Page 93 of Tangled

“And, stop.” Tristan sent the stop order, and the fire hose of his money dried up.

On his computer screen, the graphs showing the stock price reversed course and plummeted.

Colleen kissed him on the cheek, and Tristan wrapped his arms over hers, holding her lower arms against his chest. The warmth from her arms seeped through his shirt and melded with his skin, a slow glow spreading through his body.

Tristan rested his head back against her shoulder and closed his eyes.

He could have stayed like that forever.

Tristan liked sex as much as the next guy. If he were being honest, Tristan probably liked sex a lotmorethan the next guy. He liked everything about it, from the pursuit and seduction, to the first kiss and unwrapping the woman to reveal her softness and curves, to the exploration and conquest of her body when he found her orgasm, to his own completion and, above everything,aftercare.

Aftercare,when he held the woman in his arms and murmured to and petted her, and this same soft glow spread through him.

The thought had occurred to him once or twice that the whole reason he was so addicted to the BDSM dynamic was becauseheneeded the aftercare.

Sure, Tristan hugged his friends with great flapping back slaps. Growing up in Europe, a couple of absent-minded pecks on the cheek was how he was accustomed to greeting a woman friend.

But beingheldlike this was different.

His mind wandered back through his life, but other than sleepy clasps at night and the occasional serpent-like twining of a woman marking Tristan as her territory when some other woman was looking at him, the last time anyone had wrapped their arms around him and held on was before he’d left the decrepit Iowa farmhouse when he was thirteen.

His little brothers and sisters had been clingy little things, draping themselves on him like cats.

Surely his mother had embraced him at some point, maybe when he was younger, but she’d never liked “Velcro toddlers” tripping her.

And then they’d all been gone.

Tristan’s hand stole up Colleen’s arm, his fingers slipping inside her tee-shirt sleeve to her satiny shoulder, and he breathed in the clean scents of soap and feminine skin.

His breath emerged as a sigh.

Colleen whispered near his ear, “Twisty, don’t you need to do something?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

Tristan reached for the keyboard and began typing a message on the Sherwood Forum boards.

Colleen withdrew her arms and walked away, leaving a chill on his shoulders where her skin had been.

Tristan pushed the sinking emotion away and typed:

Hello fellow Whales of the Pequod Room,

This isn’t for general dissemination, but I have it on good authority (wink wink) that the GameShack cyberattack was a one-time event, and their website is now secure.

The message saying that GameShack will be closing their streaming service was trolling by the hackers. It isn’t true. GameShack has no intention of closing its streaming service.

The double top is just an artifact.

Buy the dip.

Best,

TwistyTrader

That comforting little message was about to ignite a round of panic-selling by the Killer Whales like tourists running away from a suddenly erupting volcano.

It served those Killer Whales right.