you give yourself to me. You’re such a good girl when I take you, claim you, when you take everything I do to you.”
A small part of her brain felt like she should mention the fact that she liked what he did to her, but all that came out was another whispered, “I love you.”
His body entwined around her, crushing her against his chest and in his arms. “Oh my sweet little, I love you, too.”
They lay wrapped in each other’s arms, exhausted, until Colleen murmured, “I suppose I should go get my stuff out of my apartment in Phoenix at some point if I’m going to live here.”
“I’ll go with you,” Tristan muttered, half into his pillow.
“You don’t have to. I’ll be fine. I’ll probably just take my clothes and the couple of things that mean something to me. There isn’t a lot of room aboard this boat, despite it being so big. My desk and monitor were destroyed when the Butorins ransacked my place. As for anything that survived, it’s probably cheaper to buy something over here than it is to ship those old, half-cardboard pieces of furniture.”
“I’ll go with you. You might need me. I’ll make sure you get there and back safely.”
Colleen arched her back, moving back on the bed so she could look into his wary blue eyes. “You know I’m coming back, right?”
“Of course. Of course, I know that,” he scoffed.
She kissed him slowly on the lips, and then she said, “I’m coming back, I promise.”
Tristan wound himself more tightly around her, his arms and legs trembling with strain.
She whispered to him again, “I promise I’ll come back.”
61
Cards
Colleen
“I still think I should’ve gotten you a private plane. This is ridiculous. CEOs don’t fly on public transport,” Tristan said.
He’d driven her to the Nice airport for her flight to Phoenix to begin her CEO inspection tour, and they were standing on the sidewalk outside the terminal while other cars dropped people off at the kiss-and-fly.
Colleen was wearing one of the new pantsuits that Tristan had insisted he buy for her. She had to look the part of a CEO, he’d said, so he’d taken her shopping at the high-end designer shops in the Billionaires’ Shopping Center across the street from the Monte Carlo casino and then to his tailor. The flowing trousers and suit jacket were shockingly comfortable, almost like pajamas.