by Julie Miller
As the summer night cooled, Tess went back to work stacking boxes and cleaning up for tomorrow’s opening. Travis soon rejoined her in the tiny building to hook up the hoses for the soda pop machine. They worked in a familiar, companionable silence, pushing aside thoughts of men lurking in shadows, injured legs and needy sisters. But the friendly ambiance that normally settled between them was charged with possibilities.
The small confines of the metal building filled with the evocative scents of chocolate and popcorn and Travis. An accidental brush of elbows raised goose bumps along her arm. A muffled curse over a pinched finger linked their gazes in a silent query and a wink of apology. As they used up the oxygen in the tiny space, the temperature seemed to rise, heated by the awareness blossoming inside Tess’s body.
When the box she was putting away on the top shelf slipped, Travis darted behind her to reach up and catch it. With his long, hard torso stretched against her back and his thighs pushing her hips into the counter, she was trapped between the immovable object and his irresistible body.
When she felt his ragged gasp across the nape of her neck and she heard her own moan of need in her throat, Tess knew. It was time to stop thinking about how sexless her life was, and simply start being sexy.
Don’t think. Just do.
“I think we’ve done all we can here tonight.” But she didn’t really mean it. A plan was forming. But she didn’t want to put too much thought into it. Before she allowed internal critiques like risky, or it’s too late, or you’ll scream and wake the sheriff to enter her head, she asked, “Would you mind going out front to close the awning and lock it down?”
He cleared his throat and stepped away. “Sure, boss.” He ambled out the door in that controlled stride of his. “No problem,” he muttered. “No problem at all.”
She felt the whoosh of air as the awning swung against the screens and blocked out the lights and sounds from the street. She heard the thunks and clicks of dead-bolts and padlocks. And when Travis strolled back in without noticing her behind the door, she saw the chance to prove that she could be everything he claimed she was.
“T-bone?” He reached the opposite wall and turned, frowning.
Tess gently pushed the door shut, stepping out from her hiding place. She slid the dead-bolt into place and locked them inside. Together. Alone.
She faced him again, pressing her back into the door’s cool wood.
“Travis.” I want you.
She waited for him to understand, to get the message she was trying to send. He went still for a moment. His eyes narrowed. And then he grinned.
All she said was, “Surprise.”
8
TESS SHIVERED AGAINST the door as Travis took his damn sweet time closing the distance between them. He had a look of no turning back in his eyes, and the promise of making it worth her while in every deliberate step.
He braced one then the other hand against the door on either side of her face and leaned in. “I told you a man likes surprises.”
His deep voice feathered against her eardrum as he dipped his nose close to her temple and slowly inhaled, as if savoring a delicious aroma. Tess lifted her cheek, thinking if she offered, he might kiss her there. But he quickly shifted his attention to the other temple and breathed deeply again.
“Travis.” She reached up and tickled her palms against the golden shadow of his nighttime stubble.
But when she tried to angle his lips down for a kiss, he snatched her wrists and pinned them against the door above her head. “Uh-uh.” His warm grip was gentle, but there was no budging from her vulnerable position. “I know you want me.” His blue eyes hooded and focused on her mouth, caressing her lips without a single touch. Something deep inside Tess’s belly steeped with a languid heat. “The feeling’s mutual, believe me.”
Travis leaned into his hands at her wrists, bringing his body close enough that she could arch her back and press against him if she wanted. But she was discovering a secret thrill in the wanting and waiting. The almost, but not quite. She didn’t force contact, but couldn’t help twisting her body restlessly.
“What do you want me to do?” She was both pupil seeking guidance and seductress teasing him with possibilities.
He lowered his mouth to the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Then he nipped the collar of her baseball shirt between his teeth and tugged it aside, exposing her skin to his heated breath without touching it. “Tell me exactly what’s going on here,” he demanded. She smelled the citrusy shampoo that clung to his hair as he bent even lower and did something with his lips and tongue to release the top button of her jersey. “I need to know right now if you’re going to turn all smart and sensible again.”
“This is that…” She squeezed her eyes shut but she could still feel his breath between her. “…want…” Tugging against his grip, she stretched her neck and turned her head to deny him even accidental contact as he moved back toward her mouth. “…so bad…” His body heat was scorching her, robbing her of coherent speech, and he hadn’t even touched her yet! “…can’t wait.” His warm breath danced across her lips. Her tongue darted out to moisten them. “Discreet…n…” He blew a deliberate stream of air across her damp mouth and she jerked in response. “Not.” The breath rushed out of her chest, “Travis.” Her eyes popped open. “I want you now,” she begged before words failed her again.
And then he kissed her. He skipped right past sweet and tender and ground his mouth against hers, driving his tongue inside and pouring accelerant on the flame that not touching had already kindled inside her.
He pushed his hard thighs into her hips, pinning her against the door and giving the thick, liquid heat gathering inside her no place to go but to build in intensity. Adjusting his grip on her wrists, he anchored her with one hand. The other brushed down the side of her neck, traced her sternum, boldly squeezed one heavy, aching breast, and then hooked its way down the front of her jersey, casting aside buttons one by one.
He stroked the rim of her lips with his tongue, then thrust inside to tangle with hers again. She tasted raw, potent heat. And while he feasted on her as if her kisses were a decadent treat, his hand had found bare, burning skin to palm and squeeze. Her stomach, her flank, her back. Then somehow her bra was loose and her breast was in his hand.
The blood in her veins boiled and rushed to every point of contact. Her rock-hard nipple. Her hungry mouth. The weeping center between her thighs. The heat pooled and swelled and erupted in a guttural moan deep in her throat.
Drawn by the sound, Travis shifted his assault and laved his tongue along the length of her throat. She could feel his penis bulging beneath his shorts and rubbing against her hip. Yes, he wanted her, too.
“I…Please…” Tess’s voice came in breathless gasps and made no sense. She’d never been this aroused, this needy, before—never felt so close to losing control of that last, rational thought. She only knew she wanted to touch him. She wanted the one thing he was denying her. If she couldn’t touch, couldn’t give, couldn’t find release, she’d bust right here against this door.
When his wet mouth closed over her breast and he swirled his tongue around her rigid peak, Tess screamed.
She clamped her mouth shut and he laughed in his throat. Another shout like that and someone would be calling the police, knocking on the door. But she couldn’t find a voice to protest.
“Irresistible,” he murmured against her skin, making a wet path to the other breast with his tongue.
Tess clenched her teeth and moaned. He knew how he was tormenting her. He wanted her to lose control.
She tugged at his grip and squirmed against his wicked mouth and unyielding chest.
His answer was to pop the snap on her shorts and lower the zipper. Tess nearly screamed again at just the thought of what he was about to do. “Long time…” she rasped, as he slipped his hand inside and reached around to squeeze her bottom. She tried to explain her limited experience, that she had never experienced anythin
g like this. “For me…not…” He slid her shorts down to her ankles, “like…” he pulled at her knee, freeing one foot from the denim, “this…”
When he allowed her foot to touch the concrete floor again, he’d veed her legs apart and wedged his braced knee in between. “I love it when you can’t talk.”
He was kissing her again before she could argue that he was the reason she couldn’t form a coherent sentence. She was squeezing her legs around his sturdy, sinewy thigh before she could say that his kisses were the only ones that made her babble.
His hand was palming the heavy, swollen heat between her thighs before she could confess that he’d kissed her like this once before, when he’d been heart-broken and drunk, and had passed out on her couch before he could finish what he’d begun. He, thank God, had never remembered how close they’d come to altering their friendship forever.
Tess could never forget.
Now, tonight, she was ready to alter the course of her life. Over the years, she’d stagnated, faded, never been complete. She’d allowed herself to become a sexless creature, stuck in a routine. Hiding her passions, dreams and desires. But for two weeks, with Travis, she was going to live like the woman she’d always wanted to be.
Summoning a burst of strength, Tess tried once more to free her wrists from his controlling grasp. But his grip only tightened. He pulled his mouth from hers and demanded that she look him in the eye as he pulled aside the soaked crotch of her panties and moistened his finger along her slick, swollen clit.
The pooling heat inside her bubbled up like a volcano about to erupt. She was going to come. She had no control.
He slid one finger inside her, then two. Tess’s breaths mingled with the moans in her throat, but she refused to look away.
Then, at the same time that he twirled his fingers, he pressed his thumb to that most tender spot. Tess bucked against his hand, struggling to breathe, trapped in his gaze. He rubbed her, worked her, inside and out, until she had to beg, “Travis…Trav…”
“Is that the ‘Travis, I want you,’ or ‘Travis, do me now’?”
“Dammit, Travis—”
She hadn’t realized how weak her knees were until he released her. But as she wound her arms around his neck and sagged against him, he lifted her, peeling off her panties and leaving her shorts behind on the floor as he set her on the counter. The cool surface shocked her skin, but it was the only respite he gave her before he pulled her bottom to the edge of the counter and knelt between her legs.
“Trav—” She didn’t know whether to clutch at the bronzed head of hair that contrasted with her own darker thatch, or reach back and cling to the frame of the screen behind her. “I don’t know what…I never…”
“Easy.” His strong fingers gently dug into her thighs as he spread her open. “Don’t try to talk.” His words vibrated against her slick, throbbing crevice. “Just let it happen.”
The scent of her own excitement wafted up between them in a heady reminder of the passion she was capable of if given the chance. She gripped the edge of the counter as he pressed against her with his thumbs. She couldn’t last. She was going to fly apart. He parted her folds. She gasped.
“Easy,” he coaxed her.
“Just do it,” she pleaded. “Just—”
And then that tongue that had done such amazing things to her mouth was inside her.
Tess yelped at the bolt of white-hot pleasure that shot through her. She slapped her hand to her mouth, lost her balance and tilted to the side.
Travis palmed her hip to help her sit up. He guided her hands back to the edge of the counter. He reached for the shelf behind him. “Don’t quit on me now.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s hot.”
She heard something rip. “But—”
He silenced her protest by sticking a candy bar in her mouth. “Hold on.”
Chocolate. With caramel. And a sweet, chewy…
Tess screamed around the delectable treat as Travis licked her very core. With his lips surrounding his teeth to protect her, he nibbled at her swollen mound. He thrust his tongue inside and withdrew. Thrust again. And again.
Every nerve ending that she thought could take no more throbbed to life again. Fiery sensations built in every extremity—her fingertips, her toes, her taut, beaded nipples—and flowed to her core, moving faster and faster with every nip of his teeth and thrust of his tongue.
Her vocal cords hummed and the sound rose into her mouth.
Like sparks following a trail of gunpowder to its source, the pressure inside her converged in one spot.
Travis thrust his tongue inside her and she exploded.
Lights flashed behind her eyes as her release consumed her. Chocolate and caramel muffled her ecstatic scream. Then slowly, slowly, Tess remembered how to breathe. She thought to chew and swallow. She collapsed back against the screen frame and opened her eyes to find Travis standing between her legs, wearing a most satisfied grin.
He bit off the half of the candy bar still hanging from her mouth. “You’re even sweeter.”
Tess smoothed her hair back from her damp forehead. Somewhere along the line it had fallen loose from its ponytail. If she wasn’t so tired, she’d laugh with delight. Or embarrassment. “I never knew I was so…”
Travis grinned and swallowed his bite of candy. “Good ol’ reliable Tess is a screamer. Do you have any idea how that would shock Nixa Newhaven?”
Latching on to the front of Travis’s T-shirt, Tess sat up. “If Nixa ever orgasmed like that, she’d be screaming, too.”
Travis’s gaze dropped down between them. “I don’t know. If Nixa ever looked like this, I might be tempted to coach her, too.”
“You rat.” Tess laughed. “You’d give her a heart attack.”
But as she followed Travis’s wondering eyes, she knew that seventy-something Nixa would never let herself be so shockingly displayed. Like a special candy, Tess sat on the edge of the counter with her shirt hanging open, her naked breasts poking from beneath her hanging bra, her legs shamelessly parted as she cooled and recovered from that sensual high.
Yet it wasn’t her own immodest exhibition that shamed her into a blush from her head to her toes.
It was the distinctly awkward bulge she saw straining behind the zipper of Travis’s shorts.
“Oh, my.” She shoved him back a step, ignoring his questioning gaze as she hopped off the counter. “We’re not done.”
A tingling of anticipation coursed through her. After sparing a few moments to re-fasten her bra and hook a button on her Bosox jersey, Tess ignored the panties and shorts that Travis had retrieved. She pushed aside his outstretched hands to lift his shirt and unsnap his cut-offs.
“Whoa, T-bone. What are you doing?” He pushed her to arm’s length.
But he didn’t hang on so Tess twisted away and went down on her knees in front of him. With the gentlest of care she unzipped the denim and peeled it away from the jutting protusion in his boxer-briefs. Then she spread her hands over his taut, flat stomach and slipped her fingers beneath the elastic waistband.
His breath hissed above her and her clothes hit the floor beside her. This time, his hands wrapped around her upper arms, good and tight, and pulled her to her feet. He was smiling, with gritted teeth as he looked down into her eyes. “Honey, you can’t do me. I don’t have any protection. I just wanted you to know how sexy you are. How irresistible.”
“Bull. You never could lie to me.”
He tried to back away, but now she had him cornered. When his butt hit the counter and stalled his retreat, she pulled the elastic down and freed him. His penis jutted forward, a sleek, pulsing thing that bobbed with a need she wouldn’t deny him.
She wrapped her hand around him, held on as he jerked within her grasp. Safety measures accounted for. They didn’t have to trade bodily fluids to trade pleasures. He wanted this. Maybe as much as she suddenly did.
Tess slid her hand along his shaft until
she met his groin. She let one curious finger stroke the sensitive skin underneath. He dug his fingers into her shoulders, holding on, not pushing away. Tess smiled. “I was supposed to be seducing you, anyway.”
“Oh, you did, baby. Believe me, you…” His words ended in a strangled gasp.
“What’s that?” Tess kept squeezing, rubbing, teasing, enjoying the power she now held over her helpless captor. His compliment gave her a confidence that made her bold. This was so not the same-old, same-old of her normal, predictable life. “The charming Captain McCormick has lost the ability to speak?”
“You’re cruel.”
Wrapping her free hand behind his neck, she pulled him down for a kiss. “No. I’m irresistible.”
WAS SHE A different woman?
Or was he a different man?
Travis followed Tess to her car well after one in the morning, replaying the hour they’d just spent together. He’d been a happy man before she’d insisted on the hand job. What happened after that was just icing on the cake. No woman could fake what Tess had done. Even without the gibberish and screams, her body had given her away. Any man would feel like a mighty potent son-of-a-gun if he could make a woman come like that.
Travis hadn’t felt a rush like that for a long time. A year, to be exact. But locked inside the concession stand for an hour with Tess, he’d felt powerful. Whole. He’d been Captain Travis McCormick again, decorated Marine.
He’d been a man.
Upon his homecoming, he’d turned to Tess for the normalcy of a familiar friendship. He’d quickly shot normal out of the water with his cranky reaction to her insistence on lengthy physical therapy. And then, when he’d started noticing that his baseball buddy had a body built for sex as well as sports, he’d felt crazy, unsure—like a schoolboy again. He wasn’t supposed to be sexually attracted to T-bone, yet he was having erotic dreams about her. How screwed up was that?
Maybe the doctors and his dad were right—his brain needed fixing as much as his body did.