Page 81 of Avenged

When we got there, Travis unlocked the door, set down my plant and the sopping wet stuffed animal, and headed down the hall. I stood in the entryway, both surprised and confused by the abandonment. But before I could start to put words and thoughts to the feeling, he returned, carrying towels. He was wiping down his head and his chest with one. But when he’d almost reached me, his eyes settled on my body, and he halted.

He took me in slowly, eyes wandering over my face and the curves of my body which were hiding beneath his T-shirt. The T-shirt that reached my thighs and pretty much covered the entirety of my clothes.

“You look really good in my shirt,” he said, voice deep with the desire I’d felt earlier, and it made me shiver again from the passion of it.

He saw the shiver and came forward.

“It’s almost a damn shame to take this off.” His voice was slow and sexy as hell. My body, already overheated, came alive as if every inch of me was straining to feel his skin against mine.

I slowly took the ends of his shirt and pulled it off of me. It landed on the tiled entry with a slap of wet that just reminded me of skin slapping against skin. His eyes went instantly to my breasts, and when I glanced down, I saw my white tank was tight against me and showed every curve and tip of me. I hadn’t worn a bra because of the tiny straps. I hadn’t needed it with the flowy tank. I hadn’t thought about it getting wet. But even if I had, the look in Travis’s eyes would have made me do it anyway.

He stepped closer, the towel in his hand moving out to me, but I shook my head. Instead, I grabbed the bottom of my tank and pulled it off as well, and he groaned. Instead of drying me, he wrapped the towel behind me and tugged me to him, my bare chest colliding with his, my hands touching his skin. It was hot to the touch, and I let my fingers and palms slowly trail over the muscled lines of his body, all the way up to his neck where I twined them together behind him, and for the second time that day, I stood on my toes to kiss him.

I didn’t stop to think or analyze it. I didn’t stop to wonder if it was yet another thing in my life I would regret. I just let myself feel every single touch. Both my touch on him and his touch on me. Our hands coasting over curves and learning our bodies in a new way. A way that had him breathing harder and my own breath coming in small gasps. Our tongues twisting and tasting and igniting flames inside of us.

I felt the towel drop just as his hands settled on my rear end, lifting me, and I let him, legs going around his waist, the core of me gliding over the length of him through the shorts he’d been wearing. My body shook in response, craving all of it. In that moment, I was more alive than I’d ever been in my entire life. Never in twenty-four years had I felt like this. As if my entire being was joined with the force of the earth and the air and the sea. As if I really did have some sort of superpower.

In two strides, he had set me on the countertop-high table and was letting his hands roam again, stroking my side from the waist of my jean shorts all the way up and over the top of my breast, flicking the nipple and starting again. A teasing and yet fulfilling movement that had me both frustrated and fulfilled.

I let my own hands wander over the expanse of his chest and stomach, down to the button and the zipper of his shorts, undoing them, pushing them so they slid down and showed his plain-white underwear, which I was sure was Coast Guard regulation but did exactly everything I wanted them to do. Showed me just how turned on he was. Showed me the longing wasn’t one-sided.

When I tugged at these, he pulled away, his hands stilling mine, his eyes searching.

“If you do that, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to stop,” he said, voice so thick and deep that my body pulsed to it.

“Do you think I want you to stop?” I said and was surprised my own voice was equally husky and loaded with emotions.

His hand cupped my cheek, and I closed my eyes, leaning into it. The touch. God, he’d touched me so many times since I met him. I hadn’t known how much I needed that. A touch. A touch that stemmed from desire and need.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he breathed out, and I opened my eyes to find his still searching my face.

More than just my body reacted to those words. My heart reacted as well, because he was thinking of everything he’d heard about me. The broken pieces that didn’t always work the way they were supposed to. The pieces that caused pain. But I wasn’t feeling pain at the moment, the adrenaline and desire pushing aside—momentarily—the normal pulse of ache that coated my midsection on a daily basis.

“You won’t,” I told him.

“How can you be sure?”

I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about how my skin and bones acted as if they were rejecting me every day. I didn’t want to think about what tomorrow might bring after sex. For once in my pitiful life, I just wanted to feel the glorious touch of someone who wanted me. Who cared about me. And who I cared about in return. That was all. No thoughts. No big words to filter out. Just touch. Just humanity mingling with humanity.

“Jers?” he said, the question still there in his voice.

My hand tightened around the length of him, and it pulsed underneath my palm in reaction.

“Screw it all. I want this, Truck.”

We both started in surprise at the nickname that slipped through my lips. The nickname I’d never called him before. I’d always felt like it was both too personal and too permanent to call him it. As if I needed to earn it. Had I? Had I earned it now?

Before my brain could start down that path, he was kissing me again. Strong. Powerful. Him. And I returned the kiss with every part of me, hoping my lips would feel sure and steady against his. Hoping he wouldn’t stop kissing me again until we’d both felt every single shake and shiver of orgasm flowing through us.

He unbuttoned my shorts just as I was pushing down his underwear. And as the clothes fell away, our bodies seemed to snap together. As if the skin was somehow joining and marking each other as we went. Bodies aligned with bodies. Touch inflaming us.

“God…hold that thought,” he said as he jogged away from me down the hall, doors and drawers slamming, and he came back with a condom wrapper he tossed in the garbage as he went by, the condom sliding onto him at the same time. My hands went there immediately as he got closer, as if of their own accord, and I helped roll it on just as his mouth took mine once more.

We lost ourselves to the feel of bodies and skin. Of nerve endings and chemical reactions. Of dreamlike motions that made the fiction-like day seem even more so. I just gave in and let someone else show my body what it needed.

? ? ?

After we’d picked up our clothes and hung them in the bathroom to dry, he led me down the hall to his bedroom. The room he’d vacated for my sister and me. Although he had done it weeks ago, it still smelled like him. A scent I would forever equate with masculinity and tenderness wrapped together.

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