Take Me (Fifth Avenue) (3 page)

He smoothed her hair, sweeping it to one side, his touch firm, arousing. Then he gathered it up and wrapped it around his hand tightly, tugging it, forcing her head farther to the side.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, kissing her sensitive skin, “if you don’t like something. You can tell me to stop.”

She didn’t want him to stop. Ever. She didn’t want to give the orders. She felt like this was Travis’s show, and she was the audience. Witnessing what he commanded her to. Experiencing what he demanded she experience.

There was no one on earth she trusted more than Travis.

She’d told him earlier that she didn’t know what she liked, and it hit her then, that if anyone knew, it would be him.

“Just do what you want,” she said, repeating her words from earlier. “Do what
I
want.”

He would know. She knew he would.

“Bend over,” he said.

He moved back, allowing her room as she bent at the waist and held tight to the edge of the vanity top. She looked up at them in the mirror. Travis was so large and muscular behind her, his hold on her hair tight and commanding. Her dark eyes were wide, olive skin flushed with desire, and she was ready to submit, wholly and absolutely to anything he might ask for.

He gently tugged her hair and guided her head back, turning her face to him and kissing her deeply as he moved forward, the head of his arousal testing the entrance to her body.

She kept her face turned to the side as he pushed deeper into her.

“Watch,” he said.

She kept her eyes down, not quite able to bring herself to look at their reflection again. Not now. Not during something so intense. It was too much. It would push her over the edge into...something she wasn’t ready for.

He released his hold on her hair and gripped her chin, slowly turning her head so that she was facing the mirror. “Watch,” he repeated, pausing his movements.

“Travis, I need...”

“Not until you look.”

She obeyed, their eyes clashing. He looked...not like Travis. His expression pained, the tendons in his neck standing out. His hand looked big and strong on her hip, the fingers holding her chin gentle and firm.

He pushed inside of her slowly, filling her, stretching her. She had never in her life imagined pleasure so exquisite that it balanced on a knife-edge of bliss and pain. But this did. It made her ache for completion, even while she hoped it could last forever.

Then he started to move inside of her. Hard, fast, his jaw clenched tight, his brows locked together.

The blunt tips of his fingers bit hard into her hip while he continued to hold her chin steady. And she kept watching him.

It was the most incredible thing she’d ever seen, combined with the most amazing pleasure she’d ever felt. Travis, every muscle strained to the point of breaking, taking her from behind.

He thrust hard into her and she lowered her head, her hair spilling forward, obscuring her vision as Travis released his hold on her and slipped his hand down between her thighs.

He moved his fingers over her clit in time with his movements, pushing her closer and closer to orgasm, to bliss. To oblivion.

She felt like she was on the verge of breaking, and she craved that breaking. Because everything inside of her was too much. Too big. Too intense. And she needed the release more than she needed air.

He parted her with his fingers and targeted the center of her desire with even more precision, his finger moving gently over her. Not too much, just right. Just enough.

She came hard, shuddering out her pleasure as her internal muscles tightened around his shaft. He swore, lowering his face and biting her shoulder as he found his own release.

Chapter Four

Travis released a heavy breath and his hold on her, planting his hands beside hers on the vanity, his body resting against her back.

She let her head fall against his shoulder and they stayed like that. Her knees were weak, the muscles in her thighs trembling.

He pushed off from the vanity and away from her, turning his back on her. She took the moment to admire the sight of his ass in the mirror. It was a very nice ass. And she was going to just enjoy it for a moment because she had a feeling when they actually had to speak, the words he said would not be as nice as said ass.

And suddenly, she couldn’t face what words might come out of his mouth next. Because everything was awful. Absolutely everything.

And she’d just let her best friend take her bent over a vanity. How was that for screwing things up even worse?

If he spoke, if he said it was a mistake, if he said what she was thinking, she wouldn’t be able to keep going. She would just crumple into a ball and wail, because the only thing on earth preventing her from falling apart was the post-orgasmic buzz that was lingering in her blood.

“I need a shower,” she said, stumbling on her heels away from the vanity. “Dammit,” she muttered, bending down and tugging them off, feeling like an idiot with her breasts jiggling and her dress bunched up around her hips, tugging off shiny black heels.

She pushed the dress down to the floor and padded to the bathroom, barefoot and bare-ass naked.

She shut the door behind her and turned the water on, panic slowly rising up inside of her as steam filled the room.

She stepped inside the shower and closed the glass door behind her.

A sob rose in her chest and she leaned against the wall, sliding down to the floor, her knees pulled up tight to her chest.

She was just so afraid. Of life beyond the bathroom door, where Travis was, and past that, life outside the hotel. Life after the sunrise. Because it would come. And there would probably be hell to pay.

And hell was a demanding collections agency.

The water from the shower blended in with the tears on her cheeks, helping her pretend she wasn’t having a total breakdown. A little denial went a long way, especially in these circumstances.

The shower door opened and she looked up and saw Travis standing there, completely naked, his expression one of concern.

That was weird. Because that emotion stemmed from their friendship, but standing in front of her naked had never been a part of their friendship.

The caring was, and this was more the Travis she knew than the man who had just had her, hard and fast and rough. This was the blending of the man she knew, with the stranger, and it was a lot to take in.

He stepped into the shower and sank down to his knees in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“Oh...Trav, don’t do that,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t be sweet. It’s going to make it worse.”

“Is there anything I can do to make it better?”

“I don’t think.”

“I made you forget for a while,” he said, his voice husky.

“Yeah,” she said, laughing shakily. “You did that. How about you?”

“I almost forgot my own name,” he said, sliding his fingertip down her shoulder, to her elbow. “You have that effect on me, Syd.”

She angled her head to look at him, searching his expression. He looked so sincere, his blue eyes so serious. And she wanted to ask what he meant. If she had that effect on him all the time, or just tonight. If there was something that spanned a time before this, and maybe even after.

But that was breaking her own rules. And she honestly didn’t think she could handle it anyway. Not now. Maybe not ever.

She had goals. She had plans. None of them involved risking the best friendship she’d ever had for something she wasn’t sure she would ever have the time for.

Her political ambitions wouldn’t be conducive to a husband and family. And with Travis...

Well, that was why they’d never slept together before. It made sense now.

They were both so ambitious that they needed spouses who would support them, not who would take and distract from what they wanted. Travis was destined to be a high-powered lawyer, and Sydney a politician. They both needed a trophy spouse.

And neither she nor Travis would ever be content as the trophy.

But tonight it doesn’t matter.

She wondered if that meant she had permission to kiss him. Just because she wanted to. It was like tonight they were locked in a snow globe. Shaken up, the snow falling soundlessly outside the hotel. Safe because they were kept apart from the rest of the world. From reality.

“Can I kiss you?” she asked.

A half smile curved his lips. “Just do whatever you want, Syd.”

She leaned in, her lips touching his, the water running between them, making it slick and hot. It was a slow kiss. A chance to test it, to taste him, savor him. To see what it was like without the desperation that had touched everything earlier, flavoring their coupling with grief and fear.

As they stood, he pushed her hands up above her head again, straightening her, exposing her breasts. “You are beautiful,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said.

He laughed. “Thanks?”

He lowered his head and flicked his tongue over one nipple.

“Seemed the thing to say.” Her voice was barely a whisper now, arousal stealing her ability to speak.

“You going to thank me for this, too?” He drew one tightened bud deep into his mouth and sucked hard. She pushed herself against the shower wall, the tile hard against her back

“Thank you,” she said, as soon as the wave of pleasure subsided, as soon as the tightening in her stomach lessened enough for her to get the words out.

“I like the sound of that,” he said. “I wonder what you could do to show me how much you appreciate this,” he said, drawing the tip of his tongue around her other nipple, making her gasp.

“I do appreciate it,” she said.

“Show me.” He kissed her between her breasts, a tease for what she really wanted from him, which was more of what he’d already given.

He moved away from her and she could see him, hard and ready and enticing. He wrapped his fingers around his shaft and let the water help ease his fist up and down.

She could watch him do that, touch himself, all day. She felt like a voyeur, in on a private moment, one she had, if she were honest, thought of before. She liked watching the way he pleasured himself, enjoyed seeing what he liked.

How he liked to be touched.

He stilled his movements, his eyes on hers. She crouched down, her palms flat on the shower floor, the stone hard beneath her knees, and flicked her tongue over the head of his erection. His eyes closed, his head dropping back, his fingers relaxing and falling away as he gave himself over to her.

She angled her head and took him in deep, relishing the exquisite sound that rumbled in his chest. A sound that bordered on pain, which, considering how he made her feel, was utterly satisfying.

To know she could make him feel the same.

To know that she owned his body as much as he owned hers.

“I need you,” he said.

She lifted her head and looked at him, questioning. He gripped her hips and guided her around, then he lay down and maneuvered her up, putting her thighs on either side of his face.

“Trav...”

“Trust me,” he said.

He tugged her down over his mouth, tasting her deep, hard.

She found him again, running her tongue over his hard length as he continued to torment her with his wicked mouth.

He pushed a finger deep inside of her, then two, driving her closer and closer to the edge. She’d had one orgasm tonight already that had shattered her world, and she hadn’t yet had a chance to piece it back together, and here he was threatening to devastate everything again.

Threatening to permanently, and absolutely rearrange it so that it would never truly be hers again. So that his stamp would always be on it.

So that part of her would inescapably and irrevocably belong to Travis.

He slid the flat of his tongue over her clitoris, working it in time with his fingers and she felt her muscles start to shake, felt herself beginning to tear apart inside.

And she could feel an answering tremor in him, his thigh muscles trembling beneath her hands.

He withdrew from her, growling and changing their positions so that he was settled between her thighs, one of her legs propped up on his shoulder. “Ready for me?”

“More than.”

He thrust hard as he gripped her butt and pulled her forward, seated so deep inside of her she couldn’t tell anymore if they were separate people. It didn’t feel like it. It felt like they were one person. Sharing the same pain, the same pleasure, the same heady rush of exquisite and torturous need.

Water poured down over them, his skin slick with it. She moved her hands over his back, his butt, as he continued to pound into her, driving everything away but the moment. Every demon, every doubt, every fear.

Travis was all there was.

And he was all she wanted.

“Travis,” she said, speaking his name, over and over again. Like a prayer that might hold back the darkness. Or in their case, a prayer that might keep away the dawn.

They shuddered out their pleasure together, clinging to each other as the wave tossed them, threatened to drown them.

When it passed, she lay there, cradling his head to her breasts, hearing nothing but the sound of the water on the tile and their breathing.

“I think the floor might be a little hard for you,” he said, brushing her hair out of her face.

“I didn’t even feel it.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m falling through space, I’m pretty sure. When I come back down, it’ll hurt like hell.”

“Then I’ll make sure you have a mattress underneath you.”

He moved away from her, bent over her, gathering her into his arms before scooping her up and depositing her outside of the shower.

He shut the water off and took a perfectly folded white towel from the rack on the wall. “White,” he said. “How interesting. All things considered.”

“Not as gothic as the rest of the place.”

He ran the towel over her bare skin, catching all of the droplets with it. “You look good in it, though.”

Something about the statement made her heart stop. Made her body seize up.

“Not especially,” she said.

“You do to me.”

She wrapped the towel around her body and watched him towel off. She didn’t know why she was so fascinated by such a routine activity. But then, it drew attention to the way his muscles shifted and bunched as he moved into different positions. Showed off the strong lines of his thighs, the hard ridges on his stomach, the little dent in the side of his butt.

All very fascinating and interesting things about Travis, so she was discovering.

To say nothing of his male equipment which was, in her estimation, extremely impressive.

He dropped his towel and approached her, scooping her up again with total ease before walking them out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom.

“I think you might need some sleep,” he said.

He walked them over to the bed and deposited her in the middle of it. A lump rose in her throat when she thought of how fast it would all pass if she closed her eyes for just a moment. She wanted to argue. But she suddenly felt so tired she didn’t know if she could stay conscious for another five minutes.

But she didn’t want to sleep. Because then when she opened her eyes, their night would be over. The break from the world, from reality, would be gone, and they would have to face what was left.

The loss of Sarah. The change in their friendship.

And she just didn’t want to deal with any of those things.

He tugged the towel away from her and pulled the covers back. She scrambled to the top of the bed and burrowed beneath the covers, and he slipped in behind her, pulling her close.

He put his hand on her stomach and held her to him, his chin resting on her shoulder.

It was the most perfect moment she could ever remember.

Because right now she was with her best friend. And her lover. And he was holding her like he would never let go.

So it seemed safe to close her eyes.

Just for a moment.