She grinned. “I’m in my pajamas.”
“So am I.” He gestured to his sweatpants and sleeveless shirt. She could make out the bulging outline of his arms in the dark.
Together, they sneaked across the room, then out the door. Leo, the cameraman posted outside, eyed them, but Tristan slipped the guy a bill, and he turned his head and camera in another direction. Sabrina giggled as they tiptoed together down the stairs. He was a fun man. She’d never been with a fun man, not one with a job and goals and no ring on his finger.
Outside the mansion, Tristan breathed out loud. “I don’t know how they think I can meet my forever-lady if we’re never alone long enough to ask the real questions.”
“The real questions? Like pineapple on pizza?”
He laughed. “Other questions.” He took her hand as they ventured farther out into the woods. “Like, do you want kids?”
“’Of course.” Sabrina pushed at his shoulder.
“Speaking of tongues.” He stopped, pulled her to him, and pressed his hand to her back. The way he maneuvered her, it was like she weighed nothing when she was, in fact, a curvy woman.
“I didn’t say anything about—”
He bent and took her bottom lip between his teeth, giving her a playful nip before his tongue slipped into her mouth. He was a good kisser. She felt lost in him. Then, she heard the branch snap.
She pushed him, but he laughed at the fear on her face, visible as the moon swept through the breaks in the trees. Leaves crunched as she stepped back.
“Probably an animal,” he said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said. “Bears, coyotes…”
“You’re scared of little animals? Wait until we get to where we’re going tomorrow.” He laughed, then mimed zipping his lips. “Oops.”
Sabrina’s heart jumped. “Where are we going?”
“A fricking haunted house!” His voice lifted like an excited child. “In the middle of nowhere. For a whole week.”
The blood drained from Sabrina’s face. “Ghosts?”
“Yeah, ghosts. What else?”
“I was being hopeful.” She shivered in the cold night air. “Tristan, ghosts aren’t to be messed with.”
“You believe?”
“Sort of. I try not to, but…yeah. I don’t want to chance it.” She tried to step away, but he pulled her back into him and hugged her close.
“I’ll keep you safe from bears, coyotes, and ghosts. You’ll be there with me, and I’ll keep a special eye out to make sure nothing bad happens.”
Sabrina relaxed into him once more at his words, his assurance, his request that she stay calm. Sabrina understood herself: reluctant to make decisions, make significant steps, to do the things she should—until the important people gave her that sweet permission. Like her sister and the show. Like her decision to become a nurse in the first place. Her school guidance counselor pushed Sabrina in that direction, and when Sabrina floated the idea to her sister, she agreed, it was a good career path that would offer some opportunity. Sabrina might meet a doctor, her sister said.
Tristan was no doctor, but his hands were steady as they slunk up her shirt and cupped her breasts.
“You like that,” he said, and Sabrina let out a little moan of pleasure. She liked it. He had told her so.
Sometimes, in the back of her mind, Sabrina wondered about her impressionability. That other people might know what she wanted more than she knew, that her thoughts about herself might be wrong. But his hands were gentle, and his lips were sweet, and she did like it. She just hadn’t realized it until the words left someone else’s lips.
Sabrina had never formed plans for herself, after all. As a little girl, she took seriously her mother’s life plan: Sabrina’s superpower would be her good looks. She was smart, but her sister would be able to mine intelligence, not Sabrina. Sabrina’s excellent science scores were inconsequential until the school guidance counselor brought them to Sabrina’s attention. Would she like to be a doctor, the woman had asked. But no. She realized that after Morgan reminded her about the pain she would feel when a patient was too sick to recover. Sabrina’s heart was too soft.
She let Tristan press his hand against the space where her soft heart lay inside her chest, and her skin erupted in goosebumps at his tender touch.
“Would you like me to make you scream?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked, remembering the sound in the woods. She had been on the verge of screaming already.
“Make you come,” he said. “You’ve come before, haven’t you?”
Warmth spread through her body. “Yes! I’ve come before.” And she had. In high school, she and her best friend had practiced their orgasm faces by pleasuring one another and recording the results before her sister found out and told the girl’s parents. In nursing school, one of her sweeter boyfriends had ensured that she was satisfied, but he was keeping other women satisfied, too. A couple of other boyfriends had succeeded, as well. Sabrina counted them in her head. “Like, at least twenty times.”
“Twenty times?” Tristan pulled his hand away. “You’ve only come twenty times in your whole life?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard for me.”
“The choice is yours, Sabrina: do you want me to be your numbers twenty-one through twenty-five?”
Her stomach twisted at the sight of that mischievous grin.
“Do you want to be my numbers twenty-one through twenty-five?”
“I do,” he said.
She flashed back to their fake wedding in the woods less than twenty-four hours ago. “I do, too.”
The air was cool on her bare skin, the bark of the tree rough against her back as he pressed her into it. She gasped into his ear as he rubbed circles between her legs, letting each wave of pleasure wash over her, one after the other until, finally, she begged him to slide inside. He pulled a condom from his pocket and met her eyes for an answer.
