I nodded. “Nice. A whole little laid-back family.”
“Ah, hell,” he groaned. “Here you go…”
“Here I go? What am I doing?”
“Making it seem like it’s something it isn’t.”
“Okay so tell me what it is then.”
He sat up, looking me right in the face. “I’m Tristan Grimes. When I was sixteen years old, I met Yvonne, who I thought was the love of my life. When we were seventeen, we fucked up, had a kid. I didn’t have shit else going for me, so as soon as I was old enough, I joined the military as a means to take care of my little instant family. To that end… it worked out, I guess. Me and Yvonne did not – we don’t fit together romantically as adults, but that’s my homie. We do not still fuck around when we get bored, damn,” he chuckled.
“I didn’t even say anything!” I insisted, which only made him laugh harder.
“It was all over your face, as soon as I said homie.”
Fine.
Maybe it was.
“I know you have no reason to believe that shit, especially since you just found out I even had a kid, but… you asked what it was, and that’s it. You’re interested in me, and I’m interested in you. That’s it.”
“Do you think if you repeat that enough times, it’ll be true?”
He sucked his teeth. “Temp, stop playing.”
“Stop calling me Temp.”
“Do you not like that nickname, or no nicknames period?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” I countered. “I said stop saying it.”
“Why?”
“Because nicknames are for… lovers, and friends, and family, and hell… people who actually know each other. And as we’ve established, I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
“Right, and that’s an error I’m doing my damndest to correct, if you’d stop trying to cut me off at the knees. What’s so wrong with some mutual interest between us?” he asked, his handsome face pulled into an attentive scowl as he waited for an answer I didn’t have.
“I should go.”
I said that, but didn’t move until Tristan nodded. “Let me walk you.”
Once again, I found myself grateful for the hint of coolness in the air – it was what I needed to dampen all the inconvenient feelings this night had ignited. Between that fucking poem, the drinks, and Tristan’s undivided attention, my face was hot and my mind was reeling, and I truly wasn’t sure what to do with myself.
I had no idea what I was doing.
At all.
“Please tell me you at least had a better time tonight than when ol’ boy put his hands on you?” Tristan asked, speaking for the first time since we stepped outside. The walk across the street had been quiet, which I didn’t mind.
I was still trying to figure this all out.
“What do you mean at least? Do I seem like I had a bad time?”
“Well, considering the way you were suddenly ready to go, I thought I’d said the wrong thing or something.”
I let out a sigh, pressing my back to the little inset frame of the candle shop door. “The wrong thing is pretty subjective.”
“So what I said was fine, you just weren’t trying to hear it?” he asked, leaning against the opposite side, facing me. “I mean, that’s what I’m hearing.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “Or… maybe I’m tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Me either,” Tristan nodded. “So we’ve got something in common.”
I huffed. “Somehow, I doubt our reasons for not being able to sleep are the same.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I doubt you dream about covert orders and combat situations. Well… I guess they wouldn’t be dreams, really. More like nightmares.”
I met his gaze for a moment, shocked, before it clicked for me that he was talking about himself. As much as I wanted to tell him that yes, actually, I definitely had nightmares about those exact things… I knew I couldn’t.
Or… shouldn’t.
“So that’s what you were so stressed about?”
He blinked.
Then nodded.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, with a deep sigh like he was embarrassed to admit it. “It’s… something I struggle with, a little bit.”
“A little bit, or a lot?”
A dry laugh wrangled from his throat as he pushed a handful of locs back from his face, meeting my gaze again. “A lot.”
“Me too.”
“Hopefully tonight will be better for both of us,” he replied, with zero innuendo in his tone.
My brain took it there, immediately thinking of a way we could end this night with a definite bang, and go ahead and rid the air between us of the pesky sexual tension.
“Do you want to come inside?”
His eyebrows went up, obviously surprised that I’d asked – and hell, I was kinda surprised myself. We’d exchanged nothing more intimate than a hug, but here I was, basically offering him pussy? What the hell was I thi—
“I probably shouldn’t.”
Oh.
I’d, eventually, have figured out how to rationalize having sex with a near stranger – it wasn’t as if that was far-fetched for me, especially considering some of the things I’d done in the name of a completing a mission.
What threatened to break me, was this firm rejection, when I’d thought – when he made it seem like – he wanted me.
Badly.
Shit.
“Of course,” I stammered, pushing out an awkward laugh. “I shouldn’t assume you want to fuck me just because you’ve… been in my face, nonstop, acting like you want to fuck me.”
“Temp, it’s not—”
“Stop calling me that,” I snapped, suddenly back on the verge of tears I’d overridden three times in the last twenty-four hours already. I was out of practice now – I wasn’t sure I could keep holding them back. “And you don’t have to try to spare my feelings – you can go.”
“It ain’t that either,” he countered, pushing off from the wall to get in my face.
“What is it then?”
“This.”
The this he spoke of was an arm around my waist, pulling me against him, and a hand in my hair, fingers tangled in the strands as his mouth came to mine.
His soft full lips against mine, his tongue in my mouth, his hardness pressed against my stomach, his hand sliding from my waist to grip my ass as he deepened the kiss…
I felt it everywhere.
The giddy lightheadedness, the flutters deep in my belly, the throbbing heat between my legs…
This was… everything.
And it was over much too soon.
“I don’t want to come inside tonight, because… I like you. And I would like it to just… be that, before we make it something else,” he murmured against my lips before he finally pulled back.
“You don’t know me.”
He smirked. “And I’ve already explained how I feel about that. So…”
“So, what?” I asked, my heart still racing from the sudden excitement of that kiss.