R. Lilley - Lovely Trigger

“About that,” I began.  “I’d tread carefully, if I were you and I happened to see him.  He can be, well, volatile.”

His eyes widened.  “Is he dangerous?  Wait, are you safe with him?”

I waved that off.  “I’m safe with him.  He’d never hurt a woman, and he’d cut off his own arms before he’d hurt me.  If there’s one thing I’m sure of about him, it is that.  And no, he’s not dangerous, not ordinarily, but his animosity towards you is not ordinary for him.  I’m not saying he’s going to come to your house and strangle you, I’m just saying that if you happen to see him somewhere, you should turn around and walk the other way.”

His eyes were no less wide, no less horrified.  “I don’t fight.  I’ve never been in a fight in my life, but you’re saying this guy could just walk up and attack me?”

I shrugged, grimacing.  “I don’t think he will, but though I can’t say for sure, I’m also not positive.  He can’t even say your name.  If I talk about you, this little twitch starts up under his eye.  It’s not good.  I’m just warning you to be extra cautious, because he has been in a fight before.  Many fights.  It used to be almost a hobby for him.  I’m not trying to scare you, I just don’t want you to get hurt.  Bodily hurt, on top of everything else.”

“At least you talk about me to him.  That’s got to mean something.”

“It does.  I’ll always care about you.  I’m sorry it worked out like this.”

“So you and him?  You’re making it sound like a done deal.”

I shrugged helplessly.  “I have no idea.  Who can say?  We have a powerful history together, one that goes back years, and that ended in some of the worst tragedies of my life.  Nothing is a done deal, not at all, but I’ve just begun to realize that I might have it in me to give us another shot.”

“Well, you seem different.  You seem happy.  That’s got to be a good sign that things are going well.”

I smiled tremulously, so happy that he seemed to be accepting it all.  Hopefully this would give him a few steps in the right direction, towards moving on.  “They seem to be.  I’m taking things one day at a time.”

“It does worry me that you’re talking about it more like a cancer treatment than a relationship, but then I know you well enough to appreciate your little quirks.”

I laughed.  A weight had been lifted.  He was a good man, and he would not be trying to hold me back with guilt.

I finished our meal with a lighter heart, feeling that things with Andrew were settled, once and for all.

Before I started the drive back to work, I checked my phone and saw that I’d missed a few texts from Tristan.

Tristan:  How’s work?

And then, not twenty minutes after.

Tristan:  I’m coming to take you to lunch.  I just got some good news, and we need to celebrate.

That had been about forty minutes ago.

My mouth set in a grim line, cursing silently, I texted back.

Danika:  I’m on my way back to work now.  Coming back from lunch.

I didn’t elaborate, but I did wonder the entire drive what was wrong with my luck.  Some people could get away with all sorts of deceptions.

Not that this was a deception, I told myself.  I just hadn’t bothered to tell him, because who I had a friendly lunch with was not his business.

But still, I had a long rant in my head about the fact that I did indeed have the worst luck in the world.

I also spent a good chunk of that drive wondering what I would tell Tristan if he asked who I’d gone to lunch with.  I could easily say Bev, or simply say it’d been business.  It was unlikely he’d catch me in either lie.

I didn’t entertain the thought for long.  I wasn’t a liar, and I hadn’t done anything wrong.  If he asked me, I was just going to tell him.  Easy peasy.

Tristan was at the gallery waiting when I got there.  He was chatting with Kate.  He had a deck of cards out, no doubt wowing her with one of his mind-boggling tricks.

I smiled fondly.  He was charming her into a moon-eyed mess.  I could certainly relate.

I’d seen many of his tricks, and I’d even gotten that sneaky viewing of his stage act.

Even so, he still had the ability to shock me with his talent.

He pointed to a magazine that had been strewn carelessly onto the podium.  Some sort of Vegas events brochure, I noticed, as Kate picked it up.

“Page sixty-two,” he told her with a grin.

She flipped it open to the page and started freaking the fuck out.  “Oh my God.  Oh my God.  Oh my God!  How did you do that?  How could you possibly, I mean, I picked that card myself.  It was my choice, which means, oh my God, I don’t know what it means.  Holy mother of God.”

I shook my head, disbelieving, approached them.  On page sixty-two of the magazine was a picture of a deck of cards, with one card flipped up on top.  It was a king of spades.

“You picked a king of spades?” I asked her, studying her face.

She nodded vehemently.  “That is some freaky shit, right?”

I swung a narrow gaze Tristan’s way.  “How on earth?”

Those Troublesome dimples came out to play.  “You know.  Magic.”

I pulled him into my office, not even giving a gape-mouthed Kate any explanation.  “Seriously, tell me how you did that, because unless you really have sold your soul to Satan for some magical powers—”

“Hey now!”

“Unless that has happened, there is an explanation for that trick back there, and you really need to tell me, because that one freaked me out.”

He shook his head, smiling.  “I can’t just give out trade secrets.  I need some guarantee, boo, some sort of contract between the two of us that assures your loyalty.”

“I swear I won’t give away the trick,” I told him.

He tilted my chin up with a light touch, his eyes so affectionate that I had to blink rapidly and look away, to stay unaffected.

“Okay, I’ll take that, and now I just have to keep you close, as insurance, you understand.” He smiled.  It was overkill.  “It was actually a two-bit trick.  The cheapest kind of all.  The really difficult involved stuff is never fully appreciated, which, as a professional, is vexing.  But this one was simple.”

“You somehow have an extra page that you carry around and slip into the magazine, after she picks a card?”

He laughed and shook his head.  “No.  That would be a feat, there.  I’ve seen the magazine before, and I knew about the page, about the card.  I’m actually responsible for that page being in all of the copies of that publication, and it’s a popular one around town.”

“Well, that seems pretty damned involved to me.  But that makes no sense.  She picked the card.”

“It’s not involved, since I do the damn trick all the time, and I get many uses out of it.  I make James provide copies of those magazines all over the property, which is easy for him, since he owns the publication.”

“But that doesn’t explain why she picked that card.  She said so.”

“She thinks she picked that card.  But she didn’t.  I suggested it, not in a way she realized, and that is all there is to it.  Like I said, cheapest trick in the biz.”

“Wow.  They all work like that?”

He shrugged.  “It depends.  To say I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve is like saying James has a lot of money.  Not even touching on the surface of it.”

“You think a trick like that would work on me?  Could you have suggested which card to pick to me like that?”

His mouth twisted, and he stroked a hand over my hair.  “Well, no, certainly not now.  It’s all out in the open, for you and me.”  Something dangerous was bleeding out of his eyes.

I backed away.  “I need to get to work.  Tell me your good news fast, because I’m heading out on the floor.”

He shook his head, his eyes on my body.

I was wearing a fitted navy polka dot halter dress with a big bow at the neck, and a sweeping hem that hit just above the knees.  I hadn’t been dressing to impress when I’d put it on, but suddenly it felt like the dress was too sexy to wear to work.

That’s what his eyes did to me.  They had the power to transform.  The way I felt.  The things I wanted.

“You aren’t going to tell me your good news?” I asked, breathless now.

“I can’t even remember what it is.”

“Must not have been that good of news.”

A ghost of a smile played around his mouth.  “It had some stiff competition, in terms of my attention.  Never had a shot.”

He took a step in my direction, and I inched a careful step back.  There had to be boundaries, somehow, someway, and it seemed like not having sex in my office in the middle of business hours was a good place to start.

“I really do need to get back to work,” I told him, when he’d backed me to the wall.

He picked me up by the waist, carrying me straight to my desk.  He set me on the edge there, and it was high enough that he could squeeze his hips between my thighs, and hit just the perfect spot.

“This won’t take long.”

I snorted.  “Well, that’s hardly selling it.”

He smiled, and sank down to kneel in front of me.

I’d never realized before just how multi-functional a stand-up desk could be.

He buried his face between my legs without even pulling up my skirt.  He just inhaled, making me squirm.

His hands began to inch my hem up.  I helped him, officially gone to the dark side for the immediate future.

Sanity rushing out of me between one ragged breath and the next.

And in that same breath coming back, I let sensation in.  Blissful oblivion in.

It seemed like a good trade.  Impossible to turn down, really.

He bunched my skirt up around my hips, nuzzling into my sex.  I sucked in harsh breaths as he pulled my panties off.

With this teeth.

I struggled to watch, when my eyes wanted to drift closed in pleasure.

It was a sight worth seeing.

I dragged a fistful of my skirt up, stuffing it in my mouth in an attempt to muffle my own cries.

How could I have forgotten the magical things his lips could do?  And his tongue.

And his hands.  Once those magic hands set to work on me, there was no setting up boundaries, no stifling cries.

He licked, lapped, tortured and teased, while my hands in turn stroked his hair or tried to pull it out.  That delicious scruff on his jaw added to the torment, tickling at the skin of my inner thighs.

It wasn’t long before I was tensing, my thighs gripping his head hard, the torrid sensations reaching their fever pitch.

I came, crying out his name, no thought, no care to where I was or what the hell was happening to my self-control.

He was smiling when he straightened.  Very smugly, I thought.  “Well, what do you think?  Did I sell it?”

I just shook my head with no concept of what he was talking about.

Rational thought would return.

Eventually.  But not yet.

“You said I wasn’t selling it.  I was asking if I changed your mind.”

I just shook my head, gone mute.  It wasn’t a no, it was a ‘I have no idea what the fuck is going on.’

He kissed me, one long drugging taste; before he pulled back.  “Come by my place after work.  Don’t find any panties between now and then.”

He left.

It took me a few minutes to recover, and it was only as I was straightening my clothes that I caught the full implication of what he’d said.

The bastard had made my underwear disappear.

He hadn’t given a time, but I ducked out of work early.

I’d been basically worthless for the two hours I’d stayed.  Who could concentrate on anything after that?  Not me.  I could barely focus on the road while driving there, nearly ran myself onto the shoulder as my mind ran rampant with visions of the encounter in my office and then continued to wander to the night ahead.

I had to ring the doorbell several times before a shirtless Tristan opened the door.

He was gleaming with sweat.  It would have taken inhuman willpower not to drink in every inch of his muscled, tatted up body.

And I was human.  Oh Lord, was I human.

He’d clearly been working out by the no shirt, athletic shorts, and running shoes he was wearing.

He’d always been in incredible shape, but this new, disciplined version of him had taken it to a whole new level.  He’d taken all of that antsy energy that he’d once used alcohol to mellow out, and applied it to a workout routine of epic, addictive proportions.