I’ve heard that males—even ones as sexually voracious as Travis—need some down time between climaxes, and after we’ve lain in bed together for a time, he recovers from the blowjob I gave him in the library. Then, bringing my leg over his hip, he lazily fills me, then fucks me thrust by sweet thrust. Deep inside my core, I climb higher and higher once again. I’m suspended above the clouds, above everything until I seem to swoop down, through the haze, diving into oblivion until I hit a sheet of glass and it shatters into a million pieces.

My latest orgasm brings me to yet another afterglow with Travis still in my bed, both of us in no hurry to go anywhere.

He’s playing with my hair as we face one another in the moonlit night. The surface of my skin is warm and sensitive, as if I’ve come in from hours of lying in the sunlight with no clothes on my body. I’m bare to him, all his once again.

I work up the courage to brush my fingertips over his firm chin, feeling a hint of stubble. There’s a slight burn on my cheeks from where he kissed me, a sexy, hot layer of friction on my inner thighs, too. When I bring my fingers to his lips, he sucks one of them in, then lightly bites it.

I laugh, pulling out of him. He laughs quietly, too. Then he hauls me to him as he rolls to his back. I relax with my head on his hard chest, one of my hands resting on his flat, toned stomach.

This has to be a fantasy, I think. But he still seems in no hurry to ruin it by leaving.

He doesn’t even make a move when his phone sounds off from his pile of clothing on the floor.

“You…don’t need to get that?” I ask warily.

“It’s just an update from my security team. I recognize their ringtone, and it’s time for them to check in anyway.”

“In the dead of night?”

“I don’t keep normal hours.”

But I already knew that. Travis isn’t like anyone I’ve ever met before times a thousand.

He curls a strand of my hair around his finger. “I asked for an update at this hour, and they’re right on schedule.”

“Update on what?”

I know I’m pushing it by asking him, but I want to hear about his life, his business.

“There’ve been a series of robberies,” he finally says. “And they involve my various jewelry stores all around the world.”

A muffled sense of shock has me holding my tongue. He’s actually going to trust me enough to talk to me like a real person, a real girlfriend.

I remind myself that I’m not anything but a safe business transaction to him, but it’s hard not to want more. Hard not to feel more in this moment of intimacy.

He goes on, his tone dry. “It seems my business is being targeted by some sort of criminal operation.”

“Why would they target your business?”

“My stores make the most money, so I’ve clearly attracted the best of the best even when it comes to criminals, and believe me, these assholes are good at covering their tracks. Hence the updates from my security team.” He strokes the curve of my bottom. “Needless to say, I’ve been under a tremendous amount of stress, and that’s why I’ve been somewhat distracted lately.”

My leg is still nestled between the two of his, and I push my body up so that I’m balanced on my forearm, looking down at him in the moonlight. My hair spills down to brush over his shoulder as he gazes up at me. Some kind of understanding flows between us, testing that connection that’s sometimes there, sometimes not.

It holds us together now, at least.

“I understand that your business has to come before pleasure,” I say.

He only keeps looking at me, and emotion rises in my chest. Before I can stop my next words, they tumble out.

“But if anyone can catch these assholes, it’s you, Travis.”

His smile is wry. “Your faith in me is sweet,” he says.

“I’m serious.” I slip my foot up between his knees, sliding my pussy against his hip without thinking about it. “You’re a superhero, remember?”

The man who came to my rescue today. A man who obviously doesn’t have even an inkling of how much that means to me and will always mean.

I see heat in his gaze, and, instinctively, I rub my pussy against him again. My clit responds to the friction, and I start to go damp.

“I’m going to do better with you,” he whispers in a throttled tone. “I’m going to be here as much as I possibly fucking can.”

Slowly, he runs his hand up my hip, over my waist, until he cups my breast. He arouses my nipple with his thumb, and I can see past the burning need in his gaze to something lost inside of him. Something I’m sure no one has ever discovered in Travis because he never reveals it.

He pulls me onto him, and I gasp as I straddle his body. As he clasps my hips, he moves me up and down his belly, my juices sliding over his skin. I feel his cock getting hard in back of me, and soon he lifts me up, impaling me and making me cry out.

Then he fucks me senseless once again, and as the world closes in around me only to blow itself up one more time, it’s easy to forget there’s another world waiting right outside of this bed.

* * *

The next morning, the sunlight that’s streaming through the window makes me blink awake. Outside, the tall buildings remind me that I’m not in little Harrisburg anymore, and I stretch my arms over my head. My muscles groan, remembering what Travis did to them—and me—last night and well into the morning. A dull, wonderful ache between my legs is like a sensual souvenir.

Then I reach to his side of the bed only to find it empty.

Loneliness turns me inside out, but then I look to the doorway to see him standing there, and my world is suddenly right again.

His black hair is tousled, his dark green eyes holding that devilish glint I’ve seen in him more often lately, especially last night. His cut torso is bare, and the waistband of his sweat pants rides low on his hips. There’s an electronic tablet tucked under one of his arms, even though he’s holding a large silver tray filled with food. I inch up in bed, pulling the sheets to my chest as I sit.

“Morning,” I say.

“It’s about time you’re up. You must’ve done something to wear you out last night.”

A blush doesn’t even begin to describe the heat that blazes over my skin.

He walks to the side of the bed then slides the tray beside me on the huge mattress. “You wrote on the website that you like a light breakfast.”

“I’ve had yogurt from the fridge every morning this week, so you evidently knew that already.”

“It’s time for a change of pace. Today I fried some eggs and made some toast. Something different.”

Just like last night, I think.

His thoughtful gesture grips me in the chest, squeezing my heart. “Thank you, Travis.”

I look down to also find two glasses of orange juice along with the two plates of eggs. He’s going to join me for breakfast?

As my pulse careens, the aroma of the food makes me realize that I really am starving. I guess last night did wear me out.

He watches me as I butter a slice of toast.

“So you cooked all this?” I ask.

He nods.

“Isn’t your chef here?” I ask.

“I employ him for my main residence and for travel.”

“So you’re the one who cooks when you’re not at home or jet setting?”

“I cook only on rare occasions these days. But when I was in my early twenties and working my way up, I made myself useful in the kitchen because I couldn’t afford to dine out or have someone make meals for me.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Cook also knows how to keep me healthy because I don’t have time to think about what I eat.”

I remember the not-so-faraway day when his gaze got cloudy as he told me that he didn’t expect his girls to cook him anything, as if that would mean some sort of attachment. So what does it mean that he put together a meal for me?

Is it in fact meaningless?

As I glance at him, I decide he probably meant nothing by it. Actually, I’m pretty sure of that because last night he was all heat and fire, but this morning he’s cooled off a bit. He’s not cold, but I sense that he’s got those walls up in my presence again, even if he’s in a good mood.

Maybe it was a fluke that those barriers came down with you last night, I think.

He takes his tablet out from under his arm then sits on the other side of the bed, stretching out his long legs and swiping across the screen with his fingers. He grabs his glass of juice then nods toward the tray, where my phone sits unnoticed by me.

“Thought you might want that,” he says. “It was vibrating with an incoming text.”

Yes, he’s definitely not as open as he was last night, but he’s here, and that makes me happy for now. I’ll be around for only about another week, and that’s enough time for me to just enjoy learning everything he has to teach me for as long as I can.

For the time being I allow my gaze to linger on his muscular arms, then that solid, naked chest that I felt against my bare breasts last night. God, he felt so good…

At the thought of not seeing that torso again, an empty feeling sits in the middle of my stomach, even if I try to fill it with the food. I chase the hollowness away by grabbing my phone from the tray as Travis reads his tablet screen. Then I check my texts.

There’s a message from my mom.

When I’m done reading it, I hold the phone to my chest and laugh in pure relief and joy. Travis looks over to see the tears in my eyes, and he momentarily seems disturbed by that. Then I laugh harder and he relaxes, expressionless.

“It’s my mom,” I say. “She says ‘someone’—that’s you—deposited five thousand dollars into her bank account. The money gave her enough courage to admit what’s been going on to my Aunt Dana, and that my aunt wants Mom and Tate to stay with her for now.” I beam at Travis. “Aunt Dana just started dating a cop.”

The corner of Travis’s mouth twitches upward, into something that almost resembles a smile. “A lucky coincidence,” he says.

“And,” I say, “Mom and my brother are going to leave Gary tonight. Oh, I wish I could be a fly on the wall to see his expression. I hope he cries like a baby after he realizes what’s happened.”

“You and your mother and brother deserve much better than him.” Travis’s smile is gone and he sounds matter of fact, but I think there’s something riding under his comment—happiness for me?

Does he actually care?

I touch his arm. “We have you to thank.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was something.” I squeeze him. “It was everything.”

For a second, I think that he’s going to smile at me, just as he would’ve last night in Times Square. But he merely nods and gets up from the bed, tucking his tablet under his arm then carrying his plate and juice with him.

“Conference call,” he says.

Oh. But of course. This latest verse is as the same as the first, with him leaving me once again. Even after yesterday, when I thought something had shifted between us, our arrangement stands.

At least, that’s what I think until I go to take my small plate of fried eggs from the tray. On the silver surface is a folded piece of creamy stationary paper, and after I open it, I see the writing on it.

Be ready at eleven and dress casual.

That’s all it says, and I press the note to my chest, thinking that there’s more meaning between the lines on this paper than Travis will ever let me see in him.