For some odd reason, my words make his lips curve, make that dimple flash. He turns the hat backward, looking satisfied and suddenly predatory in a way that makes my stomach flip.
“I want to be the one you practice with.” He crowds me against the wall with his heat and his size, so close that I have to lift my face. “I don’t want it to beSeth.”
“Is that why we’re back here?” My mouth parts. “Because you don’t like Seth?”
His pupils seem to blow, and he chuckles, a brief puff of air with no sound. His hand is pressed flat to the wall, and when he dips his chin, his cheek scrapes mine, all stubble and warm skin. I can’t help the arch of my body toward his.
“We’ll go with that.” He licks under my ear, and I whimper at the sudden lash of his tongue. “You think Seth could do this the way I can?” His tone is nearly conversational.
My body is buzzing.
Seth who?I almost say.It’s never been about Seth.It’s only ever been about you.
I want to be in the back of bars with him and riding shotgun in cars with him and I want to be the one he sails with and I want to claw out the eyes of the women he dates, and I hate myself for it.
I get to have Tristan right now when I just spent an entire date wishing he’d been across the table instead of Seth, and I don’t care how I do it. It almost certainly makes me a bad person that we’ve agreed this is practice and I haveall these messy feelings I can’t even give voice to. Even thinking them is dangerous.
So when I say “Do what?” it escapes from my throat like a panicked bird taking flight.
Tristan doesn’t seem to mind any of my weirdness, because he’s Tristan, and he simply laughs and sucks on the crease of my jaw. “Does he make you feel like this?”
I can’t admit it. I fist my hand in Tristan’s t-shirt, and he sucks harder on my skin before he pushes me against the wall with a hand on my stomach. My hands drag a greedy path from his stomach to his shoulders. They’re heavy with muscle, round and firm and made to grab on to while he fucks against a wall.
“Katie,” he murmurs huskily. “Tell me I’m the only one who makes you feel like this.” His mouth meets mine in a soft, clinging kiss, like he’s trying to coax an answer out of me. He tugs on my lower lip.
I make a high, panicked sound in my throat. I don’t know what Tristan’s playing at, but I suspect it’s just his protectiveness and his middle-child tendency to not let anyone else play with his toys, but I don’t care. I just want him to keep touching me, and I don’t want him to know how I feel.
“Please,” I pant.
“Nah,” he rasps. Goose bumps chase from the press of his mouth against my pulse. “I think I’ll have some fun.” His lips graze my collarbone, then he sinks slowly to his knees and fists my dress in both hands. “What about you? Are you having fun?”
“Tristan, I swear.”
He chuckles, and when my hands spear into his silky hair, his lids go heavy. I twist my fingers into the strands, likeI’ve always wanted, and he muffles a small noise against my thigh.
“Here’s the thing.” He inches the dress up, chasing each inch of bared skin with the featherlight touch of his tongue. The slide of silk on skin is butterfly light. Not enough. Not even close to enough, and yet, my skin prickles and my nipples harden and my pulse is heavy between my thighs. His mouth hovers, hot and damp, and I’m desperate for him to keep going, to keep touching me, to keep talking, because I want this, and if all I get is practice, I will take it and I will be grateful for it and—
“I don’t want to share these freckles with anyone.” His lips finally, blessedly, press to my skin and suck lightly, then greedily. “I can’t stop thinking about them, and I thought about him touching them, licking them, tracing the inevitable path.” His voice is dark and he punctuates his words with the hot swipe of his tongue. Need spirals tight in my stomach. “This one’s mine.” He groans. His hand spasms on my other thigh, and I amdrowning. Surely, it’s not meant to feel like this. Surely, it won’t always be like this and I won’t be left wanting when this inevitably ends.
“Are you thinking about him now?” he murmurs. His tongue dips against the crease of my thigh, and I tremble.
“Lower,” I whisper, “and then I’ll let you know.”
He chuckles.
There’s a whoop from the hall, and the sound of clapping.
We both still.
Tristan breathes heavily against my thigh. My nails scrape against his scalp. He’s hard under his jeans, and my stomach pulses with warmth.
More sounds filter in. I want to cry. Is this all I get? Ten minutes in a back room? I barely even got to touch him.
“Fuck this,” he mutters, seemingly to himself. He digs in his pocket, comes up with a permanent marker, and sets it against my skin.
“What are you doing?”
He meets my gaze with blown pupils under his heavy lashes and a determined set to his soft mouth. “This one’s mine,” he repeats hotly. He traces lightly over my skin with the marker, and we both watch the ink bloom in a circle around one of my freckles—where his tongue just was. He connects the freckles I’ve never even thought to love before. I do now. I cherish them.
