RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (59 page)

Just when I thought I’d reached the
brink of madness, Tristan pulled me onto his cock, my knees high around his
hips, toes curled, ankles crossed.

And then he was inside me. Oh, God,
he was inside me. He filled every space, every nook, every inch of me with his
hot, royal prick, and yet all I wanted was more, more, more…

Tristan
pistoned
into me, his fingers leaving little welts in my flesh while he pounded away. I
held on for dear life, shrieking and wailing my ecstasy. He kissed me, hard.
His lips were like fire, bruising and violent, making my mouth swollen and
sore. His kisses were like acid. Like a hit of X in the dark. He was the
brilliant strobes of a nightclub. The laser lights. The thrumming bass. He vibrated
through me and shook me to my bones.

My breasts heaved against the last
remnants of the sheets between us. He liberated me from them. My back
spasmed
and arced. He pressed me harder, closer to the edge
of the bed behind me. I screamed his name and scratched long trails of desire
over his body. He gave me more.

And when the bomb detonated inside
me, he made the explosion go on and on and on…

I writhed and wiggled as he picked
me up and dropped me over and over onto his rigid dick, spearing me, impaling
me, sending me into rapturous torment. I slapped and clawed him, my inner
muscles pumping around him, begging for that seed he’d given me before so
carelessly. We didn’t stop to think about the consequences. I wanted his cum
the way he’d taken mine from me. And I was going to have it, too. He wouldn’t
deny me. Not now, when I needed him so badly.

“I want you!” I gasped. “Oh, please,
Tristan. I want you!”

And sure as the sunrise, Tristan let
go inside me, snarling into my shoulder and holding me tight as rope after rope
of his sticky
jizz
pooled in my womb. I bit his lower
lip and kissed him, wiped the sweat from his brow with my hands, and pulled his
hair back from his face so I could look into his eyes, the brilliant eyes of my
Tristan, my stepbrother, my
lover.

His whole body was shaking. His jaw
was clenched. His pale skin was flushed. And there was an undeniable smirk upon
his lips, especially when he said:

“We can make this work, Gwendolyn.
Do you trust me?”

I nodded lazily. It was the only thing
I could do.

How could I say no to Tristan ever
again?

As it turned out, that question was
answered for the moment my stepbrother opened his stupid mouth.

“Well, I suppose there comes a time
in every young, royal man’s life where he must take his first mistress…”

Then he laughed. The
arsehole
actually
laughed.
And he kept laughing as I stared at him, jaw sagging, in utter disbelief of
what he’d just said.

“Your
mistress,
” I said. It wasn’t even a question, just a hollow
repetition of the words that had just dropped out of the mouth that had kissed
me. “You… you think I’d
ever
agree to
that?” I said, my brow furrowing so hard it made my face hurt. “You think that
I’d ever stoop that low—that I have no respect for myself?”

“Oh, come on,
Gwennie
,”
Tristan said, that petulant smirk still on his face. “All the royals have them.
Why not me?” When I didn’t share in his good humor, he tried to pull me close.
“Come now, don’t get yourself all in a tizzy…”

“Shut up, Tristan,” I hissed,
pushing him away. “For once in your life, shut
up
. Your
mistress?!
For
Christ’s sakes, your dick is still inside me!”

“I was joking!” Tristan said, his
grin fading as I forced him out of my cunt and halfway across the bed.
My
bed. Christ, the audacity! “
Gwennie
, come on…”

“Stop calling me that!” I shouted.
“How dare you, Tristan? How
dare
you
insinuate that I would ever do something like that—be the other woman, the
homewrecker
, the…” My voice broke and hot, angry tears
welled in my eyes. “How could you think I’d ever become my mother?”

Tristan’s face softened immediately,
but that only made me angrier. “
You
dolt,” I
whispered. “You blithering dolt. You didn’t even think about that, did you? You
didn’t even consider…”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Gwendolyn, I
was making a joke. It wasn’t meant to hurt you.”

“But it did,” I snapped. “It did,
Tristan. Whether you meant it to or not. And that makes you an ass—an
inconsiderate ass who doesn’t get to decide if you hurt me or not. That’s for
me to decide—the one who’s feeling the pain.” I shook my head at him. “You
didn’t think… but you should have. I’m not one of your girls you don’t know
anything about. You know everything about me, my life story. You’re the only
one I ever told about what my mother did to me, how she conned your father, and
how she used me to…” I trailed off, lost for any more words on the subject.
“Maybe you didn’t think about that because you didn’t want to. Because you
didn’t care to.”

“No, Gwendolyn, that’s not… I
didn’t…” But he couldn’t come up with any defense. His mouth worked, but his
usual Tristan charm and diplomacy was gone. Not even a master manipulator like
him could weasel his way out of this one.

“You’re right, you know,” I said at
length, covering myself with the sheets. “That’s all I’d ever be to you, isn’t
it? I could never be anything else. Nothing official. Nothing that came
first.
” I snorted. “Not when your money
and title occupy that space, anyway.”

“Please, Gwendolyn,” Tristan began,
“I can make this right. I was a fool, but what I said doesn’t mean…”

“Get out,” I told him. When he
didn’t move, I said it louder: “Get out!”

Tristan’s face crumpled. His eyes
were pleading. “It was… just a joke…”

“It wasn’t funny. It was cruel.
You
are cruel. Now get out!”

Tristan gathered his clothes and put
them on outside of the bedroom without a word. I waited until I heard the door
close to start sobbing in earnest. I’d risked everything for a few moments of
pleasure. My business. My reputation. All of it was on the line. And for what
reward? Memories that would haunt me the rest of my life? Pleasure I would
never feel again?

This
isn’t a Disney movie,
Tristan had told me once, when I was young.
I’m
not your Prince Charming, or your knight in shining armor.
I’d thought that
was just bad boy rhetoric, that if I could make him see the light, he’d somehow
change. But he hadn’t, and he never would. Not until he got married, and some
other woman bore his children and made him into the man I’d always wished he
would be.

I covered my face with my pillow to
muffle the insufferable sounds of my grief. Tristan wasn’t the fool here. I
was.

Chapter 10

I had royally fucked myself over
twice in a single span of twenty-four hours—a new personal record, to be sure.
I couldn’t believe what an ass I’d been, and to Gwendolyn of all people. I
couldn’t remember a single time that that girl hadn’t treated me well, and I
had joked about how I would make her my mistress. Idiot.

After I’d been so forcefully ejected
from my stepsister’s bed, I called myself a taxi to take me home. I hated the
look on Gwendolyn’s face, that look of embarrassment and shame. I knew that I’d
messed everything up in a way that I’d be hard pressed to fix if this plan was
going to work.

I was almost shocked when I felt my
cellphone buzz in my pocket, hardly expecting anyone to be calling me, at least
not this early in the morning. I pulled the phone out of my pocket, surprised
to see my father’s number glaring at me from the bright screen. I almost didn’t
answer, uninterested in the idea of hearing that old bastard’s voice to disrupt
what was already a perfectly terrible morning. Despite myself I swiped my thumb
across the screen and put the phone to my ear.

“Father, what a delightful
surprise,” I said, making sure my tone was almost
too
chipper. “You hardly ever phone me anymore. How are you?”

There was silence across the line
and I knew that I’d thrown him. He’d expected anger or annoyance right out of
the gate. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction; and besides, I so enjoyed
toying with him.

“I’m more than fine, Tristan,” he
said, his tone suspicious. “In fact I just came back from the sonogram with
your mother—”

“
Step
mother,”
I reminded him in a song-song voice.

“
Evenlyn’s
child is growing quite nicely,” he said, his own voice becoming almost… kind.
It had to be a trick. “I thought you ought to know, since you’ll be a brother
soon.”

“What is it you really want,
father?” I asked, “We both know you don’t ever call me unless you have
something to
gloat
about.”

“The fact that I’ve won isn’t
enough?” he laughed, that same crowing laughter that put a chill in my gut
every single time. “My son will grow up to be a duke, and you’ll be left in
squalor… that is unless you’ve begun looking for a wife.”

My stomach clenched as those words
curled through the labyrinthine maze of my mind. He had found out—somehow,
someway he had figured out my plan to take the title from his “legitimate”
heir. But how? How had he figured it out? Surely Gwen didn’t tell him, or her
assistant, Tina. But then who else could have known?

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I
said, trying to play the fool and see if he was merely fishing, or if he’d
truly been able to figure out what I had thought was such a brilliant plan
before it had time to come to fruition.

“Don’t play dumb with me, boy,” he
snapped, his familiar anger returning in force. “I’ve seen the pictures of you
and that woman. Who is she?”

“I was on a date, Father. Is that so
unusual?” I asked.

“It is when your only hope of taking
what rightfully belongs to my true son is marrying whatever harlot will have
you,” he snarled. “I won’t have you ruining this, Tristan. We both know that
you don’t go on
dates
with women
unless you want something from them. Dating and courtship imply commitment,
something you sorely lack.”

“I’m hurt, Father,” I said, hoping
to anger him to the point that he would slip up and reveal just how he figured
out where I had been the night before. “How could you say such a thing about
your own son?”

“You are no son of mine!” he shouted
over the receiver. “My son is growing in the womb of my wife! You are an
abomination!”

“Oh, Father,” I said wistfully, “I
so love it when you bring out the old names from when I was young.”

“Don’t try to play cute with me!” he
roared. “I will make you rue the day that you were cut from your mother’s
unclean womb! So help me if you try to steal my son’s inheritance I—”

“I only want what I’m entitled to,
father,” I interrupted, doing my best at keeping my voice level. I didn’t need
to him to know how frustrated I was, though I found it hard to keep the edge
out of my voice. “I’m your eldest son, and I will do what I must to make sure
that I am the only viable option for your inheritance when the time comes—a
time I hope comes sooner rather than later—when you shuffle off this mortal
coil and I take everything you ever had as mine.”

“Never!” he barked. “I’ll make sure
it’s all burned before you ever touch it!”

“Then I will be a duke of ashes and
dust,” I said, “but a duke none the less. And your new child will not even be
that.”

“It’ll never work,” he hissed. “You
aren’t enough of a man to keep yourself from a life of sin. You’ve always been
a failure, and you’ll remain one. You’ll see.”

“I think
you’re
wrong father,” I said, making a point to sigh loudly. “I have a whole list of
women who are prepared to become the next Mrs. Tristan Wolfe, and I really must
be getting back to sorting through them all.”

“How are you doing this so quickly?”
he asked after a long and tense silence, suspicion heavy in his voice. “You’ve
hardly the connections to find a woman of standing; you must have someone
helping you find these women.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as my
father desperately pumped me for answers. He knew that the game was on, and he
wanted to know all the players before he made his move.

“Gwendolyn is helping me find a
suitable wife. That is her job, after all.”

I heard him curse from the other end
of the line and couldn’t help but smile. I so enjoyed getting under his skin.
He didn’t approve of my stepsister’s business, but since she’d never used
a single pence
of his money, he could kindly shove it up his
ass. He’d never imagined that his children would both rise against him at once.
He could threaten me all he liked with disownment, but when it came to Gwen he
had no power.

“It doesn’t matter how much help you
have, Tristan. No one is going to have you as their husband, even for all the
money and status in the world. You have no follow-through. You’re unreliable,
and you’re never going to change.”

With that he hung up, leaving me
staring out the cab window with only my thoughts for company. Maybe he was
right, maybe I was the kind of man who couldn't keep to the promises or the
commitments he made. Or maybe I was the man who knew that he had the power to
change all of that.