LITMIR.BIZ

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there. There’s a rattle in the heating vent or something.”

      “Sure there is.”

      He always had an excuse for turning up. Ty was a terrible sleeper, practically an insomniac, but Kate didn’t fully understand her own role in these predictable intrusions. Experience had taught her that Ty was useless at any activity that required him to remain still for longer than thirty seconds, but why keeping her awake seemed to cure his sleeping disorder remained an inconvenient mystery.

      He groaned happily, settling in. That sound… It brought back memories Kate could have done without. It had been two years now since she’d accidentally walked in on him having sex with his then-girlfriend, but the pImages** of it were clear as day. Blissfully, Ty was still none the wiser.

      Back in L.A., Ty lived in an apartment Kate had found for him after the first season wrapped, one far more to her taste than his. She suspected he’d be happy in some craphole studio by the freeway, but she’d snagged him what she felt an up-and-coming TV personality should have. He’d hated the wall-to-wall carpeting on sight, but to this day Kate said a little thank-you prayer whenever she laid eyes on it.

      She’d had keys to his place and had gotten in the habit of coming by unannounced to go over rough cuts of the show or to drop off papers for him. She’d since gotten out of this habit.

      When she came by that traumatic evening she’d let herself in as usual and followed the sounds of the television to Ty’s living room, just as she’d done a dozen times before. The hall light had been off and the maligned carpeting hadn’t given away her footsteps, so by the time she reached the threshold she’d given the two preoccupied bodies on the couch no reason to halt their happy activities. For a half a minute Kate had stood there, frozen.

      From across the room she’d watched the long expanse of Ty’s bare back, elegant muscles writhing, his sculpted ass and hips pumping hard, flanked on either side by two svelte, female legs. Kate had smelled it, too, that raw, hot, sex smell. She’d heard Ty over the murmur of the TV, his animal moans and grunts blending with the woman’s. Kate had slunk back out of the apartment unnoticed. Her blood ran hot at the memory, the sight of another woman’s hands on Ty’s bare body.

      He spoke, snapping Kate from her trance. “What are you thinking about?”

      She blinked, felt a blush warm her face and thanked God it was dark. “Do you remember Angie?”

      “Of course. I dated her for almost a month. That’s like a record.”

      “I was thinking about her,” Kate said, casual. Thinking about her freakishly long legs wrapped around your waist. “I don’t get why you two broke up. She was like the female equivalent of you.”

      “That should be your reason, right there.”

      “She seemed nice enough,” Kate offered, feeling him out.

      “She was lovely,” he confirmed. “I think she’s a hosiery model now. Bit of a waste…she was a smart one, dating choices aside.”

      Kate had been out to dinner with the pair of them a few times and was always left feeling like Ty’s kid sister. If a tigress like Angie couldn’t keep Ty occupied then a comparable mouse like Kate was dead in the water. Not that she was looking to, of course. Definitely not.

      “But Angie was odd, too,” Ty offered, making Kate’s dangerous train of thought jump its tracks. “She had that daft little yappy dog. And she paid to have her eyelashes dyed. What is it with L.A. women?” He yawned and settled them on a channel rebroadcasting a trashy talk show. Folding his arms under his chin, Ty got comfortable, setting the remote by Kate’s leg.

      “You’ve only got about forty minutes before we need to be up and presentable,” she reminded him.

      “I’ll take it.”

      Kate offered another sigh, long and melodramatic. “You’re so weird.”

      Ty could usually manage about three or four hours on his own during these trips before he crawled into Kate’s bed, demanding distraction or soothing. He transformed into a different man at night. Restless and moody and needy, so different from his on-camera self, that picture of confidence and charisma. Kate read in his body what he needed from her. She circled her palm between his shoulder blades.

      “Mmm…”

      “Yeah, yeah.” She pretended to be watching the TV, but as always, her mind wandered to Ty. She’d been without sex for a while—months now—and ignoring the firm contours of this happily moaning man’s warm back was an impossibility. Especially when she’d already seen what they could do.

      “That feels so bloody good,” he groaned.

      Kate heard in his voice that he was already poised to drop off to sleep. Beneath her palm, his muscles released the tension they’d arrived with. Kate siphoned away his restlessness and let herself get lost in idle thoughts.

      This body was a ratings booster, no doubt about it, and Kate knew it intimately, almost every inch. Knowing it came with her job description as Woman Friday—someone to check skin for ticks, thorns, signs of illness, to disinfect cuts. Someone to pop dislocated joints back into place. Tend to fevers. To provide company in places so remote it drove a person mad just trying to comprehend it.

      Her hand continued to circle its familiar, if borrowed, territory.

      “Ty? Are you awake?”

      He snored softly, as if in response.

      “I don’t know why we bother getting separate rooms,” Kate said, knowing he wasn’t listening. “It’s a waste of money. We should just book a double. Or get adjoining rooms. Then at least you wouldn’t have to wake me up every damn night. You could just waltz on in and commandeer my bed like you always do.”

      Kate had a fantasy about these motel incidents, about Ty slipping in while she was asleep and rousing her as he slid under the covers beside her. She imagined his long body pressing into the length of hers, his mouth finding hers in the dark, as familiar and easy as their rapport. Her palms would race down his shoulders and back, over his hips, his ass, taking in all the shapes of him. She imagined slipping her hands inside his underwear, just as he rolled on top of her, his intention and his need unmistakable. Kate lived for feeling needed, and the idea set her body on fire. She imagined his sounds, as well, the same as the ones he made when he took his boots off at the end of a long stretch of hiking or ate a restaurant meal after three days with barely anything in his stomach. That’s how he’d sound when she wrapped her fingers around him, or her lips, or as he slid into her. Beautiful.

      The motions of her hand on Ty’s back and her wayward thoughts hypnotized Kate, and she almost screamed with shock when the bedside alarm clock began to buzz. She fumbled before managing to switch off the screeching device, then prodded Ty back to lucidity. Oddly enough, once he’d fallen asleep in her bed, even that industrial-strength siren couldn’t reliably rouse him.

      He groaned. “That was not forty minutes.”

      “No, that was forty-three minutes. Come on.” She poked his butt with her finger. “Time to get up.” She abandoned him to head to the shower.

      TY TURNED OVER AFTER the bathroom door clicked shut. He stared up at the texture of the cheap ceiling plaster, illuminated in rainbow fits and starts by the droning television. Kate’s water turned on and he heard her almighty yawn. There was a cold patch of skin on his back where her hand had been.

      He thought back to the stupid conversation they’d had in the bar, about what they were to each other, everything but lovers. What he felt for Kate went far beyond familiarity and trust and partnership, beyond sexual attraction, too. It was wrapped up in how he felt around her. Calm, but alive. After growing up in the suffocating vacuum left in the wake of his sister’s death, Ty had emerged into adulthood starved for human energy. He’d found it in dozens of half-assed relationships with animated but hollow women—women who appeared dynamic but were really just terrified of being alone. But Kate…her energy ran deep. She was

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