Archive of Our Own

Laura, toying with the end of a strip of thick-cut peppered bacon between her teeth, extended one leg under the big wooden dining table and planted the heel of her bare foot on the seat of Travis’s chair, smack between his parted thighs. 

When he paused with a forkful of scrambled eggs partway to his mouth and looked down at her wiggling toes, she pushed her foot forward, rubbing first the ball and then the entire sole up against the fly of Travis’s jeans. 

He raised his eyes and frowned at her—but it was a what’re-you-up-to sort of frown, not a hey-I-hate-that-quit-it sort of frown, or even his old, familiar I’m-a-cop-so-my-face-is-stuck-this-way frown. So Laura gave him a big, bright who?-me?! smile and continued her pedaling ministrations until, maybe only half a minute later, she could feel something starting to press back against her.

“Laura,” Travis said, with a note of mild warning, “you need to stop.”

“Hmm, feels like I don’t, though,” Laura replied, grinding her foot harder against Travis’s burgeoning erection. She relished the sight of his eyelids fluttering before he shut his eyes completely and sighed, the fork in his hand descending back to his plate, the eggs forgotten.

When he opened his eyes again, she could see the effort of restraint roiling there. “You said you’d love to go on this hike with me,” he said, his tone straining toward steady and unbothered, a futile attempt to deny what the bulge in his pants suggested he was physically very ready to give her. “If that’s the truth, you need to start behaving yourself right this second.”

“And why’s that?” she asked saucily, tracing her big toe slowly down the now fully packed front rise of his jeans. 

Travis took a deep breath through his nose, his jaw working in a way that made Laura want to bite her lower lip. Or his lower lip. Bite it and then lick that little scar that slashed across his philtrum, and then— 

“Listen,” Travis said, through a badly juddering veneer of calm. “If you and me go again, I’m not gonna have strength enough to stand, let alone walk a few miles. So you either behave for me now, or all plans are off.” 

Laura waited, unmoving, for a few beats, both to see if the dark-haired man really meant it and to weigh the option he’d set before her. She had meant what she’d said—she would love to go out walking with him. She just also wanted him again. Those wants coexisted in perfect harmony within her, but since they apparently presented a conflict for the older man—whose energetic differences she guessed she’d just have to accept if she wanted to date him or whatever—Laura supposed she didn’t mind letting him win this exchange.

She’d still gotten something out of it. She was discovering that, as fun as it was to be having all this sex—three times in less than twenty-four hours!—it was fun of a different kind to tease Travis, to turn him on just for the hell of it.

Actually, if she was really honest with herself, it was more than fun—it was intoxicating. Watching, feeling the effect she could so easily have on Travis, seeing by his reactions just how nakedly and passionately he wanted her—had wanted her, for months now…

It made her want to absolutely coil her body around the man and never, ever let him go. 

But this time, she settled for pouting theatrically, then taking her sweet time retracting her foot from his lap and setting it back on the floor. Travis might have won this interaction, but she couldn’t make things too easy for him just because of that. That would be out of character for her.

*     *     *

Despite her sincere intention to behave herself for the duration of their hike, Laura had a lot of trouble not derailing things. Not because she was bored or it wasn’t beautiful—it was fantastic, actually. The trail was wide, cloaked with blazing crimson, gold, and pumpkin-colored leaves both clinging to the trees and strewn all over the ground, and every so often, the curtain of foliage parted to reveal gorgeous vistas from clearings and overlooks. 

The problem was that, at one point, Travis reached over and took her hand, intertwining her fingers with his larger, coarser ones, tethering them together as they walked—and that made Laura ridiculously giddy. And she was so flattered by the way that, whenever they spotted a bird or other wildlife, he asked her questions about what it was they’d seen—and then he actually paid attention when she answered with tidbits of knowledge she’d gleaned, either from her weeks at vet school or from her lifetime of being a girl who loved animals. And then he asked follow-up questions!

And Laura knew that it shouldn’t be special to have a man holding her hand or really listening to what she had to say, expressing curiosity about her thoughts and experience—those things represented a woefully low bar for any man to clear. But those things were special to her, all the shouldn’ts be damned, because somehow, despite their past and all her better judgment, he had become special to her. She was utterly twitterpated, and caught up as she was in the still-new, hot tide of freedom to be with the man she’d craved and was now allowed to feast upon, even the most basic things made her want to be all the hell over him at every single possible moment. 

But regardless, she still managed, mostly, to behave herself. 

Mostly.

During the last half mile of the hike, they were faced with a particularly steep climb up a hill. Laura kept holding on to Travis’s hand, giving him exaggerated—and only a little mean—encouragement: “Stay strong, old man! Keep it up! You’re inspiring the younger generation with every step you take!” 

It wasn’t like she wasn’t also struggling, with her fuck-sore legs and her lungs that were now more accustomed to passively breathing classroom air than to taking in the crisp atmosphere of the great autumnal outdoors as she moved through it—she just thought she could disguise her own efforts by focusing Travis on how irritating she could be. But though the man scowled mightily at her for her insolence, he also pressed a long, panting kiss to the hollow of her palm that left her every bit as short of breath as he was—so he managed to win that little moment too. 

When they finally reached the top of the hill, they discovered a thoughtfully placed wooden bench, and Travis, releasing her hand, collapsed heavily upon it, hastily screwing off the lid of his water bottle and then tilting head and bottle back so he could gulp the contents. And looking at him there, flushed and breathing hard, his throat working as he swallowed, Laura, her own heart pounding from exertion and excitement, suddenly couldn’t keep herself off him for a single moment longer. 

She straddled Travis where he sat, yanking his bottle away and tossing it in the general direction of the trail. And then she writhed her demanding body against him, kissed his water-wet mouth and his sweat-salted jaw and neck again and again, guided his big ruddy hands up under her camisole and bra until his fingertips found her nipples. She listened to his voice become jagged as a cliff face with desire as he both begged her to stop what she was doing and groaned praise against her collarbones like he was in heaven and she was the god who’d left the gates cracked just so he could slip inside. 

She’d gotten his zipper down and one hand into his pants and was struggling to undo her own jeans with the other when he tore his mouth away from hers long enough to swear that if she could just hold her goddamn horses until they got back to the cabin, once they were back, he would give her all the cock she could stand.

And yes, technically, she did agree to that arrangement. But she did so assuming that the older man was as eager for her as she was for him after their too-brief alfresco make-out—that she’d get off him and then he’d get off that bench and get them back to the cabin and into the bed, where they could both get off, as fast as his legs and Jeep could go. 

So when Travis, a few miles into their return trip, silently and unilaterally chose to pull into a small shopping center, Laura, now uncomfortably aroused, felt justified in fixing him with a mildly betrayed stare.

“What?” Travis asked flatly, after he’d shut the ignition off and met her accusing eyes.

“Why the fuck are we here?” she asked. 

“You wanna eat tonight?” he asked, eyebrows up.

“Uh, yeah. But, like—later,” she said pointedly.

“All we got’s leftover bagged salad,” Travis said, “not even Domino’s delivers out here, and given how you seem to get, young lady, I may not be physically capable of going back out later—so.” He bent his head insistently toward the grocery store that anchored the shabby mercantile strip.

Laura felt her stare curdle into a scowl. She absolutely could not believe this man was allowing food to come before she did twice in as many days.

He closed his eyes briefly, opened them, then turned in the driver’s seat to face her more directly, his own expression softening a little. “C’mon. Maybe you don’t wanna be patient, but you can be. Just a few minutes. Just to grab enough for tonight and tomorrow. Then we’re back on the road.”

Her mouth twisted. Enough food for tonight and tomorrow did mean that they wouldn’t need to leave the cabin again unless they wanted to, which was an appealing idea. And the longer she sat there fuming at him, the longer it would be until she got her way.

So Laura grudgingly followed Travis across the parking lot and into the grocery store, glaring daggers into the back of his stupid, handsome head. In the entryway past the automatic doors, he grabbed a red plastic shopping basket by its black plastic handles and turned back, waiting for her to catch up to him.

“Okay,” he asked, “what’re you craving?”

Laura stopped in her tracks and intensified her glare. It was still possible for her to kill him, she supposed.

Momentary confusion bunched Travis’s features, but then realization bunched them differently, the tips of his ears pinkened, and he looked down at the concrete floor, nodding. 

“Yep,” he said, “walked into that one.” 

He sighed, took a few steps toward her, and put a hand on her upper arm, giving it a warm, meaningful squeeze. “I swear I’m right there with you, okay?” he murmured, his lovely, weary eyes asking for her cooperation in a way she found annoyingly effective. “Patience, Laura. We’ll be quick.”

She scoffed at him. Right there with her, hell. If he were right there with her, he’d have let her cowgirl him to pieces on a bench in the sunshine thirty minutes ago.

To his credit, the older man did move fast, going to specific places in the store to grab things rather than dragging her up and down each and every aisle while he muttered to himself about what to make. Still, when he tried once again to get her input on meals, she allowed her inner brat to answer: “Nothing you’re planning to microwave.” 

Travis blinked reprovingly, pursed his lips, and resumed moving around the store, and Laura resumed trailing behind him like a sullen teen.

After a few more minutes and several more additions to the basket, Travis announced that he was done, then looked at her and, as though he already knew the answer, asked, “Sure you don’t want anything?”

Laura almost said no automatically, but that would be going easy on him. Instead, she scanned the aisles in their immediate vicinity until her eyes caught on a particularly colorful selection of products. She felt an impish smile tug at her lips, turned her head to unfurl that smile at Travis, then sauntered away down the personal-care aisle. She plucked a large bottle of water-based Astroglide off a shelf, then strode back, displaying it in her hands like it was an award she’d won before depositing it in the basket Travis held, right on top of everything else he intended to purchase.

The man looked down at the bottle, then back up at Laura, eyebrows heading for his hairline. 

“Just in case!” she said, grinning with shameless blue-eyed innocence. He’d made her wait for sex; she was gonna make him buy the biggest bottle of lube his local grocery store carried. It seemed perfectly fair to her.

“In case what?” he hissed, eyes darting to be sure no other people were within earshot. “You sure as hell don’t seem to need that stuff.”

And, no, she didn’t need it—not for the kinds of sex they’d had so far, anyway. But—

“In case,” Laura replied, doing him the kindness of leaning closer and lowering her voice as she spoke, “I decide to peg you.” She peered down the length of his body and into the shopping basket. “You didn’t get a zucchini or a cucumber, did you?”

When she flicked her eyes up to meet his again, she saw with evil glee that it was Travis’s turn to glare at her. 

“All you’re doin’, missy,” he said, low and dark, sending a liquid thrill through her, “is showing me you’re not fit to be taken out in public.”

“Oh, you’re right,” she murmured, smiling dreamily up at him and stepping close enough that her breasts brushed his arm. “I need something with a base if I’m gonna fuck your ass. Maybe I’ll get a strap-on and bring it next time I visit.”

Far, far more than just his ears flushed, then. As all his visible skin reddened, the older man swallowed hard, his tongue emerged to wet his lips, and Laura could tell by the flare of heat in his widened eyes that if she were to glance down again in just a few moments, she might find something else getting hard too. 

She tilted her head, considering Travis with fresh erotic curiosity. She’d made the suggestion for effect—mostly—but if he would actually be into that…

“We’re done here,” he said, lurching away from her at entirely too fast a pace to appear unbothered.

“Hey! This lane’s open!” she called after him, too loud and too cheery, pointing to the spot where a disinterested-looking cashier stood behind a conveyor belt and a register. Hearing her voice, the cashier dragged his eyes away from the phone he clearly held just out of sight under his station and regarded her listlessly.

“So’s this thing!” Travis roared back, emphatically not turning around, awkwardly holding the basket in front of him with both hands as he approached a standalone self-checkout kiosk.

“So hey, do you seriously like that idea?” Laura asked, having practiced otherworldly restraint in waiting until they were back in the parking lot, arms full of brown paper bags, to start talking again. “’Cause I’ve never gotten to do that, and if you want to, I’d really—”

“Laura,” the dark-haired man cut her off, still walking too quickly and carrying his grocery bags down by his hips—and the way he said her name, tense and tremulous, like he was barely able to hold himself back—

“You do, don’t you?!” Laura enthused. “Oh my god, that is—” She shook her head and laughed, surprised and unbelievably excited by this new possibility. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Travis! Or wanted to have it in you,” she added cheekily, eyeing the older man’s ass appreciatively as he opened the Jeep’s trunk and bent to shove the bags he carried inside. “Okay, so we’re for sure doing some online shopping later. You need to think about size—” 

“Get. In. The vehicle,” Travis ordered, the cop in him edging into his tone, as he turned to take the bags she held.

She did as she was told, but once they were back en route to the cabin, Laura wasn’t about to let Travis off the hook. And if he didn’t want to talk about pegging, well…it just so happened that she’d had yet another wicked idea, one that didn’t take long to grow into an urge she didn’t want to resist once she’d noticed that theirs had been the only vehicle on the two-lane rural road for some minutes. 

Undoing her seatbelt and easing herself to her knees in the passenger-side footwell, she reached once again for the fly of Travis’s jeans—where, just as she’d suspected, she could feel that he had the beginnings of a hard-on. 

“Hey. Hey, what’re you doing?” Travis asked with a rising note of worry.

Laura watched the older man’s face shift from concern to ear-blushing shock as she undid the button and slid down the zip.

“Giving you road head,” she replied lightly, leaning closer to his lap, her lips parted suggestively. “Duh.”

Alarm flared in Travis’s sun-russeted brown eyes. “No. No, Laura—Laura!”

She didn’t get to actually do it—he had said no, after all—but for several miles, she did get to enjoy a Travis who was babblingly, adorably stern about breaking the law; about being caught breaking the law; about Laura’s grinning refusal to take her fucking hands off his thighs, get the fuck back in the passenger seat, and put her fucking seatbelt back on; about having his pants open as he was driving; about what would happen if some imaginary other drivers on the empty road they traveled had been able to look in and catch sight of her young blond head bent and bobbing on him as he struggled to keep the SUV in its lane. 

It wasn’t as satisfying as getting to blow him while he drove, but it was still pretty fucking fun to watch him squirm. 

When they were finally parked in front of the cabin again, Travis, his jeans still undone, the outline of his fully erect cock thickly molded up against the straining material of his underwear, and his brow furrowed thunderously in a way that almost made Laura feel nostalgic, shut off the ignition, stormed out of his side of the Jeep and around the vehicle, wrenched open the passenger-side door, and picked Laura up before her shoes could touch the gravel. 

“C’mere, you unruly—goddamn—troublemaking little—”

Travis heaved her giggling, shrieking body over his shoulder and carried her up to the house, where he fumbled madly with the key in the lock—

“—still don’t know how to fucking just—fucking listen to me—”

—before managing to get the door open. After getting them both inside and kicking the door shut behind them, he carried Laura into the living area and unceremoniously deposited her on the big plush rug in front of the fireplace.

“One of these days,” Travis growled, glowering down at her, arousal warring with frustration for control of his face, “I’m either gonna teach your perfect little ass some patience or I swear to Christ I’ll die trying.”

Laura smirked up at him, kicked her shoes off, and wriggled out of her pants and panties as fast as she could, so slick and aching for Travis that she could barely stand it any longer. 

“Die trying, you sweet son of a bitch,” she said, and opened her legs wide.

She watched Travis’s irises blow to black before he dropped to his knees and bent to bury his entire face in her vulva.

*     *     *

All too soon, she was stuffed full of his cock, sweetly smothered under the weight of his body on hers, her breathy laughter and moans caught up in a barrage of kisses from that wide, generous mouth and that agile tongue. Travis drove into her in a manner Laura guessed he meant to be punishing—wanted to be punishing, probably. She could feel that she might end up with some rugburn on her back from the way his thrusts were rocking her whole body beneath him. But she could also feel how it was really need that was driving him—how he was desperate to feel her, taste her, claim her, to get somehow even deeper inside her than he already was, already had been. 

Laura couldn’t blame him. She needed Travis too—needed to feel the fight in him, to feel him losing the fight to her in spite of himself, so she could give in to him too. She needed the way his desire stoked hers, the way he made her melt and clutch around him, needed the heat in his skin and his eyes, needed the sound of her name in his mouth—

—and, yes—yes, there it was: “Laura.” 

Her name rode his ragged breath as her second orgasm caused her to grip Travis’s cock so hard that she wrung his load out of him before he seemed ready to let it go. She welcomed his urgent final movements and the helpless flood of his liquid heat into her with a victorious, satisfied sigh.

*     *     *

Some minutes later, Travis, still cursing softly and breathing hard, got unsteadily up off of her, got his pants and boots back on, and went out to retrieve the abandoned groceries. Laura was blurrily grateful, despite her earlier annoyance at the stop, that one of them had mustered the wherewithal to have remembered the food that would be slowly coming to room temperature out there in the back of the Jeep. For her part, she couldn’t string two thoughts together that weren’t about how goddamn marvelous she felt…and the man who had made her feel that way. The phrase rode hard and put away wet kept sparking through her brain, and her body was pleasantly raw and humming everywhere Travis had licked and bitten and groped and stroked and pounded—

Ohh, she was definitely going to have to rile Travis up like that again sometime. She really liked what he became when he was seemingly trying to fuck all the mischief out of her. He’d never succeed, of course, but she’d gladly let him keep making all the attempts he wanted, as long as he kept making her feel as goddamn good as he did.

Laura managed to get herself up and all the way to the bathroom despite her trembling legs. She cleaned herself up the exact amount hygiene demanded, and back in the bedroom, rather than digging her own clothes out of her bag, she picked up Travis’s rust-colored twill button-down—the one she was already planning to take with her whenever she left, whether the old man liked it or not. She pulled her tugged and rumpled camisole off over her head and put on the twill—and nothing else. 

The button-down’s shirttails were long enough that she was mostly decent. But when Travis came back in with the final two grocery bags to find her standing in the spot where he’d just nailed her to the floor, her inner thighs—still gleaming with a combination of their fluids—peeking out from beneath the hem of his shirt, Laura was very pleased at his goggle-eyed, almost reverent assertion that she might be the single filthiest woman he’d ever imagined, let alone known.

“Aren’t we taking a bath later?” Laura asked, sauntering over to relieve Travis of the bags and then wiggling her ass for him as she walked away, heading for the kitchen area. “I’ll let you get me nice and clean in there.”

And then, she already knew for certain, she would dirty them both up again.

*     *     *

After they watched the last of the sunlight fade behind the mountains through one of the huge windows—Travis having declared that despite the cabin’s privacy, no way in hell was he letting Laura out on the porch dressed like she was—they made a simple dinner: garlicky chicken thighs in a skillet, biscuits from a tube, and a salad made from the previous night’s unused bagged greens plus a lemon vinaigrette. They split a bottle of white wine as they cooked and ate—no glasses, just passing the bottle back and forth and taking swigs, like they were carefree old friends and not one tired-eyed middle-aged man and one overthinking young woman who were still basically strangers, despite all the intimate knowledge they were gaining about each other.

When dinner was done, Travis kissed Laura on the forehead, then left the kitchen to start filling the bathtub. Laura took care of the dishes, putting everything she could into the dishwasher before scrubbing and rinsing the skillet and salad bowl and setting them in the drying rack next to the sink. Then she drank the last of the wine from the bottle and started heading in Travis’s direction.

She saw a warm glow emanating from the bathroom as soon as she entered the bedroom. It didn’t look quite like the lighting from that morning, when Travis had taken her in the shower—and ohh, the memory of that experience set her blood alight again so quickly. She slowed her steps, feeling the fibers of the carpet under her feet and recalling the weight and warmth of Travis’s hands on her, his command of her—so much sexier because she’d chosen it, chosen him. 

Him, him, him. Mmm, she was in so, so much trouble because of him. He had been a problem for her, in one form or another, since the night they’d met. Granted, he was a much nicer problem now than he’d ever been before, but still—

Laura’s thoughts were arrested by the sight that greeted her when she stepped into the the bathroom. The glow she’d seen was candlelight. Travis had evidently found several pillar candles of various sizes somewhere in the cabin and had placed them here and there around the room. Most were already lit, but she caught his eyes as he bent over a trio of wicks, touching the tip of a flaming match to each of them in turn.

“Wow. Who knew you were such a romantic,” Laura commented.

She’d said the words dryly, because though she could feel the way her heart picked up speed at the sight of him preparing this space for them, she still wasn’t completely comfortable talking to Travis without some kind of buffer—anger, irony, teasing, even lust—between them. She needed something to protect her from the unanticipated, raw reality of her growing feelings for him.

“Yeah, well.” The older man straightened up, shook out the match, and looked at Laura, dark eyes reflecting the candle glow. 

And it was probably just the wine, she knew, but she could both see and feel that new, naked tenderness for her radiating out from him. The sheer force of it briefly took her breath away.

“That’s all your fault,” Travis stated plainly. 

And suddenly, once again, Laura couldn’t bear any kind of space separating her from him. 

They undressed each other, slow and savoring, kissing as they went, and separated only long enough to get themselves into the tub. Once they were submerged to their chests in water of a temperature that instantly had sweat beading on any candlelit skin that was still exposed to the air, the wine quickly went to both their heads, and their kisses became lazy, messy—thin strands of saliva connecting their tongues, their open lips. Their hands, roaming over each other’s bodies, were slowed by passing through water, lending their movements an almost dreamlike quality. 

Laura had tried having sex in a bath—well, okay, it had been a hot tub at an Airbnb in the Blue Ridge mountains; not her proudest moment—a couple of years before. Now, in the bath with Travis, she still had enough sense, despite the chenin blanc haze and her renewed horniness, to remember that the hot-tub sex hadn’t worked—that the water had taken away her wetness rather than augmenting it, making penetration attempts uncomfortable. So Laura reluctantly decided that she could wait a little while for more sex, decided to just enjoy being physically intimate with Travis in a way that didn’t involve any part of him inside of her. 

With a deep sigh, she finally settled her body between his thighs, her back against his chest. She allowed herself to rest there, with the dark-haired man’s arms floating around her in a loose embrace, his lips brushing her jaw, the tip of his broad tongue laving a single drop of sweat from her earlobe. 

They said nothing for a long time, just listened to the occasional sounds of water and their own breathing, and Laura felt overcome by the realization of how completely comfortable she was, how uncomplicatedly happy she felt to be quiet and naked and tipsy and a little bit sleepy and wet in two different ways with this man she’d once utterly despised.

“I still can’t believe you’re here with me,” Travis murmured against her skin, breaking the easy silence between them.

“That makes two of us,” Laura sighed again, tilting her head to allow the older man’s mouth more access to her throat. “You know, if I found a time machine and went back to the jail to tell that version of me what we’re doing now…I seriously think I’d call myself a fucking liar.”

Travis hummed. “If you find a time machine, you should go back and tell me what we’re doing.”

“Oh yeah?”

He was quiet for a long moment, then softly said, “…yeah.”

Laura sat up and turned her head and shoulders a bit, just enough that she could see the older man’s face. “You think you’d believe me?”

Travis’s mouth pulled long and he cast his eyes down, sweat from his dark lashes running down his face like tears.

“Hell, I dunno,” he said at last. “But…well. Given how bad that pathetic old man had it for you…” He met Laura’s eyes again, perhaps somewhat ruefully, and raised his eyebrows. “I think it’d make his day just to believe he had a chance.”

Laura flipped herself over, making a seismic splash as she did, sending some water spilling over the tub’s smooth sides. 

Travis started sputtering. “Jesus, girl, what—”

“Okay, fucker,” she growled playfully, now kneeling, bent forward so she was nose to nose with the older man. “One of these nights before I leave, you are gonna tell me exactly when you started wanting me, and why.”

Travis leaned his head back far enough to get space to wipe his mouth with one hand—which didn’t do much, since that hand was also wet with bathwater—and gave her a dubious look. “I am, am I?”

“Yeah! You are!” Laura insisted. “And not just that! I wanna hear every single nasty, depraved, guilt-ridden-pervert thought you ever had about me.” 

“No,” Travis said flatly. He dropped his gaze and grinned dismissively, shaking his head. “No, you really don’t.”

“Oh, but I really do.” Laura gripped the edges of the bathtub on either side of Travis’s head and rose up so that she was leaning over him, looking down at him, bathwater running off her hair and breasts, falling onto the dark-haired man. “And you wanna tell me.”

Travis, seemingly unable to resist looking at her again, leaned his head back against the porcelain rim and did so. 

“Do I, now?” he asked. 

He still sounded dubious, but he was clearly more than a little turned on by her insistence, her position above him. He opened his wide mouth and extended his tongue to catch some water droplets as they fell from one of her nipples—

—and ohh, the look in his eyes, the wrecked, wanting reverence in his expression. If Laura had been able to think of any way—any way that wasn’t likely to end in grievous injury to one or both of them—to climb up and sit on his face in that moment, she’d have given him a whole lot more to catch on that lovely tongue.

“Of course you do,” Laura said, her voice a low, knowing purr. “Because you’re just as filthy as I am, Travis. And it’s gonna make you unbearably hard to tell me everything you wanted to do to me when you had me in that jail.”

She swayed herself a little lower, a little closer to the older man’s face. “So, yeah,” she continued, “you’re gonna tell me all your disgusting fantasies about me, and I’m gonna ride your cock the whole time you do it. And it’s gonna rock your fucking world so hard you’ll feel it all the way back in June.”

Long moments passed, and Travis just stared up at her, seemingly stunned, his lips loose and wet.

“Thoughts?” Laura eventually asked, arching one eyebrow.

The older man looked down, blinking rapidly, and blew out an exhale. “Just, uh…wondering…” He gazed at her again, eyes black and shining in the dim light. “What the hell I ever did to deserve you.”

Laura pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “I could take that two ways, you know. Good and bad.” 

Travis reached a hand up out of the water and cupped it around the back of Laura’s head, guiding her down into a searing kiss that set her skin tingling.

“It’s good, Laura,” he murmured at some point, separating his mouth from hers only far enough, long enough to get the words out. “It is so fucking good.”

*     *     *

That kiss set a fire that quickly got them both up out of the bath, hastily dried off, and into the bed together. But despite their mutual excitement, they were also mutually worn out from the day’s various exertions and the soporific effects of very hot bathwater and a little too much wine. So rather than engage in more strenuous positions, they lay down with Laura’s back to Travis—the way he’d held her as they went to sleep the night before. 

Laura bent her right leg, putting her foot down on the bed, making ample room for Travis. She felt the press of his lean, bathwater-warm body right behind hers, the shift of his hips as he moved into place—and then she felt the almost sloppy slap of his thick shaft against her wide-open vulva, making her breath hitch and her nerves spark.

“You want me, Laura?” Travis muttered, his lips against her throat and his hand clutching her bent leg as though he might try to use it to spread her even wider for him.

“Fuck, Travis…you know I do,” Laura sighed, hazy and honeyed and so very hungry to be filled up with him once more.

Travis moved the hand on her leg, reaching between them to grip his cock and gently rub the head back and forth against her swollen clit. “You want me to tell you about the first time I knew I wanted to make you mine?”

Laura closed her eyes and arched, trying to open herself even further to him, her body warm and her pussy suddenly even warmer. “Yes…yes…god, Travis, please…”

“Okay,” Travis said. “You first.”

Her eyes flew open. “Wh…what?” 

“This here’s a two-lane road we’re traveling, young lady,” Travis said, his voice downright devilish.

Laura felt the long, sweet drag of his shaft down her already-so-slick vulva, down to her entrance, where his cockhead pressed a firm, rounded kiss against her—but did not enter her even slightly. 

“And you’ve never fessed up,” he went on, “to when you started wanting me.”

Laura turned her face to glare over her shoulder at the older man. “Yes I did!” she asserted, pushing her body back more insistently—but Travis only shifted his hips away, continuing to deny her.

“Patience, Miss Kearney,” Travis uttered intently, right behind her ear. “I told you I’m gonna teach it to you.”

“Fuck you,” Laura stated decisively, right arm hinging back to clutch Travis’s thigh high up, just under his ass, trying to pull him closer again. She had gotten into this bed for a lovely fucking, and she would be goddamned if she didn’t get one, regardless of whatever little game the dark-haired man thought he was playing.

“Sure, maybe,” Travis said, teeth flashing in a grin that became a slowly intensifying bite into the curve of her shoulder. “Depends on how good this story is.”

Laura, no longer sleepy, growled and hooked her right leg over Travis’s, then used that leverage to haul him back against her so that she could feel his cock—could see it, plump and already glistening with a trace of her wetness—nestling between her folds, almost as though it could be her own flesh.

“It was…when you had me and Max in the cells,” she said, hoping that would suffice. “I told you that.”

“Yeah…but I had you for two long months, didn’t I, Laura,” Travis drawled, then spanked her clit with the head of his cock again with vicious precision, eliciting a pleasured gasp from her. “So tell me when it started for you. I’m assuming it wasn’t the night we met.”

“N-no!” Laura managed. “God, no. You were so…creepy.” She shivered, recalling how anxious he’d made her, how her skin had prickled whenever she’d met his hooded eyes, black as a starless sky on that summer night. 

Whenever she’d met those eyes…eyes that had seemed…oddly fixed on her.

“Wait,” she said, her skin prickling again. “You…you didn’t want me that night. Did you?”

The dark-haired man made an interested little humming sound, like he was considering the idea and not finding it unpleasant.

“Did you?!” Laura squeaked, twisting her torso so she could see his face better. “Jesus, were you seriously perving on me while I was stuck out in the middle of nowhere?! When you knew a monster was on the loose in the woods?! And Max was right there?!”

Travis chuckled warmly and hugged her to him with his palm against her sternum. “No, I wasn’t,” he said, kissing her neck. “I was definitely attracted to you that night, but the actual perving started later, I promise. Although…” The older man ran his warm right hand down between her breasts and over the soft contours of her abdomen until his fingers came to rest on her labia, tantalizingly close to her clit. “I won’t deny that I eventually did fantasize about having you bent over the hood of that car…while Max watched.”

A dirty little thrill sped along Laura’s nerves as she imagined meeting Max’s wide green gaze through the windshield of his mom’s old car, about Max looking on helplessly as Travis first used her flannel shirt to bind her wrists, then took a hunting knife to her shorts and panties, slicing them roughly up the back before tearing them away so that he could press her torso down against the hood, spread her legs as wide as she could stand, and take her from behind with ease, without any constraint from her clothing.

“You nasty man,” Laura moaned out, trying to shift to increase her contact with either Travis’s fingers or his cock—preferably both. “Why the hell would you want Max to watch us fuck?”

She thought she knew why, but the part of her that was also nasty really wanted to hear Travis tell her all about it. Preferably while he gave it to her slow…deep…better than poor Max ever had—

“Ohh, uh-uh,” the older man said, sounding irritatingly easygoing in comparison to the heightening urgency that roiled within Laura. “I’m not lettin’ you change the subject. It’s your turn, young lady.” His fingers, still poised at the split of her labia, pressed against her in such a way that the message was clear: Travis wouldn’t move, wouldn’t touch her clit until she started talking—until she started telling him what he wanted to hear.

She knew she was hesitating, and she knew why, even though she certainly had her requisite buffer of lust right now. Here she was, naked and wriggling in the arms of the man who’d already been inside her, come inside her, four times in the past thirty or so hours. And it wasn’t like Travis was unaware that she’d wanted him for a long time. But the specific truth about the length of time still felt lodged within her—and why was that? Because of pride? Shame?

She could just…make something up. He’d never know. And even if he suspected she wasn’t being honest, it wasn’t like he’d be able to prove it. 

But—if she wanted him to be honest with her—

“I—I’m sure you can guess,” she managed weakly. 

“But I don’t wanna guess,” he retorted, his voice gruff and hot. “What I wanna do is watch your pretty mouth form the words and feel your pretty cunt soak itself for me while you tell me all about the first time you knew you wanted me to fuck you.”

“Maybe I wanted to fuck you,” Laura said. “You wanna talk about getting a strap-on now?”

Travis chuckled. “Jesus Christ, you’re stubborn. Can’t you just play along this one time?”

“Play along with what?”

“I ask,” Travis intoned. “You answer. You remember how that works, don’t you?” 

Laura groaned, equally annoyed and aroused. Was this the way she’d made him feel earlier in the day, turning him on and rubbing herself all over his boundaries, testing what she could get away with, what she could make him give in to? Was this his idea of evening the score, of reminding her—and maybe himself too—that she wasn’t the only one capable of driving the other sexually insane?

She knew she could end this torment—get what she wanted—if she just told him.

Why couldn’t she just say it?

Travis sighed lightly. “Okay! Maybe—” He placed a quick kiss on her cheek and withdrew his hand from her vulva, patting her on the hip. “Maybe you’re not ready to talk about it, huh?” He sat up. “That’s all right. We can do this later.”

“What?” Laura asked, turning her torso to watch wide-eyed as Travis shifted his legs off the side of the bed, putting his back to her. “Hey, no—we’re not done!”

Travis looked over his shoulder at her, eyebrows lifted in exaggerated innocence. “Oh, we’re not?”

“Oh, fuck you, Travis, come on!” Laura gestured at the older man’s cock in exasperation. From where she lay, she could still see the head and some of the shaft extending from his lap, and he was absolutely as erect as she’d ever seen him, swollen flesh shivering slightly at an interval that she knew had to be the backbeat of his heart. “You’re so hard it has to be hurting you!”

Travis’s lips pulled into a tight line, but it was quirked at the edges with something like bitter amusement. “Yeah, but see, I got patience,” he said, his voice brittle. “You got any idea how many times I felt like I could die from wanting you and had to go on living anyway? I oughta be some kinda monk.”

Laura could feel that her mouth was hanging open. No, she’d never considered that the reason he seemed so capable of denying her was because he’d had to deny himself for so long—and not just when it came to his desire for her, but in so many aspects of his life. 

But…was he seriously going to just…stop? Just leave her there in the state he’d put her in?

No way. She was certain he was just goading her, making her work to get him since she hadn’t given him the answer he wanted. But still, it burned to know that he was capable of pulling away from her when she was laying there ready for him, ready to beg for him…

She shook her head and rolled over, then got up on her knees next to where he sat. “Now who’s stubborn, asshole?” she asked, louder than she meant to. She was pissed off, but knew it was just because she was horny as hell and Travis wasn’t giving her what she wanted—which pissed her off more, because it made her feel petulant…and needy. And she was okay with being needy for Travis, but only as long as he was at least equally as needy for her.

She decided to try the soft route to hopefully lure him back, leaning her body longingly toward him and cradling his balls in the palm of her hand. “Come on,” she invited, running her thumbnail lightly up the seam of his sack. “You don’t wanna stop. I’m here. I’m yours, remember?” 

There was a trace of a whine in her voice, and she hated it but couldn’t help it. She couldn’t believe how easily Travis had gotten the upper hand tonight after her total victory earlier in the day.

Travis cocked his head at her, and then his eyes just about sauntered down her body, bathing Laura in heat. The line of his mouth softened and the broad tip of his tongue emerged, wetting his lips and making Laura very badly want to kiss him. 

“Mine,” he mused, reaching between her slightly spread thighs with his right hand. She felt him cup her pussy possessively and then slowly, slowly draw two fingers through her slit from back to front.

Laura loosed an involuntary shuddering moan at his touch. God, she could feel her arousal cling to his fingers as they passed, and when his hand pulled away, she could see it too, slippery and shining and—and so much. It totally covered both fingers and had sheened parts of the rest of his hand as well—everywhere that had come into even brief contact with her most intimate flesh. 

Holy shit. Of course she’d known how hot she was for him, but seeing the evidence on his skin like that, so undeniable—

“Fuck,” Travis breathed, looking in naked awe at his hand. He ran the pad of his thumb over his fingers, and when he moved it away, viscous strands bridged his digits. 

Laura, heart pounding, watched Travis’s expression, trying to still the trembling in her limbs. Surely he wouldn’t be able to hold back now—not when he could feel exactly how wet he’d made her. Surely, in the next few seconds, he’d take her in his arms, take her down, take her—

—but he didn’t. Instead, in the next few seconds, he licked his lips again—and then he grinned, his eyes meeting hers, gleaming with a roguish wickedness. 

He held Laura’s gaze as he leaned back on the bed, propping himself on his left elbow. That position gave her an unobstructed view of him as he used his right hand to slather her glistening arousal all around the head of his cock, then slid his fingers down and wrapped his fist around the base.

Laura’s brain blanked out in astonished lust as she watched Travis give himself a few slow strokes, using her wetness to lubricate his movements. She watched his eyes fall closed and his head fall back, and the way his Adam’s apple protruded from his throat was almost as lewd a sight as the way his cock stood up from his groin, the way it strained as his hand squeezed it.

“Goddamn, you feel so good on me,” he groaned. “How do you get so fucking wet, Laura?”

“Wh—what are you doing?” Laura managed, pulling her hand back when she realized she was still holding his balls, which was clearly only helping him not pay attention to her.

“Fucking…basking in what’s mine,” Travis replied thickly.

He continued to grip and pull at his big, beautiful cock, which was now coated in her, yes—but not the way she needed it to be. As hot as it was to watch him touch himself—and it was really, really motherfucking hot—the thought that he was just going to get himself off while she was right there beside him, drenched and throbbing and horribly empty—

“Travis!” The whine wasn’t just a trace in her voice any longer—it was a plea. Desperate for the dark-haired man, Laura quickly straddled his body, and only his fist rising to encase his cockhead at the exact moment she sat back stopped her from taking him inside her.

Travis raised his head and looked at her again, his gaze burning. “Laura,” he said, and the way he said it might have been conversational had his voice not been breathy with his own arousal—and maybe his own impatience with her, which he was now too raw himself to conceal. 

“You’re mine too, Travis,” Laura gritted out, pressing her forehead to his, part insistence and part entreaty.

“Don’t I fucking know it,” Travis growled, glaring at her with anguished exasperation. 

Laura felt his hand move just enough that the very tip of him pushed against her entrance. She mewled at the sensation of it, craving more so badly she wanted to scream.

“This cock is yours just like the rest of me,” he said, his other hand moving to grasp the back of her head. “And you can get it the very second you fucking tell me—”

Laura was suddenly in a controlled roll, Travis having grabbed her ass and lifted her with hand and hips, keeping her head steady as he tumbled her onto her back and came to rest on his knees between her legs, his mouthwateringly hard erection bobbing just inches from where she needed him.

“Tell me, Laura,” Travis commanded her. “When’s the first time I made you this. Fucking. Wet.”

“The first day!” Laura cried, surrendering.

She looked at the ceiling as she said it because she couldn’t look at Travis’s face. But she could still feel him, suddenly rigid and motionless over her, against her.

“You,” Travis rasped out, after what felt like an eternity of silence. “You’re…ah, Jesus, you gotta be kidding me.” 

He sounded…shocked? Deflated? Maybe even…disappointed?

“Ugh!!” Laura put both hands over her face, feeling like she wanted to plummet through the mattress, the floor, the crust of the earth itself. “I mean, it wasn’t—! I—I didn’t actually want you until—! Fuck—okay, Travis, just—just completely forget that I said that, okay? Please?”

“Forget it?!” she heard Travis say, a strained, incredulous laugh in his voice.

“Yes!” Laura moaned. “Ohh, god.” She dug the heels of her hands into her closed eyes.

“Laura.”

Embarrassed and miserable, Laura tried to close her legs and turn onto her side, but she felt Travis’s hands lightly grip her forearms, exerting just enough gentle pressure to keep her right where she was.

“Laura,” she heard him say again, voice striking the same balance of gentle and firm as his touch. “Sweetheart.”

And then it was her turn to go still—everywhere but internally, where she was suddenly in overdrive. 

He’d called her sweetheart. 

And ohh. She really liked the sound of that.

Trouble. So, sosososo much trouble. Because of him.

“Laura. Hey. Honey, look at me.”

With equal parts trepidation and effort, she slowly removed her hands from her face and opened one eye to peek at Travis.

And there was that unbelievable tenderness again, that still-strange softness in his expression that made her heart feel like champagne was pumping through it, golden and effervescent.

“You…turned me on that first day too,” he said, his voice creaking a little.

Laura opened her other eye and stared at him. “What?”

Travis nodded once, his lips tight. “I…fucking hated myself for it, because I knew you were scared and you didn’t wanna be there…and…a-and you had me pretty fucking freaked out too, y’know. God, it was all so wrong. I didn’t wanna want you, Laura. But I…” He made a quick, rueful shrug. “I couldn’t help it. I swear, I tried. Hard.” Another shrug. “Didn’t work.”

Laura couldn’t suppress a smile. “You sick fuck,” she said, like the words were a fond endearment. “You said you didn’t start perving on me until later.”

The bedroom was dimly lit enough that she couldn’t see the exact tone of his skin, but she was certain from the look on his face that Travis was blushing.

“I wasn’t. Perving on you,” he insisted, clearly flustered. “I tried to stop it. But I’m just a guy and you’re—fucking beautiful, and—” He scowled a little. “Anyway, the first day was later than the first night. So.”

Laura huffed out a helpless little laugh. “Fair! I guess!” she said, finding herself once again stunned by the relentless strangeness of her circumstances. Here she was, laying naked and still mostly aroused before her former captor—who was also naked and, though his erection had flagged, apparently still at least a little aroused—feeling not only indifferent about but bizarrely charmed by the idea that at some point that first day, when she was trapped in a cell, confused and terrified and angry as hell, something about her had turned Travis on.

Just like something about him had turned her on.

She exhaled, releasing air in one long stream until it ran out and her emptied lungs ached. She had traversed long, long, long miles of emotional landscape when it came to this fucking man. And apparently she still had miles to go.

Travis blinked a few times, then raised his eyebrows at her. “Well?”

She blinked back at him. “Well, what?” she asked.

He expelled a long-suffering sigh, rolled his eyes extravagantly, and made a gesture of massive irritation at her with both of his hands. “It is your fucking turn, woman! It’s been your turn all goddamn night!”

Laura folded her arms under her breasts and leveled Travis with a look like she wanted to speak to his manager. “Excuse me, I believe somebody told me I could get his cock the second I admitted when I first wanted him!”

Travis stared and shook his head at her, his jaw working in frustration. “Well,” he said at last, voice clipped. With one open hand, he indicated his mostly softened erection. “Somebody else might have to be a little more descriptive with her admission and get me going again.”

Laura continued to glower at the older man, and the two of them remained suspended in shared stubborn silence for a long moment—

—and then Laura started to laugh softly.

Travis’s brow didn’t unfurrow, but its angle changed to one that indicated a measure of questioning rather than pure annoyance. “What?” he asked.

Laura sat up and put her arms around Travis’s neck. “I was just thinking,” she said, smiling sweetly at him, “how fucking furious I am that you’re making me wait for what I want again. But then I pictured you sitting cross-legged in flowing robes, all wise and peaceful and enlightened, saying ‘Patience, young lady’…”

Travis’s brow did lift, then, and Laura imagined he might be feeling a moment of satisfaction at having finally gotten through to her.

Her smile widened to an evil grin. “But you sounded just like Yoda when you said it.”

Travis snorted.

“The ears are almost right too,” Laura teased lightly, flicking one of his earlobes with the tip of an index finger.

“Cute,” Travis said flatly. “You really know how to rev a man’s engine.”

She smirked. “I could have you hard again in under a minute, and you know it.”

He smirked back. “Maybe. But you’d have to quit yappin’ and put that mouth to better use.”

She feigned surprise. “Oh! But I thought you wanted me to tell you all about the first time I wanted you!”

Travis leaned forward slowly, which lowered Laura, who was still hanging onto him, back down to the bed. But once she was supported by the mattress once more, he kept lowering his own body, his forearms moving to bracket her head, until his nose was brushing hers.

“So tell me already,” he murmured, and ghosted a kiss over her lips that made her want to melt under him. “And it better—” Another kiss, this time on her neck, in the exact place she loved it the most. “—be good—” A sharp little nip of his teeth at her collarbone. “—after all this goddamn. Motherfucking. Buildup.”

“Okay,” Laura sighed, closing her eyes and summoning the will to be vulnerable. “But the second you’re hard again, Travis—oh, fuck—”

Travis had used his teeth again, this time on one of her nipples, sending a perfect pain-pleasure jolt straight to her clit…and simultaneously, wordlessly insisting that she get the fuck on with it.

So. Here went something.

“It was…so…weird,” she began, feeling as awkward as she knew she sounded. It was an awkward memory to even recall, much less to try to make sexy. The situation at the time, after all, had been the farthest possible thing from sexy. 

“That first day,” she went on, “you weren’t being creepy anymore, which was…good, I guess? But you’d replaced the creep vibes with being a total prick to me in that…interview…thing.”

“Mm-hmm,” Travis hummed, her nipple in his mouth now, being toyed with by that wonderful tongue of his…

“And…god, yes, I was still a little bit scared of you, but mostly I was mad as hell and trying to figure out what was happening…and trying to figure you out, and the…all the adrenaline…oh, Travis, please—”

He was stroking his thick fingers through her folds once more, massaging her lightly as he moved from almost caressing her clit to almost, almost pushing past her entrance. And yes, yes, she wanted his cock more than anything, but she’d been so hot for him for so long tonight that she felt like she might come from as little as the first inch of just one of his fingers penetrating her if he gave it to her right…

“You—you made me so fucking angry, and I just wanted to—do something to you,” she went on, trying not to outright squirm just to get more of his touch, more friction from his body on hers. “It killed me that I couldn’t chase you down every time you walked away from me. I wanted to get to you. Hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anybody before, but you…you! God, even if you had let us go that morning, I think I’d’ve tried to hurt you, just for—scaring us, and for—for Max, but…oh, all I could do from behind those bars was say things to you.”

Laura heard a syrupy chuckle by her ear, then felt Travis’s warm tongue gliding along the ridge of it. “I remember. My first taste of that colorful, inventive little mouth.”

She was practically panting with want now, but she forced herself to go on. “So…okay…you remember? Me…threatening you? Saying…you were…”

“Toast,” Travis pronounced darkly. “The second you got out.”

“Yeah,” she moaned out, hugging Travis’s hips with her knees so she wouldn’t give in to the desire to just recklessly hump up against his hand. “I said that and you—you looked right at me and fucking threatened me back. And ungh, it sent a chill through me, but—the way you looked at me—oh, Travis, fuck—!” 

“Keep goin’,” the dark-haired man encouraged breathlessly, his mouth back at that perfect place on her neck.

“I can’t—tell you—why,” she whimpered, “but I suddenly found you so fucking hot. It felt like—fuck. Fuck, I don’t know! Electricity. Recognition. Some—goddamn cliché that doesn’t capture the way you just completely had me in that moment. I…I didn’t know what to do, what to think or feel. I wanted to scream when you walked away again, leaving me helpless there after you dared to…fucking…touch me! Without even putting a hand on me. I…I hated you…but after that, I couldn’t look at you without feeling…something.” 

Her head a tilt-a-whirl of lust and her body feeling like it might actually tremble itself apart if the older man didn’t fulfill her need soon, Laura forced herself to speak the very last of it. “I didn’t actually start—fantasizing—about you until the night you—caught me—touching myself. But oh—ohh, Travis. That was it for me. That was the first time you ever made me wet.”

Suddenly, there was the not-enough sensation of his cockhead bumping against her clit, and then the slip-slide of his smooth flesh down to meet her soaked, needful entrance once again. Laura had a few heart-fluttering seconds to both enjoy the anticipation and hope to hell and back that this time, there’d be follow-through—

—and then Travis ploughed his cock all the way up into her in one unerring thrust. She heard him loose a rhapsodic groan of long-delayed relief that underscored her own wailing curse and cry at the sweet, scorching stretch of him, at the feeling of her body flaring open to take him.

“Fuck, Laura, I wish—I’d fucking known,” Travis said, his eyes wild on hers as he started pumping into her, ardent and unrestrained. “You were—inside me—from the start. Made me—insane—every day and night, every fucking second—” He squeezed his eyes shut, his expression suddenly awash in what looked like agony. “Laura,” he went on breathlessly, “I—woulda let you hurt me—woulda let you skin me alive, just to feel your hands on me. Oh, god, Laura—I—need you—I—I—”

Laura took hold of his face and kissed him mercilessly, shutting him up. She’d had enough of words for now, even passionate ones. All she wanted, needed from him in this moment they shared was him, him and the indescribable, indefensible, incandescent fire he stoked within her.

It went so fast after that. Neither one of them had it in them to hold back even a little bit, or to slow things down—and their voices were entirely given over to animalistic expressions of mutual lust, moaning into each others’ mouths as Travis rutted into Laura and she, gone on the feeling of fullness, on the lushness of taking and being taken by the man she’d made crazy and who had made her crazy in return, only had time and thought enough to be grateful for all the madness before the pleasure within her spooled past the breaking point, and then she was coming so hard for Travis that she almost blacked out beneath him. 

Almost—because there she still was, slowly realizing that Travis was saying her name—

“Laura! H-hey—”

“Mmh?” she managed through her whole-body bliss.

“C-can I—come on you?”

“Wha…?”

She felt Travis put a hand on the side of her face, and she made herself open her eyes to meet his. 

“Can I—pull out and—fuck—come? On you?” he asked heatedly, every part of him radiating urgency. “On your—your tits or—ohh, fucking Jesus, Laura, I can’t stop—”

“Yes!” she said, meaning it, wanting it—

—and then Travis was out of her, differently over her, and she watched his mouth fall slack as he started stroking his gloriously engorged cock, flushed and absolutely lacquered in her fluids, with desperate speed—

“Want you—coated in me—” he panted. “All mine—”

“Mess me up, Travis,” she encouraged, arching her back and reaching to cup his balls again.

Travis shouted as soon as she touched him, and Laura saw the cum arc creamy and thick from the slit in his cockhead—and then wet warmth striped along the skin of her breasts and abdomen as his release rained down on her.

“Holy shit,” Laura said without thinking, her mind still over the orgasmic rainbow as she watched a man come on her body for the first time. She looked up from her own semen-dappled torso to Travis’s face, which was just starting to relax from the paroxysm of his pleasure.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to gaze down at how he’d painted her. “Fuck,” he breathed, his eyes roving over her body.

“Good?” she asked.

Travis nodded slowly several times, then closed his eyes again—and in his expression, Laura could read something of savoring and something of…shame? “I’ve…never done that before.”

“I’ve never had it done to me,” she said, and Travis opened his eyes again to meet hers right away.

“Really?” he asked. “Was it…” A shadow of concern flickered over his face.

“Hot,” she assured him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Yes. Very.”

Travis exhaled in audible relief. “I’ve, ah…wanted to do that. To you. For a while.”

“Pervert,” Laura quipped, smiling up at him.

Travis’s lips quirked. “Takes one to know one, young lady,” he said, regarding her with narrowed, affectionate eyes. 

“Guilty as charged,” she said, her smile opening to a grin.

He looked at her with warm humor for another moment, then got up from the bed. “C’mere,” he said, reaching down to hook one arm under her knees and another under her shoulder blades.

“What’re you doing?” Laura asked, but didn’t resist as the older man lifted her body against him.

“I didn’t drain the tub for a reason,” Travis said, straightening up and turning to carry her back into the bathroom.

Laura considered many snarky replies to that, given how the night had gone—but instead of saying any of them, she draped her arms around the older man’s neck and busied her mouth with pressing soft kisses to the side of his face, from temple to jaw. She could resume needling and provoking him another time—sometime when she was less perfectly happy.

*     *     *

Travis carefully put Laura back into the bath, then left the room without a word. Laura was curious about where he was going, but she was too suffused with the languorous warmth of afterglow to do anything about it. The water around her had cooled a little, but was still very comfortable, and she relaxed her body into it, feeling truly spent and sated. She was going to sleep unbelievably well tonight.

She could already feel herself drifting slightly when the sound of Travis’s feet on the tile brought her back to herself. She opened her eyes to see him seating himself on a low stool he’d placed next to the tub.

“Hi,” she greeted him softly.

“Hi,” he said, and smiled with one side of his mouth, looking tired, but still as oddly handsome as ever. “Feeling good?”

“So good.”

Travis nodded and extended a hand with something folded up in it. “I, ah—brought you a washcloth. For the…um…for my—”

“Got a hard time saying sex words when you’re not turned on?” Laura asked teasingly. “I think the water’s already washed most of your cum away, but thanks for being thoughtful.” She took the cloth, soaked it, then started wiping it over her breasts, just in case. 

Travis bent his head in what Laura thought was chagrined acknowledgment, but when he looked at her again, his face was serious.

“I got a hard time saying a lot of things,” he began. “You know that. But I gotta get better at it with you.”

“Do you…need to say something now?” she asked, unsure of what was happening.

“Yeah…I do,” Travis said with a sigh. “But I know we’re both wiped slick, so I swear I’ll keep it short.”

Uh-oh, Laura thought. There goes the afterglow. 

But, hell, that wasn’t fair—hadn’t she been the one to make him go through a weighty conversation right after sex the night before? She owed him one for that.

“Okay,” she said, still uncertain, but committed to hearing the older man out. “Go for it.”

Travis drew in a breath. “I wanna thank you for telling me what you told me. About…the first day. How you felt. I could tell it wasn’t easy for you, and I’m sorry I started out taking your hesitation as…withholding or something. I’m still getting my head around the fact that you actually want me…like me…as much as I…” 

The dark-haired man frowned slightly, then gestured with one hand from his bare chest toward where she sat, as though that finished his sentence. 

“It’s…too easy,” he continued, “for me to listen to the mean little voice inside that tells me you’re just fooling around with me ’cause you like the attention.”

“I mean…I do like the attention,” Laura admitted, and she meant it to sound like a gentle joke, but it came out sounding strained. She very badly wanted to restore the buffer that made her feel held at a safe distance from her own feelings. But there Travis Hackett was, all earnest sable eyes and seemingly genuine desire to communicate with her, and she knew that right now, for him, she needed to try to be better than herself.

“I like that it’s your attention, Travis,” she continued. “I do like you, and I’m not fooling around. And I’m sorry if I’ve been…teasing you too much…or anything. I just…” She took a deep breath and let the rest spill out of her before she could overthink it. “I love seeing how much you want me! It makes me feel better about how much I want you.”

Travis closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “Thanks, but…you don’t gotta say that. I gotta work on my own insecurity.” He looked at her again, eyes shining in the diminished candlelight that still glowed around them. “Just listen to me now, okay? I swear I’m almost done.”

Laura wanted to say something in reply, but forced herself to do nothing but nod. 

“I want you to know,” Travis said, “that you telling me I turned you on that first day doesn’t change the fact that I know I was dead wrong to do what I did to you back then. Okay? Seems we both had…complicated feelings about each other early on, but that doesn’t make me any less guilty of hurting you, or less sorry for it.”

Laura blinked at him, tears suddenly threatening to well in her eyes. 

She hadn’t thought she needed that assurance—but then, she hadn’t let herself think anymore, once she’d gotten her truth out and was getting fucked the way she’d wanted. But she had kind of feared telling Travis the truth—because, yes, generally speaking, she found it extremely hot and fun to think about him spending that very fraught summer yearning for her, and she wanted like hell to hear him tell her about it. But when it came to admitting to any of her own yearning during that time—especially feelings that had burst into being so early on, reaching up out of her flesh to intertwine themselves with her fear and anger—it made her feel somehow complicit in her two months of torment at Travis’s hand. And even though she knew that was irrational, completely and utterly untrue—

Travis tilted his head slightly, his gaze gentle but searching. “You hear me, sweetheart?”

There it was again. That one little word from him took the threat of tears and made good on it.

Laura closed her eyes and nodded, letting the tears escape down her cheeks. It was only a few—she wasn’t crying-crying, thank god. 

But of course, because there was no way he couldn’t, Travis noticed. “Hey, no—shit. Laura, I’m sorry—”

“Nope!” Laura said, cutting him off. “Good tears! Don’t worry.” 

She lifted the washcloth out of the water and held it firmly against her face like a sodden mask, then lowered the cloth again. 

“Now you can’t even tell!” she said brightly, opening her eyes to look at Travis again.

Her smile immediately wavered. The older man was gazing at her with such tender concern that it made Laura’s heart ache, and she swallowed around the lump in her throat that told her crying-crying might be coming right up if she didn’t do something to change directions fast.

She got her knees under her, then stretched both arms out to Travis and drew him closer, leaned to meet him, and opened her lips against his as soon as he was close enough that she could. She proceeded to adore his mouth with her own, infusing the kiss with all the feelings she couldn’t yet let herself cast into concrete language in her own brain, much less speak aloud to him. Travis kissed her back, holding her face in his hands, his thumbs running lightly over her cheeks like he still wanted a chance to wipe her tears away.

“Thanks for saying…all that,” she said softly, her nose against his, when she broke the kiss. “Now, I really need you to take me back to bed. Please.”

He pulled back a little and stared warily at her. “You…” He shook his head, brow furrowed in consternation. “Woman, you can’t seriously expect more—”

“To sleep, dude! Jesus!” She slapped her open palm against the bathwater, splashing Travis’s face and chest. “I’m not completely insatiable!”

“The hell you’re not,” Travis muttered, standing and snatching his towel off the nearby rack so he could dry himself.

The movement brought Travis’s still-naked groin level with Laura’s eyes, and she noted with interest that his cock, which had been completely flaccid when he’d sat down, had filled out just a little.

“Huh, now what’s this about?” she asked with outsized wonder, extending her arm and skimming the side of her index finger up the silky, slowly firming skin of his shaft. “Travis, you can’t seriously—”

“Oh, shut up and get your gorgeous ass outta that tub,” the dark-haired man grouched, stepping out of her reach and flinging his towel at her.

Laura caught the towel and smirked at him. “Mmm, right away, sir.”

She stood, then made a slow show of bending over to grip the porcelain edge, smoothly arcing one leg up and out of the tub, planting her toes on the tile, then following suit with her other leg. She took care to expose as much of herself as she could with each movement and never let her gaze waver from the older man, whose eyes immediately, helplessly locked onto her dripping-wet body, whose contours she knew were glowing in the dying candlelight.

“You wanna dry me off?” she asked sultrily, spreading her arms in a gesture that partly offered Travis his towel back and partly invited him to keep looking at her—and, maybe, to come closer for an even better look. “Or…do you wanna make me all messy again first?”

She saw Travis’s cock twitch, then thicken just a little bit more.

The dark-haired man loosed a muted bleat of frustration. “That’s it, goddammit! I’m brushing my teeth upstairs!” He spun away from her, grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste, and then stomped toward the bathroom door. “And when I’m back, woman, you better have some fucking clothes on!” 

“Ooh, Travis,” Laura cooed, “you gonna punish me if I don’t?”

The only answering sounds were his retreating footfalls and grumbles that sounded like something something unrelenting something something temptress. 

Laura loosed an enormous grin and wrapped Travis’s big gray towel around her like it was a hero’s cape. Her pounding heart and wicked mind urged her to pursue her man, as per usual—but she was feeling uncommonly magnanimous at the moment. As she started to move around the bathroom, extinguishing the few candles that hadn’t yet burned themselves out, she considered how generous she was being, letting him win just one more for the day.

Tomorrow, though…that would be a different story. She’d already decided to wake him up with her mouth, coaxing first his cock and eventually the rest of him to awareness—the awareness that she was the one in control. And then, maybe after breakfast—and after making him look at a few choice sex-toy sites with her, since she’d be damned if she let him go on avoiding talking about pegging—she’d take him back to the bedroom, take him for a slow ride on their own private two-lane road while he confessed at least some of his sins to her. 

Imagining Travis beneath her, virile and vulnerable and all, all hers…ohh, Laura’s nerve endings shimmered in anticipation. She was going to absolutely unravel the man, and she was going to savor every single second of it. 

She could hardly wait. The most untamed part of her didn’t really want to wait, no matter how ready for rest the rest of her felt. 

Maybe she was insatiable after all. But for this moment, for the remainder of the night, for him…

Well. She guessed it wouldn’t kill her to practice a little bit of patience.