Filthy Rich Santas

10. Lana

10

LANA

“Oh fuck,” I pant, goosebumps springing up over my skin. If I thought Tristan was hot before, it’s nothing compared to how he looks when he loses that calm control he always holds on to so tightly.

His eyes bore into mine as I stare up at him, breathless as I watch him wring out the last of his orgasm.

I’ve fantasized about things like this, but my imagination fell short. He hardly touched me just now, and yet this is the single hottest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I reach for him, needing more.

I need to taste him. Kiss him. Feel him.

The heat in his eyes warms into something softer as he leans in—but just before our lips touch, he freezes.

“Tristan?”

He turns his head to kiss my palm, but then pulls back, regret in his eyes.

I swallow, not liking that look on his face at all. It’s as if, now that the heat of the moment has passed, he’s come to his senses. Realized what he just did, and who he did it with.

Remembered that I’m still Caleb’s little sister.

He gets off the bed before I can think of what to say, and I raise myself up on my elbows, watching as he crosses over to the small bathroom without a word.

He comes back with a towel, steaming from the warm water he obviously wetted it with.

“You should clean up,” he says, holding it out to me.

I blink but don’t take it from him. My emotions are getting whiplash right now.

After a moment, he sighs softly and sits on the bed next to me, starting to clean the cum off my stomach himself.

I swallow, something twisting in my gut. I’m lying here naked, and what he’s doing is definitely intimate, but everything has changed from the passion we shared a few minutes ago.

The way he’s touching me now feels clinical and removed, and I hate it.

I’m also not willing to be some passive little thing who lets someone else decide things for me anymore. He doesn’t get to share that kind of moment with me and then just shut down without a word.

I grab his hand as he finishes, not letting him pull away again. “What’s wrong?”

He stares at me for so long that I actually think he might try to get away without answering at all. But then he sighs, pulling out of my hold and standing up again.

“It was a mistake. We shouldn’t have done that.”

It’s not exactly a surprise to hear with the way he’s acting, but even if I half expected it, it still hurts. Maybe even more so because I never truly expected anything like this to happen between us in the first place, so when it did…

I swallow hard, disappointment spreading through my body and tainting the afterglow.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” I snap, some of my hurt spilling over. “Because you missed a spot.” I brush my fingers over the little triangle of trimmed hair on my pussy, getting them wet with the last of his cum then holding them up for him to see. “If you’re trying to clean up all the evidence, you should make sure to do a better job.”

He grimaces, looking away. “That’s not what I was doing.”

I scoff and roll off the bed, done with lying naked in front of him when he considers me a mistake.

I scoop up the silky shorts and camisole I slept in.

“There. Happy? It’s like it never happened now,” I say sharply once I’m dressed again, balling up my panties in my fist since I didn’t bother putting them back on in my haste to cover myself again.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, looking oddly vulnerable without his glasses on. “We both know it happened.”

“And that you regret it.”

A pained look crosses his face. “I didn’t say that. I said we shouldn’t have.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re Caleb’s little sister.”

My hurt feelings morph into anger. “So? You’re Meg’s grandson!”

He blinks, rearing back a little. “What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing! That’s my point! You’re more than who you’re related to, and so am I.”

Tristan shakes his head. “You’re comparing apples to oranges. You don’t have the same relationship with my grandmother as I do with your brother.”

“And what about your relationship with me ?” My voice is rising, but I can’t help it. He’s infuriating. “Am I supposed to only be defined by who I’m related to? Because I’m pretty sure I’m a whole person. One who makes her own decisions.”

“Of course you are.”

“Am I, though? To you? Because it sounds like I’ll never be a woman in your eyes. Not if all you see when you look at me is Caleb’s little sister.”

“That’s not all I see,” he says after a minute, his heated gaze raking down my body. Then his eyes meet mine again. “But it’s still true,” he says with a sigh. “Caleb trusts me. He’s one of my best friends. I can’t just pretend that being his little sister isn’t part of who you are.”

Even though the rational part of me knows it’s different, I suddenly flash back to Wade. He defined me by my family ties too. By who I was related to, what kind of connections he thought I could help him with, and the expectations he put on me because of that.

It’s everything I wanted to walk away from, and it’s suddenly too much to feel it from Tristan too.

“I never asked you to pretend,” I tell him stiffly, the fight going out of me. “But I’m more than that too, and someday I’d really like to meet a man who can see that.”

He looks like he wants to say something else, but honestly, I think he’s said enough, so I don’t wait around to hear it. But it’s just my luck that the moment I open his door, still in my silky little sleep set and no doubt looking as well-fucked as I felt for those few blissful moments on the bed before reality crashed back down, Ryder and Beckett both step out of the room they’ve been sharing next door.

They freeze when they see me, their eyes widening in a way that would be comical if I were in a different mood. But I’m not, and my cheeks flame with embarrassment as I lift my chin in a small show of defiance, then quickly slip back into my own hotel room before they can say anything.

I head straight to the shower, but as good as it feels to step into the cocoon of hot steam and white noise, it does nothing to quiet my racing mind. I hate that I’m still turned on, even after the emotional ringer I just went through.

Of course, I’m still stunned that anything happened between us at all, and despite how upset I am about the aftermath, I can’t help replaying it in my mind as I soap myself under the water.

I’ve always liked Tristan. Not just the way he looks, but also the way he is . Smart. Quietly funny. Kind. But I feel like he just pulled the curtain back and showed me an entirely new part of himself. One that was filthy in all the ways I crave, and commanding too.

I’ve never been talked to the way he talked to me, and it’s that that got me off as much as what we actually did.

And I want more of it.

My hands go still, fingers buried in the lather I’m working through my hair, and something inside me deflates.

“It’s not going to happen though, is it?” I whisper to myself, the one memory I’d rather not replay in my head suddenly front and center.

Tristan thinks it was a mistake, and nothing I said changed a damn thing.

I squeeze my eyes closed, breathing through the fresh wave of disappointment, then suck it up and finish my shower, not letting myself dwell on it anymore. There’s just no point.

I find a text waiting for me in the group chat when I’m done, and as soon as I dress and repack my suitcase, I follow its instructions and meet the guys downstairs for breakfast. It’s awkward, but I’ve pulled up my big girl panties and accepted the way things are, so I get through it with a smile that’s only a little bit fake.

Once we all pile into the car, though, there’s no denying the tension going in every direction.

“Do you want the front?” Tristan asks me politely after Beckett gets in the driver’s seat.

“No, go ahead,” I tell him, equally polite.

For a second, just like back in his room, he looks like he wants to say something else, but once again, I don’t give him a chance. I hop in the back next to Ryder and pull out a sketchbook as the three of them discuss the route and who knows what else for the first few minutes of the drive.

All around, everything feels weird. I expected it between me and Tristan, and I’m not all that surprised that the casual ease I’ve felt for the last few days with Ryder and Beckett is gone too, since they caught my walk of shame, but it’s definitely not all centered around me.

I can tell that there’s strain between the two of them and Tristan, and I can’t help wondering if they—if he —talked about me.

But I try very hard not to wonder about that, because it will drive me crazy if I do.

I start randomly sketching, but I have trouble focusing, and it’s not until I realize I’ve started drawing a rough outline of Tristan in the shower this morning that I give up with an annoyed huff and slam my sketchbook closed, tossing it onto the seat.

“Writer’s block?” Ryder asks with a small smirk.

“I’m drawing, not writing.”

His smirk turns into a full grin. “Actually, it looks like you’re not drawing.”

That gets a laugh out of me, which I can tell by the glint in his eye was kind of the point, but just as I’m enjoying the tension relief, he ruins it by clearing his throat and bringing up the one topic I was hoping we could all spend the rest of our lives avoiding.

“So, why were you in Tristan’s room this morning, love?’

“She had a bad dream,” Tristan answers from the front seat, too quickly for me to decide what I want them to know.

And honestly, that’s probably what I would have gone with too. It’s not just the truth, it feels far less embarrassing than admitting that Tristan considers me a mistake . But now that he put it out, any lingering embarrassment is completely overshadowed by how annoyed I am at the way he tried to backtrack so hard after the fact.

He came all over my body. He was so hungry for me that he broke his own rule and touched me after he said he wouldn’t.

It was the best orgasm of my life, and something bold and reckless rears up inside me, refusing to let him downplay how fucking good it was.

“The bad dream is why I was in your room last night ,” I remind Tristan, giving him a sweetly murderous smile. “But that’s not what Ryder asked, is it? He wants to know what I was doing there this morning.”

Tristan clears his throat. “Well, you slept over. I was… happy to comfort you.”

“Thank you.”

He’s hoping I’ll leave it at that. The silent eye contact I’m getting from him couldn’t be any clearer. And why that turns me on even as it sort of pisses me off, I’ve got no idea.

I’m not sure I care, either. For better or worse, the emotional roller coaster this man is putting me on is exhilarating.

But if he thinks I’m letting him off the hook, he’s wrong again.

“And are you going to tell them what else happened?” I ask him, arching an eyebrow.

Tristan’s lips tighten, emotions I can’t identify flashing across his face.

Ryder looks between the two of us like he’s watching a ping pong match, and I catch Beckett’s gaze in the rearview mirror a couple of times too.

“Well?” Ryder finally asks, breaking my stare-off with Tristan. “Are you going to tell us?”

“No,” Tristan says.

“Sure,” I answer at the same time, feeling bolder than I ever have before, as if every mile of this road trip shakes loose another inhibition. “We both woke up in a certain mood, but Tristan decided to take care of that by himself in the shower… at first.”

He groans quietly, shaking his head at me.

I smile at him, holding his gaze as fresh arousal pools between my legs. “I heard him say my name, so naturally, I went into the bathroom when he called me.”

“I wasn’t calling you. I told you to get out.”

I lick my lips. “And I did. But you still had me in a state, Tristan.”

“What happened?” Beckett demands, the quiet growl ratcheting up my arousal to a whole new level.

I break eye contact with Tristan, feeling a flush spread over my skin as I briefly meet Beckett’s eyes in the mirror. “I decided to take care of things myself, just like Tristan was. I went back to the bed and got comfortable. Then I started… touching myself.”

Next to me, Ryder groans softly, and I’m suddenly intensely aware of the heat of his thigh, pressing against mine.

I shift slightly to face him, my heart beating faster as I look into his eyes while telling them the rest. “I was so turned on that I probably would have come in minutes just from picturing how sexy Tristan looked, jerking off in the shower. But then he decided to join me?—”

“Lana,” Tristan rasps softly from the front seat as Ryder’s pupils expand, his eyes still locked on to mine. “ Fuck .”

“A fuck? I wouldn’t have said no,” I tease him a little. “But the way you took me apart with just your voice alone was honestly better than any fuck I’ve ever had.”

“Jesus,” Beckett mutters quietly.

“That’s what I said,” I admit with a breathless laugh, pressing my thighs together. “He told me exactly how to touch myself. Where I was allowed to, and how hard he wanted me to do it, and when I had permission to come.”

Ryder’s eyes are still locked with mine, and the filthy, appreciative smile he’s giving me answers the question I just asked myself—I definitely don’t regret this. Not a single second of it.

No matter what Tristan said, none of this has been a mistake.