Chapter 4 #3
“I bet you’re thinking I was annoyed at you,” Travis sighed. I glanced over at him in the dark interior, and I could see his head lying against the headrest while he gave me a searching look.
“If you wouldn’t read my mind, that would be great, thanks,” I said with a smile. “Yes, I was, but I got over myself pretty quickly. Who could be annoyed at someone with a face like mine?” I teased.
“Absolutely no one,” my boss…my sexy, single, hot-as-hell boss…said with a wink. And with that, he straightened and pressed the button to start the car. His luxury SUV purred to life.
“Nice car. The heated seats must come in handy,” I offered.
My mom swore that the best way to distract my dad was to ask him about his toys, so it was worth a shot.
While I waited for his response, I ran my hand over the baby-soft leather and fancy wood accents.
The warmth under me didn’t help the way my chest fluttered every time he glanced over like he was reading my mind again.
“I couldn’t live without them because no one wants a cold ass, but I’m spoiled with this car. There’s no reason for me to have one this big, but it was too pretty to pass up.”
“You wanted it and, I’m assuming anyway, could afford it. That’s reason enough, right?”
“Ha! Where are you when I’m paying bills? I think ‘because I wanted it’ should be part of all purchase approvals. When I signed my last contract, I knew it was likely to be my last, so I took part of my bonus and bought her. It was my parting gift to myself from professional sports.”
“How long did you play?” I asked as I watched the drizzle cover the city streets in a light sheen.
I’d started to give directions, but it was clear Travis knew where he was going.
Small talk was all that was left to distract me from how close we were to each other, and I could faintly smell his woodsy cologne.
I’d bet the back seat folded down, and there was at least an acre of space to spread out in this vehicle.
Fine, maybe not exactly an acre, but definitely enough room for two.
“Just at ten years.”
“Is that a long time?”
“Yeah, the average is around five years, but I was able to stay at it.”
“I might’ve gone home and watched YouTube videos after I got the job. I don’t know much about hockey other than that you guys like to fight.”
“We do a little more than fight,” he said, and a quick glance let me see the grin that played across his lips. “But not by much,” Travis added with a soft chuckle.
The air in the car carried an electricity that was hard to put into words, other than I knew it was there.
It felt like currents were zinging between us, or at least from me in his general direction.
When I looked down at his hand resting on the gearshift, his pinky kept twitching in my direction.
When I glanced at my own lap, mine was doing the same.
The quiet of the early morning felt like a blanket protecting us from any outside intrusions or expectations.
I spent the rest of the drive trying to figure out how I could “accidentally on purpose” link my fingers with his.
I couldn’t help noticing that his hand never strayed more than an inch or two from where my thigh rested on the leather seat.
No one was more disappointed than me when he pulled up in front of my duplex.
My neighbor had a certified green thumb—his front porch looked like a jungle—while mine looked a little threadbare in comparison.
Refused to let it be a metaphor for my life or lack of success in finding the Daddy that would end my unmossed rolling stone ways.
“I guess we’re here,” Travis said.
There was a tone to his voice that I didn’t recognize. If I didn’t know better, I might’ve thought it was wistfulness—but that didn’t make any sense, so it couldn’t be. The air felt thick with all the things neither of us had said yet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to break it.
“Yeah, I guess we are.” Stating the obvious didn’t help, but I didn’t know what else to say.
My hands suddenly turned clammy. I rubbed them against my jeans, trying to distract myself from the fact that Travis was less than a foot away from me in a car that now felt closed in and tiny.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to lean over and kiss him.
Or let him kiss me. Kissing each other would be the ideal solution because then there’d be no one to blame.
“Is the cleaning stuff bothering your hands? I think we’ve got gloves somewhere in the back. I’ll look for it tomorrow,” Travis said as he picked up my hand to inspect it.
He lightly traced over my palm in the dark and then brought it closer to his face to inspect it. A reasonable person would have turned on the overhead light to see better.
We were not reasonable people.
“Does it hurt at all?”
“If I say yes, you gonna kiss it to make it better?” The words flew out of my mouth before I thought the better of them. I heard the laughter in my own voice. It was a joke. Anyone would take it as a sarcastic joke.
Anyone who wasn’t Travis.
He slowly raised my hand closer to his mouth.
Travis gave me plenty of time to draw away or say no or protest. Instead, I held my breath and waited to see what he’d do next.
With leather-brown eyes trained on me, he raised my hand to his mouth and kissed the palm.
His lips were soft against my more weathered hands, but where his fingers gripped me, I felt the calluses forever embedded by a lifetime of gripping hockey sticks.
“Why’d you do that?” I whispered.
“Because that was the part of you I could reach.” His answer was low and deep. Shivers coursed through me at the promise behind his words.
Those words rested under my skin, warm and frightening in equal measure.
“Is there a different one you’d prefer?”
“Yeah, this one.”
Quick as lightning and just as electric, Travis pulled me toward him and fit his lips against mine.
There was no need to play coy. I parted my lips, and his tongue plunged inside my mouth.
Travis swept inside me, mapping my mouth and claiming ownership of it.
Excitement pooled in the pit of my stomach and my cock, primed all night, stiffened behind the zipper of my jeans.
He possessed me, and something deep inside settled.
Each thrust of his tongue reminded me that in a perfect world, it wouldn’t only be his tongue thrusting inside me.
But when he wrenched his mouth away, hope moved to that tiny, secret place behind my heart.
I almost melted into the heated seat. What I’d thought were shivers were a weak imitation of the tremors that shook me now.
Every nerve ending was at attention, waiting to be explored, and with mercy, satisfied.
“Damn, you taste good,” Travis murmured when he slid his lips down my neck and sucked at the pulse point throbbing at its base.
With my head thrown back and chest heaving, I’m sure I looked like one of those desperate heroines on the covers of my mom’s old romance novels. At least, I sure as hell hoped I did. God knows I felt like one.
I wanted to fold into him, let him take over every thought in my head, and that scared me more than I’d ever admit.
“Gereakhm.” What my answer lacked in coherence, it made up for in enthusiasm. I hoped.
“Is that a keep going or a get away from me?”
I pulled a little away from him so he’d see my expression before I gave my answer. “Why would I want you to stop?”
I didn’t bother to hide the incredulity in my voice. I needed this man’s hands on me as much as I needed oxygen in my lungs and food in my belly.
“Because I’m your boss.”
Reality always found a way to slam on the brakes just when things felt too good to be real.
Well, shit.