Taking his Risk (Year of the Billionaire Part 2) (7 page)

"Now." I felt his cock ever so briefly tease at the entrance to my channel and then he thr
ust himself into me, filling every inch of me with his thickness. He held himself still in me for a moment. I let the feeling of having two orifices used at once wash over me. My body felt completely owned--elevated and offered up, his for the taking.

Tristan pulled my hands from above my head and grabbed a wrist in each hand, pulling them behind me next to my waist. He locked his hands around my forearms and I did the same with his. Rocking back and forth, he used our arms to brace our bodies for his thrusts. They came quicker and
deeper; his grunts of exertion filled my ears with the sound of lust and need. Hearing him aroused me beyond belief.

Each time his cock moved inside me, I could feel the object in my ass move as well
, echoing the fucking he was giving my pussy. After all the preliminaries, my entire lower body was a bundle of excited nerves. My skin danced with warmth as I felt the slap of his thighs against the cheeks of my bottom. Moaning out submission to his utter occupation of my body, I called his name again and again. 

He freed my hands
and grabbed my hips, taking total control of the pace. I could feel by his rhythm and hear by his urgent, primal sounds that he was near. My hand stole down between my legs. I wanted to come with him, I wanted to know that when his bliss was released my body would drink it in.

I was so hot, so utterly drunk with wanton need that I began to climax as soon as my fingers found my hard clit. I pushed back against him, trying to let him know that it was time. Oh God
, was it time. He yanked my pelvis back against his with a thunderous bellow of rapture that came from deep in his very core. I felt him arch back and hold my hips to his as he grunted with each wave of his orgasm. My body responded in kind, gratefully accepting the gift of his very essence.

It was the completion of our need, the
consummation of our passion and . . . the communion of two souls. I wanted to stop time.

Six

We stayed away from the beach the next day. Maybe Tristan knew that my whole psyche was working overtime just to absorb my new found sensual capacity. I had a kind of nervous excitement that wasn't at all related to anxiety, but all the same, I felt strange. Never having taken the drug ecstasy, I wondered if this was kind of like what friends had described as its effects. I wanted to touch everything, taste everything, feel everything.

We were taking a day trip to
Carcassonne
. The medieval city had not been on my whirlwind tour backpacking around Europe and I was delighted to have the chance to see it. I was a little disappointed when Kwan pulled the
Landaulet
onto an expressway.

"It's almost sixty miles to
Carcassonne
," Tristan explained when I told him I had hoped for a country drive. "Depending on the time, perhaps we can drive back on the secondary roads. Meanwhile, relax and enjoy the sky above us and this baby's sweet ride."

He wasn't exaggerating about the car. Inside, it was as quiet as a tomb, even with the open roof. I wondered what kind of engineering genius it took to manage
that feat. We sipped on
café au lait
and watched the French countryside speed past the windows.

"It's so beautiful here," I sighed. "Everything looks like it came out of a postcard. I mean, I love New York, but here it seems everything has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years."

"That's because it has. My mother used to say that France was not given nearly the credit it should have been in history. She said the Greeks and the Romans took all the credit and the Gauls were treated by scholars like some abandoned step-child."

"Did your family travel when you were a child?" I saw an opening and I took it. Tristan was a master at avoiding any sort of conversation that would enlighten me about his past. If the quiet morning ride under the clear blue September sky was loosening his tongue, I wasn't about to miss the chance to untie it.

He leaned back and stretched his long legs out in front of him. The vehicle gave even him room to spare. "My mother loved to travel. My father hated it. Still does, I believe. Every summer when school was out, we would spend as much time globe-trotting as she could manage."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Oh, God yes. My mother was a wonderful teacher. In another life, she could have been a great educator. As it was, I was her only student. She was so brilliant at helping me see the world through her more knowledgeable eyes. I sucked it up. Of course, I think I would have been happy touring a landfill if my mother took me there."

"You were lucky to have
that time with her. My Mom was great, but there wasn't much time for just her and me. I guess that's why I'm sort of making up for it now. I'm glad I'm the youngest. I've finally got her to myself."

"That's part of why traveling was so special to me. I didn't have to share her with my father. We had wonderful days, but once he came home from work, most of the energy in the house went into keeping him happy. Never an easy task."

"Was he cruel to you?"

"Not unless you consider being incredibly cold a form of cruelty. He could be caustic, too, when he chose."

And you have certainly inherited that ability, Tristan
. "That's sad. My dad is a lot of things, but cold isn't one of them."

"My mother made up as best she could. The trips were part of that."

"My family never traveled any further than the Jersey Shore. Not exactly an exotic vacation destination. My mother envied me when I scraped together enough nickels and dimes to backpack through Europe."

"If I ever had children, I would show them the world."

I wondered if I should censor my next question. But I didn't. "Do you want to have children, Tristan?"

He surprised me by taking his time before giving me a thoughtful answer. "Children seem to be the greatest risk of all in life. I often wonder if my mother would have chosen to have me if she had had a crystal ball."

"How can you say that? She obviously adored you!"

"Yes and then she
left me with a man who couldn't . . . who wouldn't . . . I just wonder if she had known how it all was going to end up, if she would have brought me into the world."

"And how has it ended up? You're a hugely successful man who seems to live a rather full life."

"Is that how I appear to you?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact it is. Okay, so there's a strange dark side to you. I mean, this whole
'no expectations thing' of yours has to come from somewhere. I'm guessing it stems from losing your mother at such a tender age."

The shadow that darkened Tristan's face frightened me
. I knew I had overstepped. "Is it impossible for you to remember the
one
thing I have asked of you? If I want psychoanalysis, I can afford the best. Amateur hour isn't my style when it comes to healing my
delicate damaged soul
." He spit the last three words out with so much sarcasm and venom that I winced.

He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. It was a pretty clear message. The conversation was over.

***

"Holy Shit! Look at that!" I couldn't help myself. When we approached
Carcassonne
, the sight of the towers, the ramparts, and just the hugeness of the ancient relic overwhelmed me. Tristan seemed more than happy to rouse himself from his (pretend) nap and get us back onto safe, neutral ground. He could turn on a dime; that much I knew. The icy mood was gone. If I still felt the sting of his words, which was clearly going to be my problem and mine alone.

"
It's amazing, isn't it? It was restored in the 1800's and the whole process was quite controversial.
Carcassonne
is the largest surviving walled city of its kind. I, for one, don't mind if Viollet-le-Duc took a few liberties in the nineteenth century."

I leaned toward the window, angling for a
better look. Tristan picked up the intercom mike and told Kwan to pull over onto the shoulder. "You really need to take it all in before we go inside the city. Appreciating it from a distance is critical."

We stood on a small hill
overlooking the arched bridge over the
Aude
River. The sun brushed that peculiar golden light over the landscape that makes everything seem like a painting. I looked over at Tristan, his profile strong and masculine against the backdrop of the green countryside. A wave of gold-brown hair caught in the slight breeze and fluttered behind his ear. I wanted to touch him again. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for trying to pry open the lockbox that held his pain. But I really wasn't sorry. I was only sorry that he had reacted the way he did.

I couldn't compartmentalize like he could. How was it possible for a man to be so intimate and so distant at the same time? How could he touch me, caress me, worship me and care for me and still shut down completely when I tried to get past his rigid barriers? When I sighed, he took it as a reaction to the stunning sight in front of us.

"I've always thought this place should have been the inspiration for Oz. But in reality, the legend is that this is the city that inspired 'Sleeping Beauty'." He took my hand and shot me the look I'd come to think of as 'kid in a candy shop'. It was the look that told me he was about to bestow an exquisite discovery and he couldn't wait. For the moment, and not for the last time, I would choose to push my misgivings aside in favor of his gifts.

Carcassonne
defied my wildest expectations. I'd seen all sorts of castles and ruins in Europe, but never anything so well preserved, so real. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a band of knights in armor ride through one of the cobbled streets on massive steeds decked out in royal colors. It looked almost like a movie set and Tristan informed me that it had in fact been used as a backdrop for "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves"
in the 90's.

Although it would have been impossible to furnish and decorate the entire walled city as it would have been at its glory, it was marvelous to see the relics, tapestries and ordinary stuff that might have belonged to the people who once lived there.

Tristan followed me as I almost skipped around the old city. It was a delightful place and I wanted him to know how much I was enjoying it. I took his hand in mine as we strolled along the ramparts and looked out over the escarpment that ended at the
Aude
River.

"Thank you for bringing me here. I had no idea it would be this amazing."

"There are over fifty towers at
Carcassone
. See those two over there?" he asked pointing to a far corner of the city. "That's where Mom and I stayed when we were here. It was during July and she knew about the annual event when the city is set ablaze with fireworks. The view from our rooms in the tower was something I'll never forget."

I tried to think of some comment to make that was appropriate and neutral. I didn't want to get too 'personal' and sour the mood of a fantastic experience as I had in the car. "It sounds like your mother planned your trips so a kid could get the most out of them."

"She did. That she did." He steered me toward a shop that sold hand milled soaps and colognes all infused with local herbs and flower essences. "Let's put a basket together for Marjorie. Any woman would love these products…" He began to pile all sorts of different bottles and boxes in the shopping basket to put together a collection for my mother. It was thoughtful and poignant; almost as if in giving my mother a gift, he could honor the memory of his.

Seven

I was never aware of Kwan as a bodyguard. He didn't shadow us the way you see celebrities or politicians covered by burly men in sunglasses with wires behind their ears. When we had gone to the beach, he had disappeared all together. While we were strolling through the streets, building and squares of Carcassone, I glimpsed him once or twice nearby. He didn't seem to be paying particular attention to us and I was quite sure none but the most expert eyes would have connected him with us.

It began to be a game with me--spotting him--but I certainly didn't let on to Tristan. When we chose a café for lunch, we sat at a street-side table and although I subtly scanned the crowd for our stealthy guard, I couldn't pick him out. It was only after Tristan had paid the bill and we headed out to find a particular
exhibit that I noticed Kwan casually examining some flowers at a vendor's cart.

After several more sightings, I saw that he kept a particular distance from us in a thin crowd, but moved closer when we were in the midst of a denser group of people.
He was methodical, consistent and very subtle.

"If Kwan wanted to hide himself completely from you, he could." Tristan surprised me by catching me at my game.

"Oh . . . I didn't mean . . . I was just . . ." It embarrassed me to get caught, for some odd reason.

"It's okay, a bodyguard takes some getting used to. I know at the beginning, I was constantly checking to see where he was. Now, it seems natural, like Kwan is a part of the landscape of my life."