The next morning, Colleen awoke in her hotel room, a small suite with a bedroom, living room, and wet bar area. It was the first hotel room she’d ever stayed in, and she suspected she was now spoiled. As a kid, her parents had taken them to the annual campground family reunion up at Big Lake or, twice, a car trip to visit relatives in Gila Bend where she slept on their floor.
She stretched in the luxurious, enormous king-size bed that felt like she was sleeping on a plush football field.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand with an incoming message.
When she picked it up, several notification boxes scrolled down the front of it.
Five were from Anjali, asking, pleading, and then demanding to know if Colleen was all right because she hadn’t heard from her since eleven the previous night.
It was only seven in the morning, but the most recent message was Anjali freaking out that she’d turned into her Indian mother, but she needed to know where the HELL Colleen was RIGHT NOW.
Colleen called Anjali back and mollified her with pictures of the hotel room and the view of the corrugated Pacific Ocean from the balcony outside.
“Do you need an assistant?” Anjali asked, and they laughed and hung up.
Most of her other notifications were requests for a moderator’s backup from the Sherwood Forest forums, and then notifications saying that somebody else had already taken care of it.
She was sore between her legs from the previous night with Tristan, a guilty pleasure.
The bruise on the inside of her thigh, where she’d pinched herself in punishment at TwistyTrader’s command, also hurt, and the dotted lines from his teeth and the suction he’d applied to mark her were also tender.
That was why she hadn’t wanted the light on with Tristan the night before, not when she had a thigh hickey from some other guy right next to her flaps. It was just too embarrassing.
Not to mention the very faint welts on her ass and the backs of her thighs. Even the next day, only faint pink lines had marred her skin, but she hadn’t wanted to explain them, either, if he had noticed.
And speaking of welts, bruises, and hickeys, the last message on her phone had arrived only fifteen minutes before she’d awakened. Twist the TwistyTrader had sent a message asking, Can we speak?
Dizziness shook her, and for a moment she thought there’d been a small earthquake. After all, they were in California.
However, the curtains surrounding the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony were not swaying.
Must just be devastating guilt.
Not that Colleen had any reason to feel guilty. When she’d met Twist at the Devilhouse, they’d both agreed it was a one-time deal. He’d even said that he was probably not going to come back to the United States for a long time, and she knew there was no way she was going to get to Europe, probably ever.
Although his dirty texts had been fun, they didn’t constitute a relationship, as he’d even said.
And so she shouldn’t feel guilty.
And yet, she felt as if that earthquake had caved in the ceiling and she was being crushed.
Colleen typed back, Yeah, we need to talk. I’m kind of busy right now for a few hours. I don’t know what continent you’re on, so I don’t know what time zone you’re in. Maybe we can talk tonight, Mountain Time?
And with that, Colleen swiped out the direct messaging app and turned off notifications because she was sure she would have a busy day. Tristan had told her to be in his suite by eight o’clock that morning, so she had just under an hour to shower and slap some makeup on her face before she had to present herself.
Boinking him last night probably hadn’t changed their schedule for the day.
Colleen rapped on the door to Tristan’s suite with two minutes to spare, her backpack with her computer slung over her shoulder.
Jian opened it immediately. “You’re expected.”
His solemn face gave nothing away, so he must have either not heard them the night before or he was supremely pissed at her for scruffing his boss.
When she entered the penthouse suite, Tristan was standing near the windows, talking on the phone. His suit jacket hung over the back of one of the chairs, and his white dress shirt was open at the collar, exposing his throat where she’d kissed him last night.
Her skin warmed under her clothes.
He saluted her with the coffee cup he held in his other hand and continued talking.
Jian asked her, “Have you had breakfast? I ordered enough for all of us.”
Tristan called across the room to her, “Good morning!” as he lowered his phone and returned to the dining room where a large breakfast, enough for Colleen and all her siblings, was laid out on the table. “Ah, good. You brought your laptop. We got the usual danishes, scrambled eggs, and fruit, but you should let Jian know if you want anything else.”
Colleen sat at one of the place settings and forked two danishes, grabbed a heap of strawberries, and spooned several cups of scrambled eggs onto her plate. “There’s so much! I don’t know how we’re going to eat all this.”
Tristan waved his hand over it. “It’s just here if you want it.”
She glanced at Jian, who shrugged.
Okay, rich people wasted food. That probably wasn’t surprising. Colleen began eating because they had to leave soon.
Tristan’s phone rang again, and he stepped away to answer it.
When she flipped over her coffee cup on its saucer and started to reach for the coffee carafe, Tristan waved his hand and held up a finger. Though he was reciting numbers the whole time into his phone, he walked over to a catering cart Colleen hadn’t even noticed, retrieved a tall paper cup with a lid, and set it in front of her with a wink.
She sniffed the sipping hole in the lid, and the aroma wafting through was rich with espresso, caramel, and cinnamon. When she sipped the caramel macchiato, the sweet and spicy flavor was how she liked it.
Dang, he’d even figured out the cinnamon-sugar sprinkle on top of the extra whipped cream.
Colleen melted a little bit inside.
Between phone calls, Tristan briefed her on the upcoming meeting, which was to be with a wealth management agency with substantial banking ties.
“What do you need all this money for?” she asked him.
He waved his hand as he chomped on a danish and washed it down with black coffee. “A debt has come due. It’s too complicated to explain.”
“Are you sure you’re not in the Mafia?” Colleen asked and pretended like she was joking.
Tristan shook his head as he ate and glanced at his phone. He rubbed his lips with a napkin. “We’ve got to leave in five minutes.”
He rose from the table and disappeared into his bedroom.
Jian was rushing around, checking Tristan’s laptop bag and talking on the phone to the concierge service to make sure the car would be pulled around.
In the mad rush to leave, Colleen checked her purse for some paper and a pen to take notes at the meeting.
Jian slung the laptop bag over his shoulder as he walked, saying, “The car is waiting downstairs,” and he sped out the door.
Tristan came back and plucked his suit jacket from the dining room chair as he walked.
She trotted toward the entrance with Tristan hot on her heels.
Just as she arrived at the still-open door, Tristan reached over her head and slammed it in front of her. “Hey!”
Colleen turned, and Tristan loomed above her, his hand still pressing the suite’s door shut. “About last night—”
“Look, I don’t have any expectations,” she said.
Tristan asked, his tone serious but a little breathless, “But do you have any regrets?”
She lifted her chin to make herself look liberated and fierce. “None. You?”
“Absolutely not. I was wondering if you’d like to go to dinner again tonight? I know an amazing rooftop restaurant here in LA where we can look at the lights of the city and the stars.”
Okay. Okay, this was how adults did dating, or at least how they did hookups.
That tryst with Twist at the Devilhouse had been a turning point for her. She wasn’t going to be ashamed or too caught up in the future or what anything meant. “Yes, please.”
Subtle expressions ran over his face, a flicker of his dark eyebrows and a slight curve of a smile on one side of his mouth, and then he ducked his head and kissed her.
His mouth met hers, and the thrill and delight lifted her to her toes. Dang, he was so tall that he was bent nearly in half to kiss her, and Colleen steadied herself against the door as she tried to rise up higher. The notepad and her purse dropped from her hands, and she reached her arms around his shoulders because his kiss seemed to pull all the attention and sensation in her body to her mouth.
His breath puffed against her lips, and he pulled back for just a second, looking at her with slightly dazed blue eyes before he swooped back in for more and lifted her under her arms.
She wound both arms around his neck and held on.
The door slid behind her back, ruffling her skirt and blouse, and he stepped closer to press her against it. She grabbed him around his waist with her legs, hooking her ankles behind his back, which meant his body ground between her legs.
Her skin tingled. Her breasts felt heavy, constricted in her bra, and her body flushed with wanting him.
Tristan grabbed her ass with his hands, his body rubbing against her as his mouth dropped to her neck. He sucked and raked his teeth across her throat, the roughness so different from his careful, almost tender touch the night before. Colleen raised her head, a low moan escaping from her throat.
The sound seemed to spur him, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her ass and pushing against her. One of his fingers wiggled past the leg band of her panties and pressed inside her.
Her body clenched around his finger, wanting more. Her breath rushed through her body as the thick ridge of his cock rubbed against her clit through their clothes and his finger pushed farther inside her channel.
Tristan growled, “You want this.”
They had to leave. They couldn’t do this right now. “Yes.”
“Take another finger, then,” he grated out, almost snarling, and the fullness within her doubled, stroking that sensitive skin inside her.
She gasped at the invasion that was sending spirals of pleasure through her, burying her face between her elbow and his neck as he drove her toward release.
“You want my cock? You want me to fuck you against this door?”
“Yes, please,” she cried, trying to keep it to a whisper but failing.
“Maybe tonight, if you’re a good girl. Right now, you’ll take three fingers. Come for me.”
He forced a third finger inside her, the stretch almost more than she could bear. With the fullness inside and the grinding of his hard cock and the roughness of her cotton panties scrubbing against her raw clit, her body tightened, squeezing so hard that her thighs vibrated.
“Do it,” Tristan grated out and pumped his fingers inside of her.
The next rub of his cock against her broke through the clench in her abdomen, and ecstasy pulsed through her body and whited out her mind, a deep throbbing that hammered through her. She arched in his arms, gasping, her eyes open and dazzled by the light from the chandelier.
The harsh orgasm slowed and then stopped.
Colleen fought her way out of the stupor blanketing her.
Tristan was watching her intently, his eyes as sharp as those of a predator. “God, you’re hot when you come like that.”
Her body was a trembling mess, and she couldn’t hold onto him anymore. He caught her limp form as she almost passed out. A grunt escaped her lips.
Tristan carried her over to the sofa and sat down, cradling her against his chest. He was warm and comforting as the maelstrom still spun in her head.
Her panties were soaked and cold against her skin down there. She parted her legs a little, trying to keep them from sticking to her, and wiggled to try to shift them.
He chuckled and shoved her shoulder, flipping her backward on the couch. She was too out of it from the brain-melting orgasm to wonder what he was doing.
Tristan grabbed her panties at the crotch, pulled them off her, and then shoved her thighs up to her chest like he had the night before, even rocking her slightly backward with the pressure of his hand on her knees. Then he licked her pussy and upper thighs, cleaning all her stickiness away.
“Oh God, you don’t have to do that!” she gasped.
“I like the sweet taste of you.” And he licked her more deeply, his tongue gently and then roughly slipping through her folds until the tension returned, tightened, and broke into waves of ecstasy through her again.
As she drifted back, the buzzing in her head did not go away this time, and her brain ceased to process anything except the insistent softness of his tongue between her thighs.
She drew a shuddering breath, and Tristan gathered her into his arms. She whispered, her voice rasping, “We’re going to be late.”
Tristan kissed her forehead. “Yeah, I know.”
“I have to stop in my room and get a new pair of panties.”
“Absolutely not. I want to be able to stroke or lick your naked pussy anytime I want. Now pick up your purse and notepad because it’s time to go.”