“Close enough,” I said, as I laid out his new silverware.

“This stuff is good, and I’m too hungry to cook for two hours.”

If he said it was good, that meant it was good. The man didn’t eat inferior food. In fact, his food was so good that I’d gained five pounds while we were hanging out together, and hadn’t even sweated it, because some enjoyment was just worth five pounds. It was that good.

Of course, I’d lost those five pounds and some extra in the weeks he’d disappeared, and completely broken my heart.

“Where’s your restroom?” I asked him, after I’d put the silverware away.

“Use the one attached to my bedroom.” He pointed, his back to me, still working at the stove.

I couldn’t seem to help it; I snooped through his room. It was spa.r.s.e, and he’d barely unpacked, so there wasn’t much to learn from the endeavor. The only thing that really stood out to me were the myriad, half-empty bottles of liquor on his nightstand. I thought those said a lot about his lifestyle.

His bathroom was directly attached to his bedroom, with one of the biggest bathtubs I’d ever seen. You could literally fit at least six people into it, which painted a picture that I didn’t particularly want to dwell on.

When I came back into the kitchen, Tristan was almost done making the pasta, so I started to unpack his plates.

They were square and white, very elegant, especially for a bachelor pad. I had picked them out.

I had one of the plates in my hand when a topless brunette sauntered into the kitchen.

Topless was putting it lightly. She was wearing nothing but a nude colored thong and a smile.

She strutted, yes strutted, right up to Tristan and hugged him from behind, pressing her huge, fake, naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his back.

I wasn’t prepared for this, so I just stood there, frozen, plate in hand, and watched the tableau.

Tristan stiffened at the contact, turned off the burner on the stove, then started to turn, looking as surprised as I was to have a naked woman in the kitchen. I couldn’t even have said if she was pretty, I was that distracted by all of that naked skin.

His brow furrowed as he looked down at her, now pressed into his side. Or rather, one fake t.i.t was plastered to his side, one to his front, just below his chest.

“Uh,” he began, obviously at a loss for words.

The s.k.a.n.k gave him a brilliant smile. Dammit, she was pretty. “I’m Kendra. From four nights ago. Don’t worry about it. I didn’t think you’d remember my name. We didn’t do much talking.”

I was gripping the plate so hard that I felt it dig into my fingers, and still, I gripped harder.

He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back, until her implants where no longer making contact. “Okay, Kendra. But what are you doing here now, and where are your clothes?” He had the careful tone of someone talking to a crazy woman.

“I came here last night with Dean. I was hoping to see you again. I think I left my panties in your room. Will you help me go find them?” Her tone was all sleazy insinuation.

I quite simply lost my mind. The plate in my hand went flying, crashing into the wall above their heads. Another plate was in my hand and flying before anyone could react. Miss Fake t.i.ts went running for it, but Tristan, the fool, started moving toward me, ducking plate after plate. I broke at least six before he made it to me. I didn’t look down to check, but I was pretty sure that was all of them.

One look at his face showed me that he wasn’t mad, which shocked me into immobility just long enough for him to get his arms around me in a hold that kept me from reaching out and breaking more of his things.

Why wasn’t he mad? I’d just tried to maim him and a topless s.l.u.t that he had apparently slept with four nights ago.

I didn’t even speak. All that I’d had to say had been said with the breaking of six white plates.

He spoke, murmuring apology after apology into my ear. I found that so strange that I didn’t even process it right away.

A shirtless Dean burst into the kitchen, with not one, but two naked s.k.a.n.ks at his back, the one before, and a redhead. He started yelling as he took in the damage.

“What the f.u.c.k, man? I was sleeping, and you’ve got some chick breaking f.u.c.king plates in our kitchen? And Kendra tells me she tried to hit her with one!”

“Go back to bed, Dean,” Tristan told him, sounding riled, which he hadn’t sounded when he’d been talking so softly into my ear. “This is not your business.”

“Of course it’s my f.u.c.king business,” Dean said. “This is my f.u.c.king place, too.”

“What’s your problem?” Topless Kendra asked, speaking to me, I a.s.sumed.

“Her problem is that she’s my girlfriend,” Tristan answered. “And she was just disrespected in my home.”

Kendra’s lip shot out in a pout. “You didn’t have a girlfriend four nights ago,” she pointed out.

“We were on a break, but we aren’t anymore. Dean, get them out of here.”

“f.u.c.k you, man. You get to keep that c.u.n.t around, and I have to get rid of them?”

I felt Tristan stiffen against me. His voice when he spoke was scary. “I’m only going to warn you once. You talk to her or about her like that again, we’re going to have a f.u.c.king problem. Apologize, and then get the f.u.c.k away from me before I take your a.s.s to task for what just came out of your mouth, and this ends with more than a warning.”

Dean cursed under his breath, turned on his heel, and left the kitchen, muttering a very insolent, “Sorry,” under his breath.

s.l.u.t one and s.l.u.t two followed quickly behind him.

Tristan bent, scooping me up into a cradle hold, and carried me to his room.

He bent, laying me out on the bed. He lowered himself over me until he was pinning me down with his body, chest to chest, thighs straddling my hips. He pulled my arms up high, pinning them over my head with his hands on my wrists.

He brought his face very close to mine, his golden eyes gone soft. “I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, and I thought I should probably apologize for breaking all of his plates, and trying to hit him with them in the process, but I just couldn’t do it. The man made me lose my mind, and I was still upset about that.

Still, there was one thing, one question, that persisted, dominating my thoughts more than anything else that had happened.

“Why did you say I was your girlfriend? That was a lie. We were never together, not like that.”

He took a deep breath, rubbing his chest along mine. I saw a flash of something cross his expression, and I thought it might have been pain. “It wasn’t a lie. It was the way it should have been, if I wasn’t so f.u.c.ked in the head. I’ve handled things badly from the start with you, and I’m sorry for that. The way I feel about you…the way it’s been between us from the start, I was an idiot for denying it to myself. I want to be exclusive. No just friends, no f.u.c.k buddies, no more avoiding commitment. I want to be with you. I’ve made it way more f.u.c.king complicated than it needs to be, and I want to un-complicate it. I’ve no right to ask it, but will you give me the chance to prove that I can be better than I’ve been?”

My heart was pounding about a million miles a second, in joy…and terror. He’d broken my heart before ever promising me anything. How much worse would it be, if he crushed me like that again, after I let myself hope for something more from him?

Unexpectedly, ridiculously, I burst into tears.

It wasn’t a quiet affair. I let out big, gasping, ugly sobs, and once it started, it didn’t stop.

It was the first time he’d ever seen me cry. A little sound of distress escaped from deep in his throat, a noise of deepest sympathy.

He nuzzled his face into my ear. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I’d take it all back if I could, but I can’t. I will try to make it up to you, though, okay? Please, just give me the chance. Please.”

I was able to calm myself when I realized that the strongest emotion I was feeling was actually relief. The idea that I could fall so hard for him, that I could feel this so deeply, and have him feel none of it had just been so awful for me, and coming back from that feeling was an emotional breakdown.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I never could keep my mouth shut. The good, the bad, the ugly, it all came out, and this was no exception.

With Tristan’s weight on me, his soothing whispers in my ear, and the knowledge that he couldn’t resist this thing between us any more than I could, had me spewing my heart out in minutes. I’d wanted to hold it in, because some confessions demand reciprocation, but my big d.a.m.ned mouth took the decision from me, as usual.

“I love you,” I told him, my voice unsteady.

I knew he wouldn’t say it back. I was prepared for that. But he did the next best thing, moving his mouth over mine in a ravenous, desperate kiss, his tongue invading my mouth.

I moaned against him, moving my body into his hard form restlessly.

He broke off, studying me. I moved my hips, trying to dislodge his uncompromising thighs. I wanted him between my legs, not straddling them.

“I want to be inside of you bare. I really am sorry about doing that last night. I lost my mind. But I swear to you, I’ve always used a condom. Always. You and I are exclusive as of now, and you’re on the pill. The choice is yours, but I want you to consider it.”

“Yes,” I answered too quickly, too needy to say no to him. He’d just given me what I wanted most—himself, and I couldn’t have denied him a thing.

He slanted his mouth back over mine, shifting just how I craved, his hips burrowing between my thighs.

He pushed his erection hard into me through our clothes, and my nails raked over his back.

He pulled back. “Don’t move,” he told me, moving down the bed. As he pa.s.sed my hips, he took my shorts and panties with him with one smooth pull. “I got you something.”

He went into his closet, coming back out with something dark clutched in one hand, and something that looked suspiciously like handcuffs in the other.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, squirming on the bed.

His mouth twisted into a smile. “Relax. You trust me, don’t you?”

I swallowed, my jaw clenching, but I nodded.

He moved back to the bed, crawling to straddle me again.

He slipped my tank top and bra off, sliding my arms above my head with a feather light touch.

His lips moved close to my ear. “Close your eyes,” he whispered.

“Tristan,” I began, but he shushed me, pulling a black blindfold over my eyes, and tying it behind my head.

The world went dark, and I didn’t understand the purpose of this until he began to touch me.

He kissed my neck as his hands moved up to my wrists. He cinched the handcuffs on very slowly, and as he tightened them, I realized that they were padded on the inside, to protect my wrists.

“Do you expect me to struggle?” I asked him, pulling lightly at my arms to test the restraints. “Is that why they’re padded?”

“No, sweetheart. I expect you to submit. They’re only padded because I can’t bear the thought of so much as bruising you. I take the gift of your trust very seriously.”