The Merciless Travis Wilde

Chapter EIGHT



SUNLIGHT BLAZED AGAINST Travis’s eyelids.

He groaned, rolled onto his belly...

And almost fell off the bed.

His eyes flew open; his brain took survey. Narrow room Narrow bed. Narrow window. What the hell...?

Then, he remembered.

Jennie. Bringing her home. Making love to her, how incredible it had been.

And hours later, she’d been so ill. That migraine...

“Jennie,” he said, as he shot to his feet.

He’d stayed the night to take care of her. Some job he’d done! He hadn’t heard her leave the bed. Leave him. Where was she? Was she hurting?

He started for the door.

Dammit, he was naked.

“Clothes,” he muttered, looking around the room for the stuff he’d discarded like a wild man last night.

There. On the dresser. A neatly folded stack of all his things.

He grabbed only his khakis, pulled them on, zipped them but didn’t bother with the top button, went in search of her...

And found her in the minuscule kitchen, standing with her back to him. Her hair was loose; she had on some kind of oversize T-shirt. Her long legs were bare, as were her feet.

She looked bed-rumpled. Sex-rumpled. And he wanted, more than anything, to sweep her into his arms, take her back to bed.

That he wanted her so with such intensity, even after all the times he’d had her last night, made his words sound gruff.

“Dammit,” he growled, “where’d you go?”

She spun toward him. She had a mug in her hand; a dark liquid—coffee, by the welcome smell that permeated the room—sloshed over the rim.

“Travis! You startled—”

He crossed the floor in three quick steps and pulled her into his arms. The coffee sloshed again, this time onto his toes. The stuff was hot, but he didn’t care.

“I thought something had happened to you.”

“No. I’m fine. I just thought coffee would be a good—”

He kissed her.

She tasted of coffee, cream and sugar.

There’d been times he’d started mornings in Paris with Champagne, in Seville with hot chocolate. But he’d never begun the day with a sweeter flavor on his tongue than the taste of Jennie’s mouth.

When he finally lifted his head, her eyes were bright, her lips softly swollen.

“I missed you,” he said, before he could think. “Waking up alone wasn’t what I had in mind.”

She smiled. And blushed.

He loved that blush. It was sexy and innocent at the same time, and made him wonder if he was the first man who’d spent the night with her in his arms.

Just because he was the first man who’d made love to her didn’t mean she hadn’t done other things with other men.

Hell. Where was he going with that line of thought? He kept reminding himself that he wasn’t old-fashioned about women and sex...

Except, it seemed as if he was. About this woman, anyway, and about having sex with her.

About making love with her.

About staying the night in her bed and, come to think of it, how often had he done something like that? Truth was, he could probably count the number of times on the fingers of one hand.

Women tended to get the wrong idea when you spent the night. They read more into it than it deserved.

The way to keep expectations reasonable was to avoid certain trip wires.

Spending the entire night in your lover’s bed was one sure trip wire—and why was he thinking of Jennie as his lover? He’d spent two nights with her. That hardly made them “lovers.”

Suddenly, the kitchen seemed even smaller than it actually was.

He let go of her, cleared his throat and moved past her to a shelf above the stove where coffee mugs hung from little hooks.

“Great idea,” he said briskly. “Making coffee, I mean.”

He could feel her looking at him as he filled the mug and added a dollop of cream.

“Yes,” she said, after a couple of seconds. “I’m no good at all until I get my morning dose of caffeine.”

“Mmm. Same here.” There was a teaspoon on the counter. He picked it up, stirred his coffee—but how long could a man take to stir coffee? “So,” he said, even more briskly, “you’re an early riser, huh?”

“You don’t have to do this.”

Her voice was low. Something in it made him wince.

“Hey,” he said, “why would I turn down a cup of—”

“You don’t have to stay. Really. It isn’t necessary. I mean, what you did last night—taking care of me, tending to me—that was—it was much, much more than—”

“You were sick.”

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean—”

He put down the mug and turned toward her. Forget bed-rumpled. Forget sexy. She looked small and fragile and all at once, he hated himself for being such a selfish, unfeeling bastard.

“Come here,” he said gruffly, although he was already moving toward her, his arms open.

She went straight into his embrace.

“I’m sorry,” she said unsteadily. “I’m not very good at this. I guess I’m not good at it at all. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say after—after—”

Travis put his hand under her chin and raised her face to his.

“How about, ‘Good morning, Travis. Are you as glad to see me as I am to see you?’”

Her eyes searched his, and then she gave a tremulous smile.

“Are you? Glad to see me? Because—because really, if you just want to leave—”

He silenced her with a kiss.

“Confession time,” he said softly. “I’m not sure of what to say, either. I don’t—I don’t usually...” He cleared his throat. “Spending the entire night in a bed that isn’t my own isn’t something I’ve done very often.”

He watched her trying to make sense of what he’d said, saw her eyes widen when she did.

“Oh,” she said.

And blushed.

God Almighty, that blush!

“Well,” she said quickly, “you were—you were kind to do it. I mean, to stay because I—”

“I stayed because I hated the thought of leaving you.”

Her lips curved in a smile. What could he possibly do except kiss that smile? And kiss it again, when she sighed, put her hands on his chest and rose toward him.

He wanted to undress her.

Touch her.

Kiss her everywhere.

But she’d been so sick last night...She needed coffee. Food. Not sex.

Except, he didn’t want sex.

He wanted to make love to her...

Travis clasped her shoulders, ended the kiss, flashed a quick smile.

“Okay,” he said, yes, briskly, and if there was a word that went beyond “briskly,” he needed it now. “Time for breakfast.”

Her lashes rose. There was a blurred, dreamy look in her eyes.

“To hell with breakfast,” he growled, and he drew her against him and kissed her again and again, each kiss deeper, more demanding than the last until she was clinging to him for support, leaning into him, her hands twisted in his hair. “I want you,” he said against her mouth.

“That’s good,” she whispered. “Because I want you, too.”

His body, already hard, felt as if it might be turning to stone.

“Your headache...”

She gave a sexy little laugh.

“What headache?” she said, and he swung her into his arms and took her back to bed.

* * *

A couple of hours later, they were in his car, on their way to breakfast.

Well, to brunch.

When she’d said she couldn’t go with him, that she had to go get her car, he’d phoned the mechanic who worked with him on his ’Vette when it needed something, and asked him to stop by for her car keys.

She’d stayed in the bedroom when the guy showed up but she’d heard Travis describe her old, if honorable, vehicle.

“A tan two-door?” she’d heard the guy say with disbelief, and Travis had said, in solemn tones, that spending half an hour driving it would be good for the guy’s soul.

He’d come back to her, still chuckling.

Just remembering it made her smile.

Now she glanced at him from under the curve of her lashes.

They’d completely missed the hours when most people had breakfast.

Instead, they’d spent the time in each other’s arms.

And it had been wonderful.

At one point, when she’d sobbed his name and begged him to end the beautiful torment, he’d clasped her wrists, drawn her arms over her head, said—in a sexy growl that had only added to her excitement—that he was never going to end it, that he was going to keep her where she was, on the edge of that high, high precipice...

Even thinking about it made her a little breathless.

Was sex like this for everyone?

She knew it wasn’t.

The books said sex was different for all couples but she’d have known that anyway, because sex with Travis was—it was—

Really, there weren’t words to describe it.

She’d gone looking for sex.

For the experience of it, because—because time was closing down around her and she couldn’t let that happen without knowing what life had not yet shown her, because sex was supposed to be such a powerful part of your existence.

But she had not expected this.

The passion? The excitement? The clinical physiology of orgasm?

Yes, yes, and yes.

But the reality was...

Beyond description. Especially the wonder of those last few minutes when you felt—you felt as if you were drowning in sensation.

And the rest.

The way you reacted to the sound of your lover’s voice. His strength. His tenderness. The feel of his body under your hand, its taste on your mouth.

There was more. Much more, and some of it didn’t have a thing to do with sex. Like Travis’s smile, or his easy laughter.

Even the way he took control of things.

Of her.

She’d always thought that kind of behavior was male arrogance and, yes, her lover had an arrogance to him, but it wasn’t born out of pride or ego or aggression, it was born of the innate ability to lead.

Jennie glanced at him again.

Added to all that, he was beautiful.

She loved watching him.

He did everything with self-assurance. He even drove that way, as he was right now, his attention on the road, his hand light on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift...

On her hand, lying just beneath his.

What if she hadn’t stopped at that awful bar a week ago? What if Travis hadn’t been there? What if she hadn’t gone along with the game he’d initiated?

What if she’d let fearless Genevieve morph back into cautious Jennie, the Jennie who had not understood how quickly life could change?

Most of all...

Most of all, what if the years still stretched ahead of her, bright and golden in their clarity? What if she was like everyone else, able to reach out and take what she wanted without having to stop and remind herself that she had no right to do so?

Anger flared within her.

And she couldn’t afford that anger.

It was too devastating. Too crippling. It stole what little remained of moments and hours and days that might still be filled with happiness.

She’d learned that the hard way.

One minute, you were looking into a future of clear skies and bright promise...and the next, clouds had covered the sun and the future was looking at you, sneering, saying, Okay, lady, here I am, this is the way it’s really gonna be, and what are you gonna to do about it?

Crumple, had been her first reaction.

But then her alter-ego, for lack of a better term—and what better term would someone who’d taken that double major in psychology and sociology come up with—her alter-ego had said, Dammit, stand up and fight!

It didn’t change the end game, but it changed the way you got there, head bowed or head high...

“Hey.”

They’d pulled to the curb outside a restaurant. Travis was watching her, his dark eyes narrowed.

“Hey yourself,” she said, with what she hoped was a smile.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” she said brightly. Too brightly, perhaps, going by the intensity of his gaze.

“Tell me the truth, honey. Is that migraine back?”

“No. I’m good. Really.”

He looked at her for a long minute. Then he flashed that sexy smile, the one that seemed to melt her bones.

“Except when you’re bad,” he said huskily, “and you’re perfect, either way.”

She blushed.

He grinned.

“I love the way you do that.”

“Do what?”

“The way you blush.” He undid his seat belt, leaned in, undid hers and took her lips in a soft, sweet kiss. “It’s one hell of a turn-on.”

She blushed even harder. This time, his smile was wicked.

“Keep that up, we’re not going to get into the restaurant.”

He was right. They wouldn’t. If he smiled that way again, kissed her again...

“Jennie,” he said in a low voice, because what she was thinking was probably right in her eyes.

What she was feeling was probably only a heartbeat behind, and she couldn’t let him see that because it was impossibly out of the question, it was not what he’d signed on for and, oh God, it was far, far more than she’d ever even considered...

“You going to feed me, Wilde?” she said, reaching for the door handle, laughing in a way that she hoped didn’t sound as phony to him as it did to her. “Or let me swoon away from hunger right here, in your car, with everybody in Dallas walking by?”

“The only swooning I want you doing is the kind that happens when I take you in my arms,” he said.

But he wasn’t laughing.

Neither was she.

They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity.

Then Travis cleared his throat, stepped out of the car and the world began spinning again.

* * *

She ordered yogurt and fresh fruit.

He ordered pancakes, bacon and eggs.

“The menu says they use only certified humane, free-range eggs,” she said, after the waitress had brought them orange juice.

Travis raised an eyebrow.

“And that’s good, right?”

She nodded. “Absolutely. Did you ever see any of the documentaries about how chickens are raised?”

“No,” he said quickly. From the look on her face, he was happy that he hadn’t.

“Back home—”

“Where’s that?”

“New Hampshire.”

“Ah. Thought I heard a touch of New England in that accent of yours.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“You’re the one with the accent, cowboy, not me.”

He grinned. “Anyway, back home...?”

“I spent part of a summer working at an egg farm.” Her smile faded; a little shudder went through her. “‘Farm’ turned out to be the wrong way to describe it. It was an eye opener.”

He’d never thought about it before. Now he did.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll bet.”

Their meal arrived, her bowl of yogurt heaped with big, shiny strawberries. He watched as she plucked one from the heap, brought it to her lips and bit into it.

Crimson juice ran down her chin. She got to it, fast, with her napkin.

He thought about how he could have got to it faster, with his tongue.

Not a good thing to think about, in a public place.

“So,” he said quickly shifting a little in the leather booth, “is that why you’re such an early riser?” She looked at him blankly and why wouldn’t she? Talk about non sequiturs...but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment. “You were up with the sun this morning.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “It has nothing to do with chickens. It’s academia.” Her smile became a chuckle at the look on his face. “I have three early classes a week. I’m a T.A. A teaching—”

“A teaching assistant.”

“Uh-huh. It’s a grad course. The Psychology of Male-

Female Relationship Patterns.”

Travis nodded. Male-female relationships. He could almost feel his appetite fading.

“Must be—”

“Deadly dull.”

His eyebrows rose. She laughed.

“I know I shouldn’t say that but it is.” She brought the teaspoon to her mouth. “And what do you...” Her face pinkened.

“What?” he said, his eyes on the spoon, imagining what the coolness of the yogurt would be like in the warmth of her mouth.

“I only just realized...I don’t know anything about you.”

“You know everything about me,” he said in a low voice. “Everything that matters.”

“No. Seriously. If you and I—”

“Honey.” His gaze went from the spoonful of creamy yogurt to her rosy lips. “Save me here, will you? Put that yogurt in your mouth so I can stop working up a sweat thinking about it.”

“Thinking...?”

Man, what a mistake to have told her that. She was blushing again. He’d made love to her enough to know her chest and breasts turned that same rose-petal pink when she had an orgasm, when his lovemaking caused her orgasm...

“Do it fast,” he said hoarsely.

She put the spoon down.

“Travis. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like—like—” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “Tell me—tell me about yourself.”

He grinned. “Change in conversation, huh?”

“Absolutely. Come on. Tell me about Travis Wilde.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

Jennie rolled her eyes. “You don’t really think I’ll fall for that, ‘shucks, ma’am, ah’m jest a plain cowboy’ stuff, do you?”

He burst out laughing.

“Talk about accents...Is that how guys in Texas sound?”

“Some of them.” She smiled. “But not you. Were you born here?”

“You mean, am I an honest-to-God Texan?” He put his knife and fork across his plate, pushed it aside, reached for his coffee. “I am. I was born here. Well, not here. Not in Dallas. I was born in Wilde’s Crossing?”

“A town with your name?”

“Wildes have been in Texas a long time, honey. You listen to my old man tell the story, we’ve been here ever since Thor the Hammer wrecked his longship on the Corpus Christi bar.”

Jennie grinned. “No, he didn’t.”

He grinned back. “Okay. Maybe not, but yeah, we go back a bit.”

“Are you ranchers?”

Amazing, he thought. He knew every inch of this woman’s luscious body, she knew his, and yet, they were only just having this conversation.

“We have a place in Wilde’s Crossing. El Sueño.”

“The Dream.”

Somehow or other, that she knew what the words meant pleased him.

“Yes. Do you know Spanish?”

“I had two years of it in high school.”

“Ah.”

“Plus two years of German. My father said, if I was going into science, it was a good idea to know German.”

Travis cocked his head. “‘The Psychology of Male-Female Relationship Patterns’ is science?”

“Yes. No. I mean, there’s this whole controversy, whether psych and sociology are sciences or not...” She made a face. “Travis Wilde. You’re trying to change the subject.”

He sat back, sighed, drank some coffee.

“Okay. I was born in Wilde’s Crossing. I grew up on El Sueño. I liked ranching well enough but math always fascinated me...”

He paused. Math? How come he was telling her that? Women had made it clear that “math” wasn’t sexy. Being a finance guy, an investor, was.

“Math,” she said. “If only I’d known you in high school.” She smiled. “I’d have flunked calculus if it hadn’t been for Mary Jane Baxter.”

Travis tried not to smile. She was full of information, his Jennie; all you had to do was find the right button and out it came.

“Mary Jane Baxter?”

“A girl I knew. See, we did a trade. I coached her in English Lit. She coached me in Calc.”

“Sounds like a good deal all around.”

“It was.” She sat back in the booth. “But you’re not a math teacher. Not with that car and condo.”

“No. Well, for a while I was in the Air Force.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I flew planes. Jets.” Her eyes widened. “Fighter jets,” he added, watching her face.

Hell, he was boasting. He knew the effect that bit of news had on women; if their eyes glazed over at the thought of a guy doing math, they positively glowed on hearing a guy was a jet jockey—and wasn’t that pathetic? That he wanted to impress her?

“Did you serve in the war?”

He nodded, all his boasting forgotten.

“Yeah.”

“That must have been hard. Seeing things. Doing things...”

Her voice was low. Her eyes said she understood that flying a fighter jet in battle left a man with memories that weren’t entirely pleasant.

“Yeah. Sometimes, it was.”

“But other times, it must have been wonderful.”

He smiled. It occurred to him that it was a long time since he’d thought about that part of it.

“What’s it like? To soar over the world?”

“Well,” he said...

And he told her.

About the sense of freedom. The joy. About the sight of the earth, far below. About the first time he’d taken the controls from his instructor.

“It wasn’t a fighter jet, it was a crop duster. See, I loved planes, even when I was a kid. And this guy used to work for us—”

“For El Sueño.”

She’d remembered the name of the place he still thought of as home. For some reason, that pleased him.

“Exactly. He taught me to fly, and then I worked like crazy all one summer on another ranch, earning enough money so I could pay for real lessons...” He paused. “I’m talking too much.”

“No. Oh, no! I love hearing about you as a little boy. I can almost picture you, boots, jeans, a cowboy hat—”

Travis laughed.

“Bumps, bruises and dirt. That was me. My brothers, too. Our mom used to say we were the reason Johnson & Johnson made Band-Aids...”

His words trailed away.

He’d told Jennie more about himself in ten minutes than he’d ever told anyone in a lifetime.

“It must be nice to have brothers.”

He cleared his throat.

“Don’t let them hear me admit it,” he said with the kind of grin that made it clear he was joking, “but they’re great guys.”

“Did they go into the Air Force, too?”

“Caleb went into some government agency he can only tell you about if he kills you after.” She laughed; he took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Jake went into the Army. He flew combat helicopters.” His smile tilted. “He was wounded. Badly. And, for a while, he lost his way...” He paused. “I—I guess I kind of lost mine, too.”

His own admission stunned him.

He had never said anything like that, not even to Jake or Caleb...but it was true.

He’d always been into risk: high stakes poker had given him the money to start his investment business, but the risks that came of being part of a war nobody could quite get their heads around had affected him.

Coming home and putting everything on the line—all his considerable winnings, his reputation, his mathematical ability—had been, in some dark, crazed way, a means of taking control of his life.

Risk everything, win everything.

All you had to be sure of was whether or not the risk was worth taking...

“Travis?”

Jennie’s voice was soft.

All at once, he felt as if every risk he’d ever taken had been nothing compared to this...

“Yes.” He cleared his throat, searched blindly for a way to change the subject. “Tell me about you.”

“There’s not a lot to tell,” she said, lying so easily it terrified her. “As I said, I’m from New Hampshire. No brothers, no sisters. Not like you, with all those brothers—”

“Only two. And three sisters. Emily, Lissa and Jaimie. Well, half sisters, but we never think of them like that. Our mother died and our father married again. We lost her, too.”

“It’s hard, losing your parents.” Jennie paused. “Mine died in a car crash when I was eighteen.”

Travis wrapped both her hands in his.

“Leaving you alone?”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Tell me about your father.”

There was more to her story; he was certain of it, but if she needed to change the subject, he’d let her.

“Ah.” Travis waggled his eyebrows. “The old man is a four-star general.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Oh, boy, indeed. You can’t imagine what it’s like, growing up under the eye of somebody who thinks he’s perfect.”

Jennie smiled. “Actually, I can. Well, not exactly. My folks never said they were perfect—but they were. A pair of professors. Dad was a classicist. Mom was a medievalist. Brilliant, both of them. They had me late in life, so they were kind of overprotective.” She sighed. “And when I said I wanted to go into psych and sociology—”

“I bet that went over about as well as when I said I was leaving the military to start my own investment firm.”

“Exactly. I might as well have said I wanted to, I don’t know, to play in a sandbox for the rest of my life.”

“But you’re happy, doing—” he grinned “—doing whatever it is you do.”

Jennie laughed.

“I teach. Well, I will teach...”

Her smile, so lovely and wide, faded. Darkness filled her eyes.

“Honey? What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

“Is it your headache? Is it back?”

“No.” She blinked, smiled, but he could see tears glittering in her eyes. “I’m fine. Really. I’m absolutely fine.”

He moved fast, leaned over the table, all but pulled her into his arms.

“Yes,” he said gruffly, “you are,” and when her tears began spilling down her cheeks, he took out his wallet, tossed a stack of bills on the table and did the only thing a man standing on the edge of a precipice could do.

He took her out of the restaurant, took her home to his place where he held her in his arms and made love to her until the tears she wept were tears of joy.