Chapter 22
TRAVIS
Nearly a full three days since their date night and Rachel had been scarce. She wasn’t avoiding him; he understood this because they were still connecting for…entanglements… every night. But the amount of time she spent working was becoming cumbersome for even the boys.
They wanted their mom around, and even when she was present, the laptop or her phone was her constant companion.
He got it. Understood that she was worried she’d miss another request or make a mistake.
Her attention to detail was one of the things he liked most about her, because when it was just the two of them?
Oh yeah, her attention to detail was meticulous, which led to other things that were exceptionally…thorough.
He was pretty sure he was becoming addicted to Rachel’s particular brand of precise.
“Hey.” Travis pushed the door closed softly behind him, pressing the lock with his thumb.
He held her toothbrush in his other hand. She’d left it on his sink that morning.
Rachel, sitting crisscross-applesauce on the bed with her laptop open in front of her, lifted her gaze to him and raised her eyebrows. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said again. He held up the toothbrush. Set it on the table by the door. “Thought you might want this.”
She hadn’t messed with her makeup that day, so her face was bare, her hair piled on her head like she wore it only when she didn’t expect anyone else to see her.
At least, that’s what he’d noted. She never kept it up like that when anyone else was in the room.
He gave her thirty seconds before she remembered that it was in the pile before she removed the band and let it hang loose.
He liked it both ways. He didn’t particularly have a preference.
“Are you busy?” he asked, hand still on the doorknob, ready to leave if she couldn’t take time away for him.
She nodded, the almost-there smile edging at her lips. “Always.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He turned the door handle to leave.
“Trav?” she called before he pulled the door open more than an inch. “Did you need something?”
Yeah, he needed something. Someone.
“You,” he said simply, turning back toward her.
She smiled, her cheeks turning pink, her teeth nibbling her bottom lip. “Good thing I’m here, then.”
“Good thing.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, glancing at his bare feet.
She closed the laptop, carefully, and moved it to the nightstand before patting the bedspread in invitation.
He pushed the door closed and made it two steps into the room before she reached for the rubber band and pulled her hair free.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said, moving to the bed and stretching out beside where she sat.
“Do what?” She tossed the band on top of her laptop and snuggled in to his chest.
He relaxed immediately. Breathing around Rachel just came easier. Having her against him like this made him feel like he hadn’t been breathing and never even realized it. Then suddenly she was there, and the world was full of oxygen.
“The hair thing. I like it up.” He shuffled his hands through the strands, piling it on the crown of her skull like she’d had it with the band.
The kiss he pressed to her mouth didn’t go as planned when she frowned against his lips.
He didn’t like it when she frowned in bed. Didn’t particularly care for it when he frowned in bed, either.
“Okay.” She turned from him and reached mechanically across the mattress toward the nightstand until her fingertips grazed the hair tie. “I can put it back in.”
He caught her, pulling her back in to him so the front of her meshed with the front of him. “I like it down, too.”
That got him a smile and a press of her lips against his. “Oh.”
“I like it both ways. You don’t have to change it when I’m around.” His lips were barely away from hers, sharing the same air, firing all his senses, making him want to sink himself in all that she was and escape.
Unfortunately, it was the middle of the day and she had work, and he had a call with distribution, and if they weren’t careful, someone would come knocking at the door.
“Wanna make out?” he asked instead of what he really wanted to do.
“The kids with Dane?” she asked but didn’t wait for his response before running her hands up the edge of the bottom of his tee. Her palms against his abs lit a trail of fire along his skin that was all Rachel.
“Yeah.” He brushed the tip of his nose against hers. “We’re alone.”
“Then by all means, yes. Making out is good. Add some groping too, if you want.” The last word barely passed her lips before he rolled her to her back and reached up her top, under her bra, to toy with her nipples as his mouth melded with hers.
He broke the kiss only long enough to pull his shirt over his head and toss it to the chair beside the bed.
“Good call, fewer clothes.” Rachel laughed against his mouth as she rolled him to his back, straddling him.
There was no doubt about it, he was falling tart over toaster for Rachel.
“Rach.” Travis held her face as she continued to kiss the hell out of him.
The things this girl did with her mouth couldn’t possibly be legal. Her T-shirt stretched across her breasts, her nipples pebbled into tight buds, he was hard, and she was riding him over his jeans. This was so much more than a make-out session.
“We aren’t good at the just-kissing thing, are we?” she asked.
He chuckled. “It’s probably a good thing to know.”
“Tonight, I expect you to follow through with the promises your body is making to me right now.” She laughed as their mouths melded and the center of her heat rubbed against his length. She groaned as he pressed his hips up and into the warmth between her thighs.
The barrier of their clothing barely registered, and the moan that filled the space between them could’ve been either of theirs.
He had no idea if it was him who was making the noises.
It didn’t really matter. What did matter was that he was going to end up finishing in his pants, and wouldn’t that just be embarrassing?
“Mom,” Kellan called from the hallway, the pounding of his footsteps getting closer to her door. “Brady took Mr. Pretzel and won’t give him back.”
Once, Travis had taken the twins to the water park and there was this huge bucket of cold water that would drench anyone standing in the wrong spot. That’s exactly how his body reacted right then. Like fifty gallons of cold water had been tossed over them on the bed.
Travis was a little worried that Rachel might pass out, because suddenly she was holding her breath, not moving, and her eyes had gone wide.
Rachel scrambled off the top of him, her eyes still huge, round orbs. She threw his shirt at him.
“You locked it, right?” Even as she asked, she headed toward the thick wood as he dealt with his own thick wood. He rearranged his pants and grappled with his T-shirt.
“I locked it,” he assured.
Yes, he had. He distinctly remembered pressing the lock.
Rachel’s mouth had the appearance of a thoroughly kissed woman, her lipstick smeared over her lips and up onto her cheek. “You run to the bathroom, wait there. I’ll open the door once you’re—”
The door swung open. Sonofa—
Kellan barreled through the entry, skidding to a stop nearly comically. “Uncle Trav, what’re you doing in here? Why’s your shirt off?”
Travis gripped his T-shirt against his naked torso, wishing he could become one with the mattress.
“And what happened to your face?” Kellan asked, moving his gaze from his uncle to his mother, then back again.
Kellan settled his gaze on his uncle sitting on his mom’s bed with a T-shirt gripped to his chest, a set of blue balls, and apparently his mother’s lipstick smeared all over his mug.
His heart tripped over itself as he grasped for ideas on how to play this. There could be no collateral damage for Rachel. Unfortunately, the commands from his brain weren’t working, because though he opened his mouth, no sound came out.
“Uncle Travis was helping me look for my toothbrush,” Rachel said quickly. She raised her arms and then dropped them to her sides. “But we found it. Yay.”
“Brady stole Mr. Pretzel. He won’t tell me where he hid him.
” Kellan was on a rant and clearly wasn’t too concerned about the current state of his mother, his uncle, and their…
toothbrush situation. “I know it was him because I left Mr. Pretzel under my pillow and only Brady knows where I keep him.”
Rachel turned her rabid gaze to Travis, mouthing, Help.
Travis pointed to her lips.
She must’ve understood what he meant because she was swiping around her mouth with her fingertips. “Tell you what? I’ll go put my toothbrush away. Then Uncle Trav and I will come help with the Mr. Pretzel search.”
“Hurry.” Kellan’s shoulders slumped. Travis could relate to that feeling.
Rachel shooed her son out of the room with the ease and practice of someone who had done it a thousand times before.
As soon as he was gone, she clicked the lock on the door.
“You said you locked it.” She turned a fiery gaze on Travis. This time it had nothing to do with the fire from their chemistry experiments.
No, she looked like a dragon about to breathe fire. To be honest, she scared the piss out of him with the way her skin flushed.
“I did.” He scrambled to his feet and pulled on his shirt. “I guess I accidentally unlocked it, too.”
“Accidentally?” she said with a hiss. “Do you know what happens when there are accidents?”
Um…the kid walks in on his mom in an awkward position with his uncle?
“There cannot be accidents.” As quickly as it started, the fire banked, and she fell against the wall, her back to the plaster.
“Rach?” Dane knocked. “Have you seen Mr. Pretzel?”
“No,” she called back. “Give me a minute to finish changing. I’ll be right there.”
“Okay,” Dane replied before his footfalls disappeared down the hallway.
Travis moved toward Rachel, hands up like he was prepared to be arrested. “Scale of one to ten, how pissed are you right now?”
She rubbed her forehead. “That depends,” she said, and suddenly she was smiling. “Are you going to help me find my toothbrush again later?”
“Tonight.” He let out a holy-fuck-thank-God-that’s-over breath. Then he ran his hands up and over her shoulders. “After everyone is in bed and I’ve installed a second lock on your door, I will help you find all the toothbrushes.”
That got him a smile.
“Then I’m not mad.” She wiped around the edges of his mouth with her thumbs. “There’s makeup remover in my bathroom. You should probably use that—it’s in the pink bottle.”
“Will do.”
“And…uh…wait five minutes after I leave…so…”
She didn’t finish the thought—so we don’t get caught together. She didn’t have to.
He understood why they needed to be secretive, for now. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the way it made his back teeth set on edge or his limbs itch, but he understood.
Standing on her tiptoes, she pressed a breath of a kiss against his lips. “When you’re done here, we’ll probably need your help to find Mr. Pretzel.”
“It won’t be as fun as the toothbrush hunt, but you’ll be there, so I’ll deal,” he murmured against her mouth.
She smiled, but the effect of it didn’t quite meet her eyes. Yeah, they’d need to figure out how to handle this thing between them before they had a real accident. The kind of accident they couldn’t cover with a toothbrush and Mr. Pretzel.
The problem was, he wasn’t sure how they could approach the situation reveal without facing the damage of a fallout.
Deep down in his gut, he worried it would affect everyone.
But it’d be Rachel who suffered most.