Chapter 29 #5
His sheets are twisted around my legs. My hair is a mess over his pillow. My skin still feels too sensitive everywhere he touched me, and his arm is heavy and possessive around my waist like he doesn’t trust distance even now.
Maybe he shouldn’t.
I’m not sure I trust it either.
Not after this. Not after him. Not after the way he took every jagged, frightened, uncertain part of me and made me feel wanted instead of broken.
Joker, Travis in here, only in here, shifts beneath me just enough to pull me closer, his hand sliding slow and lazy up my back like he’s memorizing the shape of me all over again.
The room is quiet now.
Just the sound of our breathing. Just the hum of the old air vent in the corner. Just the low, steady beat of his heart under my cheek where I’m curled half over his chest like I belong there. Like I’ve always belonged there.
The thought hits me so hard and so suddenly it nearly steals what little air I’ve managed to get back.
Because that’s the most dangerous part of all of this. Not what we just did. Not how much I wanted it. Not even how much I still do.
It’s this.
This quiet after. This softness. This impossible, terrifying feeling of being exactly where I’m supposed to be.
My fingers drift over the hard lines of his chest without thinking, tracing over warm skin and old scars and ink I’m still learning by touch. He watches me do it in silence, dark eyes half-lidded and heavy where they stay fixed on my face like he’s waiting to see what I do next.
I don’t think. I just feel.
And somewhere in the middle of that quiet, with the room wrapped around us and the whole rest of the world shut outside that locked door, his real name slips free before I can stop it.
“Travis.”
He goes completely still beneath me. Not in a bad way. Not tense. Not closed off. Just still in that immediate, unmistakable way that tells me I touched something deep enough to matter.
My heart stutters.
His hand slides up the length of my spine and settles at the back of my neck, fingers threading gently into my hair as his gaze holds mine with a kind of raw intensity that makes my chest ache.
“Say it again,” he says quietly.
The words are rough. Low. Like they had to scrape their way out of him.
My pulse trips hard enough I feel it everywhere. “Travis,” I whisper again, softer this time, like it belongs in the dark between us and nowhere else.
Something changes in his face. It’s small. Barely there. But I feel it all the way down to my bones.
His forehead tips to mine, and when he speaks again, his voice is so low it almost sounds like confession. “No one else gets that.”
I don’t know why that makes my throat tighten so fast, but it does.
Maybe because I know exactly what he means. The world gets Joker. The club gets Joker. The brothers get the man with the dark mouth and violent hands and the reputation sharp enough to make people think twice before they breathe wrong around him.
But me?
I get this. I get the man under the patch. The one he keeps hidden behind locked doors and rough edges and a name no one else is allowed to touch.
I lift my head just enough to look at him fully, and whatever he sees in my face must hit him hard too, because his grip on me tightens immediately.
Not painful. Not controlling. Just certain. Possessive in the way he always is when he forgets to pretend he’s anything less than all in.
“Good,” I whisper, because it’s the only thing in me that feels true enough to say. “Because no one else gets to.”
His eyes darken instantly. That slow, dangerous heat rolls back through the room like it never left in the first place, and his hand slides from my neck down my spine until it settles low at my back, keeping me exactly where he wants me.
Exactly where I want to be.
The look he gives me after that should probably scare me. It doesn’t. It makes me feel treasured. Claimed in the most terrifyingly gentle way. Like he would tear the whole world apart before he ever let anyone take this from him. Take me from him.
And God help me, I think I’d let him.
I think I’d stand in the middle of the wreckage and let him pull me behind him while the whole world burned, just to stay right here where he’s looking at me like I’m something precious and dangerous all at once.
His mouth brushes mine once. Twice. Slow enough to hurt.
Then he presses his lips to my forehead and keeps them there for one quiet, endless second before murmuring, “Go to sleep, angel.”
The tenderness in it nearly undoes me. Because he sounds wrecked too. Like this got under his skin in places he didn’t plan for either. Like I’m not the only one lying here realizing this stopped being temporary somewhere along the way and neither of us knows how to go back now.
I settle against him again, my leg tangled with his, my hand spread flat over his chest where his heart keeps beating under my palm like a promise. And before sleep can fully pull me under, one last thought drifts through me, soft and beautiful and terrifying enough to leave a bruise.
I think I’m falling in love with a man the rest of the world only knows as Joker.
But in the dark, behind a locked door, with his arms around me and his real name still warm on my tongue.
I think I’m already in love with Travis.