Bad for You by Weston Parker
26
BRITTANY
Tristin’s lips were against mine, but we weren’t kissing. Maybe that was what we were doing with our bodies, but it felt like so much more than just a kiss.
There was something happening between us that I couldn’t describe. Something so powerful that it was painfully breaking me apart piece by piece before putting me back together again and leaving nothing but joy in its wake.
This was that moment people wrote books about. Sang songs about. Made movies about. The moment of absolute clarity when a person became a part of someone else. It was the happy-ending moment, the happily ever after moment, but our story was nowhere near finished. Nowhere near the point where anyone could or would declare that we would live happily ever after in the end.
There were so many things still up in the air between us that I didn’t even know if we would ever get to that point. Tristin said all the right things, and I knew he meant every word, but what stood between us wasn’t even about us. It never really had been.
It was about society, and responsibility, and expectations. It was about whether we fit together as well as we thought we did despite all the broken pieces that had shattered under all the various pressures we’d faced.
But that was the thing about this kiss. That was part of what made the dismantling of the pieces so painful, but what made it feel so darn good when they came together again. It was because right now, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we did fit together as well as we thought we did.
It might not make sense to people, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because, in this moment, I finally really understood one of my favorite quotes. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
That was what it came down to. The rest of it, as he’d said, was bullshit and noise.
I knew this moment, this one precious, perfect moment of absolute clarity wouldn’t last. In the morning, we’d be leaving the beach and heading back to our real lives. But I felt like he was giving himself to me with this kiss. And not just in the way that people proverbially “gave themselves to each other” when they had sex. We weren’t even having sex right now.
It felt like he was pouring every ounce of the light and love he had inside him into me. Like he was giving me every part of himself that wasn’t vital for his continued existence. And what was more, like he was giving those things to me so that, when we did go back to our real lives tomorrow, I would be taking him back with me.
Or maybe my very non-poetic brain is just making up all these things that don’t even make sense because the moment itself is so romantic.Whatever it was, I threw myself into it with all the same passion and fervor as he did.
He tasted like red wine, and truffles, and Tristin. His lips were hard, but his tongue was firm and insistent. Every part of it—of him—was perfect and delicious, and I wasn’t about to go ruining it by trying to figure out what was going on in my head.
Tomorrow was another day, and whether we wanted it to or not, it was coming for us. Thinking could wait until tomorrow.
I slammed the lid on my thoughts—poetic and otherwise—and just focused on feeling. His heart was racing against my chest, his breathing uneven, and his hands impatient.
The crew had gone after they’d served our dinner, but I didn’t know where they were. Since we were on a boat, they couldn’t have gone very far.
Tristin didn’t say anything, but his mind seemed to have gone to the same place mine had. Gently slowing our kiss, he rested his forehead against mine once our lips parted and just breathed for a beat as his fingers stroked my cheek.
“Come with me,” he murmured before standing up and holding out both his hands for me to take. I did as he asked, blind to the opulence of our surroundings as he led me to a bedroom with windows just above the waterline outside.
We stood at the end of the bed, our gazes never breaking eye contact as we started removing our own clothes. Tristin was so gorgeous in the moonlight streaming in from outside that I wouldn’t have been able to look away from him even if I tried.
Which I didn’t.
Obviously.
No woman would’ve. Hell, a lot of men wouldn’t have either, and I wasn’t even only thinking about those who were usually into what he was packing.
He was just so freaking beautiful, standing there in the silvery light of the moon and the shadows playing across his muscles as they moved, that no human who had any appreciation for the gods that walked among us would’ve been able to not stare at him.
It was a testament to the level of emotion in the room that he didn’t smirk when he caught me looking at him like that, nor did he comment on it at all. Instead of doing that, he was staring at me in the same way.
Staring at me like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing either. With all that going on, it took us longer than it should’ve to remove the little clothing we’d been wearing. Swimsuits and T-shirts weren’t exactly a lot of layers to have to get out of, but we both moved slowly.
Once we were finally naked, we came together again in a gentle clash of lips and bodies and the unspoken desire to come together in more ways than just the obvious physical one. The only time we broke apart again was when he had to leave the bed to get condoms from his bag in the corner of the room.
It was powerful stuff, this emotional lovemaking we were doing. We held each other’s hands, kissed, caressed, and looked into each other’s eyes. My orgasm was more like the lazy roll of thunder one could hear coming from a distance than the sudden flash of lightning ripping through me.
Tristin came undone above me just seconds after I came back to earth, his eyes staying on mine until he just couldn’t keep them open anymore. He stayed inside me for as long as he could after, then left the bed only to dispose of the condom before he was back.
It was a night of dozing off, waking up to make love, and then dozing off again. We didn’t speak very much in between, but there was nothing that needed to be said tonight that was more important than what our bodies were already effectively communicating.
We loved each other. We’d missed each other. We were both terrified of losing each other, but neither of us knew if we’d end up having any choice in the matter.
When I woke up the next morning, I was still lying in Tristin’s arms. I must’ve turned over in my sleep, because we were face-to-face now, but I’d fallen asleep the last time with him behind me.
It was amazing how safe and comfortable I felt with him, even if it was a little unbelievable to think I’d spent a night on a yacht. As hostile as this world of his could be, it was also filled with so many beautiful possibilities.
Watching the sun rise over the ocean from the middle of it—after the most intense night of my life— was one of those beautiful things. It wasn’t even just a possibility anymore. It was my reality this morning, and it was all because of him.
I knew why he’d brought me out here. I knew it was to show me the upside to having as much money as he did. It was his way of showing me the good that could come with the bad. The people were worse than bad, they were horrible, but this was also better than just good.
It was incredible, and so was every minute I spent with him. I had to force myself to climb out of that bed, scooting carefully to the edge of the mattress so I wouldn’t wake him.
My bladder insisted that I do force myself away from him, though. No matter how much I’d rather have stayed in that bed with him all day, I couldn’t. We had to get back home, and later this morning, we even had to go to work.
I just needed a few minutes to myself before all the craziness of the week began. After attending to the necessary and then brushing my teeth, I went to get some coffee and headed outside to drink it.
The water was clear and calm, the swells gentle and the sky still that magical dark blue of the very early morning. As I sat down on the deck with my knees drawn up to my chest and one arm around them while I held the mug in the other, I thought about Tristin and what he had tried to do yesterday.
It was clear that he was serious about me. He wasn’t making any secret of it, and honestly, I’d always loved how open he was with me when it came to us.
To the outside world, he was something else entirely to what he was to me. With me. Even when we’d been kids, he’d kept his circle small. Very few people knew him the way I did, and I knew for a fact that those people at the party couldn’t be counted among that number.
But his mother’s words haunted me.
She’d gotten so far into my head that I didn’t know if there was any way of getting her out of it again. Somehow, when I’d been at the ripe old age of eighteen, she’d managed to plant seeds of doubt that had grown into bushes. Bushes I couldn’t seem to weed out even in my thirties.
Could I risk my heart despite those bushes? And if I didn’t risk it, what would that mean? This might very well be my only chance at true happiness, but I didn’t know if I was strong enough to take it.
Tristin wasn’t and never had been a momma’s boy. I knew he didn’t share her views or opinions, but she had raised him. At some point or another, he might come around to seeing things her way.
It didn’t seem likely, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Even if it never happened, could I live with the fact that Selena hated me and would never think I was good enough for her son? Could I live with the doubt she’d planted that I’d only ever drag him down?
No matter which way I sliced it, I just didn’t know. I didn’t know whether he’d wake up in fifty years’ time, turn over in bed to see me there, and wonder what he might’ve achieved if it hadn’t been for me.
But I also didn’t know if I could really break his heart all over again. If I could break my heart all over again.
The gentle lapping of the waves against the hull couldn’t answer any of these questions for me. No one could. Not even me.
There was no crystal ball that would tell me what would happen in our future. All we had was now, and right now, I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do.
