I lean into him and look up into his eyes. “Exhausted,” I murmur.
He grins. “Then let’s get you to bed.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m stretched out naked on the bed in our hotel room, with one hand gripping the headboard and the other tangled in Travis’s hair. His head is moving between my legs, the wet heat of his throat turning my brain inside out while his fingers dig possessively into my thighs. I’m going to have bruises there tomorrow, sore purple smudges that mark me as his.
“Fuck—fuck, fuck,” I say, eloquently. Travis hums, amused, and the vibration nearly tips me over the edge. I push him off of me hastily. If he keeps going like that, this is going to be over way too soon.
He captures my mouth in a brief, bruising kiss, then slaps the side of my hip impatiently.
“Bossy fucker,” I mutter, which earns me a sharp bite on the back of my shoulder.
I spend the next stretch of time at the mercy of his fingers. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been together like this, and yet somehow, every single time, it’s like a hill I have to climb, a choice I have to make. To be vulnerable with him or not, to hold a part of myself back or let him see how much I need him. It should get easier with time, but it never does.
But it never stops being perfect, either, when I summon up the courage to let him in.
My choked-out words give way to incoherent noises, broken sounds with the cadence of pleas. Travis’s free hand slides against my stomach, pulling me up and back. This is how he likes it, his chest pressed against my back, his mouth on my neck, one hand tight around my waist and the other moving between my legs. His skin against my skin at every possible place.
This is how I like it, too.
The edges between us blur and disappear, building pleasure threaded with pain. Travis gets quieter, his grip gets tighter, then my voice splinters and breaks as I fall apart. It takes several long minutes to come back to myself. The world reforms around Travis; the weight of his chin on my shoulder, the warm press of his fingertips on my skin.
“Missed you,” he murmurs.
I rest my temple against his. “Missed you, too.”
We migrate to the shower, where I stifle yawns in the steam and Travis smiles at the way my muscles shake when I shampoo my hair.
“You sure you’re going to survive sixty-two laps tomorrow?” he asks, running his thumbs over my biceps.
I fight another yawn. “Hopefully.”
“If you feel yourself slipping, give me a signal, and I’ll do something to cause a red flag so you can have a mid-race nap.”
I laugh and say, “Please don’t do that,” but as he turns away to scrub the shampoo from his hair, something unpleasant tugs at me, just like it did when James Riley was interviewing him. I try to chase the feeling, but my mind is too tired, my thoughts slipping away like soapy water through my fingers.
As we’re crawling into bed, there’s a soft knock on the door. I glance at the clock. It’s well past midnight.
“Maybe it’s Heather and Ghost,” Travis says.
Instead, it’s an apologetic hotel clerk delivering my lost luggage. I hear her wish Travis luck on the race before the door clicks shut.
“Your luggage, sir,” he says, rolling my bag into the bedroom.
I grin. “Did you give that girl a tip, or d’you think the visual of you in boxers was enough?”
He laughs. “At least you’ll have your own stuff for tomorrow.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll keep your shoes, though,” I add, as he slides into bed beside me. “Unless you need them back.”
“They’re yours,” he says. “Lights off?”
“Mm.”
The room goes dark. I slide deeper under the cool sheets, shivering slightly until Travis’s arms slide around me.
“Do you ever think,” I say after a moment, “that all it would take for everyone to find out about us is one little thing like that?”
“One thing like what?”
