Page 104

The nearly three-hour drive from Chicago back home feels endless. I don’t have my phone plugged in playing my favorite tunes, so I’m stuck with the radio—which is largely commercials the entire way back. I spend more time flipping through stations trying to find a song than I do actually listening to music.

Tristan’s truck is in the street when I pull onto Oak Tree Lane, and I pull into my mom’s driveway off to the side so she can slip her car past mine and into the garage when she gets home from work. Before I’ve even cut the engine, Tristan is storming across his driveaway, and as he approaches my SUV, he looks some combination of anxious and angry.

He opens my door for me, and he practically hauls me out of the seat and into his arms.

“Fuck, Tessa. I was so worried.” He cradles me in his arms, and I’m no lightweight with the extra baby weight, but he holds me as if I weigh nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I say, tears filling my eyes as I spot the worry in his melt into something else.

Something…hotter.

“Inside,” he grits out. “Now.”

“I dropped my phone in the toilet and it killed it and I had to get a new one but I didn’t know my password or anybody’s number so I couldn’t call and—”

He cuts me off by pressing his lips to mine. “You can explain later.” He carries me to the door, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him like this. He sets me down so I can unlock the door and open it, and then he takes my hand and practically drags me down the hall to my bedroom.

“You think I was off in Vegas cheating on you with those other women?” he demands once he slams the door shut behind me.

“I, uh…I—” I find myself at a loss for words, but I realize my last text to him said something along those lines.

“What will it take for you to see that you are the only woman I want to be with?” he asks.

“Why?” I whimper.

He looks caught off guard. “Why what?”

“Why do you want to be with me?”

His brows knit together. “Because I love you. Because we are connected down to our very souls. Because there’s no other woman who understands me the way you do, who loves me the way you do, who makes me feel the way you do. Because you were my best friend when we were kids, and you’ve slipped into that spot again, and I can’t imagine another day without you as my wife.”

I’m floored at his description. In a lot of ways, it’s the same way I feel about him…and I’m not sure why I didn’t trust that when I was away from him.

It’s easier to believe the doubt, I guess.

“I got it in my head that you only wanted to be with me because you feel this need to save me,” I say softly.

His jaw drops open just slightly for a beat, and he looks like he wants to say something, but then he closes his mouth. He works his jaw for a beat, clenching it with some unnamed emotion. “When I got back here and you were gone, all those feelings from seven years ago washed over me. It was like the first time you left all over again. I didn’t know where you were. I couldn’t get in touch with you.” He shakes his head, and he looks a little unfocused…a little lost as he says the words. “I was terrified.”

“I’m so sorry, Tristan. I’ll never leave you again. I promise.”

“I think you deserve to be punished,” he says, and he grips his belt buckle. “Don’t you?”

Punished?

Is he, like, going to hit me with his belt? He wouldn’t do that.

He unbuckles it and pulls it off.

Would he?

He tosses the belt on the bed.

“Answer me,” he demands.

“Um, ye—yes,” I stammer. “But I don’t know what you mean.”

He unbuttons his jeans and pulls down his zipper, and then he pulls out his cock. It’s hard and throbbing and red, and he strokes it a few times. My eyes fall onto it, and I can’t help but stare as he strokes himself.

“God dammit, why are you still on pelvic rest?” Despite the way he’s acting, all dominant and forceful, his eyes fall tenderly on me. This is a new way for him to show me love, whatever this is, and an ache presses roughly between my thighs.

“Get on your knees,” he demands, and I do it.

Eagerly.

This is a brand-new Tristan. A brand-new Tristan I can get behind.

Or one I want to get behind me .

“That’s my good girl,” he praises, and I swear to God I preen under his compliment.

He pulls my shirt over my head, and then he flicks the hook of my bra in the back and pulls it off me. As he works, his cock is at eye-level. It’s thick and hard and pointed straight up, and my mouth waters. I have this sudden urge to please him, like pleasing him will please me , too.

He pauses to take a step back, and he looks down at me. I feel self-conscious for a beat as he gazes at my swollen stomach that seems to get bigger by the day, at my breasts that don’t seem as perky as they were a few months ago.

“Perfection,” he murmurs as he studies me. I sit up a little taller on my knees at the approval. He presses a fingertip softly to my chin. “Open.”

I gasp a little at the command, but I drop my jaw anyway. He fists his cock again, and then he slides it into my open mouth. “Mm,” he hums. “That’s right. Wrap those pretty pink lips around me.”

I open my mouth wider to accommodate his size, and he slides it in until it hits the back of my throat. My eyes start to tear up at the feel, and he pulls himself out. “Take it all, baby,” he murmurs, and he closes his eyes as he leans his head back, his neck corded, as he pushes back in.

“Now suck,” he says.

I do as I’m told, and he moans a little louder, so I suck harder.

“You look so beautiful on your knees sucking my cock,” he says, and his words cause that ache between my legs to intensify.

It’s nearly unbearable. I wonder for a beat if this is considered rest when I’m this freaking wet.

I need some relief, but I can’t get it because of doctor’s orders.

But being here, sucking on Tristan’s cock as he groans with pleasure, as he tells me how beautiful I am and compliments how I’m doing this…it’s filling some void I didn’t know existed within me.

“You have no idea what you’re doing to me,” he murmurs, and he thrusts into my mouth a little harder as he holds the back of my head.

I’m helpless on the floor, his cock practically choking me, and all I want to do is be very still so he can take me in whatever way he wants. Whatever way he needs .

I’ve never been like this with anybody. This is new. Different. A little terrifying, if I’m being honest, but also possibly the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I’m pleasing him with my mouth, and he’s pleasing me with…his words?

I didn’t know that was a thing. I didn’t know I could be so turned on just by the things he’s saying to me.

We’ve established a trust between us. I know he’d never do anything to hurt me, and I keep that in mind as he grips onto the back of my head with both his hands and drives his cock in and out of my mouth.

He pants as the pleasure washes over him, and at the last second, he pulls out of my mouth and strokes his cock, a loud growl erupting from his chest as hot white streams of come spill onto my chest. My eyes are wide as I watch it shoot out of his cock with each pulse that shudders through him, and I don’t know if I’ve experienced a hotter moment in all my life.

All I want in this moment is to reach down and rub away the ache pulsing between my legs.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” he says, eyeing the messy paint project he just made of my body.

Tristan hauls me up into his arms and sets me down on my bed. He pulls his shorts on then walks out of my room. He returns a moment later with a wet washcloth and a cup filled with water, which he sets on my nightstand. He sets to gently cleaning the evidence of his orgasm off my chest.

“That didn’t really seem like a punishment,” I whisper while he works.

He chuckles. “How badly do you want to come right now?”

I clear my throat. “Pretty bad.” My voice is hoarse and strangled.

“ That is the punishment, Tessa.”

“Oh,” I gasp. I think I get it now. I think about asking whether he’s done that before, but then I realize…I don’t really want to know.

I don’t want to think about him with other women, telling them the things he told me just now.

I want it to be something special that just happened between us.

I want to be his only good girl .