“Um. Well…” I cleared my throat. “I don’t exactly know what I’m doing, you know? How do I…?”

  He smirked and leaned back, running a seductive hand down his furry belly. “Ever have a popsicle, Tripp?”

  “Yeah. Lots of times.”

  “Treat me like your favorite popsicle, darling, and you can’t go wrong.”

  Okay, I could do that.

  I shifted down between Nicola’s legs, trying to get comfy. The position was awkward no matter what I did, but maybe that wouldn’t matter once I got into it. I licked my lips and stared down his cock like I was sizing up the competition.

  His dick was… Well, it was different, no two ways about it. It was conical, with no discernable head, lavender in color, and when I’d grabbed it earlier, it felt segmented. There were definitely visible grooves running in a spiral around it. It spun into a fine tip with a horizontal slit. All of him was coated in a shiny, slick lubricant, the same stuff that I’d felt while my fingers were inside of him.

  Okay, Tripp. You’ve faced down the toughest players in the NHL, won two Stanley Cups, body checked a hundred guys bigger than you, and survived a helmet-shattering puck to the head. A mothman’s dick is not going to be the thing that does you in. You got this, buddy. I blew out a breath.

  “You need a pep talk, darling?” Nicola teased.

  “Nope. Already did that myself,” I said and stuck my tongue out to give him a tentative lick.

  As soon as I touched him, he shuddered and moaned, fisting the blankets. That alone was enough encouragement for me to keep going. At least the taste wasn’t too off-putting. I expected it to be weird and a little gross, but it wasn’t bad. A little bitter, salty, and musky, but he mostly just tasted like clean skin and something my brain said was sexy as hell. The more I had of it, the more I wanted it, too. I closed my mouth around him like he’d done to me and pushed my face down his length, taking all of him in my mouth at once. Nicola’s hands flew to the back of my head, and he ground out a curse, but he didn’t push me back or anything. His fingers curled in my hair like he was holding on for dear life. Maybe he was. His legs were sure trembling like it.

  Spurred on by how much he was clearly enjoying what I was doing to him, I pushed down a little further, flattening my tongue so he could get further back in my mouth. My tongue dipped into the warm, slick slit his cock was jutting out of, the taste of him stronger there. It drove me wild. I suddenly couldn’t get enough and started lapping at the spot like I was starving for it.

  Nicola groaned and started panting. His hips jerked, and I almost choked when he pushed further back and hit my throat, but the truth was, he just wasn’t big enough to choke me. Maybe that’d be a turn off, but I liked it. It meant I could fill my whole mouth with him and have room to maneuver my tongue to tease him. I’d never be able to do what he did, but damn if I didn’t want to try.

  “Stars, Tripp,” he moaned. “Oh, my fucking stars, that’s good. Don’t. Stop.”

  Like I had plans to. If I’d known I’d like sucking moth dick that much, I’d have been doing it all day. I gripped his hips, pinning them to the mattress. He whined in frustration because he couldn’t thrust anymore, but that was the whole point. I wanted to enjoy doing this for as long as I could. Plus, I’d just realized that my hands were large enough to curl around and grip his ass while I was holding his hips. I squeezed him, making him groan in pleasure before I started pushing and pulling him, forcing him to thrust between my lips.

  “Faster,” Nicola planted. “Faster, please!”

  But I didn’t want to go faster, and I was in charge. He wasn’t strong enough to fight the grip I had on him, completely at my mercy, and I was going to savor this for as long as I could.

  “Tripp…”

  God, he was so sexy when he was moaning my name. It was too soon for my dick to rally, but damn if I didn’t wish I could.

  “Tripp! I…It’s…” He let out the most miserable little whine, one that almost made me want to take mercy on him. “Please, darling. I’m so close!”

  Well, how was anyone supposed to say no to that? He was such a sweet talker.

  I released my hold on him, surrendering control to let him set his own pace. Nicola grabbed the back of my head and started jackhammering his dick into my mouth, using me like his favorite toy and fuck if it wasn’t the hottest thing. I moaned around him to let him know I liked it and relaxed as much as I could, giving him all the control.

  Nicola’s movements suddenly got all uncoordinated and jerky. He let out the most beautiful, shuddering sigh and flooded my tongue with his release. It was more than I was expecting, and with a lot more force, enough that I struggled to swallow around him.

  When it was done, he groaned and sagged back against the bed, throwing an arm over his face. His chest rose and fell with harsh pants.

  I sat up and did my best to make my face presentable, scrubbing it with the rumpled sheet. “You okay?”

  “Okay?” He lowered his hand and peeked at me from beneath it. “Okay? darling, how am I supposed to live now?”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  He laid there for another minute, just trying to catch his breath. “Are you certain you’ve never done that before?”

  “Never with a dick, but I’ve had lots of popsicles,” I said with a shrug.

  “And I am jealous of every single one.”

  “So it was okay, then?”

  He guided me down to the mattress to lie next to him and curled up against me. “Darling, you were wonderful. Now just let me bask in the afterglow a bit before you start trying to pull me back into the real world.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” I mumbled.

  “Hold me, darling. Tell me I’m beautiful and let me have a nap. And when I wake up, feed me.”

  I grinned and slid my arm under him, pulling him closer. “You are beautiful, Nicola.”

  He sighed happily and shifted to lie on his side. “That’s the stuff,” he mumbled as I pulled the blanket up over him.

  I chuckled and kissed the top of his head, but he was already half asleep in my arms.

  I rolled over with a groan, reaching for Tripp’s warmth, and found the sheets bare. My eyes fluttered open, and I frowned at the sight of the empty bed. The covers were thrown back, and the door cracked open. I could hear him moving around in the other room of the suite, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was doing.

  “Tripp?” I called, sitting up.

  The door pushed open wider, his big frame blocking out the light beyond. “Sorry. Did I wake you? I was trying to let you sleep in.”

  “No, no.” I rubbed sleep from my eyes and yawned. “What time is it?”

  “Five,” he replied with a wince.

  I squinted at him. “In the morning? Stars above, why are you up at such an unholy hour?”

  “Habit. I was just doing my morning workout.” He stepped into the room and my eyes finally adjusted to the change in light, revealing he’d put on a pair of gray sweatpants and nothing else. They sat low on his hips, leaving most of the best parts of him free for my eyes to roam over.

  I sighed dreamily as I took him in. The best part of waking up was seeing a sweaty Tripp Powers in nothing but a pair of tight gray sweatpants. “If you insist on getting all sweaty so early, maybe I could help?” I flapped my wings and flew over to where he was, practically depositing myself in his arms.

  Tripp laughed. “Tempting as that is, I’m all hot and sweaty and haven’t showered. I’m pretty sure I smell awful.”

  He didn’t. He smelled like sweat and sex, and I wanted to gobble him up. “I like the way you smell when you get all sweaty,” I purred and buried my face against his meaty pecs.

  Underneath all that muscle, Tripp’s heart was pounding as he carried me back to the bed. I thought maybe he was going to take me up on my offer. After all, he really seemed to enjoy himself the night before. Why not go for round two?

  Instead, he set me on the bed beside him and put his hands on his knees, staring at the floor. “Listen, Nicola. About last night…”

  Oh no, I thought with a wince. This doesn’t sound good.

  He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry if it didn’t go as you expected. I, um… I really didn’t know what I was doing. Like, I’ve watched porn and stuff, but I know that’s not real and, well, you’re different. I wanted to do it right, and I’m sorry we didn’t get to, and I’m sorry if you were disappointed by my performance.”

  I blinked in confusion. “Wait, what?”

  “I’ll…understand if you don’t want to do anything else.” He rubbed the back of his neck without looking at me.

  “Tripp, darling…” I took his hand. “Your performance was nothing short of amazing. Why would you think otherwise?”

  Tripp frowned. “Because we didn’t…I couldn’t…you know.” The poor human’s face was blazing red.

  “Because we didn’t have penetrative sex?” I supplied and then couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous a notion it was. “Darling, I’m not from Ikea. There’s more to sex than simply inserting rod A into slot B until climax. Just because we didn’t go all the way doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy every second of that, because let me be clear. I absolutely, positively, one hundred percent would do it all again without one single change. Except, well, maybe to make you more comfortable in the beginning.”

  “Really?” His eyes widened briefly before he squinted at me, scrutinizing. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?”

  “Tripp Powers! Are you calling me a liar?” I pulled away, putting a hand dramatically against my chest to feign offense. “I’m insulted!”

  “No, I didn’t mean…” He sighed and rubbed his face. “Okay, but like…You’re not even the least bit upset?”

  “Upset? No. Disappointed? Maybe a little, but that burden falls on me. It has nothing to do with you being inadequate in any way. Let’s chalk it up to poor preparation. If you’re interested in trying that again, we’ll need a few things to make it work, probably.”

  “Like what?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

  “Well, proper lube for one,” I said, counting on my fingers. “And maybe a decent plug.”

  “A plug?”

  I chuckled and patted his shoulder. “A butt plug, darling. Your fingers are quite large and I’m sadly more delicate than I’d like to admit. We need the proper tool for the job. That means either a butt plug or dildo, if you’d prefer.”

  “Oh,” he said, blushing. He squirmed in place. “Um, well… I wouldn’t know anything about any of that. I’ve never messed around with that kind of stuff, Nicola.”

  I grinned and stood up, stretching. “Well then, I know how we’ll spend our Sunday. Why don’t you make up some coffee since I’m clearly terrible at it?” I gestured to the two cold and abandoned cups I’d messed up the night before. They were still sitting on the bedside table, untouched. “Then we can jump in the shower and go on another little field trip. What do you say, darling? Are you up for a little shopping spree with me?”

  Tripp smiled warmly. “Yeah, absolutely.”

  I squinted into the dawn creeping through the bedroom windows while Tripp shook the last of the coffee beans into the grinder. My people weren’t meant to be awake at that hour. Every instinct in me was screaming that I should go back to bed, sleep through the day, and get back up at dusk. We were nocturnal by nature, and here I was, fighting that nature.

  Why? Because I’d somehow gotten it in my head that I wanted to be somebody. The world wasn’t made for nocturnal monsters. Business was always conducted between the hours of nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. If I stuck to my natural sleep cycle, I never would have had a chance to make it in the entertainment industry. How could I compete with the other talent agents in the field if I was asleep? I couldn’t. So, I had resolved early on in my career to battle my inner nature and flip the clock. I’d sleep at night like everyone else, and stay awake all day.

  Hence my coffee addiction. Caffeine was my salvation in those early days, and it still propped me up most of the time.

  But some days, I wondered why I bothered, especially when I had such a comfy bed waiting for me, and nowhere I had to be. Though I’d promised to take Tripp shopping, hadn’t I?

  I sighed. Best put yourself together, Nicola. You have a baby bi to guide through the rainbow of his awakening.

  “The key to making good coffee is the ratio,” Tripp was saying, completely unaware that I was waging a silent war against the sun in my head. “And the ratio changes based on your brewing method. A lot of people swear by the French press or the Chemex method, and I like the taste of that, but I gotta be honest with you, Nicola. I’m just too clumsy to go brewing coffee in glass containers, and the press is nice, but it takes up too much counter space for an appliance that does only one thing.”

  “You sound like you’re selling me something on QVC, darling.” I leaned on my elbow.

  “I’m practicing,” he said proudly. “I figure whoever you get as an investor in Brewtiful’s will want a demo, right?”

  “A demonstration, yes, but not a lecture.” I stifled a yawn. “And I’m too tired to pay attention just now.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “It’s all right. Just caffeinate me and call me pretty. That’s all I need in life right now.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said, carefully measuring the water. He used the premium bottled water out of the minibar instead of from the sink. “I just really like coffee. It’s the process for me. I’ve never been smart about anything, but for some reason, I get this. If all math was coffee math, I’d be a genius.”

  I chuckled and patted his arm. “You are in your own way. Not everything is about being book smart, you know. I read a book once about the different sorts of intelligence. Did you know, there’s a such thing as physical intelligence?”

  “Really?” he asked excitedly.

  I nodded and leaned back in my chair. “You have to have a particular amount of spatial awareness to be good at sports. Even if you don’t realize it, when you were on the ice, you were making complex calculations in your head all the time. How fast did you need to go? How far? How hard is the impact going to be? How hard do you need to hit the puck to make it go where you want without hurting someone?”

  “Yeah,” he said and winced, rubbing the side of his head. “Miscalculations can be dangerous.”

  “Does it hurt, darling?”

  He sighed and shrugged. “It’s just a headache. I get them all the time.”

  “Nonsense. There’s no reason for you to suffer. Come here. Sit.” I pointed to the floor space between my legs.

  Tripp came over to settle between them without so much as a whimper of resistance, sitting with his back to me.

  I put my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. “Relax.”

  “Oof. You’re stronger than you look.”

  “And you’re far too tense,” I said, kneading the thick muscle of his shoulders. “What’s on your mind, darling?”

  “I just really want Brewtiful’s to be a thing, you know?” He leaned back and closed his eyes while I worked out the knots of tension.

  “It’s important to you. Your dream.”

  “More than a dream,” he said quietly. “It’s a promise I made myself when I didn’t have anything else to look forward to. The one thing I had left in the world when I thought I had nothing. If I don’t do this, Nicola… I don’t know. It almost feels like I never existed.”

  I thought for a long moment, working my way up his neck to the base of his skull. My fingers started to ache with the effort, but it was worth it if it helped him relax.

  I understood what he meant, I supposed. I felt like that with every deal I closed. Each one was important, earth shattering, life changing…Until it wasn’t. There was always another deal to close, more talent to hunt down, a bigger star to chase. The work was never ending, even if I enjoyed it. It was satisfying to a degree, but it wasn’t true happiness. It had taken a long time for me to realize that the elation I felt when I signed new talent and shook hands on a new deal wasn’t happiness. Not really. It was just an adrenaline high. The harder I chased after success, the more miserable I became.

  This weekend with Tripp, strange as it was, was the first time in a long time I’d stopped to think about what I was doing and why. It was also the first time in many years that I found myself truly happy. I could have sat in that hotel room with him for days doing nothing but drinking coffee and chatting about life as long as I got to touch him.

  And it wasn’t the coffee or the room making me feel that way.

  It was Tripp.

  His easy smile. The fresh way he looked at the world. His excitement over small things.

  He’d made me feel alive in a way I hadn’t for so long.

  My throat was suddenly tight and a cold dread for Tuesday settled in the pit of my stomach. How could I go through with annulling this marriage? If I did, I might never see him again. I didn’t know if what we had was love, or if that was even possible after just a few days, but it was something good, and I wanted more of it. More of him.

  “Mmm, that’s good.” He tipped his head back and smiled up at me, eyes closed.

  I couldn’t resist bending down to press a quick kiss to his lips.

  Tripp’s eyes opened, dark lashes fluttering. Our eyes met and my heart jumped like I’d just been hit by an electric shock. I could look into his pretty blue eyes forever and never get tired of it.

  He blinked slowly and reached to touch the side of my face. “Nicola, about Tuesday. I—”

  Before he could finish the thought, my phone buzzed. I snatched it up from the table to answer it with a scowl. “This had better be important or I’ll—”

  Chef Adam Northstar giggled on the other side. “You’re so grumpy first thing in the morning, Nic! You remind me of Inzo.”

  I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Adam! What can I do for you?”

  “Well, there was a lull in the prep this morning so I figured I’d call you while I could to work out the details of that coffee deal,” he said.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63