Page 70 of Travis
Low, involuntary, the sounds of a man who had stopped trying to control anything at all.
I’d never seen Travis lose control. Not really. Not like this. He was always so contained, so precisely assembled, every part of his life organized and labeled and accounted for. But underneath me his composure dissolved, and what was left was raw and open and devastating, and I wanted to live in this version of him forever.
His grip on my hips tightened, and he took over. I let him. His hands guided my rhythm, faster now, harder, pulling me down onto him the way he wanted, and the shift sent a jolt through me because this wasn’t careful, measured Travis.
This was a man taking what he needed, and the fact that he needed it from me, that I was the one who could give him this, was its own kind of undoing.
His head pressed back into the pillow and the tendons in his neck went taut and his breathing broke apart into sounds that were barely sounds at all. I watched every second of it. I wanted to remember every second of it. The way his jaw clenched and then released. The way his hands gripped my hips like I was the only solid thing in his world. The way he said my name when he came, not a groan, not a shout, just my name, rough and wrecked and real.
His arms locked around my waist and pulled me down against his chest, and I buried my face in his neck and held on, and we lay there, tangled together, our breathing ragged and slowing.
After a long time, I rolled off him and on to my back. I turned my head and looked at him.
I reached over and traced the line of his jaw with my fingertip. He turned his head and looked at me, and the green of his eyes in the dim room was the softest thing about him.
A scratching sound came from the other side of the bedroom door. Small, insistent, accompanied by a high, thin mew that escalated into a second and then a third. A chorus of tiny complaints from three animals who had no concept of timing.
Travis looked at the door. Then at me. His lips twitched. Barely.
I pressed my face into his shoulder and laughed. Helpless, the kind that shook my whole body. A former CIA operative and an FBI contractor lying naked in an underground bunker while three foster kittens demanded entry like the world’s smallest, furriest chaperone committee arriving fifteen minutes too late.
He rolled his eyes and detoured to the bathroom to dispose of the condom before he walked over to the door. I couldn’t help but admire his striking physique along the way.
The white kitten entered first, tail high, radiating the confidence of an animal that believed every room existed for its personal use. The gray followed. The black one hung back, assessed the situation, and bolted under the bed before either of us could react.
The gray kitten climbed up the mattress, walked across the pillow, and settled on Travis’s chest when he lay back down. It turned twice and dropped into a purring heap against his sternum.
He looked down at it. Then at me. “Don’t say anything.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The white kitten clawed its way up the foot of the bed and wedged itself between us with a purr. I curled onto my side and Travis’s arm came to rest on my hip.
The black kitten, not wanting to be left out, had made its way up to my pillow and curled behind my head. Its quiet purrs became a tingling vibration in my hair.
I closed my eyes, taking it all in. His breathing was slow and even and the kittens purred and the compound droned its quiet hum around us.
I thought about the way he’d said my name. Both times. In the shower, like he needed the word to prove I was real. In the bedroom, when he came, like it was the only word left in him.
Not Naomi’s name. Mine.
I fell asleep with his arm around me and three small, warm lives pressed against us in the dark.
