“You want this? You’re sure?” he asks.

It sounds almost like a warning. I think back to what he said about his name.

And maybe it is a warning. A warning that once we do this, there’s no going back to the way things were before. This is uncharted territory.

But I don’t care.

“Yes,” I hear myself say. “Travis. I need this. I want to forget everything. Please, make me forget for a while. I want to be dominated.”

I didn’t mean to say it — I didn’t mean to say any of it. But it’s true. I want to be erased, taken, ravished. I want him to make me forget my own name. For once, I just want to give myself up to pleasure, and not be afraid of losing control, or being afraid, or hurt. I want it to be like I didn’t leave him all those years ago.

I want to make up for years of wondering what I gave up when I ran away from him.

Travis and I were never really together — not like that. We were headed that way, for sure. But after what happened — after what made me leave town — I was too afraid to let him touch me again. Even Travis, who seemed to actually care about me. He didn’t seem like the other men I knew. Even though part of me believed that being with him would be amazing — perfect, even — a bigger part of me couldn’t handle how crushing it would be if I was wrong.

If Travis turned out to be an animal.

It’s almost too ironic. I ran from the man, and now I’m flinging myself back into the arms of the Beast, with no idea what I’m getting myself into.

But I’m about to find out.

“I’m gonna make you come, baby. I’m gonna make you scream,” Travis rasps against my ear. The tightness in his voice tells me he’s been waiting for it, too. His words make me moan again, the sound ripping from my throat.

“I just…” I gasp, and then words just start to come out of my mouth. “I just want this. So bad. I wanted this so bad, Travis. I’m sorry I…”

“Shhh.” He hushes me with a rough kiss that leaves me breathless and panting. “It’s not about the past. It’s just about now.”

It’s exactly what I need to hear. My body takes over, just like it couldn’t all those years ago. Travis leans into me on the bed, his hard length pressing against my aching center in just the right way. I moan into his mouth as I arch toward him, the delicious pressure and friction making my heart pound. I could come, just like this, I’m sure of it. My core is throbbing, soaking with heat and need.

Travis groans, and then chuckles. “You’re so fuckin’ wet, babe.”

Instantly, I freeze, mortified. I must be soaking through the fabric of my pants. My face flames, and I start to push against him, but he anchors me in place. “That’s not an insult, Brooke,” he growls, staring at me with hooded eyes. “It’s fucking hot. I can’t wait to taste that sweet pussy of yours.”

Oh, God. How can talk that filthy be so embarrassing and so hot at the same time? I feel myself grow even wetter, which I would have thought was impossible. Every nerve ending in my body is singing, practically pleading with Travis to touch me and relive the pressure that’s building inside me like a fire hose.

He raises himself up to his knees and pulls off his cut, tossing it to a chair by the bed. Then as I watch in fascination, he peels off his T-shirt to reveal an intricate curling of tattoos that trace up and down his arms and onto his chest. Most of the designs are black ink, but there’s one on the left side of his chest that makes me stop and gape at it in amazement.

It’s a beast. A dragon, probably. The artwork is beautiful. But the most stunning thing about it is the orange fire that breathes from its mouth.

It’s gorgeous.

In fascination, I reach up and touch the ink. Travis’s skin is hot, the muscles under the tattoo hard. As I run my fingers down his chest, he draws in a sharp breath. I continue, slowly, down the path between his strong abs, toward the top of his jeans. Just beneath the zipper, his cock is pulsing.

I reach forward with my other hand and undo the button with trembling fingers. My mouth is actually watering with the need to taste him. I’ve done that before, to a few men, but I’ve never liked it. But with Travis, I want to. I lift myself up onto my elbow as I start to tug at his zipper.

“You’re gonna have to leave that for another time, babe. Right now, I’ve got other things in mind.”

In an instant, Travis is up off the bed, towering over me. “Take off that suit, Brooke. I want to see you naked and ready for me.”

Feeling self-conscious, but also incredibly turned on, I do as he says. I kneel on the bed and take off my jacket, tossing it to the floor. My silk blouse goes next. Then I slip over to the edge of the bed. Kicking off my shoes, I unzip my pants and wriggle out of them, until I’m standing before him in just my bra and panties.

Travis gives me a long, lingering look and pushes his unbuttoned jeans down to the floor. His cock springs free, thick, hard, and huge. It’s monstrous, the biggest I’ve ever seen. He takes hold of it and begins to stroke, openly admiring the view. He lifts his chin at me, his eyes not leaving my body. “Take off the rest.”

He pumps himself, slowly, as I undo the clasp on my bra and push my panties to the ground. The air is cool against the wetness coating my sex and my upper thighs.

“Touch yourself,” he commands.

I open my mouth to protest. I’ve never done this in front of anyone. For a second, it occurs to me that he’s trying to humiliate me — that he’ll laugh at me, find me ridiculous. But one look at his hungry eyes and my mouth snaps shut again. He wants this. He wants to make me do his bidding. And that’s what I asked him for. I asked him to take control.

So I do as he says.

I reach down with a tentative hand and slide a finger against my slick folds. The touch makes me shiver in spite of myself, and my eyes half-close in pleasure. I want Travis to make me come, but this feels so good I can’t help but stroke myself, softly, my hips involuntarily moving forward in rhythm to meet my hand.

“Fuck,” Travis grunts. He starts to stroke faster. “Pinch your nipples. Do it,” he orders when my eyes dart to his.

I take my right nipple between my thumb and forefinger and roll it. The jolt is intense, a lightning bolt sent straight to my clit. I gasp, loudly, and throw my head back.

“That’s right, baby,” he murmurs. “Just like that.”

“Travis,” I moan. “Please.”

“This is just for me, babe. Your turn is coming soon.”

I force my eyes open and lock my gaze with his. I realize the only way I can get him to give me relief is by pushing him further. Biting my lip, I continue to stroke myself, cocking my hips and rolling them toward him. It’s a provocation.

It works.

With a hiss, Travis abruptly slows the rhythm of his stroking. Sliding my eyes down his body to his cock, I see a bead of precum leaking from his tip.

“That’s good, baby. That’s real good. Now lie down on that bed and spread your legs.”

I’m almost drunk with relief, so much so that I hardly manage to be embarrassed that he wants me in such a vulnerable position. I climb on the bed and lie on my back, spreading my legs like he told me to. My breath is coming in shallow bursts of anticipation. Travis kneels on the mattress, sinking it down, and before I realize what’s happening he’s pushed my legs even further apart and his head is between my thighs.

“Oh, my…” I start to gasp, but my words end in a sharp cry as his mouth finds my clit.

His tongue is hot, insistent. He licks and devours me as I writhe on the bed, already so close I know he could finish me with two or three quick strokes. But he takes his time with me. He slides himself deep inside me, tasting, then draws his tongue out and uses my juices to tease and torment me. I know I’m crying out, begging him, but my mouth has a mind of its own just like my body does. He’s in total control, and we both know it. The jolts of electricity running through me turn into flames. My body arches like I’m being tortured, but it’s the sweetest torture I’ve ever known.

“Travis,” I whisper then, just as a feeling like vertigo over takes me. “Oh, Travis, oh, God…”

The explosion rocks through me, stronger than anything I’ve ever felt, like an earthquake, like the end of the world. I’m crying out, and then he’s inside me, pumping, filling me with heat, stretching me to the breaking point, possessing me, owning me. A blinding light of pleasure and pain consumes me as he pulls me forward, hands on my hips, then withdraws and thrusts deep inside me again, over and over. Then, I’m climbing again, and just as he shouts out my name I start to fall, into the abyss, into the forgetting. There’s nothing but this, but him, but here. Now.

I fall into a dreamless sleep in Travis’s arms. When I wake up, it’s getting dark. The curtains are still open from the daytime. Fading light illuminates the room just enough for me to see that there’s a note lying on the pillow next to me:

Didn’t want to wake you.

No signature, no extra words. It’s somehow reassuring how simple it is. No promises. No excuses.

I almost manage to convince myself I’m not disappointed.

I glance at the clock and see I should probably go and grab some dinner. Pushing away the nagging sense of sadness that I’m alone, I throw on some jeans and a tank top and set out in search of food. I’m not really in the mood to interact with strangers, so I decide to find something I can get as takeout.

I find a Mexican place and order some tacos to go. Then I drive around for a few minutes trying to find someplace to eat it so I don’t have to go back to my hotel room. Eventually, I realize I’m close to Tanner Springs Senior High. I end up devouring the tacos in the parking lot of the upper campus, watching a few kids playing tennis under the street lamps on the aging court adjacent to the school. The kids look so young and innocent as they play. They’re not bad — probably on the tennis team, I figure. These are some of the “good” kids — the ones who don’t live in a mobile home park, and who have stable homes with a mom and a dad who encourage them to join teams and make the honor roll and pay for tutors to help them study for the ACT.

These are not the kids who would have been friends with a kid like me. Or like Travis, for that matter.

When I first saw him riding around our mobile home park on his dirt bike, I assumed he was a golden child who had everything he wanted, and not a care in the world. In reality, he came from a home not that much better than mine. The house he lived in wasn’t much more than a shack, on the opposite end of town from our trailer.

He did have two parents who cared about him, though. And a big sister two years older. His dad worked in a factory the next town over, and his mom worked part-time as a cashier at a dollar store. I knew the family didn’t have much, but Travis didn’t seem to mind. He never complained about it, anyway.

I only found out about all this after Travis and I started spending time together, a couple of months into my junior and his senior year. One day after school, I was hanging around outside one of the side entrances of the school building — not far from where I’m sitting now in my car eating my tacos. I was supposed to go home right after school, but I was trying to avoid it.

Not the home at the trailer park. I didn’t live there anymore.

In a foster home.

Over the summer, my mom had died. It was sudden and unexpected. A tear in one of her arteries from an undiagnosed heart condition.

Through the wall of my grief, it never occurred to me in those first few days what would become of me. My stepfather had left my mother almost a year before, so it had just been the two of us in the trailer. Somehow, I had just assumed that I’d be allowed to keep living there for a while. At seventeen years old, I figured I could take care of myself. I was even told by the lawyer that there was a small insurance policy that would come to me on my eighteenth birthday.

Unfortunately, until then, I was considered a ward of the state. A week after my mom’s death, I was placed in temporary foster care with an older woman who seemed irritated to have me there. Then, right before school started, I moved in with Mr. and Mrs. Bonner.

And living with Mr. Bonner turned out to be even worse than living with my stepfather.

That day after school, I was sitting on a cement planter outside the building, wishing I had somewhere else to go than back to the Bonners’. The side door to the school opened, and out came Travis Carr. It was a thrill to see him, but terrifying at the same time. I sat frozen in place staring at my fingernails, too shy to look up.

“Hey. Brooke, right?”

I forced my eyes upward to meet his, hardly believing he knew my name. If anything, he’d gotten even more handsome over the summer. He could easily pass for twenty, and was more muscular and broad-shouldered than even most of the football players. Next to him, I still felt small and childish. I couldn’t imagine why he was even bothering to say hello to me, when practically any girl in the whole school would have chopped off a limb to go out with him. I just assumed he was being nice to what he saw as a pathetic little kid.

“Yeah,” I nodded reluctantly.

“I’m Travis.”

I almost laughed. Everyone knew who Travis Carr was.

“You waiting for someone? You need a ride?” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the parking lot. “I can take you.”

I can only imagine that I gaped at him in shock. It was beyond any fantasy I’d ever had about Travis — and I’d had a lot of them — that he would just offer to drive me home from school. But he acted like it was a totally normal thing to do. It was absolutely terrifying, and completely thrilling. It felt like I was dreaming.

Except I didn’t want to go home. Not at all. But the prospect of being alone with Travis Carr, as nervous as the thought made me, was too good to pass up.

I mustered up all the courage I could find in my body, and stood up.

“Sure,” I said nonchalantly.

What followed that day, and the days and weeks after that, was something I could never have imagined in a million years.

Travis Carr and I became friends.

He told me about his family. How his parents wanted him to go to college, but they couldn’t afford it and he wasn’t feeling it anyway. I told him about my mom’s death, and that I was living with foster parents. I told him I hated it there, but I didn’t tell him why.

He started picking me up for school a few times a week, when he didn’t have weight lifting in the morning for the wrestling team. If he was ever embarrassed to be seen with me, he never showed it. I finally started to get less nervous and more comfortable around him, even though I still had a huge crush on him.

I told myself he was just treating me like a friend. Like a little sister, almost. In a way, that was comforting. Even though I wanted more — my body wanted more — I was afraid of my own desires. And worse than that, I was afraid of the desires of men.

Maybe Travis sensed that, somehow. Maybe he went slowly on purpose. And for a while, it worked.

But in the end, maybe he went too slowly. Or not slowly enough. I don’t know. All I do know is, by the time we got close, I was too damaged to trust him, or any man.

In the end, I ran, because I couldn’t face Travis anymore. I felt dirty, like I could never be clean. Like he would never be able to love me if he knew.

Today, I know better. At least in theory. I know I’m not dirty. But I am still damaged.

And I’m afraid that finally letting Travis in has opened a door to the past that I’ve been trying to keep locked for years.