RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (64 page)

Chapter 20

I had few options left open to me
after the scandal, and the only skills I had were best suited for a position in
the military—and so it was Her Majesty’s Royal Army that became my only option.
I would be able to apply for a return to duty and before I knew it I’d be back
in some far-flung land securing the interests of the country. I’d never see
combat, even as the disowned son of a lord, but at least I’d be able to have a
place to stay and a more than decent wage to keep me going.

At least this way I’d be out of
everyone else’s hair and able to hopefully turn myself into the man I knew that
I could be—the man that I knew would prove my father wrong. Maybe it wasn’t
what I wanted, but at least being in the military would keep me on the straight
and narrow, and hopefully out of too much trouble.

I wasn’t even sure where I’d be
stationed, all I knew is that I’d be away from the things that would tempt me
to be my old self. I could only hope my absence would make everything better
for Gwen. Perhaps the interviews had helped and perhaps just maybe she’d find
it in her heart to forgive me for what I’d done, but I imagined something like
that was a long way away.

I stepped out of the cab as it
dropped me off right outside of the recruitment office, breathing in the
crowded London air as I tried to push through the crowd of people that was
moving to catch the next light on the crosswalk.

I wasn’t sure why, but every step
felt like I was pushing against a wind, as though something wanted to keep me
out, to warn me away. Maybe I was being foolish, giving in to a deep seated
sense that somewhere in the universe there was some force pulling us toward a
certain goal. Fate.

But if fate had any meaning then how
could something so cruelly pull me from the one woman that I knew was the only
one that I’d ever feel any true manner of love for. Fate was a joke, and a sick
one at that if it kept me and Gwen apart.

You
did that
, I reminded
myself.
Fate had nothing to do with it
.

But despite my assurance that only
my foolish actions had lead me to where I was, I couldn’t help but hesitate as
I reached out for the handle for the recruitment office door. I don’t know what
I did it, honestly there
was
no
logical reason to have done it at all, but for a second I stopped before I
touched the handle and went inside.

“Tristan!”

The voice stopped me dead in my
tracks, my entire body frozen in time as I let that name wash over me like a
wave from the ocean. I knew that voice, I’d hoped to hear that voice one last
time before I left, but knew that I’d never have that chance again. At least
that was what I thought.

I turned toward Gwendolyn’s voice,
my mind still in shock from even the vaguest possibility of seeing her again. I
almost thought that I’d gone mad, crazed at the idea of her even considering
seeing me again. I couldn’t believe it, but there she was.

She wove her way through the crowd
of people toward me, trying to keep my attention, my hand only an inch away
from the handle of the door. It all felt like a dream. None of it felt real.

“What are you doing here?” I asked,
staring down into her gorgeous eyes. I felt like I was going to be sick with
guilt just looking at her. All the thoughts of what I’d done kept flooding back
to me—how she’d even managed to stand the thought of seeing me again was beyond
me.

“I saw the interview,” she said,
reaching up to gently caress my face with her soft fingers. “I heard everything
that you said… and I know that you lied to protect my reputation. And I wanted
to tell you that I appreciated it.”

At
least there’s that
, I
thought ruefully. I gave her a half-hearted smile as I stepped away from the
door to allow another person to make their way inside to sign their life away
as well. The longer I had to consider what I was doing the less I actually
wanted to go through with it. Seeing Gwen brought back feelings that I knew I
needed to suppress,

“I’m just happy that I could do that
for you at least, even if everything that happened was my fault,” I said, swallowing
hard to fight back something akin to tears. I couldn’t let her see me shrink
away from this, after everything that I’d done, she deserved to be as far from
me as I could get. I wasn’t the kind of man that she deserved.

“There’s more than that,” she whispered,
taking a step closer. I looked deep into her eyes, my heart aching to feel
those soft lips against mine, like fruit from the forbidden tree. I wanted to
toss all pretense aside and take her into my arms like I’d been dreaming since
I saw her that first night in her office.
 
“I know that you still care about me.”

“Of course I do,” I said, taking a
breath to calm myself and my quaking nerves. I care for Gwen more than
anything, which was why I had to make sure that I was far away from her or
anyone else that I cared about. I was toxic, and she’s said as much. So why was
she here now when if she’d only waited I’d have been out of her life for
another decade or more. “I wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.”

“Rejoining the army?” she asked, her
eyebrows raised. “You really think that’s what you want?”

Of course it wasn’t. I had hated my
time in the army with such conviction that I’d almost made a game of how much
it would take to have me thrown out. But I knew that a life in the military
would at least keep me grounded, with a sense of purpose that could not have
been seen as more respectable than to strive and possibly put oneself in danger
for their country.

“It isn’t about what I want,” I
said, shaking my head as I turned away from her touch against my cheek. How
could she expect me
not
to go through
with this after everything that had happened? This was my penance, the only
chance that either of us had for any sense of happiness. “This is about what
needs to happen.”

“Look at you, sounding like a grown-up,”
she teased, and I couldn’t understand where her sudden change of attitude had
come from. I’d ruined her life only days before and now she was flirting?
“Maybe there is another way that you could make up just how awful you’ve been
to me lately. A way that I think both of us would enjoy.”

“What has gotten into you?”

“I want to be with you,” she said,
looking up into my eyes. “Permanently.”

“How can we do that when every
newspaper in town would be hounding us everywhere we went?” I asked. “It would
be a zoo, and your reputation is already at risk as it is!”

“That would be true if we were
planning on staying in London,” she said, smiling mischievously up at me.

“Where the hell else would we go?
Our entire lives are here!”

“Then we can make new lives,” she
said, her hands sliding over my sides. “Somewhere that they don’t know us or
care who we are to one another.”

“Your business,” I said, unsure
where this sudden willingness to abandon her carefully constructed life had
come from.

“My business will survive, Tristan,
don’t worry,” she said, smiling up at me calmly as her hands caressed my hip.
“And Tina can step into my place as CEO. She’s handled the company better than
I could have through this whole thing. She’s ready and I have every confidence in
her.”

“But what about everything you
said?” I asked, still trying to process the fact that we were even having this
conversation after the last few days’ events. A rollercoaster had fewer hills
and valleys than this relationship had, and things had certainly been said that
would be hard to take back. “I thought that I was an asshole and that you never
wanted to see me again.”

“You still are an asshole,” she
giggled, biting on her lip as she looked. “But you did something that no one
has ever done for me, you gave up what you wanted—
everything
you wanted—so that I wouldn’t be hurt by our mistake.”

“So we’re still a mistake then,” I
said, shaking my head in frustration. “I don’t understand why you’re here,
Gwen. What is it you want?”

“You, Tristan,” she said, “I want
you
.”

“How can you after everything that’s
happened?
You
reputation will—”

“I was wrong,” she whispered. “And
so long as we’re still in London we’ll be getting looks for the way that we
feel for one another. I want to go away—with you.”

“What? Where could we possibly go?
Everything we have is here in London,” I said, looking all around. “Your whole
entire business is here.”

“Tina can handle everything,” she
assured me again, caressing my cheek. “And as far as location… I was thinking
that France would be fun.”

“We’re moving very fast,” I said,
eyebrows raised, wary of the sudden speed that we were moving. I loved her, but
this eagerness to bind ourselves together was hard for me to handle. I was
never used to women actually
wanting
to tie themselves down to a guy like me. “Moving to some foreign country
together? Living together?”

“We have a few years of lost time to
make up,” she whispered before pressing her lips to mine. “Why take it slow?”

I closed my eyes as our lips met, my
shoulders relaxing into the sensation of her body pressing against my own. For
the briefest of
moments
I fretted about who might see
the two of us together, but the longer her lips pressed to mine the less I
seemed to care. All of my insecurities began to ebb away as I felt my
Gwennie’s
arms wrapping around the back of my neck.

Epilogue

Months after Tristan and I absconded
to France, my youngest brother was born, a pretty-looking baby whom my mother
named George… Not that my mother ever told us about the birth. We’d heard about
it months after that from some tabloid. There were rumors that the child was
never Lord Wolfe’s and how the two of them were sleeping in separate rooms.

“Glad to be far from any of that nonsense,”
Tristan whispered as the two of us lounged across a comfortable lawn chair side
by side. The mid-day sun was in the sky as we basked in its warmth together.

We’d moved into a flat in Paris, the
Eiffel tower in view on the horizon. It was everything a girl could have wanted
when she imagined herself living in one of the most romantic cities in the
world.

“Think any of it’s true?” I asked,
gently running my fingers along his bicep as we lay with one another.

“I couldn’t care any less,” he said,
laughing as he turned to press his lips to mine tenderly. “I have you, and
that’s all that I have to worry about.”

“You’re right,” I whispered
soothingly. “They’ve taken up enough of our lives.”

I’d been left in relative peace ever
since I’d left London in favor of Paris. Our absconding across the channel had
raised a few headlines at first, but before we knew it we were old news by
London’s standards. Everyone was looking for the next big scandal, and ours had
had its fifteen seconds of the spotlight. We were slowly drifting into
obscurity, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Once I’d left I put Tina in charge
of the day-to-day activities at the company, promoting her to CEO as I stepped
back into a silent ownership role from my new home. After the dust had settled
concerning Tristan and I’s affair we found that my client list had not been
nearly as decimated as I had expected, with a good number of members of the
upper class still happily accepting my company’s services. With business back
home still booming, I felt that it was high time that I let myself relax.

I breathed a sigh of contentment as
I let my hands begin to wander over Tristan’s body, allowing my fingers to
gently caress the minute curves of his abs and down along his side. I followed
those Adonis lines all the way down between his hips, caressing the soft mass
of his cock, just barely running my fingers along its length, entertaining the
idea of rousing it from its sleep to feel it filling me in the most intimate of
ways.

Tristan moaned out ever so softly,
his eyes fluttering shut as he enjoyed the slow, deliberate attention I paid to
his slowly awakening dick. I couldn’t help but smile as he began to grow as I
took him into my hand, wrapping it around his base and slowly starting to
stroke him.

“Weren’t you just taken care of?” he
asked, a wide grin splitting his face. It was true, only a few hours earlier
Tristan had held me down as he plowed that massive cock inside of me, slamming
in as hard as he could until my knees buckled. I bit down on my lip, already
feeling my womanhood start to slicken with lust.

“Maybe I want more,” I purred,
squeezing softly on his considerable girth as I continued to stroke his massive
cock. “I’m always so hungry for it, lately… I can’t help it.”

Tristan laughed, a slow, melting
laugh that made a shiver run up my spine and then back down between my thighs.
I bit down harder on my bottom lip and whimpered, my nails ever-so-gently
raking along the underside of his arm as I began to brush my lips over his
skin.

“Who knew being pregnant would turn
my prudish
Gwennie
into such a horny little minx,” he
growled playfully, running his fingers in my hair as my lips turned south
toward his groin. “It suits you.”

“Does it?’ I asked, lapping my
tongue over his tip ever so slightly. “I wasn’t sure you’d really like dealing
with your needy stepsister trying to sit on the cock every second of the day.”

Tristan let out another laugh as he
pulled me into a deep, passionate kiss. “Clearly you don’t know me at all.”

I smiled, pressing myself into his
warm body as I straddled his waist, my back arched as I slowly lowered myself
down onto his stiff rod.

“I love you,” he whispered softly to
me as I took him slowly deeper inside of myself, gasping out as that piercing
slid right against my spot as I worked him in all the way to his base.

“I love you too,” I moaned out,
looking down into his eyes.

As I began to move my hips at a
torturous pace on top of his cock, I realized that my entire life had lead up
to this moment, a moment of pure happiness with the one person I truly loved. I
threw my head back, letting out a soft moan of pleasure as I felt his shaft
twitch as I worked my hips against him.

I had spent so much time trying to
match others with their perfect
soulmate
that the
person I was always trying to set up was myself. All I needed was the right
place at the right time and the will to grab what I’d always wanted.

My
stepbrother, Tristan Wolfe—and his
royal
prick.

The End…