Love Is In the Air Volume 1

by Susan Stoker

  I look around. “First of all, who’s this ‘we’ you speak of, and second, what’s wrong with breaking a few rules?”

  “Is that how you ended up here in the ‘family’ bathroom?” he asks.

  I put my deck of cards down and look at him. “I had to go and the line for the women’s room was long. And that’s saying something for the women’s room.” I pause. “Wait a minute. Why are you here in the ‘family’ bathroom?”

  I detect the slightest blush on his cheeks. “I…” He trails off and clears his throat. I give him a pointed look. “Fine, I wanted to freshen up before the flight in case I didn’t have time in Miami. And to be fair, the men’s line was equally ridiculous. I saw some woman walking this way and realized there was a family bathroom here. But then she was chasing after some kid as I made my way over here. I almost fell over trying to get out of the way and I knocked into some old lady, who dropped her bag. I couldn’t leave her to pick up all the stuff that fell out of it. So, I had to take care of that. I opened the door and…well, you know what happened after that.”

  “OK, so we are equally guilty, maybe me less, because I actually had to pee,” I state.

  He shrugs. “I guess so.”

  I look back at the cards. “We should make this a game.”

  His squinting eyes tell me that he doesn’t understand. “This is a game.”

  “Oh, uh, I mean make it truth or dare or something. Like you miss and you have to answer a question,” I explain.

  “Alright. I mean, I’d suggest shots but unless you have a bottle of tequila in there with that vibrator, I guess we’ll have to stick with good old truth or dare,” he says, motioning to my bag and making me blush. “So, since you missed, will it be truth or dare?” he adds.

  I look around the bathroom and decide the truth is the better option. “Truth.”

  “If the ‘mile high club’ was on your list, then I would gather that you’ve had some pretty adventurous sex. Where’s the craziest place you’ve done it?”

  I bite my lip and debate whether I should lie to him. “I….” I trail off before deciding to just tell him. “Truthfully, I’ve only done it in a shower and a bed, oh, and once on a sofa. I guess that’s why the ‘mile high club’ seemed so awesome because it was…different and exciting…and a little scary.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed that answer.”

  I shrug as he picks up a card and flings it toward the book. It lands right on top.

  I glare at him. “Am I getting played? Is this some party trick you do all the time?”

  He laughs and holds his hands up. “I swear, I don’t play this a lot. Maybe once in a while with my niece.”

  I roll my eyes. “Uh-huh.” I grab a card and fling it. It lands two inches shy of the book. “Damn.”

  I look over at him. “Dare.”

  I can tell from his smirk that he’s already thought of one, and damn it if I don’t hate it before he even opens his mouth. “Use the vibrator,” he says. My eyebrows nearly hit my hairline. “Until you come.”

  “What?” I yell. “No way.”

  “Chicken?” he says.

  “Well, first of all, it fell on the floor, so I’m not putting that anywhere near my lady parts. And second, no way, I’m not masturbating in front of you. You’re a stranger,” I scoff.

  He grins and opens his bag, handing me a small bag of hand wipes. “Problem one is solved. And as for problem two…well, you know my name, my job, that I’m an uncle, and you just admitted you like the idea of doing exciting and slightly scary things. And besides, you just told me you were actually contemplating sex with a stranger in an airplane bathroom.”

  “That’s different because my friend knows those guys. And nope. Not happening. I can’t believe you’d ask me to do that,” I say, glaring at him.

  “Fine. But I thought it was a great dare, for the record. And I’m sorry if I offended you, I promise that was not my intention. I guess go read a sex scene out loud from your book,” he says. I give him a look. He grins again, and I roll my eyes as I grab the book.

  After reciting the shortest of the sex scenes that I can find, I toss the book on the ground and go back to sitting near the door. I won’t lie. My lady parts responded to that sex scene and Blake now has a hand over his crotch, so I imagine he enjoyed the book just as much as I did.

  Blake tosses a card, and it lands on the book before sliding off. I smirk.

  “Truth,” he says.

  “How long were you engaged?” I ask.

  “Two years. We would have married next month,” he states.

  “That’s a long engagement.”

  “I suppose so, although now it seems clear that she just didn’t want to marry me.”

  “What do you think really made her change her mind?” I ask, truly curious.

  “I don’t know. I was busy with work and probably not giving her much attention. Honestly, in hindsight, she was really more into people with lots of money. I never stood a chance. I was blind to have not seen it coming.”

  I don’t know what prompts me to do it, but I reach over and squeeze his arm. And damn, his arm is well-muscled. “I’m sorry.”

  Shrugging, he motions for me to toss a card. I do and it lands right on the book. Squealing, I jump up and do a victory dance.

  He laughs and tosses a card. It lands again on the book.

  “You really are good at this,” I state.

  Blake

  “Like I said, I have lots of practice.”

  “How old is your niece?” she asks.

  “Ten.”

  “That’s nice,” she replies as she tosses her card, and it lands to the side of the book. “Truth.”

  “How would you have chosen which groomsman got to be the lucky ‘mile high club’ volunteer?” I ask.

  She grins. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I was going to sit by both and decide later.”

  “What if they both qualified?”

  Laughing, she looks over at me. “I guess I could flip a coin. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I would have chickened out. Who knows?”

  “After all that, you would chicken out?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Maybe not, if I had a few drinks.”

  “So, you’re a lightweight.”

  “No!” she replies with a raised voice. “I just…sometimes I loosen up with a glass or two or five.” She giggles.

  “So, then, what’s with the vibrator? I mean, if you were going to have sex, why bring that?” I motion to her bag.

  “I guess…it’s my backup plan. I mean, what if I didn’t score with a guy and then I’m reading my romance books and watching my friend and her groom all lovey-dovey and I have no one and nothing. At least with Peter, I have something to help me forget my current singleness.”

  “Peter?” I ask, my brows furrowing.

  The darkening shade of pink on Molly’s face says it all.

  “You named your vibrator Peter?”

  She buries her head in her hands and nods. “I also have Richard, but he’s at home.”

  I can’t control the laughter rumbling in my chest. “You named your vibrators Peter and Richard?”

  I can’t stop laughing.

  She peeks out from between her fingers. “I can’t believe I just told you that,” she whispers.

  I pull her hands away from her face and my finger grazes her cheek. It’s soft and warm. Her skin is smooth and inviting. I quickly pull my hand back.

  “You know what?”

  “What?” she asks.

  “I haven’t had this much fun…or honesty, with a woman in a very long time. I’m maybe sort of glad to have gotten stuck in here with you,” I admit. “Not happy about missing my flight, but geez, can you imagine getting stuck in here with some of the other people that had been in line for the bathrooms?” I say.

  Her grin morphs into a full laugh. “The old lady in front of me was attempting to strike up a conversation before I beeli
ned over here. She had a giant bag that said ‘Crocheting Cat Sweaters Festival.’ I wasn’t about to get drawn into a conversation with someone whose hobby involves making sweaters for cats. I mean, to each their own, I just wasn’t prepared for that conversation. That could have made for an awkward several hours.”

  “Not as bad as the man in front of me that was releasing enough methane to power a small city,” I state with a shudder.

  “Ew.”

  “You’re telling me. It may have contributed to my idea to come over here,” I admit. I toss another card and the game continues for a while. I learn that she has an older brother who isn’t married. I tell her about my sister and my niece. We both talk about places we’ve been and want to go.

  An hour passes quickly as I get to know Molly. She’s a very interesting woman. I learn that she does marketing for the zoo and once had to hold a baby crocodile for a photoshoot.

  “Maybe we should think of something else to do?” I say as the last card is tossed and lands on the book.

  She adjusts herself on the floor. “Like what?”

  I look around in my bag and remember that I had a board game app on my phone. I set it between us, and we begin to play.

  After one round of the game, she squirms again.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  She blushes. “I need to pee.”

  Well, this ought to be interesting.

  4

  Molly

  “OK,” he says, motioning to the toilet.

  “I’ll wait. It’s OK,” I say, cursing to myself for finishing the entire bottle of water.

  “Well, you’re in luck because we’re in a bathroom, so you don’t have to wait.”

  “But…you are in here,” I point out as I motion around us.

  He sighs. “I’ll turn around.”

  “And plug your ears,” I command.

  He covers his ears and turns around. I turn on the sink faucet just to make sure he can’t hear me.

  “Is that really necessary? Everyone pees.”

  “I can’t go if you can hear me,” I say as I unzip my skirt and place a wad of toilet paper down on the toilet because hovering right now seems even weirder with Blake in here.

  I sit for a minute but I’m still too nervous to pee. “Uh, can you turn on some music or something on your phone?”

  “Molly, I can’t hear anything.”

  “Please, I can’t go,” I plead.

  Groaning, he whips his phone out of his pocket and turns on “The Rain” by Missy Elliott. I giggle at his song choice. I can practically see his smirk even though he’s facing away from me. I finish peeing and wash up.

  “OK, you can turn around,” I say once I finish.

  He turns off the song and swivels to face me. “All better?” he asks.

  I nod and sit back down. “Now what?”

  He looks around. “This is gonna sound strange, but maybe I could show you my presentation? I mean, if I get the chance to reschedule, I’d love to have someone else look at it.”

  “No one else has looked at it?” I ask.

  Shaking his head, he stands up and pulls a computer out of his bag. “Do you mind?”

  “No. I mean, what else do I have to do?” I lean back against the wall as he looks around and then eyeing the changing table, he goes to pull it open.

  The next few seconds unfurl like a bad movie in slow motion. As the table comes down, a diaper that must have been caught in it goes flying toward him. I hear his long, low-pitched, “Nooooo,” as he holds up his hands but it’s to no avail as the open diaper hits him in the chest.

  He looks down in mortification and gags.

  “Quick, take it off,” I say to him. I want to tell him he’s lucky it’s pee and not poo. Having nannied my way through college, dirty diapers don’t even make me bat an eyelash. He starts unbuttoning his shirt and rips it off, handing it to me. He groans as he sees a wet spot on his white undershirt and removes that too. And that’s when I stop moving.

  Blake Bennett is a fucking supermodel. What in the actual fuck? The man is either on steroids or he spends at least two hours in the gym every day while eating a diet of chicken breasts and spinach because holy mother of pearl he is ripped. Pectoral muscles flex in slow motion. Abdominals…one, two, three…yep, definitely six, practically create a washboard on his torso. I think somewhere I hear angels singing and a light may be shining down on him with some sort of wind machine blowing his short locks like a bad music video.

  “Molly?” he says. I’m fairly certain that this is not the first time he’s said my name because now he’s also waving his hand in front of my face.

  Shaking my head, I turn to the sink and pump an insane amount of soap on the shirt as I begin to run hot water over it.

  “Grab the little pink bag inside my purse,” I tell him.

  He reaches in and I can tell he grabbed my vibrator because he blushes before pulling out the pink bag. I really need to find a better case for that thing.

  “Inside it, there’s a small packet with a travel pack of laundry detergent,” I state.

  He opens it and hands me the packet. I motion to the fact that I’m elbow-deep in the sink with his dirty shirt which I hold out for him to dump detergent on. He does, and I start cleaning both his shirt and undershirt. Five minutes later, they are hanging over the hand dryer which we take turns turning on to help them dry faster.

  “I’ll keep doing this. You give me your presentation,” I state after a few minutes.

  “Really?”

  I nod and motion toward his laptop.

  He turns it on and starts his presentation. I admit I might be using it as an excuse to ogle him some more. Each time he raises his hands to make a point, his pectoral muscles tense and it does things to my lady bits. His flexing abs are an entirely different level of distraction. But it’s his biceps that are doing me in as he speaks. The man talks with his hands and those biceps are in constant flexing motion. I try to say a lot of “uh-huhs” and “really” and “that’s interesting.” But honestly, I’m more focused on his physique. Hell, if I’d known that was the scenario, I might have taken him up on his obnoxious middle schooler dare.

  Why didn’t I? He raised a valid point about me being willing to have sex with essentially a stranger on a flight. And why would I want to do that? All of my brazenness from earlier is quickly wearing off as he continues.

  He finishes and looks over at me. “So?”

  “It’s good. Can I give you some pointers on the slides?” I state because the few I saw were total shit. I mean, he’s clearly passionate about his product but the visuals are not quite what they should be.

  He hands me the laptop, and I begin to mess around with the presentation.

  “Do you have any photos of family on here?” I ask him.

  He nods and opens his photos. I pull a few of older family members and a young girl, I assume his niece.

  “There,” I say. “Voilà.”

  “Wow, that looks great. Thanks. You’re really good at this,” he says as he flips through the slides.

  I shrug. “I do this every day. Marketing, remember?”

  “Well, you have talent.”

  “It’s no big deal,” I assure him. Sadly, I realize his shirt that’s hanging in the hand dryer is now in fact dry. I reach out and hand both the shirt and undershirt back to him. I watch as the amazing torso of this man who is clearly a sculpted Greek god disappears beneath his undershirt.

  I sort of wished I had soda and could accidentally spill it all over him, so he’d be forced to remove that shirt again.

  He sits back down and looks over at me. “Now what?” he asks.

  I open my bag and rifle around. I come up empty-handed. “I got nothing.”

  I reach for my phone and see that almost three hours have passed.

  “Wow, time is going faster than I thought it would,” he confesses as he looks over at me.

  His knee moves and the empty plastic bottle on th
e floor between us spins in a circle as his leg hits it. We both look up at each other.

  He raises an eyebrow, and I grin.

  5

  Blake

  Holding up my hands, I give her a sheepish look. “I swear that was an accident.”

  Her grin widens. “Sure it was.”

  I laugh as I set the bottle back up. I’m surprised when she knocks it back over and the damn thing spins and stops. It’s pointing right at me.

  “Aren’t we a little old for ‘spin the bottle’?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  She shrugs. “I mean, I can’t fulfill my ‘mile high club’ goal, so…” She pauses and looks around.

  “You wouldn’t take my vibrator dare. Why would you want to kiss me?” I ask.

  She rolls her eyes. “We both know that the vibrator dare was a joke dare. I won’t lie, I’m still mildly offended. But, what else are we going to do for the next hour?”

  “Mildly offended?”

  She tilts her head to one side. “I mean, normally I’d only do something like that in front of a guy that I’m actually dating, so yes, mildly offended.”

  “Yet, you are the one with it in your bag.”

  “Don’t be a hater. I think you are just jealous,” she says. I swear if she was standing, those hands would be on her hips instead of in her lap. And something about the bit of sassiness I’ve seen from her makes me want to kiss her.

  “Maybe I am,” I retort playfully.

  She leans forward. “So, kiss me, then.”

  I don’t move. Instead, I study her and recount what I’ve learned about this woman over the last three-plus hours. She’s in marketing. She lives in Atlanta. She sucks at tossing playing cards, but she’s great at fixing presentations. She’s kind and funny. She’s well-traveled. She’s definitely sexy as fuck.

  I lean toward her, pressing my shoulder against the door.

  When our lips are an inch apart, I stop. “Are you sure?”

  Her eyes squint slightly. “Do you want a formal written invitation?”

  I chuckle. “Maybe?”

  “How about this instead?” she says as she leans in and presses her lips to mine. The first thing I sense is how soft and warm her lips are against mine. Then, my lips part slightly, and I taste her lip balm. I’ve seen her apply it twice. It’s cherry. And I can fucking taste it now.