Bankers' Hours (36 page)

I gasped again, unable to respond verbally as he took me entirely in and down to the root. I fisted the sheets with both hands.
Toys?
Oh God, I couldn’t think about what that meant while he sucked my dick.

Tristan worked on me, but only briefly, pulling off and letting my cock flop back down as he sat up and removed his shirt. “Will you sit on me?”

“Sit?” I asked, because his intent wasn’t registering through my lust-induced fog.

“Yeah,” he said, removing his pants. “I think you’re probably right about sex with a concussion, so if I’m lying down, relatively immobile, it might be better for me. My head does kinda hurt.” Once naked, Tristan lay on his back with his head on the pillow. “I want you to sit on my dick.”

I felt the heat of an inexplicable embarrassment flush over my face. “Oh,” I said, eyeing his cock as he held it up off his stomach. “O-oh, o-okay,” I stuttered nervously. This would be different for me. So far, we’d only tried a few standard positions. I rather liked missionary position, as it allowed me to kiss him, hold him, and watch his face. I was relatively passive. Tristan did the work, and I held on. Sitting on his cock would take me to a different place, a more assertive place, a place where I had to maintain the rhythm and motion. Plus, his cock was massive! I’d taken him in fully, but not without difficulty. The last time had been much easier than the first, but the thought of impaling myself on him scared me a little.

“Grant,” he said with a certain intonation that told me he saw the trepidation in my eyes. “You’ll be fine. Grab the lube and take it slow. It’s not like you have to sit down and impale yourself in one swift motion.”

I breathed a snort of relief as he read my mind.

“Tease me. Take in just a little and pull off. Do whatever you want, and however much you feel comfortable with. I’m going to pop just watching you.”

I blushed and turned away. It was hard to believe that he saw me so provocatively. My body was so bland and undefined, yet every time we’d been naked together, Tristan had been so…
enthusiastic
. His eyes had glazed over with such lust-filled hunger that I practically came considering what he might do. Maybe it was because it was him, and because it was me, and we both wanted each other so badly, we looked past the imperfections. Although I would say
he
had no imperfections. His enraptured gaze on me surely made me reconsider my self-image. Maybe my naked body wasn’t as unappealing as I had previously thought.

“Okay,” I agreed. I grabbed a condom and the lube and coated everything liberally. Straddling his waist, I reached behind me and guided him to my clenched hole. I pushed down against him, but there was no way his wide head was going to breach my entrance. I tried again and then admitted, “I can’t. It’s not going to go in. You’re too big.”

He rubbed my thighs and grinned. “No, I’m not. I’ve been inside you a number of times, Grant. It’ll fit, but you need to relax first. You’re too tense; I can see it in your scrunched-up face as you’re trying to put it in. Relax. Why don’t you lean forward, and I’ll help you? Then you can sit back and go with whatever rhythm you want. Okay?”

I nodded nervously. I did what he wanted and focused my energy on relaxing my asshole.
Relax. Relax. Relax.
Tristan propped himself up on one elbow, bent his knees, and reached under me to position his cockhead against my hole. He tilted his hips, lifting them off the bed as he pressed in before lying flat once more. Pressure. Burn. Stretch. Pain. More pain as he slid in deeper. “Ah!” I cried out, my breath fluttering as I gasped.

“Relax, Grant. Let it happen. Shhh,” he soothed, caressing my thighs. “Let your weight down slowly. I’m all the way in, so all you need to do is move when you’re ready.”

It hurt, true, but not as badly as I was bracing myself for. I needed to relax, and I’ll admit it was a difficult thing to remember every time I glimpsed his size. Yet… he said he was in. I let my hips down and my thigh muscles go slack, and I realized I
was
sitting on his cock—fully—and it wasn’t bad. It was my fear of being ripped in half by his massive tree trunk that had me tensing up. I laughed at myself for being so silly.

I lifted myself and eased back down, gasping slightly from the stinging friction. Up again and back down. “Ohhh,” I groaned raggedly, reveling in the wave of pleasure that rippled through my body. I hopped again, more aggressively, and gasped. “Mmm,” I moaned. The rhythm wasn’t as easy to set as I’d hoped, but the more I moved my hips up and down, the easier it was to find a gratifying cadence. In fact, I found myself wanting more, needing deeper penetration, and yearning to come. My thighs burned, yet for the first time in my life I ignored my own pain in lieu of the sensations that radiated from my ass outward through my extremities.

“Tristan,” I rasped. “I need….” I swallowed hard, reaching for my cock and eagerly jerking it.

Tristan grunted as I spilled myself all over his stomach. When I was finished, he lifted me off the bed, repositioned our still-locked bodies, and thrust savagely into me several more times until he came. He pulled out when he was done and flopped on top of me, panting and mewling—contented as ever. He kissed my skin wherever his lips could reach without moving his body as he held me tight.

“That was fucking amazing,” he remarked.

Understatement of the year!
I only chuckled breathily.

LATER, AFTER
we showered and brushed our teeth and I removed my contacts, Tristan and I lay on the bed facing each other—he said it hurt his head to lie flat on his back, and spooning only allowed him to nuzzle the back of my head. This time he wanted to watch me. It was a different feeling, lying on our sides inches apart, yet only touching where he held my hands and our knees bumped. I think it was the perspective. His nose was inches from mine on the pillow, so our eyes really had nowhere else to look but directly into each other’s. It was more exposing than when we cuddled or spooned, or even gazing into one another’s eyes during orgasm.

With the slight light from the bathroom, I couldn’t exactly see the color of his eyes, but I knew how beautifully blue they were. Tristan was a very handsome man, and he was mine. The very idea made me swell with pride. I squeezed his hands and whispered, “I love you.”

He smiled and whispered back, “I love you too.”

“How does your head feel?”

“It’s fine. Lying still like this is good. Sex earlier, while lying on my back, was not so good. My head hurt more and more, especially when I flipped you on your back. I probably should have rested first.”

“Why didn’t you say? We could have stopped.” I felt bad thinking I’d caused him more pain.

He snorted. “Grant, unless a fire starts in the bed while we’re doing it, I’m not stopping in the middle of sex just because my head hurts. If I did, the ache in my balls would surpass anything in my head. I’ll be fine.”

I grinned. He had a point. I’m not sure I would feel very good stopping in the middle either. I pulled his hand up to my lips and kissed his fingers. His gaze softened, and the look he gave me was probably the most intimate I’d seen—so open and tender. I wanted him to look at me like that forever, but my mind had other ideas. One thought popped out that might kill the mood, yet it was one I really wanted to talk about.

“So what happened with Teresa?” I asked. My question was not exactly romantic, and it wasn’t the best timing, but it seemed right to open up here like this, when there was nothing between us.

Tristan’s mouth twitched. He lifted his fingers and touched my chin. He sighed heavily, and I hoped I hadn’t killed our beautiful moment. “I’m not sure you really want to know.”

“I do. I want to know what happens to you, and about the people who affect you.” It was the God’s honest truth. I had realized it in those moments right after our disagreement, and I was determined never to repeat that sort of indifference to his feelings. If it mattered to him, then it needed to matter to me.

He tenderly touched my cheek. “I didn’t fall at work.”

“Okay. I kind of got that, the way Jeff talked to me before I went in to see you, but I don’t see what that has to do with Teresa.”

I was glad for the bathroom light seeping into the room, because I could make out his facial expressions. I could see the strain in his eyes. He didn’t want to tell me. When he dropped his hand from my face, it seemed even more serious. What could be that bad? So he didn’t fall? I could only think of one other way to get a head injury. “Tristan? Did somebody hit you?” I didn’t want to think of anyone beating him in the head on purpose, but if he didn’t fall, what other option was there?

He closed his eyes as if gathering his thoughts. “Yes. Someone hit me.”

I tightened my grip on his other hand. “Oh my gosh! Who? How? With what?”

He paused again. It was hard for him to say, and the longer he took, the more tension swirled in my stomach.

He explained slowly, “I was in the shop. Everyone had gone home, but I still had a few things to take care of. I told you I’ve been behind. I was angry with you, and I didn’t want to go home to an empty house. I stayed to work more because working is something I’m good at. I was in the bay, standing under an Impala on the lift, when I heard a noise behind me. I thought it was that damn cat Wes has been feeding, so I ignored it. I heard it again, but before I turned around someone struck me on the back of the head. I went down on one knee, but I turned fast enough to see someone dressed in black run out the side door.”

I gasped but couldn’t form words, thinking this sounded like a murder mystery novel. Only the intended victim caught a glimpse of his “killer.”

Tristan kept going. “I wasn’t on the ground long when Jeff ran in. He said he heard a screech and bolted for the shop. Ironically, his car had run out of gas a half mile from the shop, so he was walking back for a gas can.”

“He didn’t call you first?”

“He said he did, but Wes turns the shop phone over to the answering machine after hours and my cell phone was on the desk on vibrate because I wasn’t in the mood to take calls.”

“Oh,” I lamented, knowing that part had been my fault.

“Grant, don’t. I’m over it. I was pissed at you enough to want to avoid you for the day, but then I got hit on the back of my head with what felt like a tire iron or a crowbar, and all I wanted was for you to be there.”

I felt the need to point out a flaw in his reasoning. “But you told Jeff not to call me.”

“I know. By the time I was at the emergency room, I felt stupid calling you. I’m a grown man. I didn’t need you to hold my hand.”

“But your blood pressure went down when I got there. Remember? The doctor even said you needed more snuggling with me and less falling on your head.”

He grinned and touched my face again. “You’re right. I
did
need you to hold my hand, but I was too stubborn to admit it. As soon as you came in, it felt like a wave of tranquility rushed over my body. Yeah, I fussed at Jeff, but that’s because I’m pigheaded. I don’t like admitting I’m wrong or that I need people.”

“It’s a good thing Jeff got to you so quickly.”

He nodded, head still resting on the pillow. “Yeah. But the worst part is that Jeff thought he recognized the sound of the car. He thinks he knows who snuck up on me.”

“How could he by a car’s sound?”

“Because the car has this stupid fan belt that sticks all the time. It makes a very distinctive squeal.”

“Who’s was it?” I asked, not wanting to jump to the conclusion that brought all the parts of the conversation together.

“Teresa’s.”

“Why?” was the only word I could form as the rest of my body debated on whether to get sick in the bed or run for the toilet to puke bile.

He confessed, “I don’t know. I need to talk to her, but I’m not sure how. If I go to the police with Jeff as an
ear-
witness, then it could go really wrong for her. I have to think about Claire. Whoever it was, if I were to describe what I saw to the authorities, it was someone about five foot one, thin, with good aim, but not the muscle power of a grown man. I was hit hard, but I think if Jeff had done the same I would have blacked out. He said I was cut deep, but my skull wasn’t dented.”

I really did want to puke, but mostly I wanted to be as close to him as I could. I pressed my body forward and tucked my head under his chin as I curled my arms between my chest and his. I felt a tear escape and run over the bridge of my nose. “Can we talk about the rest later? I don’t like where this is leading. It makes me scared for you.”

Tristan had moved his arm under my neck when I scooted closer, so he could hold me securely. “I know, baby. Don’t worry. I’m pretty tough. I’ll figure it out.”

The longer we lay there, bodies entwined, the more I thought about the what-ifs. What if he’d been seriously hurt, and our last conversation was about living apart for a while? What if I never got another chance to tell him I loved him? Or worse, what if he had died and our spontaneous marriage ended a week after it started? Overthinking had always been an issue for me, and I managed to work myself up into a good hard cry. I wasn’t sobbing, but my face was wet as was his skin where I touched it—all from my tears.

“I love you, Tristan. I don’t want to lose you,” I whispered, sniffling.

“I love you too. Go to sleep. We’ll talk about it more tomorrow.”

Chapter 15: Clues, Capers, And Fifteen-Year-Old Detectives

TRISTAN HUNG
up the phone and groaned loudly. “Ah! That girl! She wants to know why I asked her to look for a crowbar in the shed.”

I lifted my eyebrow. “What teenage girl wouldn’t? Your explanation didn’t make any sense. Then, when you changed the whole story because she had too many questions, even I would have a hard time believing you.”

“I just don’t want to be wrong and trap Claire in the middle of it.” He sat on the breakfast bar, tapping his hands on the clean counter.

“You already have. When you called and asked her where her mom was last night, you involved her. When she told you she didn’t know, she became a witness to the fact that Teresa wasn’t home around the time you were struck.”