We were like teenagers discovering orgasms for the very first time. And it was addictive.
“I’m going to have to start doing monthly questionnaires with the astronauts,” she told me one afternoon. We’d barely made it in the door after work before proceeding to rip each other’s clothes off in the living room and fucking right there. Now I was contemplating how famished I was, and she was lying across me on the couch, idly twirling my chest hair in her fingers. “Will that be weird for you? Should I get someone else to do you?”
“You’re the only one I want to do me,” I laughed.
Her hand stilled, and I wondered what I’d said when I replayed how that sounded. My gut tightened instinctively. Normally, I was careful about the language I used with the women I slept with—on the few occasions that we had involved conversations. I always tried very hard and meticulously to keep it casual. Not to give a woman a reason to think it might be anything more than that.
But it was hard with Gray. Our lives overlapped a great deal and—well—for some reason, I kept slipping up here and there like that. Making it sound like this was something that could last.
Maybe it could?
Days later, our astronaut group of four emerged from the flight simulator for the first full simulation. We went through an entire debriefing afterward attended by the astronauts, Tolan Reeves, our CEO, and Adam Drake. Adam had worked on a great deal of the simulation programming design via a virtual reality company he had recently acquired.
We spent hours going over the simulation, examining how it had gone, how it could be improved, discussing possible variations, and imagined catastrophes to test and prepare any astronaut who would be going up in a Phoenix capsule.
“Things are looking great with your ‘romance,’ Ty. I don’t normally follow gossip, but I’ve been paying attention to the coverage. Well done,” Adam said after the meeting as the other astronauts filed out. I’d held back to have a few words with him. Upon hearing this, Kirill’s head jerked around, and he shot me an accusing stare. I puzzled at that and sent him a “What’s up?” look as he jerked his head away and disappeared.
I frowned, wondering if he thought there was actually something going on between Keely and me. Maybe he’d lost his usual cool with this girl and had gotten more attached?
But Kirill played things so close to the vest, who knew what he was thinking? Sometimes I doubted even he knew.
I finished up my chat with Adam and Tolan and left to hit the gym for a workout before the day came to a close. Gray had a meeting with her advising professor at UCLA this evening and wouldn’t be back for hours, so I had some time—and excess energy—to blow off.
The gym was spacious and occupied the majority of the multipurpose rooms in the west wing of the XVenture facility. It was for all employee use, but at this time of day, it was usually deserted. I’d made that delightful discovery almost by accident when I’d come here around this time weeks ago. It had been an excellent way to work off the sexual frustration I’d been building up by hanging around Gray without being able to touch her, despite desperately wanting to.
Thank God those days were over.
All the guys were in the gym when I got there. Apparently, they’d headed straight here after the meeting.
“Well, look who it is. The man of the hour,” Noah called out when I walked in. He was spotting Hammer on the bench press. Kirill was doing pull-ups on the chin-up bar, pumping his arms up fast as if his gym shorts were on fire. He stared fiercely straight ahead and didn’t acknowledge me when I came in. What was up with him? He seemed pissed off and was playing it off with typical cool Russian attitude. But I knew him well enough to know something was bothering him.
I blew it off and went through my own workout, figuring it would come out eventually.
And I was right. It didn’t even take that long.
Afterward, in the showers, the guys had decided to tease Kirill for all the scratch marks down his back. The man seriously looked like he’d gotten in a fight with a wet alley cat. Wolf whistles abounded, and he grinned sheepishly.
“Kirill getting lucky with my fake girlfriend.” I laughed, grinning ruefully. “Way to go. Apparently, she’s a hellcat in bed?”
Kirill’s face clouded. “I’m not only one getting lucky, though. Am I?” His ice-blue eyes clashed with mine, and I frowned, looking away. He knew, clearly, about Gray and me. Either he’d seen something or Keely had or—who knew—girls talked. Maybe Gray had told her.
Apparently, Kirill wasn’t happy. Well, at least he wasn’t hiding it anymore.
I snatched up a towel and wiped my face, hoping he’d keep his mouth shut in front of the guys. But no, apparently that hope was in vain. Noah straight up asked him what he meant.
Kirill jutted his chin at me and said. “Ask him.”
I shook my head and headed out of the showers and into the locker room. Fuck this shit. I was not ready to talk about it. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to trade literal locker room stories about Gray. No fucking way.
Because she meant more to me than that. The thought of it even made me sick to my stomach.
“Is Kirill right?” Noah asked. “Are you getting pussy on the side? Aren’t you afraid the press will discover it and out you as ‘cheating’ on Keely?”
I dropped the towel and proceeded to dress as quickly as I could. I was not doing this.
“It’s worse than that,” Kirill said softly, and I turned, only partially dressed, to stare him down.
“Don’t start this,” I said to him in Russian.
“Worse? What do you mean, worse?” Noah asked.
Kirill shook his head but didn’t take his eyes off mine. I took a deep breath and let it go. Then held the next one. But I didn’t speak as every muscle in my body tensed.
“If you are jeopardizing entire program, don’t you think Noah and Hammer have the right to know before they break ties with NASA or anywhere else?” Kirill’s thick brows rose over his pale blue eyes.
I folded my arms and leaned back against my locker. As I had no shirt on, the cold metal settled against my shoulder blades.
“What’s he talking about, Ty?” Hammer asked from where he sat on the bench in front of his locker.
“Exactly how is my relationship with Gray going to jeopardize the entire program?” I said to Kirill, ignoring Hammer’s question.
“Wait, what?” Noah shut his locker and turned to me. “Relationship? With Gray Barrett? As in, daughter of Conrad Barrett?”
There was a resounding silence between the four of us as his question sank in. Their accusatory stares pinned me down as unspoken allegations bounced off the polished cement floor beneath our feet.
“Are you screwing the billionaire’s daughter?” Hammer asked, clear disbelief on his face. “Have you lost your mind?”
Kirill shook his head. Ripping his eyes from me, he muttered expletives in Russian—things I’d learned from my grandpa when I was five. Bad shit he didn’t normally say out loud.
“I’m not just screwing her. Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”
“But you are screwing her. And it is our fucking business.” Hammer groused. “If her dad finds out, what do you think is going to happen? Our money vanishes.”
“Jesus, Ty.” Noah huffed, turning beet red. “You need to keep it in your goddamn pants for once instead of fucking everything that moves. You’re risking trashing the program for a piece of ass?”
Rage set my skin on fire, tensing every muscle, and I turned to him, staring him down. How fucking dare he? My fists clenched at my sides in clear warning.
And then he took his shitty diatribe and pushed it over the edge. “Really cashing in on that American Hero persona no matter what the cost to the rest of us, huh?”
I leaped off that locker and over the bench to slam Noah against his own locker, my face inches from his. “I said it wasn’t like that. Did I stutter, asshole?”
“Fuck you, Ty,” he gasped as he foug
ht against me pinning him to the cold metal.
I grabbed his T-shirt, twisting it in my hand. Shaking my head at him, I hissed between my teeth, “You’ve been wanting at me for the past year, Noah. Let’s do this now. I’m sick of all the shitty side-eye and the muttered comments. Let’s settle it like men.”
Both Hammer and Kirill were at my shoulders, pulling me off of him. Noah stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Come on,” I shouted as they dragged me back. “We all know you fucking blame me for the accident, so let’s go, goddamnit!”
I shoved against Kirill’s hold, but Hammer yanked me back. I might have been a match for one of them, but not both. Not without bloodying myself up pretty badly.
And Noah wasn’t taking the bait, the fucker. My jaw clenched. I wanted at him. And I wanted it bad. I was sick of all the pussyfooting around.
Once upon a time, he was one of my closest friends.
But since the mission…since I’d gone up in his place, everything had changed. Noah should have been the senior astronaut on that spacewalk. But not long before the launch, he’d developed an abscess in his jaw that had prevented him from going up.
And I’d thought myself a lucky bastard as his backup. I’d have my second mission in less than two years—almost unheard of under normal circumstances. Lucky me.
I always knew that Noah firmly believed that if he had been on that spacewalk with Xander instead of me, things wouldn’t have gone down the way they did. And I would have been sitting in Mission Control in Houston as the CAPCOM instead of him.
Now, his words confirmed that—but for that wretched twist of fate, he’d have saved the day.
I backed off from him, my heart banging in my chest, adrenaline pumping. Noah watched me, wide-eyed.
“We should calm down now,” Kirill said, tightening his grip on my arm as Hammer went to Noah in case he decided to come at me. Apparently, they’d determined that the best solution was to physically separate us as far from each other as possible.
Fine. It wasn’t like I was going to sit down and talk this out with the bastard.
“You’re the one who fucking started this shit,” I growled at Kirill.
I yanked my arm away from his grip and went to my locker, cramming shit in there as quickly as I could.
“We are worried.” Kirill replied. “About this program. About you. This destructive—”
I tensed, but my fury had muted me. I yanked the zipper closed on my gym bag and grabbed my other shit, getting ready to bolt, determined to finished dressing in the bathroom.
“Now that the intervention is over, you all can go fuck yourselves,” I ground out as I left.
I seethed the entire way home. Their mere suggestion that I was sleeping with Gray to get my rocks off was offensive beyond belief—and I tried not to question too closely why that was. The logical side of my mind knew where they were coming from.
But this wasn’t logical. She wasn’t just a lay. She was more. So much more.
I wanted some vodka badly when I got home. And I’d been good. I hadn’t even wanted it. But damn, I almost poured myself a shot. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of her reaction when she got home and smelled it on my breath. Instead, I went for a run in the canyon. By the time she came through the door, I was well and truly exhausted.
Needless to say, I did not socialize much with the guys in the days after that. We were cool and cordial to each other at work. Did what we had to do together, and that was it.
Days later, I had a local gig with Keely—a charity dinner at a fancy hotel in Beverley Hills. I showed up in the tux for the red carpet, the pictures, and the meal, then filed out a side door and went home to where I honestly wanted to be—in Gray’s arms.
Daily, we continued with the flight simulations. I aced every one of them. We processed, discussed, tweaked, and they threw variations at me. Everything was smooth sailing.
And with Gray, my nights sizzled. Smoldered. I couldn’t get enough of her.
Every time I saw her again after being apart, it was thrilling. My heart sped up, my breathing hitched. I hadn’t felt like this since…
I blinked, thinking about it.
I had never felt like this.
I sat on her couch, watching her as she tucked some clothes and personal items into a suitcase for me to take to my house so she wouldn’t have to come here as often to get her stuff. Later, her dad was going to pick her up for their weekly meal together.
“You know,” she said as she dumped yet another pair of jeans and a small stack of T-shirts into the suitcase. “One could argue that you are doing so well now that you don’t need as much ‘babysitting’ anymore. Isn’t that what you were arguing for in May? Maybe we could meet daily at work?”
“Nope. Vetoed. I definitely need closer constant supervision.” Especially in my bedroom.
My eyes had riveted to her fine little ass as she bent. Any other woman and I would have suspected she’d purposely given me that angle for seduction purposes. But not this girl. She didn’t operate like that.
Everything about her said straight shooter. Maybe that was why I’d grown to trust her so quickly. Because frankly, it was shocking even to myself how fast it had happened.
She turned and shot me a wry smile and then went to grab her tablet and a few books to tuck into her luggage.
“Yes, you definitely need to keep coming to my house—I mean, at my house,” I said, my mouth in that cocky grin she had told me drove her nuts.
“I thought I had a rule about that? No sex while I’m under the same roof?”
I laughed, resting my head against the back of the couch and looking at the ceiling. “Ooh boy, we blew that one right up, didn’t we?”
She grinned, walked to the couch, and bent over me to land a kiss on my mouth. “Multiple times.”
“More like exponential times. Or at least, on our way to it.” I winked at her and copped a feel. Her boobs were right there. I never missed an opportunity.
She smiled and straightened, politely removing my hand from her chest. “We are wasting time.”
I smiled. Not a waste of time in my opinion. I half felt like packing up the rest of the apartment and moving it in if it meant she’d stay with me. We hadn’t talked about that yet—that our arrangement had an expiration date to it. The test flight was still a couple months off, and we were deep in the middle of summer. But when fall came, what then?
I still didn’t know. The only thing I did know was that I wasn’t ready for this to end. And I didn’t think I’d be ready in two months either. Of course, we had yet to pin down and declare exactly what this was.
I swore I’d do anything I could to avoid breaking her heart.
And with the tightness that blossomed in my chest, I wondered if it was her heart I needed to be the most worried about. As she settled on the couch beside me and leaned in, her strawberry and mint smell enveloping me, I blinked, wondering.
Because inadvertently, I’d been relying on her. So where would I be when she was no longer there?
If, Ryan. If she was no longer there.
I blew out a breath. Fuck.
Of course, she sensed the change in my mood immediately. “What’s wrong? You want to come along for dinner that badly?” she joked. “I know you’re Conrad Barrett’s number one fan.”
I laughed. “More like the other way around. I wasn’t the one roasting him over the coals in that investment meeting.”
She reached up and sifted her fingers through my hair. “Oh, you can take some good ol’ boy prodding from my dad any day of the week. He’s all bark and no bite.”
I hooked my arm around her waist and pulled her into my lap, facing me, so that she straddled my lap.
“So I guess he wouldn’t be much of a fan of this, would he?”
She paused, and her eyes roamed my face as she shifted, getting comfortable on my lap. Her weight added pleasant pressure through my jeans as she settled against the budding bulge
of my erection. In response, I grew harder and half of her mouth quirked up in a knowing smile.
“I haven’t said anything to him, if that’s what you’re asking. And the main reason is that, well, we don’t know what this is.”
I nodded but didn’t otherwise respond.
“Do we?” she asked quietly, and I lifted my head to meet her gaze.
My mouth twitched as I watched her, all pretty and innocent. She’d never done this before and neither had I, and we were stumbling around what should be an important conversation. An inelegant dance where we approached, then shied away.
Like we were constantly falling. Like gravity.
The force that not only drew us nearer and nearer to each other but kept us in each other’s orbit, constantly circling without getting closer.
And an object in orbit around a larger body was in a constant state of free fall. And this…this felt like free fall too.
My arms tightened around her hips. Dare I tell her that? That this felt like the beginning of something more? That it was so different from anything that had come before.
And dare I voice that now? And dare I think she’d want to be in my orbit?
My head was still a little too fucked up to think about starting something like this now. It was too precious, too new, too bright for me. I was still looking out at it from the darkness.
I swallowed.
“We’re having fun, right?” I deflected.
An unsure smile crept onto her mouth, causing a dimple to show above her chin. “Yeah,” she breathed.
“Come here,” I said. With a hand pressing her on the back, I brought her to me, our mouths connecting in a steamy kiss. Her mouth opened, and her tongue slipped confidently into mine. If I wasn’t fully aroused before, then I certainly was now, especially when her arms came around my neck and her chest pressed against me. Her nipples tightened under her tank top, driving me insane as they rubbed me through my shirt. A second later, my hand was under the thin material, toying with the tight bud as she sighed against my mouth.
High Risk (Point of No Return Book 1) Page 29