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As if they’d forgotten anybody else was in the room, Tristan continued.

  “The way she saw it,” he said, “Terrence had meant the work to go to her. It was all she had left of him, too, and having it was the only thing that kept her together after she had to turn away. That painting kept her strong for the few days she had it before it was genuinely stolen. But she’d already sketched it in that letter to her sister.” Tristan was still watching Juliana. “Memories of it bolstered her through the roughest times, but she—they—could’ve had so much more if he’d gone against his family and refused the arranged engagement.”

  Don’t look at him, Juliana reminded herself.

  She forced her gaze to the painting, and in it, she saw those reaching hands, the desperate stretch of them.

  But instead of seeing Emelie, she saw a woman who’d lost love because she didn’t know how to handle it.

  Everything came to Juliana in a rush, as if the mist were enveloping her: having sex with Tristan, rising, rising toward the height of her feelings, then having to pull back from all its strength because giving all of herself to him was a betrayal.

  How could she shake that?

  Would she ever be able to?

  She heard someone clear his throat, then realized it was Jiro.

  “So then,” their host said, the pep in his voice indicating that he knew just how much Dream Rising had cost their families…and would cost one of them now. “I believe we’re prepared to continue.”

  Continue.

  He made it sound so easy.

  But couldn’t it be?

  As she stole a last glance at Tristan while the negotiations began, she let herself wonder.

  AFTER THE BARGAINING ended, Jiro provided them with an exquisite multicourse dinner that was a work of art in itself, composed of everything from sashimi to beef-wrapped asparagus to tempura shrimp to fresh fruit for dessert.

  Tristan expressed his enjoyment of it, of course, although his stomach had churned the whole time. Even after he’d holed up in his room, post-meal, to call Chad, he felt immune to sensation.

  When his cousin answered, he sounded sleepy-voiced, content….

  Tristan didn’t ask.

  Instead, he said, “Two hundred and fifty thousand American dollars. Can you get the cash in motion?”

  He could hear the immediate change in Chad’s tone. “You did it? You beat the Thomsens out for the painting?”

  “I did it.”

  His voice was flat, but how could it be anything else next to the words of Terrence and Emelie? Or against the image of Dream Rising, with its colors and shapes weaving into a message that had entered Tristan, making him see what he and Juliana truly had with each other?

  Love—or at least the concept of it. It was complicated, hard to bottle, but it possessed him all the same.

  His glance rested on a dripping branch in the garden. He would swear that she was just as in love with him as he was with her. They were meant to be. They always had been.

  Chad was talking. “Over two hundred thousand. That’s a steep price to pay.”

  He had no idea just how much Tristan had invested. “But the family’s got it covered. It’ll stretch the bank accounts, but the money’s there.”

  “True.”

  He could tell Chad wanted to talk longer, but Tristan signed off, then shoved his phone into his bag.

  He wasn’t about to leave the ryokan without seeing her again, without…

  There was a tap at his door.

  Thinking it was the maid, he called for her to enter.

  It wasn’t the maid, and his electrified body, his thudding pulse confirmed it.

  Long, light hair spilling over her face, hiding her expression from him, Juliana doffed her slippers, then came all the way into his room, tucking the strands behind her ears.

  So sad, he thought. But weren’t they both?

  “Congratulations,” she said. “It wouldn’t be polite to go home without saying it here first.”

  “You already did say it, after we closed our business and then again during the meal with Jiro and Midori.”

  He wanted to ask her why she was here—to make her say it—but he didn’t want to scare her off.

  But he’d get her to admit it before she left this room. Dammit, he wouldn’t go back to the States without her.

  Juliana stepped closer, and a fan in the corner blew enough air to lift the ends of her hair. He imagined the feel of its softness against his face.

  “Did you tell them yet?” he asked.

  “I called, but my uncle Gary answered.” Juliana pressed her lips together, then barely got the words out. “Aunt Katrina was so anxious about the negotiations that they put her to bed.”

  “You’re kidding—”

  “No, she’s okay, but she gets like this sometimes. I’m afraid one day that her ‘nerve flutters’will turn into something worse, so I’m dreading how she’ll react when she actually hears about the painting.”

  The rest went unsaid: how Aunt Katrina might respond if she also found out about her great-niece and Tristan.

  It enraged him that the family could manipulate Juliana like this. The whole town knew how sweet yet controlling Katrina Thomsen could be.

  He stood, came toward her. “Juliana.”

  Next thing he knew, she was against him, her face pressed against his chest, her arms around his waist. He was so surprised that he paused, then tenderly stroked a hand down her hair, holding her to him.

  Oh, God. This couldn’t end. It just couldn’t.

  “I can’t test her,” she said. “It would be selfish of me.”

  “I’ve thought the same thing. But doesn’t there come a point where they should think about our happiness? Why does an abstract feud count more, Juliana?”

  He cupped her face, guided her to look at him. The tears in her eyes almost killed him.

  He couldn’t stand to see her like this, and he knew that, if they went back home and announced their relationship to the town, there’d be a lot more tears.

  Maybe for the rest of their lives.

  She pressed her cheek back to him, and all he could do was hold her.

  And afterward?

  He just didn’t know anymore.

  JULIANA DIDN’T WANT to let go of him.

  Never.

  But she had the sinking feeling that if she made a choice here, it would be much harder to keep back in Parisville, where consequences would rush back to greet her with battering speed.

  So would this be the last time she saw Tristan?

  Would they be like Terrence and Emelie, living in the same town but separated by a refusal to give in to their hearts?

  All she knew was that she was here with Tristan now, and they still had the night.

  Then it’d be homeward bound. Real life.

  No more playtime in Wonderland.

  Against her, he felt hard, strong, and she got even closer to him, feeling safe and warm now.

  One more time, she thought. One last memory to make.

  He must’ve been thinking the same thing, because he inched his hands between them to part her robe.

  Then his robe.

  Their bare skin touched, burned, and she gasped, feeling his penis rubbing against her belly. He was getting aroused, his tip probing her, already wet.

  Without breaking contact, she bent one leg, then the other, slipping off her socks.

  Then she doffed her robe while he did the same with his.

  Her blood dove downward to pool and whirl, to harden her clit until she wanted to touch it and soothe the gnawing stiffness.

  She ran her hands over his toned waist, his rear.

  She wanted to paint him, just like Terrence and Emelie’s picture, show him how much he meant. That way, maybe he’d always be able to feel it, to see that maybe they could find a way to be together someday.

  He got to one knee, spreading his yukata on the ground as an impromptu bed. The maid would be laying out a futon later, so this
would have to do for now.

  Anything would do.

  The intensity of his gray gaze brought her to her knees and they kneeled face-to-face, him holding her hands in his.

  It seemed to be a promise that they would overcome everything, but she couldn’t believe that. She wanted to, but she knew her fiction and the line between that and fact.

  At some point, she’d become a realist, and that fact hurt just as much as loving Tristan did.

  And she did love him. Maybe she always had.

  HE SAW THE DESPERATION in her gaze, and when she slid her hand underneath his penis, the shock of contact fried him.

  Did he want it fast and desperate with her?

  His body said an unqualified yes, but his heart said no. It wanted slow and lasting.

  It wanted everything she wasn’t able to give right now.

  “Juli—” he started to say.

  Her name snagged in his throat as she ran her cupped palm upward, then down.

  Breath. Heart. Both had stopped….

  “I want to make you happy,” she said, using her other hand to urge him to his back. “Let me make you as happy as I can right now, Tristan.”

  As he reclined, she touched her own sex, and when she brought her fingers out, she smoothed that hand over his cock, stroking up and down, coating him with her juices.

  Just knowing that she’d already been so worked up for him shot a jolt through his body—thousands of watts.

  Why couldn’t it be this way in the future, too?

  All his possible answers shorted out when she held the base of him with one hand, her knuckles facing her, her thumb resting on his pubic hair. Then she smoothed upward, grasping him gently until she got to his head, where she made a twisting motion, sliding her palm over his other side while continuing to grasp him on the way down, her knuckles facing him now.

  When she got to the base of him again, her other hand took the place of the first and soon she established one continuous, sinuous rhythm with both hands.

  It felt as if liquid were running over him—hard liquid—and he dropped all the way to his back, unable to do anything more than feel an orgasm building.

  He tried to say her name once more, maybe to stop her because she was hitting every sensitive inch of him, killing him with each twisting caress at his tip.

  Or maybe he was only trying to tell her what she did to him—not just to his body, but to everything else, to the part of him that had stayed remote from all the others because Juliana and only Juliana had been his ideal.

  “Show me you’re happy,” Juliana said. “Let me remember it.”

  With every twist of her wrist as she came to his tip, he saw how much she needed him to show her.

  She increased the pressure and pace, and he grabbed at the robe under him, pulling on it, fighting the heat steaming inside him.

  The red mist in the painting…

  The way it hissed and lifted and—

  He spilled his juices in bursts, bathing his belly, her hands, and when he was done, Juliana still held him, sketching his head with her thumb.

  He saw the emotion buried beneath the violet of her eyes, a color as soft as dusk, just before the sun disappeared.

  If it wasn’t love, he’d be wrong the rest of his life. She felt the same way he felt about her. He knew it.

  Rage speared him—anger at the world, at what was ruining their chance to be together.

  Sitting up, he grabbed her by the waist and tugged her to him. Her sex rested against his cock, and he almost lost all train of thought at the slippery warmth of her.

  She held him tightly, and he trailed his fingers downward, over her cheek, her neck, to her chest.

  He pressed against her heart.

  “I want to believe it’s enough that I’ll be in here,” he said. “But it’s not, Juliana. It’ll never be enough.”

  “Tristan…”

  She was racked with guilt, he thought. Just as out-of-mind wary as he was about going there.

  “Juliana,” he said again, but this time all his emotions were entwined with her name.

  In her gaze, he saw her vacillate, saw her flail and wonder what to do.

  He leaned forward, kissed her just over her breast, where her heart beat like something trying to escape from its hiding place.

  Her hands tightened on his shoulders, and he dragged his mouth to her nipple, taking it into his mouth to circle his tongue around, to taste her sweat, to suck and kiss.

  She whimpered, and he slipped his fingers over her belly, to her legs, opened them and ran a soft touch over her inner thighs.

  She jerked, winced, and he continued, petting her there, up and down her damp skin, coming closer and closer to her pussy.

  At the same time, he kept sucking, working her nipple while slowly easing her back to the ground.

  Then he switched his mouth to her other breast, still caressing between her legs as she wiggled her hips, insisting that he go on.

  He let go of her breast, wanting to see her face.

  And when he spied her flushed skin—a lightly brush-stroked rose—he went hard again.

  “Every night,” he whispered. “We could have this every night, Juliana…”

  At the sound of his voice, she opened her eyes, as if realizing what was happening.

  But in the next moment, she closed them again, tightly, turning her head away as she began to moan.

  He increased the pace of his stroking, and she moaned again, louder.

  Then again.

  Again…

  She was fighting it, he thought.

  But he was going to get her over it.

  11

  EVEN THOUGH HER SKIN was on fire, her body pulsing into itself, the enormity of being here with him kept coming back to Juliana.

  Don’t think about anything but Tristan, she told herself, shifting her hips in response to his caresses. Moving with him.

  Don’t think about them.

  His fingers rested on her inner thighs, brushing close to the center of her, and she ached. Agonized.

  “I’m not going to give up,” Tristan murmured as he sketched his palm up to her mons.

  She bit her lip, hard. It felt as if a part of herself—an entirely new part—was breaking away from her, away from her regular loyalties.

  Can’t let go, she thought, every worst-case scenario running through her mind. Being left alone, just as she’d almost been when she was little, without her parents, until the family had come to claim her….

  Tristan bent to place a soft kiss on her breast. Then he sent her a glance of such affection that a warm gush flooded her veins.

  “Wouldn’t it be worth every second of misery?” he asked.

  Yes, she thought. It would.

  Then he kissed her again, under the curve of her breast this time, and when his lips left her skin she pressed toward him, arcing her back, hating to lose contact.

  No one had ever been so patient with her…or so persistent. No other man had been so willing to invest this much effort and care.

  The realization screwed into her belly, digging down until her clit stiffened to a painful piercing. Then the sensation flamed upward, taking her to where she’d started.

  The zing of need wedged her open as he ground a thumb against her clit, then took her nipple into his mouth again—but harder this time, the wet, wicked suction so unbearable that she almost screamed.

  He drew on her. “Beautiful Juliana,” he whispered. “Perfect Juliana.”

  Echoes from the past, when he’d said the same words to her in the car one time, holding her close, kissing her neck in innocent fervor, melded with the present.

  I never stopped needing him, she thought. I won’t ever stop.

  She almost sobbed at the thought of it, but it was true, and the idea helped her shed the guilt she’d been feeling, leaving her to thread her fingers through his hair, holding on to him.

  Yes, Juliana would go back home to her family, but she would always
love him.

  The thought freed her, making her ten times more open.

  Sensitive…

  He moved to her other breast, his every motion slow and worshipful, as if he would take forever with her. She tightened her hold as he nipped at her peak, licking it to an even more stimulated nub. His tongue took up the same rhythm as the fingers stroking her sex.

  Juliana moaned as if in anguish—drunken, delightful pain that was making her feel more animated than ever.

  And when he slid his fingers into her, slipping his thumb over her clit while still loving her breast with his tongue, Juliana’s moan turned to a blissed-out mewl.

  She spread her legs for him, inviting him deeper inside.

  He looked just as flushed and excited as she was, and lowered her to the ground, taking hold of his erection with one hand, then guiding it between her legs. The tip of him slicked against her, and she instinctively raised her hips.

  “Now,” she said, unable to wait another pulse-thrashing second.

  He plunged inside with one thrust.

  As she took him, she cried out his name because he filled her. And as he drove into her once more, another time, he broke her apart, pounding into her, then beating her back together again.

  A rumble growled inside Juliana, growing in sound and fury.

  They looked into each other’s eyes as they labored, as she pushed against the ground with one hand as if that could bring her even closer to him—maybe even into him.

  He really was a part of her now, and she couldn’t deny it.

  The rumble in her core opened into a full-fledged quake, and the split cracked farther up her body as tiny fissures jabbed out from her center, outward, upward, increasing in speed, breaking into their own multitude of fault lines.

  Then there was something like a gush, a thundering wall of water rushing through the cracks of her, blasting her apart until only scatters of thought could form before being obliterated, too.

  Him.

  Her Tristan…

  She was still coming when he climaxed, as if her orgasm had been the thing that had broken him, as well.

  The force continued to pummel at her, disintegrating her…

  Section by section…

  One piece…

  Another…

  Then, following what seemed like hours, she spasmed one last time, pulling him down to her, burying her face in his neck, almost biting him with the aftershocks.