by Julie Miller
There’d been one back in college. A fantasy kiss. A mystery woman. He’d never been that drunk before—had wisely never been that drunk since. But whether that make-out session had been the perfect solace for his breakup with Stacy, or just a feverish wet dream, he’d probably never know.
“Travis?” Tess was squiggling again, rubbing choice parts against bits of his anatomy that leaped in eager response.
“I’m with ya.” Reality topped fantasies and shadowy memories every time. He tightened his arms around Tess and reclaimed her kiss.
“Mmm,” she moaned with a ragged impatience that matched his own. He dragged his lips to her throat to lap at the sound and taste the drumming beat of her pulse beneath his tongue. “Trav—” she gasped, arching her back and inviting his lips into the unbuttoned gap of her shirt.
Retreat! Retreat!
But Travis was ignoring the order in lieu of discovering the exact spot where the taut skin across her collarbone and sternum gave way to the softer swell of a breast. His pulse pounded in his ears and his nose filled with the arousing scents of citrus and sunshine that clung to her hair and clothes. His mind was lost in the moment—lost in the reawakening sense of manhood, potency, virility, success. He was lost in the woman.
She’d dared him to kiss her.
Seemed like a sweet deal. In exchange for putting his father’s fears to rest, he could erase a few doubts about that future spinsterhood she questioned. Give her a shot of confidence. Offer a little expert training to make Ashton sit up and notice the new Tess Bartlett he had become aware of. As a bonus, he could explore, fulfill, then finally cast aside this crazy need that had tormented his waking moments as well as his dreams.
Except…nothing in him seemed to be easing, abating. The more contact he had, the more he wanted. He skimmed his hands along the backs of her smooth, sinewy thighs. Up beneath her shorts. Inside her panties where he kneaded and squeezed a handful of that tight, gorgeous ass.
He tugged her across his chest until one sweet, ripe breast dangled above his mouth. Lifting his head, he captured her nipple through shirt and bra, and suckled until she squirmed and moaned and batted helpless fists against his shoulders.
“Uh-uh, sweetheart,” he wanted to coach her. “Don’t fight it. Just enjoy.”
“Travis—” she gasped. Her fists beat a little harder, but her thighs convulsed around his hips in an unspoken signal of pleasure.
“Touch me.” He suckled harder and a tremor racked through her body. “We need…” The cotton knit was wet enough that he could feel the seam of her bra, the puckering of her areola, the needy, greedy thrust of her nipple dancing inside his mouth. “…to touch.” He worked his hands between them, unhooking the button of her shorts.
Her fingers slid beneath his shirt, finding and singeing his sensitized skin with her hot, seeking hands. “Like this?”
“Oh, yeah.” Travis grabbed at the hem of her pink top. Her back was smooth and supple beneath his hand. He shoved the shirt up and reached for her bra clasp. He wanted a naked, straining tit in his mouth. Now. He fumbled with the hooks. “Damn.” He was out of practice. This was going to be a two-handed job.
“We should slow down.” She palmed a pectoral. How could he possibly slow down? “Do you think we—?”
“Yes.” She brushed her lips against his and he caught them, silenced them. One hook popped. “It’s just a kiss.” He nipped at her. “Just…” The sensuous curve of her bottom lip fit perfectly between his. “Kiss…”
Pop. The last hook gave way.
He was done talking.
He bucked beneath her, bouncing her up, then sliding his hands inside her shirt and bra, catching her bounty in his palms. She groaned. “This is too much.”
It wasn’t enough.
He squeezed the dusky tan nipples between his thumbs and forfingers and guided one of them to his eager tongue.
When his teeth got a little nip of the action, her sexy moans erupted into an erotic yelp. He might have laughed when she clapped a self-conscious hand over her mouth, if he wasn’t so far gone himself. He rolled, letting her slide onto the table beside him. This was the kind of physical therapy he could get into. This incendiary connection had only one place to go, and he intended to take it all the way. He snatched at her zipper. He’d suffered through hell this past year and had no doubt the solace he’d find burying himself inside Tess would go a long way toward his recovery.
Where the hell had he been for almost twenty years? Not to notice Tess this way? Not to want her like this? This must be summer magic messin’ with his head. A moment stolen out of time. It was as if all the surgical teams who’d stitched him back together had altered him somehow. He hadn’t been with a woman since the accident. The setting was wrong or the timing was off or he just hadn’t been in a friendly mood. But with Tess, in the middle of the afternoon in a public hospital’s therapy room…hell, he couldn’t get inside her fast enough.
When he reached for his own zipper, he cursed, realizing he wore those damn pants where he had to pull everything down in order to take care of business. Warning her of his intention with another kiss, he twisted himself and lifted her, trying to ease her onto her back so he had room to maneuver. The table stayed rock solid, but his stiff leg protested the sudden acrobatics. A lightning bolt of pain shot through his knee and fired every nerve from his thigh to his hip, effectively stunning all interested parties in between. “Son of a bitch.”
Every muscle in him clenched and Travis gritted his teeth, breathing through the aftershocks of pain and frustration. The game had just been called on account of his frickin’ body letting him down one more time. Bye-bye, sex. Bye-bye, solace. Bye-bye, Tess.
Hello, reality.
“Trav?” Tess froze, her arms clutched tightly to her exposed breasts. Her voice sounded ragged and distant though she was only inches away. “Did I hurt you?”
“Did you…?” Travis collapsed onto his back beside her and let the colorful commentary rip again. “No. You didn’t do a damn thing.”
They lay side by side on the narrow table, facing the ceiling’s fluorescent lights. He still had one arm trapped beneath her shoulders, one hand still splayed with possessive intent atop the dimple of her belly button. The diaphragm muscle beneath his palm rose and fell, indicating the same desperate need for oxygen and sanity that he felt.
She whispered into the charged atmosphere still heating the air around their bodies. “This was a mistake.”
No shit. But not because she’d done anything wrong. “I’m the one who screwed up. I let that get way out of hand. I was just supposed to kiss you, not—”
“It takes two to get out of hand.” He felt her skin cooling to match the bite in her voice. “Don’t move,” she ordered. “I’m getting up. If you’ve reinjured something, I don’t want to aggravate it.”
“Dammit, T-bone, it’s not your fault.”
But she was already sitting up on the edge of the table, her back turned as she contorted herself to refasten her bra. Fine. He understood the message: This is awkward as hell. Promise me we’ll never do anything this nutso, out of control again. He dropped his legs over the edge of the table on the opposite side and sat up.
“Travis! You weren’t supposed to move until I check you out.”
“I’m fine.” Well, mostly. He tugged his T-shirt down and stretched it out to mask the tent in his pants. The Ashton Hospital and its sexiest physical therapist couldn’t do anything about that problem. “I twisted wrong. It was just a twinge. Now it’s gone.”
“You’re sure?”
“Tess.”
She stilled, feeling sufficiently dressed, he supposed, to finally relax. “That was weird, right?”
He tried to think of other women—other men, even—who knew as many secrets and personal baggage about him as Tess did. Besides his sister, there wasn’t anyone who came close. He’d been with several women over the years, and had always taken precautions—both the physical and the emot
ional kind. He knew how to separate fun from intimacy, how to make the act good for both parties without strings being attached. He’d learned the hard way early on that letting his heart get involved in a relationship made him an easy target for heartache. A lover could take his secrets and dreams and walk away. But Tess was loyal to the bone. She was someone who would always be there, someone he could always trust.
He’d never gotten the two categories of women mixed up before.
Travis needed to back way up and think about what he was doing here. “Yeah,” he finally dredged up a response. “Weird.”
“But I was okay?”
Okay didn’t quite describe the fireworks going off and trains colliding and his dick being as hard as it had been in a year.
“Yeah.” The answer didn’t feel right. Having this whole conversation didn’t feel right. He glanced over his shoulder at the sexy muss of Tess’s hair and the shade of embarrassment dotting her cheeks. Through her cotton shirt, he glimpsed the shape of one pebbled nipple, pointing north above the tight hug of her crossed arms. In the south, his penis danced in helpless response. Okay was far too tame a word to explain what she had done to his body.
With one finger, he reached out in a peace-making gesture to brush her hair off her neck and drape it behind her shoulder. “I don’t get what the men of this town are waiting for if no one’s asking you out. You were more than okay. You were hot. You just have to make them see that.”
“And you’re willing to help?”
“Why not? Fair trade, right? My reputation for yours?”
Her forced laugh grated on his ears. But he caught the hint of a genuine smile when she turned to face him. She pointed to her pink, swollen lips and drew a circle in the air. “You’ve got a little…”
Travis wiped the back of his hand over his own bruised mouth and came away with streaks of tawny rose lipstick. He grinned. “Nice shade.”
He pointed to the unzipped fly of her shorts to return the favor. “And you…”
“Oh.” Tess glanced down and immediately jumped off the table. Amazing how quickly she could tuck and zip and smooth away the evidence of being so thoroughly groped. “That’d look real professional, wouldn’t it?”
He laughed at her sarcasm and ignored the twinge of discontent nagging at him. Probably guilt. The easy repartee was coming back; he’d better not do anything to spoil it. He eased himself more slowly to his feet. “Not that I was complaining about your bedside manner, but you’d be reprimanded if you showed up for formation looking that sloppy.”
“I told you to wait.” Tess dashed around the table. Her hands were firm and cool on his shoulder and forearm as she urged him to sit. “I need to check your injury.”
Travis shook off the impersonal touch.
“And I told you I was fine.” Minding every precise placement of his foot so he wouldn’t limp, he headed for the bench where his towel, keys and wallet lay. “It’s nothing but a charley-horse. I’ll walk it off.”
“You’re a lousy liar. No wonder you need my help fooling your dad.”
He grabbed the towel and flicked it her direction then draped it over his arm in front of him. “For your information, I’m a damn good liar. You’re just better at reading me than most people.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “There’s no way I can convince you to come back here for real physical therapy?”
He glared. “Read this.”
“Okay, so you’re not an invalid. My mistake.” She laughed at his effort to look tough, and things almost felt normal again. Almost.
He still had one pesky problem to take care of. But he managed to grab his keys and wallet and stroll toward the exit without giving himself away. “I’m gonna run home and take a shower.” He’d have to finish what they’d started by hand. “We probably should talk a little strategy, get our story straight for Dad and negotiate other ways I can repay the favor.” He paused at the exit and turned. “You know, I don’t think you need as much practice as you think in the…sexy…department.”
“You couldn’t tell how out of practice I was? Pickin’s are mighty slim here in Ashton.”
“They won’t be when the fleet comes in next week.”
A laugh snorted through her nose. “You want me to trust this sexual makeover to some stranger I meet at the carnival or in a bar?”
No. Definitely not. Travis squeezed his eyes shut and fought to block out the disturbing image of a dozen uniformed men trying to get at what Tess had just offered him on that table. No frickin’ way. A woman looking to brush up her sexual image was a prime target for a man to take advantage of. At the very least, he owed her some sort of watch-dog protection. Maybe he could screen the candidates for her. He could at least give her some tips on self-defense if something should get out of hand. “You got plans tonight?”
When he opened his eyes, she was on her hands and knees, retrieving the twisty thing that he’d torn from her hair and tossed beneath the practice stairs platform. “Right now it looks as if I’ll be sitting Amy down to tell her all of Morty’s good points and convince her it’s okay to go out with him. Just give me a call when your guests arrive, and we’ll wing it.”
He looked away from the tempting wiggle of that fanny in the air. Oh, yeah. Judging by the leap of interest beneath the towel, his body was ready to volunteer for the sexy makeover mission. But she’d wisely hesitated to accept that kind of repayment from him. Maybe he could content himself with some verbal tips.
His whole body seemed to sag with disappointment.
Tess—friend. Any other woman—lover. He chanted like a caveman in his head and made sure his hormones understood the distinction by the time she stood to say goodbye. Travis winked into her guileless hazel eyes and said the words a friend would want to hear. “For what it’s worth, T-bone? Morty should’ve asked you out.”
“MORTY SHOULD’VE asked you out.”
Yeah, but Morty hadn’t.
Tess had tried to get down and dirty with Travis, but that hadn’t happened, either. For a few feverish minutes, she’d been someone else. Someone sexy. Someone hot, to quote Travis himself.
Tess wiped the fog from the mirror over the sink and wrapped the bath towel beneath her arms. She caught her breath as the terry cloth rubbed across her nipples in a rough caress and they jumped to life, just as they had beneath the rasp of Travis’s tongue. A memory throbbed between her legs and she squeezed her thighs together. Her own hands went to her breast and waist, easing the torment of a body that remembered every touch that had left her on the brink of fulfillment, every kiss that had promised such pleasure, as if only seconds had passed instead of hours since Travis had pulled her onto that massage table with him.
That was how a man should make her feel.
That was what was missing from her life.
That rush, that fire, and the pay-off she’d denied herself today were things she deserved. There was only so much a girl could do with a towel and the handheld entertainment she kept in the table beside her bed.
She looked at the woman in the mirror—her wet hair plastered to her scalp, her face scrubbed of any makeup, her hand clutching her breast—and for one brief moment, Tess saw herself the way Travis said she should.
She was irresistible.
There were curves beneath that towel. Seduction in those drowsy eyes and parted lips and bold hand. And the heat that opened her pores and glazed a sheen of dampness across her tanned skin didn’t come entirely from the shower she’d just taken.
No other man had ever made her feel this way. Had ever made her believe she was sexy.
But then she blinked and the plain brown mouse everyone else saw reappeared in the mirror. Ashton’s future Nixa Newhaven. Reliable as Old Faithful and common as a mud pot. Just about as sexy, too. Glub. Glub.
Travis claimed he could save her from spinsterhood by changing her reputation in town. At least he could save her from involuntary celibacy. With a little guided practice from him, he’d forc
e the men of Ashton to see her as an exciting, sexy, datable—bedable—woman. Maybe their interest in her could spark her desire for one of them.
Tess snorted at her silly reflection. Yeah. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
The bald truth was she wanted Travis. He made her feel sexy without batting an eyelash. She didn’t want to be made over for some other guy…but that was the practical thing to do, or else she’d be pining over Travis McCormick the rest of her life.
“Damn practicality.” Why couldn’t she just have what she wanted?
Why couldn’t she?
Tess picked up her comb and started detangling the shoulder-length kinks of hair, along with her wandering thoughts. Nah, she couldn’t. Could she?
He was home for two weeks. And then he’d be gone. They’d be reduced to e-mails and phone calls and letters. But for two weeks…?
“You shouldn’t.” She pointed to her reflection in the mirror. “But you want to.”
Should she really trade in her best friend for a drill sergeant who could transform her into a lean, mean sex machine? What if Travis’s so-called miracle makeover didn’t take? Or what if it did and she discovered there wasn’t another man in Ashton—or on the planet—she wanted as badly as she wanted him? Could she really walk away from a steamy, two-week training session like what they’d started on the massage table with her heart and pride and future intact?
Would a hot summer romance be enough to finally get him out of her system? Or would loving Travis forever spoil her for any other man?
Either she should ignore her attraction to Travis totally, or she should have the balls to see it through to its conclusion. She wasn’t sure she was sophisticated enough to have it both ways. Sophisticated, right—that was probably on one of those irresistible genes she was missing.
“Make a decision, Bartlett.” She frowned at the perplexed reflection in the mirror. “Go for it, or get over it.”
“Who are you talking to?” Her comb clattered into the sink at the sharp rap on the bathroom door. Amy knocked on the door a second time. “Mom said dinner would be on the table in five.”
