Tristan’s hands ran up my body, starting at my ankles, up my calves, over my ass, across my naval, finally going to the front clasp of my bra to snap it open. He freed my breasts from their confines, but left my little white tank, and even the straps of my bra on. It wasn’t that type of a fuck, either. This was a direct access, get at it as fast as you can kind of fuck, and I was right there with him.

His knee moved between my legs, nudging them a few inches farther apart, and I heard him unfastening his own shorts, and pulling himself free. He rubbed his bared erection along my already slick sex, over and over.

I stared over the balcony’s railing, thanking God that it was dark, and that his apartment was facing away from the other buildings. We were on the third floor, but even in the daytime, I would have only been looking at a large concrete wall and the desert field beyond.

His mouth was at my ear, telling me in detail just how good I felt, as he worked himself into me. One of his hands slid up to pluck at my breast, his other moving to grab my hip hard as he seated himself to the hilt. We both let out a low groan as his hips made solid contact with my ass.

Balcony sex should have been a quickie, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t a rough race toward the finish. He brought me over twice in a row, with his perfect strokes and his magic hands, and the sexy things that came out of his mouth. He took his time with me.

At some point, someone began to open the sliding glass door. The door itself was quiet, but the racket they made moving the blinds out of their way was loud enough to give us warning.

“Go back inside and shut the fucking door!” Tristan barked out, not even slowing his strokes. Sure enough, that worked like a charm.

And strangely, hearing that rough command in his voice, that raised voice he almost never used, brought me over with a helpless little moan.

That had him moaning and jack-knifing into me, shouting out my name with his own release. “You like it when I yell at people, huh?” he panted into my ear as he leaned hard against me, both of us recovering.

I didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge the question. I wasn’t sure what to think of it myself.

He nuzzled his face into my hair as he pulled out of me, doing it slowly, making me want him all over again just from the long exquisite pull of him.

I turned into his arms after he’d gotten loose, throwing my arms around his neck, and then, when he hugged me back hard, lifting me slightly, my legs around his waist.

I kissed his ear. “I love you,” I said, never able to hold back the words.

He squeezed me, kissing my cheek in the sweetest way. “Thank you for that, boo.”

I tried not to let myself be hurt by that all too neutral response to my nowhere near neutral feelings.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The words he didn’t say started to weigh on me more and more as time went by. I knew that I’d fallen way too fast for him, but as we approached the one month mark of our relationship, it started to feel like, if he didn’t feel it yet, then he never would, and that thought consumed me.

I had seen how easy he was with his ex. The sort of careless flirtation, the easy affection he felt, just seemed so brutal to me the more I thought about it. I never wanted to be that to him—a woman who he’d owned completely and would never want again.

She’d cheated on him, and then he had moved on. I knew this, just as I knew that I would never do that to him, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he could never love me like I loved him.

I became almost clingy in my affections, which I’d never been before. I’d get upset about being clingy, and become withdrawn, which drove him insane. Clingy, he could deal with, withdrawn, not so much.

We kept the crazy club hours, and I became worse and worse at my day job, which I beat myself up about often. I loved the kids, loved Bev and Jerry. They’d done so much for me, and had helped me out a lot with school and just general employment, and I knew that I was becoming a bigger flake by the day. Still, I couldn’t seem to keep away from Tristan, not even for an evening, and the man couldn’t stay home for one damned night.

The band started playing every other weekend at Decadence, and that was both heaven and hell for me.

I loved to watch Tristan on stage, the way his presence seemed to suck the very breath right out of a crowd.

If the place was so packed that the room got warm, he’d whip off his shirt, tucking it into his belt, and boy did that get a reaction. I saw him naked all the time, spent hours staring at his beautiful body, but even I was blown away by the sight of him, tattooed and huge and toned within an inch of his life, the cut of his abs even more stark when he was belting out a song. That was the heaven. That and his voice washing over the throng in deep, intoxicating waves, making me warm all over.

Like me, Frankie never missed a show. We went together, always watching the performance from a few rows back. Tristan told me he preferred this, since I tended to distract him, if he could see me in the crowd. I was torn on this, liking the way I distracted him, but wanting so badly to be front and center.

Rosette, the pink haired slut from hell, never opened for them again, but Tristan’s female fans were nearly as bad. In just a few performances, I’d seen panties thrown on stage, a topless woman, and several with tops, try to grope Tristan, and heard things shouted at my boyfriend that no one should ever have to hear without a plate handy to throw. That was the hell.

I’d learned to focus on Jared when this happened. He was nearly as arresting as Tristan singing when he strummed on his guitar, a look of absolute bliss on his face. If the lead singer had been anyone but Tristan, I was convinced that Jared would have stolen the show. He was fond of taking off his shirt about halfway through the show, which the crowd always appreciated, showing that appreciation with screams and catcalls. How he was a relationship guy, and managed to stay single, I would never understand. Part of me wished I’d seen him first, like there was some chance that I may have been a different person before I set eyes on Tristan.

At the band’s third appearance at Decadence, I got to see firsthand why Tristan didn’t want me at the front of the stage, distracting him. In all fairness, though, there were extenuating circumstances…

Frankie had pulled me front and center between the opening act and the band coming out, spotting a friend of hers. It was a lovely Hispanic woman with an hourglass figure, and I saw right away that Frankie was interested in her. She’d told me many a time that this was her type.

We’d barely gotten introductions out before Tristan was filing on stage, the rest of the guys behind him. He’d spotted me before he even reached the mic. He sent me a slightly puzzled look, but that was all. He quickly looked away. He’d explained to me before that he needed to focus when he was up there, that no matter how many times he did it, it still gave him a strange bout of nerves, to the point where he couldn’t handle the level of distraction I caused him with my presence.

I was nearly close enough to touch him when he started singing, and I loved that. He’d never sing for me off stage, and I’d asked a lot. This was the next best thing, and I swayed to the beat, my eyes glued to the man I loved. The man I adored. The man I’d become completely obsessed with.

The downside to being that close to the stage was that it was also the most crowded part of the room, bodies that I didn’t know pressing up against me.

The band was on their second song when I felt big hands grip my hips, and a hot, hard body press against me from behind.

I stiffened. The bump and grind was a familiar element to the Vegas dance scene, but I usually managed to steer away from it, since I did actual dancing, and not the stand-up humping that some people called dancing.

The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds.

A greasy, unfamiliar voice whispered something suggestive in my ear, and I felt a strange erection poke into my behind. I didn’t even have time to react, or even consider how I wanted to react.

My eyes shot to the stage as the singing stopped, though the music kept going.

“Get the fuck off of her!” Tristan shouted into the mic about a millisecond before he was jumping off the stage.

The creeper behind me was ripped away, and I did my best ‘get the fuck out of the way’ move, backing up three steps fast.

I saw Tristan gripping the man’s shirt, saw him knee him in the groin hard, and saw him yell into his face.

That was as far as it got before security became involved, tearing the two men apart, but I saw the murder in Tristan’s eyes, and wondered just how far he would have gone.

It was pure chaos after that. I don’t think anyone knew quite what to do when the lead singer started the fight in the crowd, but needless to say, the performance was over after that.

Me, Frankie, and all of the guys ended up in the green room, and the strange perv from the crowd in another room, for obvious reasons.

It was a mess.

I was mad at Tristan, because it was a fact that he had overreacted.

Dean, the prick, was mad at me, even going so far as to tell me that it was all my fault.

That had Jared, Frankie, and Tristan all furious at Dean, though in all fairness, Tristan seemed to be mad at everyone in the world just then.

Tristan was in a state. He stood as far away from us all as he could get, staring at the wall, rage coming off him in waves of nearly visible hostility. He was a huge man, and when he was angry, he was scary to behold. Even the security guards gave him a wide berth the second we got into the room, and they were big men themselves.

We were waiting a good twenty minutes when I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I strode up to the security guard, asking, “What’s going on? Are we waiting for the police? Are they going to arrest him? Is that what’s going on? How long are we going to have to wait here before we know what’s going on?”

“We are waiting for answers, as well,” the one closest to me said, sounding calm and reasonable. “All we were told was to sit tight while this thing is figured out. No police were called, as far as I know.” The man put a hand on my shoulder as he said it. It was an innocent gesture. I knew that. Any sane person would have assumed that, as well.

But Tristan was not feeling sane. Sanity had left the building and he was striding across the room, shouting at the man to get his hands off me.

I watched him lose his mind, feeling a shot of fear at the sight, even knowing that it wasn’t directed at me.

Thank God he didn’t hit the man, just got in his face and started yelling like a maniac.

I had no clue what to do with him like this, so I just walked across the room to get away.

“Yoko Ono over there doesn’t want to deal with all of this, even though she started the whole fucking mess,” Dean said, his voice low and mean, but loud enough for me to hear.

I shot him a glare, but I wasn’t the only one that heard him, and Tristan stopped yelling at the security guard mid-sentence, striding across the room, a finger pointed at his roommate, his eyes wild with his fury. “What did I tell you, Dean? What did I fucking tell you? Not one word. That’s what I told you. Not one more fucking diss on my girl!”

I gasped, then covered my eyes when Tristan’s huge fist made solid contact with Dean’s face. I heard two more sickeningly fleshy thuds that meant a fist was hitting flesh, and then it stopped.