by Bella Andre
"Travis, I didn't know..." she said, but he leaned over and silenced her with a kiss.
"Enough games," he said. "You've got me so hard I'm about to blow in my pants."
Lily's eyes grew even wider as she lay beneath him. "It wasn't a dream?" she said, her words barely louder than a whisper.
Travis grinned. She was good at pretending innocence. Really good. "It's a dream if you want it to be," he said, bending his head down to her breasts. "I'm going to suck on these for a while," he added, "so feel free to come again if you need to."
Lily gasped as he grazed her hard nipple with his teeth. He used both of his hands beneath her breasts to push them together, sucking first one nipple, then the other, then both.
"Take me, Travis," she said, and he lifted his head.
Just hearing those words come out of her mouth made his cock nearly explode. Lightning fast, he ripped off his jeans, boxer shorts, and his T-shirt.
He followed Lily's eyes to his penis.
"You like?" he asked, knowing what her answer would be but wanting to hear it anyway.
She reached for him. "It's huge," she said, "even bigger than I thought it would be."
A thick spurt of precome emerged from his engorged cock. Travis pushed her hand away. She reached for him again, and he said, "If you touch me, I'll blow."
She shook her head. "No. I want to feel you inside of me. Like that. That big."
Travis quickly sheathed himself in a condom and positioned himself atop Lily on his bed. He had never had sex with a woman on his bed before, but if it was always this hot, he was definitely going to have to rethink his have-sex-at-their-house rule.
Lily was soft and warm beneath him. Her smell, vanilla mixed with sex, was both comforting and exciting.
Travis propped himself up again and settled the tip of his shaft between her legs. He slid his head into her wet heat and had to pull out immediately. He hadn't come so close to premature ejaculation since he was sixteen in the backseat of his souped-up Chevy with the head cheerleader.
But then Lily pressed her hips to his, and he did what he had wanted to do since the moment she walked out onstage: He plunged all the way into her.
"Oh God, Travis, don't stop," she said as she flexed her inner muscles against the length of him.
Even if he wanted to stop, he couldn't have. She was too hot, too wet. He could taste her on his lips, feel her wetness still on his thigh. The only choice he had was to explode in her willing cunt.
Leaning down until her full breasts rubbed against his chest, Travis moved in and out of her in long, intense strokes. Lily watched him, her eyes a deep, dark blue, her plump lower lip between her teeth; then her eyes fluttered closed.
He marveled at how responsive she was. She was eating him up and begging for more. Well, he thought with a groan, she had come to the right place.
It took every ounce of will to hold himself back so that Lily came again before he lost it. He dripped with sweat, causing them to slip and slide against each other. Her nipples raked across his chest. Her hands slid on the hard planes of his shoulders, his narrow hips, then back up to the back of his head.
Her moans merged with his, and her cunt squeezed him. All thoughts of control gone, he plunged in and out of her, a rabid beast with only one thought: to claim the woman beneath him.
Travis exploded into an orgasm so big that pins and needles surged through his limbs. From within a deep fog, he thought he heard Lily cry, "Travis," but all he wanted was to keep coming like this forever.
He took her lips roughly, sure that he was hurting her with his savagery but unable to do anything else. Lily took as good as he gave, thrusting her hips into his so hard that there would be bruises.
At last Travis fell against her, his heart beating an out-of-control staccato. Holding her in his arms, still nestled between her legs, he rolled over to one side. Incredibly well sated, Travis fell asleep.
BEING WITH TRAVIS had been so much better than any of her dreams. Lying in the crook of his arms as he breathed deep and even, Lily was tempted to let herself fall asleep with him. In his bed. In his loft.
In a perfect world he would wake her up, kissing her all over, until he slipped his huge shaft between her legs again and made love to her with agonizing slowness.
But Lily knew the time for dreaming was over. All of her dreams had already come true. She was going to have to be happy with her memories of Travis's mouth on hers, of his hands on her breasts, of his penis hard and perfect inside her.
Come morning light, if he woke up with her beside him, he would see the real her.
The Lily who had cellulite.
The Lily who was a size sixteen on a good non-PMS-bloat day.
If he had ignored her before, he was going to darn near erase her after he woke up.
With a minimum of movements, she slid out from beneath his arm. He reached for her, and she stilled. He smiled in his sleep, and Lily's heart broke from simply witnessing his incredible male beauty.
She was going to have to be happy with one incredible night in the arms of a god. Especially since it was more, far more, than she had ever hoped to experience.
Sliding off the bed, she reached for The Dress, that miraculous swatch of fabric that had enabled her most impossible dream to come true, and tiptoed out of Travis's bedroom. She took one last look around the loft, at Travis's perfect tanned limbs on the twisted white sheet. She wanted to commit all of the details to memory.
With a quiet sigh, she turned around and put her dress back on. Not bothering to look in the mirror to fix her hair and makeup, she picked up her shoes and purse from beside the door and walked outside into the cold night air to catch a cab.
Too soon she was back in Noe Valley, letting herself into her tiny rental house. She should have showered, but she didn't want to wash away any part of her evening with Travis. Stripping off The Dress, she reverently laid it on the back of the sofa chair in the corner of her bedroom and crawled under the covers, wishing that Travis's warmth was pressed against her instead of her ratty old teddy bear, JuJuBee.
"HEY, LILY!" Luke got up out of their usual booth at the Fog City Diner and gave her a warm hug. "You look great," he said, holding her at arm's length, taking in her flushed cheeks and the "I've-had-great-sex" glow that infused her very soul.
"Thanks," she said with a blush as she slid into the booth and picked up the menu. She was dreading the moment when Luke would ask her about Travis. She had nearly canceled their weekly Sunday brunch in a fit of wussiness.
Luke studied her closely. "Did you get a new haircut?"
Lily shook her head and read Bacon Cheeseburger with blue cheese again and again until the words swam in her head.
"Different makeup?"
"The same old me as always," she insisted as she closed her menu.
"I've got it," he said, pleased as punch with himself for figuring it out.
Lily smiled at her best friend, even as nerves fluttered wildly in her belly. She did her best to project a calm and unworried aura.
"You got laid," he said, his eyes twinkling. "And based on that glow you're wearing, he must have really been something this time."
Alarm flashed in Lily's eyes too quickly for her to tamp down on it. She had never been wary of discussing her sex life with Luke before, but the situation was so awkward this time that she didn't know quite how to roll with it.
"Do you think you could say that any louder?" she asked, looking around the full restaurant.
Luke raised his ice tea in a toast. "Do you want me to?" he teased.
"God no. I was kidding." Maybe if she changed the subject really fast, he'd forget all about it. "Did I tell you what Mr. Slimy Boss said to me last week?"
"So, who was it?" Luke asked, his mind alarmingly single track.
Lily tried another tack. "I'm mad at you," she lied.
Luke sat back into the plush leather booth, knowing exactly what she was talking about. "I'm really sorry Lily. I got call
ed into the ER right after we got off the phone. I didn't know what else to do. Was Travis a class-A jerk?"
She fought back the blush that threatened to overtake her again. "No," she said, "not really. He was actually pretty, um..." Lily searched desperately for the right word. "Nice."
"Nice?" Luke raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like my twin. Not at all."
Oops, Lily thought silently. She should have said he was a jerk. But last night he had been so far from a jerk, he had done such wonderful things to her, that she couldn't blaspheme him like that.
Lily kept her expression bland. "You know him. He had all of the models swarming around like flies."
"Uh-huh. And what did he do to you?"
Lily swallowed, but her mouth had gone completely dry. She downed half of her ice tea in one gulp. She slammed the glass down a little too hard on the retro fifties Formica tabletop.
"Oh you know, the usual," she said, but it was hard to lie convincingly as she was faced with vision of Travis's hard, slick body above hers, his tongue in her mouth, his cock so deep within her.
"I'll kill him," Luke said.
Lily gasped with alarm. "No really, Luke, he was fine."
Luke didn't look happy, but thankfully, he let it go. "So," he said, leaning over conspiratorially, "tell me about your new lover boy."
Lily couldn't stop the smile that stole across her face. "Nothing much to tell," she said, trying for nonchalance. "Just a one-night stand."
"You? A one-night stand?" Luke said, clearly incredulous. "That's a first, isn't it?"
It was unreasonable, but Lily felt slightly insulted by that. "Oh, I see. I'm the have a dozen kids, bake a zillion chocolate chip cookies for PTA meetings, drive a minivan to soccer practices type, aren't I?"
Luke's eyes widened, and he backed off the table a couple of inches. "I didn't mean anything by it, Lily."
She immediately felt guilty for laying into him. Luke had to be shocked by her strange behavior.
"Sorry about that. I didn't mean to snap at you. I guess I'm a little tired from the late night. Can we talk about something else?" Lily pleaded.
Besides, if Luke ever found out about her and Travis, she wasn't sure whom he'd kill first--her or Travis. Unfortunately, Luke's sixth sense that something was irrevocably changed about Lily was too strong for him to ignore, and he was like a dog on a hunt for a bone.
"Okay, I'll stop bugging you. But only if you tell me the guy's name. Just in case I know him. That way I can see if you need to make it a two-night stand or if he's a loser, and I need to get rid of the guy for you."
Lily flushed a thousand shades of red as she desperately tried to come up with a name. "Um, it was, um..."
Luke looked shocked and not a little concerned. "You don't even know the guy's name? What happened to you last night?"
"Tony," she blurted out. "His name was Tony."
Luke stared at Lily with the oddest look on his face. Any second he was going to see through her lie.
Five, four, three, two...
"Oh no," Luke said. Lily's heart sank to the shiny black-and-white checkerboard floor. His voice dropped low and scary. "You slept with Travis."
Lily looked up at her best friend, caught just like he had caught her passing her test answers to Melanie Frost in sixth grade in a bid to be accepted by the popular girls. Bright stains of pink on her cheeks, she tried to shake her head in denial, but she couldn't pull it off. She nodded and waited for the fireworks.
"How could that have--" Luke began but broke off when he clearly realized how it might sound to Lily.
"What?" Defensive was so much better than guilty. "You don't think I'm pretty enough for Travis to want to sleep with me?"
"Lils, you know I think you're beautiful. Too beautiful for my brother, in fact." Back on the offensive, Luke said, "How could he? How could you?"
Lily bit her lip. "It just happened."
"Don't lie to me, Lils. Look," he said, reaching for her hand across the table, his eyes gentle, "I know you've had a crush on him for a long time."
Lily snatched her hand back as if Luke had burned her. "Shut up," she hissed.
Going on as if she hadn't spoken, Luke said, "But you know how he is. He's never going to settle down with one woman. Ever since our mom died..." He let his words drift away and looked her in the eye. "I don't want to see you get hurt. You deserve better than Travis. But now that you've gone and had sex with him, we'd better figure out what we're going to do about it."
"Nothing," she snapped. "We're going to do nothing. I had fun, and I never thought for one second that he would want to date me or be my boyfriend or anything. It was a crazy, one-night, fluke. So don't make such a big deal out of it, okay?"
Luke looked stunned by her monologue. Lily knew she wasn't usually so forward, but maybe something inside of her had really changed. Maybe it was something bigger than The Dress.
Unexpectedly, Luke changed tacks. "I've got an idea," he said.
Lily groaned. "I don't think I want to hear it."
Her best friend smiled. "I think you do, Lils. It's time to beat Travis at his own game. And now I can see that you're exactly the one who can pull it off. He'll never see it coming."
Curiosity might have killed the cat, but Lily couldn't help herself from asking, "How?"
As their bacon and eggs were delivered, Luke talked while Lily listened with a laserlike focus to his advice, committing everything he said to memory.
TRAVIS HAD BEEN on the basketball court for thirty minutes by the time Luke showed up. He hadn't been able to think straight all day, and the only thing he could come up with to fix it was hard physical exertion.
Too bad it wasn't working. All he could think about was Lily.
How good she had tasted.
How kissing her had stolen the ground from beneath his feet.
When he woke up and realized she was gone, he was angry. Angry with her for leaving before he could take her again. Angrier at himself for caring.
Travis was always the one to leave, never the woman, who was always begging him to come back. He couldn't believe he had actually considered getting on his motorcycle and riding to her house. He didn't chase women.
And he certainly wasn't going to chase Lily.
All of a sudden Travis was back in fifth grade, trying to make it through another day. His mom was dead, and the world had gone from yellow and blue and green to black. I don't care, he had told himself, over and over, which seemed to work. Except around Lily. Those blue eyes of hers saw right through him, and it killed him. The more uncomfortable she made him, the more he closed himself off from her. He needed her to leave him alone before he did something childish like cry. No one, not even his brother, was ever going to find out how much he had cried alone at night. Lily's mom had died, too. Travis knew that, but it didn't mean he had to be friends with her anymore. It didn't mean he had to accept her comfort.
Comforting was for babies.
Travis emerged from his memories as a picture of Lily naked flashed before him. Forget her, he told himself. Sleeping with Lily had been a humongous, idiotic lapse of judgment on his part. He hated how uncomfortable he'd been in his own skin since he'd been with her. He needed to get back on his usual in-control even keel.
The more he tried to erase her from his mind, the harder he played. By the time Luke joined him on the court, Travis was soaked with sweat, and his legs felt like jelly. Without a word, Luke grabbed the ball from him and started the meanest game of one-on-one they had ever played.
No shove was too hard, no foul was too big. It was every man for himself on the court. In the back of his mind, Travis wondered if Luke knew about Lily. Was he trying to make Travis pay for it? But Travis was glad for the distraction of gasping for breath and getting his limbs to obey him, because it meant he didn't have time to think about her .
Luke sank the final basket, thirty to twenty-nine, and headed straight for the showers. Travis picked up the ball and stripped off his
dripping T-shirt. A woman on the treadmill on the way to the locker room licked her lips, and said, "You have the most amazing six-pack I've ever seen."
But Travis couldn't have cared less what the woman thought about his abs. Without sparing her a glance, he pushed through the thick locker room door. Stripping off his shorts and shoes, he stood next to Luke in the communal shower stall.
"What's your problem today?" Travis asked.
Luke shrugged. "Nothing. Just whupping your ass like I promised." Silence fell between them. "So, you screw any hot babes last night?"
Travis couldn't miss the venom dripping from Luke's verbal blade. He knew he had to step very carefully or he was likely to get his skull cracked on the tile of the locker room. "Why do you ask?"
Luke pinned him with a glance that let Travis know he was being laughed at. "I had brunch with Lily this morning at Fog City."
Travis tried to look like he didn't care. "So?"
Luke washed away the rest of the soap and turned off the faucet. Reaching for a towel, he said, "Looks like her debut as a model turned out pretty good."
Travis put his face under the faucet so that Luke couldn't see his expression. What would he normally say to Luke about Lily? Travis tried to get his muddled mind in gear as he turned off the water and reached for a towel.
"She didn't fall down or anything, if that's what you're talking about."
Instead of looking like he was going to punch Travis, Luke looked suspiciously like he was trying to hold back laughter. "That's for sure," Luke said. "Turns out Lily went home with some guy in the audience."
Travis dragged a clean T-shirt over his head. He couldn't tell yet if Luke knew it was him or not. He wanted to inquire without coming right out and asking, but he couldn't think of anything better than, "Anyone we know?"
Luke shrugged. "She didn't have much to say about him."
Travis spun around. "Some guy took Lily to his place for sex, and she didn't have much to say about him?"
"She didn't mention going to his place," Luke observed, with a raised eyebrow.
Covering his mistake, Travis said, "Whatever. His place. Her place. She didn't say anything to you about it?"
"Well, since you're so curious about Lily's sex life, I guess I can tell you that she didn't seem that impressed with the guy."