Keeping His Promise (Year of the Billionaire Part 3) (2 page)

When he returned, there was a lot less light in his leafy eyes. He sat down next to me and gently took my hands in his. "Raina, I'm sorry. Very sorry. I hope you will let me see through the situation with your parents and help you find a position. It's the least I can do."

"That's it? That's all you have to say?" I was shocked. I had been kidding myself that somehow he would want to make it right. To open up, to
bend
a little.

He stood up and kissed my forehead with a softness that brought tears to my eyes. "I'm going to my office for the afternoon. Stay as long as you like. Kwan will be downstairs when you're ready to go back
to your house. I'll be in touch . . . later." Then he was gone.

Two

My room seemed small, shabby and like it belonged to a little girl. I felt like a little girl. A lost one.

I didn't mention the 'scene' with Tristan to my parents. By the time I got home it was dinner time and Mom was back in her place at the stove, throwing together a nice supper for Dad and I.  I gave them both a big hug and fled upstairs hoping that my devastating sadness wasn't written all over my face. They needed some p
eace and happiness, not my self-pity to bring them down.

I soaked my pillow with some hot tears of frustration and anger. I had blown it big time and deserved to have Tristan cut me out of his life. The man had been kind, generous and totally up front about himself and I just couldn't leave it alone. I didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with a man like Tristan King. I was a bad cliché. The girl who just has to push until she pushes the one man she really wants out of her life.

I was surprised when my father told me he had talked to Tristan that afternoon. He blithely related what a great guy Tristan was. That he was handling the union problem with subtlety and real street smarts. Tristan had informed Dad that even though there were plenty of witnesses to the beating, none of them would testify publicly.

"Damn cowards, every one," my father fumed. "Tristan says that even though we know, beyond a doubt, who the guys are and where they are, our hands are tied. Tristan wants to set them up--a sting--and get them on tape."

"I hope you told him to find another star for his show," my mother said.

"Are you kidding? I'm the only logical one. Tri
stan said . . ."

"Dad, can we just stop with 'Tristan said' and 'Tristan wants'? Please?" I really didn't need to hear much more about wonder-boy. My mother shot me a strange look

"Did you and Tristan have a fight?" she asked me.

"No, mother. We didn't have a fight. We just want different things. Okay?" I pushed myself away from the table. "It's been a long and mostly rotten day. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed."

My phone mocked me from the nightstand. I couldn't will it to ring. I couldn't, by sheer force of thought make Tristan dial my number and say "We need to talk" or "I've changed my mind" or any number of things I so wanted to hear.

I tried to put him out of my mind.
I was actually watching South Pacific on the classic movie channel. It was corny and old, old school. It was even an old movie by my parents' standards. I had forgotten the night Tristan and I first made love in Brian's loft. But it all came back to me when Rossano Brazzi started to sing "Some Enchanted Evening". When he got to the end and sang "then fly to her side, and make her your own, or all through your life you may dream all alone" I started to cry again.

"Is that what you want, Tristan?" I asked the empty room. "You want to dream all alone? What a fucking waste," I sobbed. My American Girl dolls all looked down from the shelf at me and I imagined they felt sorry for me. I cried harder, wishing I could go back to a time when my biggest concern was whether I'd get the outfits and furniture for them that I asked for for Christmas.

It was still early when I fell into a teary, exhausted sleep, snubbing into the wet pillow as the last of my impotent sobs resided. I woke up at eleven thirty, then two, then three. I fought the urge to get up and tossed back into a fitful sleep.

***

"It's your turn. I'm going to do anything I want to your body…" Tristan whispered into my neck with soft nuzzles of his warm nose against my skin. His lips brushed against my collar bone and the silky skin under my chin. A flutter of response tickled through my entire body as he moved further down to my breasts.

I felt him take the first nipple tightly in his
mouth and pull hard on my tautness, straining against him for more. Twisting the other nipple hard between his thumb and forefinger, he raked his teeth around the one in his mouth and I cried out in the pleasure-pain of exquisite sharpness. He knew how excited his fierce attention made me, how aroused I became when he was rough and lust driven against my tender tips.

He slipped down across my belly and left a trail of bruising kisses against my torso, nibbling and sucking
my flesh. As he made his way down he rasped out words dripping with heat.

"Oh, how I'm going to fuck you. My cock is ready to explode on you, in you, all over you." He lunged into my pussy and suckled there as if he would draw the life from me with his urgency. My clit rose to meet him, erect and straining for the pleasure of his tongue against it.

"Tell me what you want," he commanded and I answered him.

"Touch me, lick me, eat me, Tristan. I want to come against your tongue." Saying the words to him, aloud, made me want to spread my legs further to him. I wanted to be exposed and vulnerable. Tristan held my pussy up against his mouth and flicked my clit back and forth as I began to move against his mouth, bucking and pushing toward what I knew would be a crashing orgasm.

Without warning, Tristan flipped my body over onto my stomach and I felt him tie my hands behind my back. He lifted me roughly from the bed and pushed me into a chair beside the bed. He bound each of my ankles to the legs of the big armchair and I sat there, stunned and splayed out, unable to move. I watched his naked body swiftly cross to the night stand where he retrieved another cloth.

He stood in front of me, his erect cock face level. His smile was fiendish as he took his hard member and smacked it around my cheeks and mouth. I could feel the warmth and then the coolness as he rubbed the escaping drop of moisture from the head over my skin.

He tied the cloth around my face, gagging me. He tied it snug and I had to breathe deeply through my nose to get enough oxygen. I'm sure my eyes widened in fear. I'd never seen him this way. Even at his most dominant, he was never mean.

"I can see your excitement," he snarled at me. "I can see your horny wetness dripping down your legs. I brought you right to the brink, didn't I?"

I nodded bleakly. I had no idea what he was going to do next or what was expected of me.

He opened a door and a woman walked in. A diaphanous
garment swirled around her. I tried to make out the color of the transparent silk, but it seemed to be all color and no color all at once. Likewise, her hair was not brown, nor blonde or even auburn, it iridesced with every hue. She was backlit, like an angel, and her face was obscured.

Tristan walked over to her and dropped the gown from her shoulders. I could make out the swell of a ripe, perfect bosom tapering to a tiny waist and curving out again to perfect, rounded hips. Tristan gasped at the sight of her body
. All I could do was watch.

"Here stands the most perfect of women," he said. "My beauty, my only love."

My heart was breaking and I wanted to scream, but the gag prevented it. I could only watch as Tristan trailed kisses down her body proclaiming his love with each pass of his lips over her flesh. She said nothing. When she sighed, it sounded like music or birdsong.

"Make me whole tonight. Complete me with your touch."

She went to the bed and lay against the pillows where my head had been just moments before. Tristan stood over her, tight and tense in his desire and his need. His cock stood straight out from his body and it seemed bigger and fatter than it had ever been before.

He put his head between her legs and she began to moan in her ecstasy. I tried to turn away but something, some power kept me riveted to the sight of him licking her. Every so often he would stop.

"Stay with me forever," he'd say. Or "I'm yours until the end of time." Then he would resume his attention and she'd groan and twine her fingers through his hair. She arched against his face and screamed her climax into the darkness. I felt wetter still between my thighs and it horrified me.

He mounted her with a tenderness I had never seen in him. He was rapt in worship of her and moved with agonizing slow thrusts that I could almost feel in my own trapped body. Involuntary tilts of my pelvis strained toward the cock that was now impaling this apparition of purity and loveliness. I watched them in tortured silence and knew without a doubt, even before he said her name, that this was the woman who'd forever haunt him. The woman to whom he compared me. The woman I could never be.

He began to come and cried her name in his rapture. "Elsa, Elsa, oh Elsa my love . . ."

***

I woke in a burning sweat. My skin was soaked. I was sticky and hot between my legs. Mortified, I shook the dream from me and whimpered against the sheet I drew up against my hot cheeks. A dream can shame you, and this one did.

The clock said five-thirty. It was close enough to dawn for me to get up.
The prospect of the dream returning motivated me out of the treacherous bed that led me to such a miserable nightmare.

I went down to the kitchen and started the coffee. I've always hated getting up before the sun. The darkest hour was made even darker as the dream refused to leave my psyche. I kept hearing him whisper all the things I knew he had probably really said to her. The things he'd never say to me.

Mercifully, I wasn't alone with my thoughts very long. George wandered up the stairs and Dad came down. I got busy cooking up a batch of biscuits. I knew my mother would welcome the smell of baking bread when she joined us. By the time the sun was fully up, breakfast was well underway and the dream receded into the backwaters of my mind.

I intended to stay busy and keep my thoughts from drifting to Tristan. He had said that he'd be in touch, but I knew better than to expect it to be any time in the near future. I had made my decision and I had said the words. I couldn't take them back now and he couldn't take back the
gentle but cold dismissal of my needs.

As the day wore on, I was thankful that my sadness began to morph into anger. Anger is a lot easier to channel into productivity than sadness. I didn't want to be depressed, I wanted to take action. Since the day I met Tristan, I had allowed him to take control of my emotions. He had made all the rules and I had blithely followed them out of fear that not doing so would lose him.

Indeed, that's exactly what happened. As my mind wrapped itself around the damage I had done, I started to forgive myself. I watched my parents cherish one another in the small things as they began their umpteenth day together. She poured him coffee, he shared a headline or two out of the morning paper. When he rose to take his plate to the sink, he picked hers up as well and gave her a little peck on the cheek. It was all very mundane.

My mother didn't have to ask my father to be there the next morning, or the next or the next. And if she had, he would have thought it an honor to promise her anything. He would not have felt cornered or thought her needy for asking. As much as I would miss Tristan's touch and the adventure and excitement of time spent with him, I deserved as much as my mother. I deserved to expect.

By midday, I had the want ads spread out on one end of the table and my laptop at the other. My resume was slim, but polished. There was no point now in kicking myself over blowing off those interviews to go to France with Tristan. There was a job waiting for me out there and I intended to find it.

Three

A week later, I wasn't nearly as optimistic. I had emailed my resume to any and all jobs that remotely fit my limited experience and my liberal arts degree. I applied to publishing houses, theaters, museums, libraries, bookstores and non-profits. In seven days, I hadn't netted a single return call.

As a fall back, I had pounded the pavement in my neighborhood hoping to luck into a vacancy in a restaurant. I had experience as a waitress, hostess and pantry girl. Although I hoped it wouldn't come to restaurant work, I was prepare
d to take anything. I had let the grass grow under my feet. I was broke and had stooped to getting spending money from Mom and Dad. This was not the way I had envisioned life after Bennington.

Dad had been talking to Tristan on the phone. My parents knew, of course, that we were no longer 'together' as if we had ever really been. They were diplomatic about it and didn't question me. But they didn't avoid him, either. My father still wanted to nail the bastards that beat him up and Tristan was the only person who seemed fully committed to seeing it through.
I left it alone, it was between my Dad and Tristan.

Plus, Archie was still hound-
dogging the money trail to see if he could nail Mom's kidnapper. He was convinced that those hundred dollar bills would surface sooner or later and probably closer to home than any of us thought. Archie claimed to be an 'intuitive' detective. It was a word that seemed out of place in his vernacular. But he was sure that his gut feelings were as valid as any other piece of evidence in Mom's case. The police had been cooperative, but it was Archie (and thus Tristan) who was supplying the man-hours. Plenty were needed.