Brown-Eyed Girl (Travis Family #4)(18)

“You don’t have to —” he began.

“Yes. I have to.” I kissed him again, excitement pulsing through me. “You have to,” I whispered against his lips.

Joe responded voraciously, caught up in the heat just as I was, his hold on me changing as he sought to make the fit between us even closer, tighter. After a while he began to undress me, and himself, clothes littering the floor in a trail to the bed. The light was switched off, the darkness relieved only by the starlight sifting through the mesh of the window blinds.

I pulled back the covers and lay on the mattress, shaking from head to toe. He lowered over me, the feel of hair-roughened limbs stimulating my skin into excruciating sensitivity. I felt the hot whisk of his breath against my throat.

“Tell me if you want to stop,” I heard him say hoarsely. “No matter what, I’ll stop if you decide —”

“I know.”

“I want you to understand —”

“I understand.” I pulled him down to me.

Nothing was real in that quiet room. Things were being done to me, and by me, in an ecstasy of sexual greed that I knew I would be shamed by later. His mouth was at my breast, his tongue articulating delicate circles until the tip budded, and he began to lap and tug until the pleasure went singing to the quick of my body. I gripped his shoulders, the tough muscle of his back, massaging blindly.

Skilled and sure, his fingers teased along the insides of my thighs, coaxing them to part. The pad of his thumb brushed a place so tender that I cried out, my hips lifting. His finger slid inside me, caressing deep into a frantic wet pulse. My body tightened to hold the sensation, drawing the pleasure inward.

His weight slid over me, his legs spreading mine, and I gasped out a few words… we had no protection, we needed to use something… He reassured me with a hoarse murmur, reaching over to the bedside table for his wallet, which I hadn’t even been aware of him setting there. I heard the rip of a plastic packet. Momentarily distracted, I wondered when that had happened, how he had managed —

My thoughts imploded as I felt the pressure of him working slowly, circling intimately. He entered me in a low, thick slide, sensation blooming within sensation, hot and sweet and maddening. A cry stirred in my throat.

Joe nuzzled at my ear. “Shhhh…” He slid an arm beneath my hips, pulling them high. Every thrust was a full-bodied caress, the hair on his chest teasing my breasts. I’d never felt so much at once, raw sensation eliding the spaces between every heartbeat and breath until I was blind and silent. The release wrung pleasure from every muscle, tightening until I shuddered in long, liquescent spasms. Joe held me tightly, breathing in rough gasps as he reached the pinnacle. He kissed my neck and shoulders, his hands moving over me gently. His fingers traversed my stomach, down between my legs to the verge of our joined flesh, and I felt him caressing intimately, teasing around the small centered ache. Moaning in astonishment, I sank into an erotic darkness where there was no thought, no past, no future, only pleasure that made me twist in helpless ecstasy.

I awakened alone in the morning, aware of the slight aches left by another body’s intrusion into mine, the faint whisker burns on skin that had been kissed and kissed, the tender pull of inner thighs.

I wasn’t sure what to think about what I’d done.

Joe had said little when he’d left, other than the obligatory, “I’ll call you.” A promise that no one ever kept.

I reminded myself that I had the right to sleep with someone if I wanted to, even a stranger. No judgments were necessary. No one had to feel bad.

Still… I felt as if something had been taken from me, and I didn’t know what it was or how to regain it. I felt as if I would never be the same again.

Letting out a shuddering sigh, I used the bedsheet to blot my eyes as tears threatened to well up.

I pressed hard against my eyes. “You’re okay,” I whispered aloud. “Everything’s okay.”

As I huddled back into the damp pillow, I remembered how, when I was in grade school, we had studied butterflies for a science project. Samples of a butterfly’s wing under a microscope had revealed that it was covered with tiny scales like feathers or roof shingles.

If you touched a butterfly’s wing, the teacher had said, it would knock off some of the scales and they would never grow back. Some butterflies had clear patches on their wings where you could see right through the membrane. But even with some lost scales, a butterfly would still be able to fly after you let it go.

It would get along just fine.

Six

During the long drive home, Sofia and I talked about the wedding and rehashed every detail. I did my best to keep the mood light, forcing myself to laugh from time to time. When Sofia asked casually if anything had happened with Joe Travis, I replied, “No, but I gave him my number. He might call sometime.” I could tell by her quick, speculative glance that she didn’t entirely believe me.

After Sofia plugged her phone into the car audio and started a jaunty Tejano song, I let myself think about the previous night and tried to figure out why I felt so guilty and worried. Probably because having a one-night stand was so unlike me… except that since I’d done it, it was like me.

The new me.

Feeling a stirring of panic, I pushed it back down.

I thought back to when I’d first met Brian, trying to remember how long I’d waited until sleeping with him. Two months, at least. I had been cautious about intimacy, having no desire to careen from one man to the next the way my mother had. Sex would be on my terms, within the margins that I established. Brian had been fine with that, patient, willing to wait until I was ready.