Page 7

Instead, I tilt my chin, barely, but it’s enough. An answer I didn’t mean to give.

My heartbeat is loud in my head now. Distracting.

This isn’t happening to me.

But I’m letting it happen.

And as he rises to his feet and jerks his chin toward the bathroom, it seems like I’m going to keep letting it happen.

My head nods before my brain can intervene. Three seconds pass.

Five.

I stand, legs unsteady beneath me, and follow him.

The bathroom is small. The kind of space so cramped it feels like it should be illegal, barely enough room for one person, let alone two. The fluorescent light flickers, harsh and unforgiving, casting shadows that make everything feel more immediate.

He pulls the door shut behind us, the click of the lock too loud in the sudden quiet.

I should be thinking about Maggie. About the mess waiting for me in Redwood Run. About everything I’m leaving behind.

Instead, I’m thinking about his hands. The way they look against the door. The way they might look against my skin.

I kiss him again.

It’s clumsy and desperate. His hands skim up my sides, ghosting over my ribs, then flatten against my hips, holding me like I’m going to disappear.

Maybe I am.

The mirror over his shoulder reflects a version of me I don’t recognize, flushed and hungry. My hair’s coming loose, my blouse is wrinkled, and I don’t look anything like a woman who builds her life out of order and lists.

I look like a woman desperate to crawl out of her own skin and into someone else’s hands. Someone else’s life.

Another tremor runs through the plane as my hip bumps hard against the sink edge. I laugh once, breathless and disbelieving, because this is insane.

“Want me to stop?” he asks against my mouth.

The plane shudders again beneath us.

“No.”

He catches my hip, my ribcage, fits me back together fast, like he can sense the parts of me that are rattling loose.

One hand slides into my hair, crashing the bun against the nape of my neck. I gasp from the jolt of pressure, and I feel, for the first time in months, alive and absolutely present.

He drags his mouth along my jaw, heat and steadiness. I kiss him back harder, more needy than I should be, but he gives as much as he takes.

I hear my own voice, muffled and unfamiliar, a thin moan behind my teeth, the thud of my own heartbeat in my ears. My back arches as his fingers dig into my hips hard enough that I know I’ll feel it for hours.

I want that. I want the mark of it, the memory.

“Fuck,” I whisper, and he laughs into my throat, the vibration sending heat curling through me.

He hikes me higher with one arm while the other snakes under my shirt, palm flat, bold. I’m embarrassed by the heat in my face, but not enough to stop him.

I want more, more, more.

I chase the feeling, grinding against him until my thighs ache, until the seam of my pants bites, until if I don’t come in the next sixty seconds I might explode. He slides a hand between us, cupping me through the fabric, testing.