“I’m not sure what they should be,” she said.
“Oh.” I had to think for a minute before I responded to that. “Um...well, the kissing is okay, right?”
A little smile crossed her face, and she nodded a couple of times.
“And this is okay?” I ran my hand over the side of her face, down to her neck, and then over her arm. I took her hand and brought it up to my lips for a moment.
“Yes,” she said.
I let go of her hand, and she returned it to the back of my head where she once again played with the short hairs, stroking upward, against the grain. I worked my mouth against hers, and I gently ran the tip of my tongue across her lips before reaching inside. As we kissed, I slowly caressed her side and moved over her hip. As I started to reach around to her backside, her hand left my head and reached around again to stop me.
For a moment we stopped kissing, and Tria looked to the side, not meeting my gaze. I moved my hand back to her side and tickled the soft skin right below her T-shirt. She smiled again, and I touched my lips against hers briefly. When I pulled away, her eyes remained closed.
“You need to sleep.”
“You haven’t told me anything.” She pouted as she spoke.
“In the morning,” I suggested.
“No,” she said. “You’re just delaying.”
“How about I tell you, and in return, you let me grab your ass when I kiss you.” I was joking, but it was the only way I could see myself getting out of this.
“Deal!” she responded immediately.
I eyed her for a minute and knew she was completely serious.
“I don’t…” I started, then closed my eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t talk about my history. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Tria’s chest rose and fell with a deep breath. She shook her head slightly and then rolled over to face away from me.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
She turned her head to look over her shoulder.
“You said you’d try this,” she reminded me. “What exactly do you think is involved in a relationship?”
“I also told you I wasn’t going to tell you shit and that I was going to fuck it up. Do you believe me now?”
“That was yesterday,” she said. “You made a deal with me just now. Are you going back on it?”
I glared at her for a moment, but this time there was no wavering in her determination to get something out of me. It was too late to start this shit, but I knew I was going to have to give her something.
Besides, her ass was calling to me.
I sighed, knowing that I couldn’t deny what she was saying, either. I didn’t know a lot about being in a relationship, but I knew enough to understand there was give and take; there was compromise. If I give a little, it sounded like she was willing to give a little, too.
Maybe a short and quick version would be enough.
“My dad kicked me out when I was seventeen,” I told her in a rush. “I haven’t spoken to him since. My uncle, Michael, tries to get us back together every once in a while, which is why he offers me jobs. I don’t want them. I don’t want anything to do with them.”
Tria rolled back over to face me and propped herself up on her elbow as we talked.
“Your father owns the hotels, too?”
“My father is the owner and CEO of Teague Silver,” I told her. “It’s a conglomerate of companies that started with a bunch of silver mines. Originally, it was a chunk of the Comstock Load, if you remember anything about US history, but now there are mines in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina—all over the place. That expanded into smelting ore and mining copper. Now there are jewelry stores and a bunch of other related shit, too.”
“That’s why the earrings are significant,” Tria said with a nod.