Text Me (9 page)
Donovan toed off his shoes while she straddled his thighs
and undid his fly. Then with some undignified wiggling and maneuvering, she
managed to scrape his jeans and socks down his legs to fall with his shoes on
the floor.
“Commando. I like it. Easy access.” She laughed and ran a
hand down his hip. His cock, lying against his stomach, jumped at her touch.
“Someone’s anxious for attention.” Ariel bent down and used
the tip of her tongue to lick the slit of its head. He was salty and male and
delicious. She used one hand to fist around the base and took him in her mouth.
The flat of her tongue rubbed the thick vein along the underside of his shaft.
She let her teeth graze on the way up.
He hissed in a breath and his fingers tangled in her hair.
She loved it. Loved that she could evoke the same level of
reaction from him as he did from her. Fired up, she cupped his balls in one
hand and squeezed lightly. She let her fingernails rake the skin while her
mouth took his cock again. She sucked and pulled at the same time and his grip
tightened against her skull.
“Fuck, enough. You’re killing me.” He sat up, gripped under
her arms and pulled until she was straddling him, his cock pulsing heat against
her core.
She balanced on her knees and reached into the nightstand
drawer. A quick check reassured her the condom was still good and she tore the
packet open. With extreme care, she positioned the protection and rolled it
down slowly. She looked up and saw Donovan’s eyes locked on her hands.
“There,” she said. “All suited up and ready to play.” She
leaned over his body and gave him a kiss.
“Well then, put me in, Coach.”
He nudged her with his knee and she lifted up enough to
wriggle her hips until she felt the head of his penis push in. She let her hips
fall, sank down to the hilt and paused for a moment to savor the fullness.
Donovan thrust his hips up and she took her cue to move. The
slow glide up felt good and she almost didn’t stop, but his hands caught her
hips before his cock slipped out completely.
“Lean back. Put your weight on your hands and arch back,” he
commanded.
Ariel didn’t think twice before obeying. She settled her
hands on the outside of his knees and arched her spine. Her breasts lifted
toward the ceiling and she let her head fall back. The position sent him deep
inside her but limited her motion. She rocked forward on her knees as far as
she could go and his cock pushed in even farther.
He used his hands on her hips to guide the rhythm. A slow
burn started low in her belly and she tried to grind down harder, faster. His
thumb stroked around where their bodies joined then slid up. He rubbed circles
around her clit, teasing her with contact. Release was there, just out of
reach.
“Donovan, please…” She panted the words.
He chuckled. “Please what?”
“Just…please!”
His thumb picked up the pace and pushed down hard. The added
pressure and speed was enough to send her over. Her head fell back and her
fingers clawed the bedspread. She thrust her hips forward and clenched her
knees tight to his body. Against her thighs she felt his muscles tense and
bunch. He grabbed her hips and held her down as he pulsed inside her.
Ariel let the waves of pleasure roll through her body until
her limbs were limp. She shifted and fell to the side, facing Donovan. One
heavy arm came around and pulled her to his chest. She breathed in their sweat,
his cologne, and let the scent imprint a memory. They may not have forever, but
they had something special for a short time.
* * * * *
The lack of warmth woke Ariel up. Without opening her eyes,
she shifted her hand over the bed but didn’t find Donovan. She sat up and
pulled the covers over her breasts, holding the sheet by her sides with her
arms. Her eyes adjusted to the room and she saw him, fully dressed, sitting on
the edge of the bed facing the window. He sat bent over, elbows braced on his
knees, head in his hands, unmoving.
“Donovan?”
“I didn’t plan this. Before anything, I need you to know I
didn’t plan this.” He didn’t raise his head or look her way. Just spoke with a
tone that had ice forming in her gut.
Didn’t plan what? To sleep with her that night? To sleep
with her at all? Oh God… She screwed her eyes shut and asked the question she
dreaded the answer to.
“You’re not married, are you?”
“What? No.” He sounded so offended her eyes popped open. He
was staring at her like she’d just asked him if two plus two equaled five. “I’m
not married. Not engaged or seriously committed or anything else.”
She exhaled. “Well, as long as you’re not on the run from
the law…” she teased.
He smiled a little. “Not even a parking ticket.”
“Okay. So what’s wrong?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m not just here for a
post-deployment vacation. I’m here looking for my sister.”
“You’re looking for your sister,” she repeated slowly. Of
all the places she thought this conversation was going, that one did not come
to mind.
“Her name is Sarah.”
Ariel’s sleep-fogged brain worked furiously to connect dots,
but she had a feeling she was a few dots short.
“My first name is Travis. Trav.”
Travis
. The truth slammed into her like a wrecking
ball, fast and overpowering. Travis. Sarah. “The text messages,” she whispered.
He nodded.
What the hell was going on? She scooted until her back hit
the headboard and she flipped on the bedside light. She blinked rapidly to
refocus while a thousand thoughts swam through her mind.
“I didn’t plan it.” Donov—no, Trav’s voice cut through the
whirlwind of her mind. “I had no clue who you were when you showed up with Pete
night before last.”
“Pete?”
“Goodwin. His first name is Pete.”
“Ah,” she said, like it all made sense. Like her world
wasn’t currently upside down.
“I enjoyed the texts. Text Girl.” He laughed, a humorless,
scornful sound. “I came home from this last deployment and needed to find my
sister. I just did. She wouldn’t respond to my letters. They’ve been sent back
‘return to sender’ for so long it wasn’t worth bothering any longer. And she
used to just ignore my texts. But clearly she got a new number.”
“Clearly,” she agreed, dazed.
“I was thankful you’d let me know, since I could have just
assumed she was ignoring me again. I thought that would be the end of it. But
then you were so helpful. And funny. And just nice. I didn’t want to stop
talking to you.”
Neither had she.
“I came here with the purpose of finding my sister. Meeting
you—it never crossed my mind. No,” he corrected. “It crossed my mind. But I
never thought it would happen. Then we get here and Pete comes back the same
night with two girls. I wasn’t interested…until I saw you.”
He looked at her, as if waiting for a signal to continue.
His eyes were full of hope and worry. She nodded, needing to know where this
was going.
“You were beautiful and unexpected and I couldn’t walk away.
Didn’t want to walk away. And then we ran into you the next day in the coffee
shop. Which was a coincidence, I swear. I just texted, well, you. And I was
wondering how to approach, uh, you…”
He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “This is confusing. I
still didn’t know who you were, but then the employee called out Ariel instead
of Mackenzie and it made me think. So I texted ‘Text Girl’,” he said, using air
quotes to make it obvious. “And I watched while you opened your phone, read
something, typed something and closed it. Then three seconds later my phone’s
vibrating with a new text and Text Girl is saying she’s hanging with a friend
getting coffee. I may not be a college grad but I can put those two together.”
Random coincidences. Could it really all be chalked up to
happenstance? Or was Mary Ellen’s paranoia on the money and she currently had a
crazed stalker with a good story in her bedroom?
“I wanted to tell you tonight after dinner,” he said softly.
“I planned on it. But then you brought me back here and my resistance broke.
You do that to me. And no matter what, I hope you believe me. Even if this is
the end, I hope you believe me.”
She wanted to believe. Was desperate to believe him and move
on. But a small voice in her head that sounded annoyingly like Mary Ellen
warned her to be skeptical.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that I need some time to
process.”
He was still a moment then nodded sharply. “All right. I’ll
leave.” He crossed to the bedroom door and paused. “If you need anything, or
just want to talk…you know my number.” He shut the bedroom door quietly behind
him.
A moment later she heard the front door close.
Ariel didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She stared into
the dark until her eyelids were heavy with exhaustion. She got up, stripped the
bed of the sheets that still smelled like sex and him and remade it with fresh
ones. Then she crawled back under the covers and decided to pull a Scarlett
O’Hara.
She’d think about it tomorrow.
Chapter Eight
“Bombed, huh?”
“Shut up,” Trav muttered as he backed away and let Pete into
his hotel room.
He’d come home the night before and crashed, not bothering
to see if Pete was back yet. If his friend was in the middle of an all-night
sex-fest with Mary Ellen, he wasn’t in the mood to interrupt.
Pete flopped down on the bed. “I missed the breakfast
buffet. Did you bring back anything to eat?”
Trav waved a hand toward the desk, which held a plate with
pastries. Pete jumped up and threw himself into the desk chair, attacking the
plate with a vengeance. Trav took his place on the bed, knowing nothing short
of a mortar attack would stop Pete in the middle of stuffing his face.
Three danishes later, Pete asked, “So
what happened?”
“I tried to explain right after we split up. But we got sidetracked.”
“Sidetracked being an euphemism for ‘fucking’ right?”
Trav lifted a brow at that. “Do you even know how to spell
the word euphemism?”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Ha. Clever. Stop stalling.”
Trav blew out a breath. “To answer your question, yes. She kills
my resistance. I had my mind all made up, this entire speech planned out and
then
bam
. She takes me back to her apartment and suddenly I can’t say a
word.”
“So you didn’t tell her?” Pete asked between bites of his
second croissant.
“I told her…eventually.”
“Mary Ellen said she thought Ariel would believe you. Said
combining you and this text dude she thought she’d been talking to would be
like a dream come true.”
Trav stared at his friend. “You told Mary Ellen?”
Pete shrugged. “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to leave the area
too soon in case you got it over fast and needed a drinking buddy. So we had to
kill time somehow.”
“And you chose to do it by talking?”
“She’s hung up on someone else. Nice girl, good sex. But I’m
not interested in playing someone’s second string.”
Wise words from the man for whom all women would be second
string. “Why did she say Ariel would believe me?”
“Ellen—sorry, Mary Ellen said Ariel’s one of those ‘believes
in the good in all’ people. So maybe she just needs a day to think and she’ll
forgive you.”
“What if?” Pete repeated. He used the last croissant to
point at him. “Fact is, we are leaving in less than a week. And you can’t
change that. You know we have to report back. And then what? We get back, sign
our re-up papers and start all over again. Her life is here. You heard her say
that, all those plans. She’s got ‘roots’ written all over her.” His point made,
he popped the pastry into his mouth.
He was right. Even if Ariel forgave him for the
unintentional deception, nothing would come of it.
But the part about signing papers—for the first time, it
didn’t appeal. And not because of Ariel, but because he was just done running.
The Corps had been there for him—saved him—when he had to escape his home. But
he never intended to stay in for life. He’d just stuck with the habit of
running, never feeling quite steady or safe enough to get out. Was he ready
now?
Only one more thing to do before he’d know for sure.
“Time to go see dear old dad.”
* * * * *
Ariel sat on the fence watching Mary Ellen work a yearling
in the paddock off the barn. It always amused her that Mary Ellen—so tiny and
compact—exerted complete and utter control over the thousand-pound animals with
a simple flick of her wrist or a whistle.
Watching the horse circle around, figure eight and stop in
place soothed her frazzled nerves and she was glad she’d come to the barn to
talk things out. Even though she knew she was in for a huge “I told you so”
lesson.
Mary Ellen led the horse back to the barn and Ariel hopped
down to follow and give a hand.
“You can say it now,” Ariel said.
“No clue what you’re talking about,” Mary Ellen replied as
she started to rub down the yearling.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t tell me you
and Pete didn’t say a word about Trav being the anonymous texter.”
“It might have been mentioned,” Mary Ellen said coyly as she
brushed down the horse’s back. “More important than what I think…how do you
feel?”
“I feel…” How did she feel?
“Let’s play this game then.” Mary Ellen put her brush down
and led the horse to his stall. “Do you think that Travis Donovan set up this
trip to meet you?”
Ariel thought about that. She never got a stalking vibe. And
if he wanted to harm her or anything crazy, he had the perfect opportunity the
night before. Never once did she feel threatened. “No, I don’t,” she said,
feeling more sure after saying it out loud.