 by Raleigh Ruebins.jpg)
Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Then he kissed me. Now it feels like he’s mine…
I’ve shown my best friend Tristan everything: how to use a circular saw, how to lay grout, and how to do a kitchen renovation right. On the job, we became close friends—then even closer as we learned to share a camping tent.
It was all harmless. Just like my crush on him.
Then one night at Red’s Tavern, Tristan pretends to be my boyfriend. And apparently he likes it, because he’s trying things with me he never has before.
…Like kissing me. Touching me more. Dragging me into bed. He invites me on a trip back to his Colorado mountain hometown, and I fall in love with his big, awesome, quirky family, then end up in bed with him each night.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
JACK
“I’m here,” I called out as I pushed open the familiar front door of Tristan’s house. “Please tell me you have your clothes on by now?”
“Depends on your definition of clothes,” Tristan said as he rounded the corner of the hallway into his living room. He had a towel slung around his waist and water droplets clinging to his shoulders, slowly dripping down the taut curves of his pecs and his biceps.
Good God.
I swore his body somehow got even better anytime I’d been away from him longer than a week.
I rolled my eyes, even though I wished I could watch him. “You’re just trying to show off your abs. Go get ready.” I looked away and shook my head at him, crossing over to the couch.
He just stared at me. “I’m ready for you to get your ass over here and give me a hug,” he said.
“Hurry up, then,” I said. “At least wait ‘til you’re dried off to give me a hug, you weirdo.”
“You fuckin’ love it.” He gave me his signature playful smile. His black hair was short on the sides but a little longer up top, and right now, it was sticking up in a million different directions after being toweled off. “Come here, Blue.”
Before I could protest, he’d crossed the room and wrapped his wet, warm arms around me.
I let out a long breath, feeling like I was home, for the first time in weeks. He held me close and I got a big whiff of the familiar scent of his clean skin. If he were anybody else, I’d have complained about my shirt getting all wet, but I was pretty sure I’d let Tristan Wood do anything to me.
So what if I was sort-of, kind-of, completely in love with my best friend? I needed him. He was like a magnet I’d been hopelessly stuck to since the moment we met.
Show me the poor sucker who could be around Tristan as much as I was and not fall in love.
There wasn’t a chance in hell.
And not having him here around town for the last month had absolutely fucking sucked.
When he pulled back, a loose thread on his towel snagged on my belt loop and the towel dropped to the floor, the loop of string ripping a small portion of the towel.
“Oh, fuck,” Tris said, and I averted my eyes. I was an expert at keeping my gaze away from his cock, actually, and I’d had to do a million times before. Tristan was a fan of skinny dipping in the river or in pools, and he wasn’t exactly ashamed of his body. He had a good one, and he knew it. Reason number twenty-two million why I loved him.
“I got it,” I said, pulling my multi-tool from my pocket and using the scissors to cleanly cut the string.
Tris puffed out a laugh. “You can just rip it off,” he said. “That towel’s old and ragged anyway.”
“No way,” I said. “I can rescue it. The multi-tool saves everything.”
“That thing is like your fifth limb,” Tris said.
I snipped the snag in the towel and handed it back to him. “Put this back on. Last thing I need is an eyeful of your dong.”
“You know I have no shame,” he said. “I’m proud of my cock. Look as much as you want.”
Sure thing, Tris.
I’ll just look at your cock, get hard within two seconds, and make everything weird.
Like I said. Not a chance in hell.
I rolled my eyes. “I hate you,” I said. “And… I missed you. A lot.”
“I missed the hell out of you,” he told me. “And I was only gone for what, twenty-six days?”
“Twenty-seven. Torture.”
Tristan had been away visiting his big, sprawling family in Jade River, Colorado. It was the longest stretch of time that the two of us had been apart in the last twelve years. Not only were Tristan and I best friends, but we also worked together—I was a general contractor and he worked mostly as a trim and carpentry subcontractor. In other words, Tristan knew his way around a piece of wood. Any project where I could bring him in, I did. At this point, everybody we worked with just sort of expected us to come as a team.
“You’re never going to stop, are you?” I asked, noticing fresh ink on the side of his ribcage.
He turned to show me, and I tried to focus on the new tattoo instead of his abs. “Got it one of the first nights I was in Colorado,” he said. “My brothers went with me. It’s a spruce pine. You like it?”
“Hate it.”
He opened his eyes like I’d just physically wounded him. “Oh, hell no.”
“Of course I like it,” I finally told him, and I meant it. “I love all of your tattoos.”
“Thanks, Blue,” he said.
He called me Blue mainly because of my eyes, which were the only thing anyone ever really noticed about me. Tristan had always been the noticeable one—loud, funny, outgoing, and covered in tattoos. I was the opposite. I was just Jack Damien, Mr. Responsible. Jeans and a white T-shirt. Slow and steady. Boring, according to some people, probably.