by Melody Eve
“I’m relieved.” He unbuckles his seat belt and stands in front of me.
I look up into his face that indeed appears to be relieved. “You are?”
“I can work with overwhelmed. Opposed to, however, I wasn’t so sure.”
He holds out his hand to me. I unbuckle my seat belt and take it. He helps me up and leads me to the bedroom at the back of the plane. “I told you I’m fine. I don’t need to lie down.”
“I know.” He opens a small door, and inside is a bedroom with what I imagine is a queen-size bed on the left and an entertainment center that covers the entire wall on the right. The room is tight but perfect for sleeping on long flights or lounging in bed while watching TV. It’s also the perfect way to join the Mile High Club if one were interested in things like that. I am not, and never thought I would be a card-holding member of that particular club.
“Are you trying to induct me into the Mile High Club, Mr. Forrest?”
“Only if you want to be a member.” He chuckles. “No, actually, I thought we could lie down and watch a movie. The doctor said three days of bed rest, and it’s only been one.”
I’m a little disappointed with his answer. I thought it would be very Fifty Shades of Grey for him to ravish me in his jet bedroom. But, Anna Steele wasn’t sunburned with a gash on her head when Christian took her on their kinky flight.
Oh well, movies and cuddling won’t get me into the famous club, but I’m more of a book-club-kind-of-girl anyway.
“That sounds nice. What movie are we watching?”
“When we were on the yacht, you said you’d never seen Game of Thrones.”
“That’s not a movie, it’s a series.”
“Well, yes, you’re right, but what if we had a lot of time to waste?”
I narrow my eyes and tilt my head to the side when I look at him now. There was something shifty in his tone when he asked that question.
“We have three and a half hours. I’m quite sure we can’t watch ten seasons of Game of Thrones in that amount of time.”
He places his hands on my shoulders and gently eases me down to the bed and lifts my legs up so that I will turn and lay down. He sits down next to me with his hip against mine, and I feel it… he’s lied, and now I’m about to hear the truth.
“What if we weren’t going straight home to Chicago?”
I sit up putting us face to face. “You said we were going home. You said you wanted to get me there, so I could rest. ‘Convalesce’ was the word you used, I believe.”
“I decided that you could convalesce much better in London.”
“What? Are you out of your mind? I can’t go to London. I have to get back and open the bookstore. I’ve already lost too much money being closed while I was gone. People are going to think I’ve gone out of business.” I’m trying hard not to act as hysterical as I feel, but I can feel my emotions unraveling like a knit blanket.
“Aria, stay calm. You gave me a week, and I want to spend it alone with you in one of the most beautiful places in the world. You said you’d never been to Europe, that’s a travesty. You’ll love it, the food, the people, the sights. One week isn’t really enough, we will have to go back another time.”
“But my store…”
“Your store is open. It has been for a week.”
“No, I closed for my honeymoon. I can’t afford employees to cover when I’m gone.”
He looks up and leans his head to the side a bit, and his body language says I’m not going to like what’s coming next. “I may have hired a few people to help you out.”
Anger bubbles up from my chest to my head spreading out to my arms that develop a life of their own when they shove him hard. “You did what?”
“I know a lot of people. All it took was a phone call, and you have a staff of three well-qualified people, a librarian from NYU, a junior writer at The Times, and a cop to round things out and keep everyone honest. I also had a security system installed, you should have done that a long time ago. Did you know there were three windows on the third floor that don’t lock?”
I can’t believe this man. How does he take me from being blissfully happy to seeing red in a matter of minutes? I want to hit something, and I’m not a violent person.
“There are so many things wrong with what you just told me, I don’t know where to start.” I push him away and scoot to the other side of the bed. I need space, I need distance, and he has purposely told me all of this while I am stuck in a sardine can thousands of feet in the air. Can he know me that well yet? Did he anticipate me fleeing when I heard this news? He must have, and that’s bad news as well.
This was supposed to be a fling, a rebound that ended when we left the resort. But I let it continue, and that’s all on me. I knew better, and I let him manipulate me into more.
He’s sitting across from me waiting for me to yell or cry or thank him for taking me to London, but I’m not going to do any of those things. It’s all too predictable.
I scoot to the edge of the bed and stand, catch my breath, and even my temper before walking back out into the main section of the airplane. I take my seat and motion to the flight attendant. She approaches right away. “Can I help you, Ms. Savage?” she asks.
I look for a name badge, so I can call her by name as she did me, but she’s not wearing one. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Michelle.” She flashes me a too-white toothy smile.
“Michelle, do you have any headphones or earbuds?”
“For music or silence?”
“Music, please.”
“Of course.” I watch her open a cabinet and pull out a pair of white and chrome headphones with little rings of diamonds on each ear cup. “The side with the ring of rubies goes on the right,” she says handing them over.
I turn the headphones in my hands feeling their weight, curious as to how much something like this cost but not really wanting to know. “Thanks.”
“Can I do anything else for you?”
“No, thank you. This is great.”
“Of course.”
She walks back to her seat at the front of the plane. I can feel Roman’s eyes on me from the bedroom door. His stare is heavy and irritating. Did he think I would just roll over and spread my legs when he told me he’d essentially taken over my company? If that’s the case, he thought wrong.
I love my bookstore. It’s been my dream for as long as I can remember. When I found my old three-story building with the perfect storefront in the middle of downtown Chicago, I cried.
It was exactly what I wanted—full of charm and personality, a fixer-upper that I could spend my life fixing up while I worked there. If Roman has put my life’s work in jeopardy, so help me I will do whatever it takes to make him pay when we get home. If we ever get home.
I could claim he kidnapped me. That’s what this is, isn’t it? He told me he was taking me home, and now we’re on our way out of the country. That has to be illegal, right?
I put the headphones on and plug them into my phone. When I find my favorite playlist of Indie artists, I close my eyes and try to think non-murderous thoughts—white doves, sprinkles on cupcakes, dandelion fluff blowing in the warm summer wind, the smell of books, my bookstore, Roman letting strangers into my bookstore…
How did he get into my store? I rip the headphones off and hiss when they scratch the cut on my head. “Shit,” I say, reaching up to touch it.
“Are you okay?” Roman says materializing out of nowhere.
“I’m fine. How did you do it?” I say with my hand still on my head.
“How did I do what?”
“How did you get into my store? You know, to let the people inside who are probably robbing me blind and messing up my system.”
“Your system?” he says, sitting down with at least four, maybe five fingers of scotch in a tumbler.
“I have my store organized according to a system I developed. No one else knows how it works but me. How did you do i
t?”
“Your loan for the store is with my bank.”
“So?”
“So, being that I am the CEO, I had a key made. It was simple.”
Great, so any Joe Schmo working at Clover State Bank can get a key made for my store so they can let themselves in. That’s fabulous.
“Is that even legal?”
“I’ll tell you what should be illegal, you paying what you did for that building. It’s in horrible condition. I wouldn’t be surprised if the city condemned it.”
“You shut your mouth about my bookstore. I love Savage Books. It was my dream since I was a little girl to own it, and I fell in love at first sight with that building.”
“It is a good location, I’ll give you that, but baby, the building is a wreck, I’m sorry. It is what it is.”
“Don’t call me baby. Call your people and tell them to close the store and turn this plane around and take me home. Now.”
His sharp gray eyes lock with mine over his glass as he takes a long drink of scotch. It’s a standoff that I intend on winning. “You have kidnapped me. That’s what I’ll tell the police when we land in London.”
“Go ahead, they’ll never believe you. Everyone from the resort knows about us, we’ve spent the last twelve days together, and you were openly grateful to me for taking you home.”
“Exactly, for taking me home. Not kidnapping…”
“It’s not kidnapping when you walked onto the plane willingly. Do you know how many women would love to be ‘kidnapped’ and taken to London for a week of pampering? It was supposed to be a surprise. It was supposed to make you happy, not insane.” He flips his hand at me like I’m being irrational.
I suck in a deep breath and slowly let it out while counting to ten. “Okay, let’s start over. I appreciate you wanting to take me to London. And, although intrusive and overstepping your bounds, I understand you were trying to be helpful by hiring staff to run my bookstore for me. Now, can you please take me home?”
He doesn’t even think about it for a second before he answers, “No.”
“Kidnapper!” I yell.
“Insane,” he says calmly.
“You call me that one more time, and I’ll show you insane.” He smiles, and I know I’ve given him exactly what he wants. Roman likes to argue. I like to argue too, takes one to know one.
“I think you knocked something loose when you hit your head.”
I put the headphones back on and turn the volume up loud. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of continuing to fight. I’ll sit and be quiet until we get wherever we are going. When we arrive, I’ll book a commercial flight home and call my bookstore and fire a staff of people I never hired.
I can feel Roman staring at me. I don’t have to open my eyes to know he’s plotting his next move. I can’t let him keep ruffling my feathers. If I do, he wins.
He may be sexy, handsome, rich, and better in bed than any man I’ve ever been with, but he is out of his damn mind. Calling him controlling isn’t adequate, he’s a manipulative dictator, and now he’s met his match.
Two hours into the flight, I lay my head back and close my eyes. Only eight hours to go until we land in London. I googled the flight time. Roman is still sitting across from me boring a hole in my body with his eyes. I wish he would stop and go back into the bedroom and watch Game of Thrones alone.
I’m dozing off when the volume in my headphones lowers, and I snap open my eyes. Roman is there, bending forward right in my face, nose to nose, lips almost touching mine.
“What are yo…” I don’t get the sentence out before his mouth connects with mine. I clamp my mouth shut and place my hands on his chest and try to push him away, but he doesn’t budge. He’s twice my size and solid muscle. If I didn’t know him and this were really a kidnapping, I would be afraid.
He continues probing gently, softy, and sweetly loosening me up with every lick, every nip of my bottom lip. The music in my ears changes to something low and erotic that’s not on my playlist. How did he… why is he… oh God. The combination of the soft moans in the background of the music and his lips working magic on mine prompts my mouth to open, and I let him in.
A weak, feeble voice comes from a tiny room in the back of my mind, stop, this isn’t right, he’s manipulating you. I slam the door shut and hear the voice no more. I consider cementing that door shut to assure no future interference, but the thought dissipates in the fog Roman floods my mind with when he kisses me this way.
Voices flood my ears with sighs and moans and the occasional long gonging of a bell. He continues to kiss me and only kiss me, no touching. He kneels between my knees placing his hands on the armrests of my chair, and I wonder for a moment if the flight attendant is watching us. I want to open my eyes, but the music and Roman’s slow, tantalizing kisses keep me from doing so.
His soft lips brush against mine, his tongue sliding over them dipping in to taste me. I’m drawn in by a force stronger than my stubborn will, stronger than my independence, stronger even than my anger. I try to move toward him, but he only backs away further, never breaking the kiss but not allowing me any control.
Surprise, surprise. It doesn’t bother me. I like it when he’s in control like this as long as this isn’t a punishment for threatening to turn him into the police for kidnapping.
I stop and sit back removing the headphones. “What are you doing?” I snap into his relaxed face. He looks like he’s in a trance, and I can hear the music without my headphones. It’s playing on the intercom.
“Can the pilot and the flight attendant hear that?” I ask not waiting for an answer to my first question. He still doesn’t answer me. “Roman, what’s wrong with you?” I ask, and he lays his head in my lap like a child.
He slides his hands down around my hips holding onto me. I’m unsure of how to react to this. It’s odd behavior, but it feels good just the same. My hands go to his hair, and I thread my fingers through it, letting the silky strands slide across my skin, massaging his scalp, tracing the sharp edge of his jawline.
I don’t know what exactly it is that we are doing, but it’s something intimate and purposeful, and he is leading me through it like a silent teacher. We sit this way for the longest time. There is no clock nearby, but I have no urge to know the time or how long we sit and meld into one another. The music changes, slows even more, and he moves, or more like floats away from me. He stands in a painfully slow, fluid motion and takes my hand. I stand, and we walk together back into the bedroom where the music is louder but still slow.
He closes the door and guides me to the bed where he undresses me and then himself, lazily, deliberately. It seems as if time has slowed down, each movement feels like we are moving through molasses when he helps me onto the bed to sit facing him in his lap with my legs around his waist in a lotus position.
I should be self-conscious about my sunburn or the fact that the only other people on this plane are hearing this music and know what we are doing. I’m not, though. I’m not anything but melting molasses in Roman’s arms.
He begins to kiss me again like before—languid and sultry. There’s no rush to get anywhere, no goal of orgasm, no beginning, middle, or end, just this, whatever this is. His hands roam to the places on my body he knows aren’t hurting—my ass, my breasts, the small of my back—everywhere I’m not burned, but it’s not his hands I’m focused on, it’s his mouth.
How can anyone kiss for so long with so much patience and skill? He moves down my neck, back up to my mouth, along my jawline with the tenderness of a butterfly, so as not to cause me pain on my burned skin.
My breathing picks up, and I feel his length between us grow hard. He takes my hand and places it on his heart and then his own on mine. Gazing into my eyes, he communicates without speaking by taking a deep breath holding it and then letting it out. I follow his breathing inhaling when he exhales, slow and steady until I am no longer panting with want. We keep up this meditation-like breathing pattern for a long
time, and I’m starting to feel sleepy when he moves back to kiss me again.
A trail of his kisses leads to my ear, and I feel myself winding up again when he whispers in my ear, “Slow, slow, slow. Trust me. I won’t disappoint.”
So, I do. I trust him because I have no other choice. I trust him because I want to, and I need to. I need to know he’s capable of keeping his word, that he won’t disappoint after what happened the last time we were intimate. I also love the way all of this slowness feels. We are connecting on another plane, listening to our bodies, our breath and heartbeats, and instead of rushing to get to the best part, he is making the journey the best part.
His hand cups my cheek, and I lean into it feeling the warmth of his touch spread over my face and down my neck. I imagine his warmth is a yellow light moving over my skin lighting me up from the inside. The pressure of his hand determines the color of the light. When he presses harder, it’s orange, harder yet, and it’s red, and lighter, it dims to a soft yellow.
I’ve never experienced anything like this before. It’s sex without the sex. The music fades until the only sound left is the soft hum of a bell. Roman lowers me to the bed on my back and stretches out next to me on his side with his head propped in his hand.
I look at him to see what’s next, and he smiles a slow, sexy grin. I wait and wait, but he just keeps staring at me like I’m a new species he’s just discovered. “Roman?”
“Hmm?”
“What are we doing?”
“Centering. Balancing. I was losing myself in you so much that I need an intermission.”
“I’m still lost.”
“I know. It’s all right, relax, and we will find you.”
I feel my forehead wrinkle up in a frown. He reaches up to smooth it out. “Don’t think so much. This is something I learned a long time ago from a Hindu friend of mine. You and I argue too much. I bully because it’s how I’m used to dealing with others in business and life, and it gets results. But, with you, it’s getting me nothing but frustration.
“So, you’re going to Hindu sex me into submission instead?”
He chuckles and places a chaste kiss on my lips. “I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as Hindu sexing, and it’s more about relaxing and letting go than submitting.”