Black Heart (17 page)

everything and anything about the medical field.

Hank had immediately taken Tristan under his wing at the ripe old age of six. He’d

quickly became one of his best friends. He’d taught Tristan how to protect himself and

when it was appropriate to throw a punch and when to walk away. He’d always introduced

Tristan as his boy and, when Tom was around, he referred to him as “our” boy, earning

curious looks.

Shayne had taught Tristan how to trust. He was also the more motherly of the three men,

which was a sharp contrast to his tough Irish persona. When Tristan broke his arm when

he’d been fifteen, during a football game, it had been Shayne running around the field

screaming like a banshee as Tristan was loaded into the ambulance. It was also Shayne who,

for the next two weeks, haunted the hell out of the linebacker who’d broken his arm. He

was fiercely protective, but he could also be one of the sternest men in his life, like now.

“What. Did. Ye. Do?”

As big a pervert as Shayne was when it came to porn and women, Tristan had no doubt

whatsoever as to what his reaction would be when he found out what Tristan did to Marty.

Shayne believed in treating a lady with respect even if she was a whore. Considering how

much Shayne liked Marty, Tristan was going to be in deep shit.

“I, uh, that is, we may have fooled around a bit after you left,” he said quickly.

Shayne’s scowl swiftly turned into a grin. “Finally. It’s about time the two of ye stopped

acting like idiots.” After a moment, his happiness turned into confusion. “I don’t see how

messing around would upset her…...ye didn’t hurt her, did ye, lad?”

“No, but I may have um, inadvertently guaranteed that her date was not going to, um,”

he cleared his throat, “want to take her out.”

“She had a date?” Shayne asked, sounding even more confused.

Tristan returned his gaze to a menu and nodded.

“I don’t understand. What did ye do? Did ye wait around and explain to the other lad

that ye were seeing Marty?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, what the hell did ye do?” Shayne snapped, clearly aggravated.

Tristan mumbled his response.

“What?”

“I marked her.”

For a moment Shayne was too stunned to respond. “Ye marked her, lad? Like with a

pen?”

Tristan chuckled. “You could say that I laid my claim with a kiss.”

“Oh, ye sly bastard,” Shayne said, smirking. “I’d love to see the face of the poor bastard

when he spotted that.”

“It would be pretty hard to miss,” Tristan said, chuckling.

The doorbell chime echoed throughout the house. Tristan’s grin widened. “Showtime,”

he said, pushing away from the counter. The doorbell then began to ring continuously as if

it was being held down, which it probably was. Then the pounding joined in, followed by

her screaming threats.

“Tristan Black, you open this door right now before I break it down!” she yelled. “I am

going to kick your ass!”

Chapter
12

Tristan casually leaned against the doorframe while he smiled warmly at her as if this was

a pleasant visit. She inwardly scoffed at that.

This was an ass kicking!

“Why, Marty, what a surprise to see you here,” he drawled as he studied his nails.

“Didn’t you have a date?”

“
You
,” that one word seethed with uncontrollable rage, “
bastard
.”

He pressed a hand to his chest. “Me? What did I do?”

“You….You……” She had to take a deep calming breath just to get the words out. “You

gave me a,” she paused to look around, making sure that no one was within earshot and

hissed, “
a hickey
!”

“I did?” he asked, looking thoughtful. “You’d think I’d remember something like that.”

Then he shrugged as if it was no big thing.

“You marked me, you prick!”

He frowned at her. “Are you sure? Because I really can’t recall doing that.”

Her hands clenched by her sides as she prayed for patience or a baseball bat to beat his

ass with, either would be welcomed at the moment. She tilted her head to the side to expose

the mark. Not that she really needed to do that since no one else had seemed to be able to

miss it, much to her embarrassment.

“Oh yeah, so I did. Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. No, he sounded and looked

smug, very smug.

“Everyone at work saw it!” she snapped. Damn if that didn’t make him look even

smugger. “Some of them asked if I had a run in with a vacuum!”

At that he laughed.

Laughed!

“It’s not funny!”

He laughed harder.

“It’s not!”

Sighing, he reached out and ran a finger over his mark. “Come on, it doesn’t look that

bad.”

-
-
-

It did. It really did. There was no way that Hank was going to be happy about this.

She stood there fuming, looking so damn upset that he couldn’t help but feel a little bad

about what he’d done. Not that he regretted ruining her date, because she was his and

really, by this point, she should have realized that, but about embarrassing her at work. He

reached out to take her hand in his only to have her pull it out of his reach.

“Look, I know you’re pissed. Why don’t you come in here and we’ll talk it over and

order some food. Then if you’re still angry, you can kick my ass, okay?” he suggested with

a hint of a smile, praying like hell that he could fix this. He wanted to spend the night

holding her in his arms, not fighting over petty bullshit.

Marty eyed him for a moment before her scowl disappeared and a sunny smile took over

her features, making him understandably nervous. “That sounds great. Let’s go,” she said,

seeming pleased as she stepped past him and walked inside.

Well, that was easy. A little too easy. He’d expected to have to beg, apologize, and

ultimately chase her down and drag her back. Ignoring every instinct in his body that was

shouting for him to run for the hills, he stepped back and closed the door.

The lock clicked just as he was shoved against the door and his arms were swiftly

brought behind his back. He heard and felt the handcuffs before it registered in his mind

that he was seriously fucked. Damn, he forgot about Hank teaching her how to take down

an unsuspecting criminal when she was five, you know, just in case she happened to come

across one on the playground.

-
-
-

Tristan turned around to face her, grinning. “Is that all you have for me, baby?”

“That and more,” she promised with a pleased tone that let him know that she truly

thought she’d won. She really should have known better than that by now.

He shook his head, sighing. “I’m really disappointed in you, baby.”

“Are you going to continue to call me that?” she asked in a bored tone.

One eyebrow arched up in challenge. “Are you going to take these cuffs off?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

She watched him as he carefully moved to sit on the floor. “If you’re going to handcuff a

man,” he paused to shoot her a look of warning, “and you better not be thinking about

handcuffing any other men.”

She rolled her eyes at his assumption that they were together. “Make sure that he isn’t a

cop with a shitload of extra handcuff keys lying around the house.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said with a shrug.

He frowned up at her when his butt hit the floor. Even as he spoke he bent his legs to

loop his arms under them to bring his hands in front. Now she couldn’t very well allow that.

“What doesn’t matter?” he asked, the last word leaving his mouth in the same

instant that she lowered herself onto his lap, straddling him and effectively trapping his arms

behind his back.

She pushed him down, knowing that with his arms behind his back like this that he

wouldn’t be able to stop her, or at least, not easily. He landed with a thud. “It doesn’t

matter, because I’m not going to give you a chance to retrieve a key until I’m done with

you.”

-
-
-

Tristan took a moment to consider his predicament while his eyes ran over her spread

legs, at the skirt that was hiked up, the hard nipples that were straining against her blouse up

to the face of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He felt his lips curve into an

appreciative grin. He could think of a hell of a lot worse situations to be in than lying

beneath the woman that he loved.

“Do your worst, baby. I’m all yours.”

Marty returned his grin, which made him a tad uneasy, but not enough to roll her off of

him and end this game. “Oh, you can count on it.”

“Ah, lad, I know this is generally a good start to a porn and all, but I have a really bad

feeling about this,” Shayne said, looking both amused and nervous at the same time.

Tristan rolled his hips suggestively beneath her and watched as her eyes glazed over.

“The only thing I can count on with you like this is getting hard.”

Nothing on earth could have shocked him more than her grinding down against him as

she leaned down until their lips were barely a few centimeters apart. “That’s exactly what I

want.”

All thoughts of acting unaffected shot out of his head at that declaration. He leaned up

and captured her lips with his own. She eagerly returned the kiss while she continued to

grind against him. He swallowed her moans of pleasure as his hips rolled up to meet hers.

The pain in his shoulder from having his hands cuffed behind his back was forgotten as was

the pain from having their combined weights pressing the cuffs into his skin. All that

mattered was the woman on top of him.

“I need you, Tristan,” she whispered against his mouth, breaking the last strand of

resistance that he’d been holding onto.

“You have me. I’m yours,” he promised, because he was, always had been and he’d

been a fucking moron to fight this hold she had over him.

She stopped kissing him and moved back just far enough away so that she could look at

him as she asked, “No matter what?”

There was no hesitation whatsoever. “No matter what, Marty. I’m yours, always have

been.”

For a moment she looked like she was going to cry and he definitely did not want that.

He leaned up and captured her lips again, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. She met him

stroke for stroke as her hands roamed through his hair, over his neck, shoulders and chest.

She gently pushed him back down and broke away to trail kisses down his chin. Tristan

was as a helpless as a newborn babe beneath her touch. He watched through hooded eyes

as she licked and kissed her way down his body.

“Do you like this?”

“Yes,” he groaned as he imagined her hands and mouth on another part of him. That

thought was quickly replaced with one that had him grinding his teeth and trying to bite

back his temper before he did and said something stupid to wreck this.

As she reached the waistband of his pants he couldn’t stop jealousy from taking over and

asked, “Have you done this before?”

-
-
-

“This?” she asked, pulling back slightly before she followed the happy trail that

disappeared beneath his jeans with her tongue. “No, I haven’t done this with a man before.”

“So…,” he sucked in a breath as she ran a curious hand over the bulge in his pants. “You

haven’t,” gasp, “had a man inside of you before.”

She looked up with a thoughtful expression on her face. “Well, only Bob, but I haven’t

been with him in a while.” She had been meaning to pick up batteries for her Battery

Operated Boyfriend months ago, but had never gotten around to it.

Rage shot through him at the thought of another man touching her. “He doesn’t touch

you again.” His eyes locked on hers as he snarled out, “I’ll fucking kill him if he touches

you ever again. You’re
mine
!”

She looked down so that he couldn’t see the pleased expression on her face. Really, she

shouldn’t be this happy that a man was acting this way, but she was, probably because it

was Tristan and it meant that she wasn’t the only one suffering from this thing between

them. This was the man she’d loved her whole life. Then a thought occurred to her that

wiped away her smile.

As she cupped him through his pants with one hand and undid his pants with the other,

she asked in a nonchalant tone, “And have you had many women?”

Tristan opened his mouth to answer when Shayne’s loud bark of laughter distracted him

letting him know that he was still close by.

“Not unless ye count yer left hand, lad!” More laughter. “And I don’t think that lass that

ye
almost
lost yer virginity to counts since she shoved ye away once ye moaned Marty’s