Chapter Nine
Travis held Kass’s hand as she led him down the hall to her bedroom. He’d never been in her home before, and he liked the coziness of it. In one way, he felt dazed by the sudden shift going on between them. In another way? It was something he’d wanted with her since he left for the Marine Corps.
“In here,” she said, opening the door, releasing his hand and stepping inside.
Travis liked the room. It held a queen-sized bed with an antique brass headboard and footboard. There was a brightly knitted top over it, all Christmas colors of red and green, mixed with silver ribbons woven throughout it. The floor was made of blond oak and shined, covered by two small rugs on either side of the bed. The rugs depicted Christmas scenes, and he smiled down at her.
“You really celebrate Christmas, don’t you?” He saw her grin.
“I love the holidays. All of them.” Kass gestured to the knit cover over the bed. “I love knitting. Mom taught me when I was twelve and over the years I’ve knitted a top for my bed for every major holiday.”
Nodding, he wanted to simply absorb this room because it seemed to be the most intimate of all of them and spoke loudly of who the inner Kass was. Knowing she had been abandoned at birth, his gaze swept to a small baby rocker in the corner of the room. Squeezed in between the arms were three dolls and several stuffed animals. Did she someday dream of having three children? His intuition said yes. There was so much he didn’t know about her, and he was starving to know everything. This room was a major key to understanding the Kass so few really were privileged to know. He squeezed her hand.
“Your room. It reflects you, doesn’t it?”
She shrugged a little painfully. “I never thought of it in that way, but you’re right, it does.”
“Those dolls in the rocker?”
“Yes?”
“Is that how many kids you’d like to have?”
She smiled a little. “Yes, I think three is just a perfect number.”
“And the rocker? Is that the dream of having one to rock them in?”
“Sure is.” She beamed up at him. “But now? Now I have a real rocker. A beautiful black one, and I just love your gift so much, Travis. You have no idea how much it means to me. It’s as if you picked up on my secret, innermost dream I wanted to come true.”
He pushed the door closed and then rested his hands on her shoulders, looking deeply into her happy gaze. “I’m not good with words like you are, Kass, but I want to take a moment before we love one another to say a few things.” He smoothed the fabric across her shoulders, watching her eyes closely because he needed this time with her. To explain a few things.
“Sure,” she said, resting her hands on his waist.
Drawing in a deep breath, releasing it, he said, “I’m so sorry I’ve caused you so much pain over the years, Kass. I don’t deserve you. I really don’t.” He reached up and pushed a tendril of hair away from her temple. “I love you. I never stopped loving you, although you never knew that. When I went into the Corps at eighteen, I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps. I was only going to stay in for four years and come back to the valley to marry you. But I got into black ops, and my life, what I thought was important, changed.” He grimaced, looked away for a moment and then reconnected with her gaze. “I got really bad PTSD from it. It accumulated over time until I had to get out because it was destroying my ability to be good at what I was doing.”
“And then you came home,” Kass said, saddened by his experiences.
“Yes.”
“And then a month later, I dropped in to see you, to see if there was anything left between us,” she said, her voice low with pain.
“God, that’s what I’m so sorry about, Kass.” He smoothed her hair with his hand, cupping her cheek, his tone raspy. “I wanted so damned desperately to see you, to run into your arms and hide. I was a mess, Kass. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, I was screwed up in my head and my emotions. I wanted to see you, I wanted to find out if there was any love still left between us.”
“But I came at a bad time, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but there was never going to be a good time, either. I was still sorting myself out, finding out who I was, fighting the PTSD symptoms twenty-four hours a day, trying to make a living. It had nothing to do with you. I was so happy to see you, but I was terrified at the same time. I was waking up at night, my hands clenched in fists, swinging in the air around me. How could I put you in bed with me under those circumstances?”
Her lips thinned. “Now I understand. Why weren’t you honest with me, Travis? Why didn’t you tell me that you still loved me? That what we had was still alive between us?”
Drawing in a ragged, pained breath, he said, “Because I was so afraid that I wouldn’t get better, Kass. Everything I’d heard from anyone who had PTSD, it doesn’t get better. It’s always there. I felt terrified over you being in bed with me, having a flashback and striking, maybe killing you. I just couldn’t go there, I just couldn’t . . .” And he gave her a look of apology, his hands tightening on her shoulders.
“You were protecting me from yourself,” she said simply, nodding.
The word came out anguished. “Yes.”
“You didn’t trust me that we could work through it, figure out some way around it, and yet still be together?”
Pain zigzagged through his chest. “At the time, no. Today? Yes, I guess this year home, stabilizing my life, my income, has all helped me, maybe matured me or made me see things differently than when I first got back to the valley.”
She caressed his hand that cupped her cheek. “And if I’d known all this I could have helped you, maybe, Travis. We’ll never know. But we’re at a different juncture with one another now.”
“A better one,” he agreed, leaning over, kissing the top of her hair as he released her cheek. “But you’re the one who has paid the price for it, and for that, I’m forever sorry, Kass. I never meant to hurt you. I really didn’t. But in the end, I hurt you the worst.”
“I’m built tough that way,” she teased lamely, giving him a soft smile. Sliding her hand up across his chest, she added, “I never stopped loving you Travis Grant. Not ever. Men came and went in my life, and none of them stacked up to you. My heart somehow knew that waiting, being patient, it would all sort itself out. And it has.”
“You’ve got incredible vision, then,” he muttered, “because I didn’t.”
“Is that why after the first two years you stopped emailing me and talking to me on Skype from time to time? You were shifted into black ops?”
“Yeah. I can’t say much about it because it’s all top secret, Kass, but I will tell you that I was always in enemy territory. There was no way to reach you. I was being sent out three months at a time to different areas. No phone, no WiFi, no Skype, no nothing. Even my parents were trapped in the same thing you were. When I’d get back to a fire base, I’d manage to email them a short explanation, saying I was all right but that I couldn’t go into what I was doing.”
“I remember that,” she said. “I called your parents after I hadn’t heard from you, when our communications just disappeared. I was worried. They told me you’d been deployed into black ops. At first, I didn’t understand, but your dad explained it to me. I tried to reconcile myself to not hearing from you, but hoping I would. Your dad would call me about every three months and let me know they’d gotten a brief two or three sentence email from you.”
“It was rough on them and rough on you,” he said, sorrow in his tone. “I didn’t even come home for my thirty days’ leave between Afghan deployments. My skills were so badly needed and there weren’t a lot of us Marines who had them, so we were desperately needed over there, Kass. What I did made a difference. Marines came home to their families instead of being overrun, attacked, and killed.”
“And you’re so responsible that way,” she choked, grazing his cheek. “You’re my hero, Travis. I may never know the full story of what you did over there, but I know you’re honorable. And if lives were on the line, I can completely understand that you would do whatever you could to save lives. Just knowing that makes the years I didn’t hear from you less painful for me.”
“And I couldn’t tell you at the time, Kass. God knows, I wanted to tell both you and my parents, but I couldn’t. All I could hope for was that you would find a man who would give you the love and care you deserved. I knew I wasn’t that man, although I continued to carry my love for you every day.”
Tears formed in her eyes. Her voice wobbled. “And yet you continually put yourself out for the other Marines. You saved so many lives. That’s important. It counts, Travis, with me. I don’t like that we were separated for so long, that there was no communication between us, but I can accept why you did it, now. Before? It was just a big, black hole with a huge question mark, and I couldn’t understand why you’d done it.”
“I know.” He drew her into his arms, pressing her gently against him, resting his chin against her hair. “I have so much to make up for with you, Kass. And I’m scared to death of my PTSD symptoms returning. In the past year my flashbacks have reduced a lot. But I’m still fearful of hurting you. Aren’t you?”
She pulled back just enough to meet and hold his worried gaze. “Tell me something. When I was with you those five days in your cabin, did you ever have a flashback? Did you ever wake up punching the air with your fists?”
“No . . . never. And when I got that, Kass, that was when I started realizing that somehow, the magic of you just simply being in my life had short-circuited a lot of those symptoms. I don’t know why. I have no explanation for it.”
“Did they come back in the last three weeks since I left your cabin?”
He gave her a wry look. “I haven’t had one. And that’s unusual. In the year I’ve been home, they gradually reduced to about two a week. But there were none when you were in my cabin, and there’s been none since you left.”
“Maybe I’m your good luck charm, Grant?” she teased gently.
“No question, you are and always will be,” he whispered, kissing her cheek, inhaling her special womanly scent.
“I like being your rabbit’s foot.” She smiled up at him. “Anything else you need to share with me?”
“Not right now. How about you?”
“No. You need to know that I’m not on the pill or anything else. I’m within the ‘safe’ period for not getting pregnant right now. No diseases, either. How about you, Travis?”
“No diseases, either. I wish I had a condom on me, but I don’t, Kass. I can go out and buy some at the drugstore—”
“No. It will be all right as is.” She gave him a warm look and eased out of his embrace, sliding her hand into his. “Come on, come to bed with me. I want to love you.”
* * *
Kass could see the love Travis held for her in his eyes as he slowly undressed her where she stood with him. The late-afternoon light was druzy and almost magical to her as it moved through the sheer pink curtains. There was such concentration in his face, his roughened fingers easing the straps off her opened bra. Her skin prickled with delight as his flesh met hers. She was somewhat worried he wouldn’t find her body acceptable, but she knew that was an old wound of hers and she tried to ignore it, concentrating instead on the burning look in his narrowing eyes as he revealed her breasts for the first time to his gaze. She thought she’d feel worried, but instead, hearing a soft intake of his breath, the pleasure coming to his expression, she knew she was perfect for him.
Without a word, she eased the white T-shirt he wore beneath the shirt she’d already removed upward. His body was lean and hard, his flesh warm and strong beneath her hands as she pulled the T-shirt off him. “Oh, you are sooooo beautiful, Travis,” she whispered, meeting his hungry gaze. She dropped the T-shirt on the bedstand.
“Beautiful is reserved for you, Kass.” He lightly moved his hands from her shoulders, all the way down her arms, and then gathered her hands into his. “You’re the stuff dreams are made of, sweetheart. You’re mine. You always have been, and I’m yours.”
Her heart melted at his ragged, emotional words. It was as if she was in one of her torrid dreams, loving Travis and him loving her. He scooped her up into his arms and laid her gently on top of the bed and then joined her.
Without a word, she helped him take off her slacks and socks, and then it was his turn. In no time, they were naked, staring at one another, and she felt heat scalding her lower body, an ache centered deep within her, wanting him. All of him. He brought her over and they lay side by side, his hand on her hip, looking deeply into her eyes. Kass shouldn’t have been surprised when he asked her what she liked and didn’t like. He wanted to know ahead of time so that he knew how to pleasure her. And she asked the same of him, seeing that slow smile pull up the corners of his mouth, pleased that she was considerate as well. They both had enough experience, understanding that different people didn’t always want the same thing. Knowing what her partner wanted was crucial to Kass.
Her heart blew open, sweeping her into a fierce love for Travis as she asked him to lie on his back and allow her to truly love him, to acquaint herself with him in every possible way, to understand his reactions, what pleasured him the most so that she could give him what he desired. She wanted to touch him, smooth her palms across his dark-haired chest, feel his muscles contract with pleasure and watch him close his eyes, borne on the wings of mounting ecstasy beneath her exploring fingertips. Each groan that rumbled up through his chest sent sizzling and tantalizing surges of heat through her.
Oh! How often had she dreamed of doing just this? Feeling the difference in his skin texture from his broad, capable shoulders to the thinner skin along the sensitive nape of his neck. Sliding her breasts tantalizingly across that powerful chest of his, her nipples hardening, begging to be touched. He couldn’t keep his hands still as she worshipped him with her tongue, her teeth, nipping him here and there, kissing him afterward, listening to the raspy, harsher sounds of enjoyment, heightening her own need of him.
Sliding her hands around his thick, hard thigh and then drawing them downward, she closed her eyes, memorizing Travis as she never had before. The only pain she felt was the number of scars on his body from being in black ops.
As she urged him to turn over onto his belly, she saw swollen, bruised spots on his back, hips, and upper legs that would never go away. Those areas she hesitated, licked with her tongue and then kissed each one of them, wanting to will away the pain he surely felt when it happened. She had never seen a man with so many scars, white and pink, indicating age, and more recent ones that he’d collected as a Marine. Her pride in him, the courage he had, rippled within Kass. This man had gone through hell and survived it somehow. Only when she would lightly trace such a place on his hard body would he instinctively flinch. Kass would then lean down, lick the sensitized area, and then press her lips softly against the brutalized flesh. And then, almost a miracle in itself, she would hear him release a held breath of harsh air and relax beneath her delicate ministrations, as if understanding she was doing it as an act of love. And that love was ultimately healing. Tenderness swept through her as she finished the head-to-toe exploring.
As she rose and came back, he turned onto his back. She settled her leg over his hips and he gripped her hips, guiding her against his erection.
It was her turn to moan as the juices of her body met and surrounded him; the pressure he applied downward on her hips as she slid against him sent her into a keening cry of gratification. He knew exactly how to intimately get a woman’s body anchored and tease her until she orgasmed. And that’s exactly what she did, the explosive pleasure erupting within her, making her cry out, her fingers opening and closing against his chest as he held her in place, continuing to give her the ultimate satisfaction.
Fierce love for him swept through her as she was flung out into a night of stars surrounding her. Faintness rimmed her consciousness. It had been years since she’d experienced an orgasm, and it was so violently intense that it stunned her. Never had she felt such rippling pleasure as he was giving her right now.
Eyes tightly shut, she felt herself spinning and falling. It was only seconds later when Travis guided her body against his like a warm coverlet, her cheek resting on his shoulder. She was shuddering with heat swamping through her until all she could do was gasp for breath, hold on to him, and ride that blazing wave of incredible beauty and satisfaction. She was breathing hard and shallow, her body contracting, the flood of heat tunneling through every cell. Never had she felt such power from her own body. As his arms slipped around her torso, his lips against her temple, her cheek, she turned her face just enough so that her mouth engaged with his.
If there was such a thing as being reborn, Kass was in that moment as their mouths clung hungrily to one another, his arms tightening, holding her against him until she felt herself melting into him and they became one living, breathing human being with no beginning or end. The joy bubbling through her now was infectious and she could feel how much Travis loved her—had always loved her, just as she had always loved him.
And then he entered her, slowly, acquainting her body with him. A new level of celebration began as they joined. Flung into a new, heady level, Kass sat up, hands against his chest, moving in rhythm with him, their breath ragged, their hearts thundering with adoration for one another, culminating in another orgasm and his climax.
Later, she snuggled against him, her brow against his sandpapery jaw, strong, caring arms around her, roughened fingertips stroking her spine, caressing her hips in the aftermath. Even now, her lower body was contracting with memory, and the wavelike effects of the heat continued to flow outward, unabated. The man clearly knew how to love a woman fully and completely.
As she barely forced open her eyelids, the light had changed in the room, early dusk filling it. A sigh of contentment filled her as he continued to stroke her back, worshipping her with small kisses along her hairline, caressing her, letting her know in the warming silence settling around them as they lay together that he loved her more than anything else in his world.
And she loved him.
That was the last barely coherent thought that Kass had because she drifted off into a galaxy of sunlight warming her, rainbows before her closed eyes and the thudding of his heart beneath her palm where it lay upon his chest. Her own heart was thudding in unison with his. They were still one with one another, and she absorbed the moment as never before. One with each other. Finally . . . finally . . .