Chapter 18 Frankie
FRANKIE
I’d always thought escaping into the night would feel like something out of a spy novel my mom liked to read—cool, slick, maybe glamorous if we did it right.
But mostly it had felt like my heart was trying to crack my ribs from the inside out.
Even now that I was ostensibly settled inside the Butera family’s plane, my dark clothes no longer necessary in the warm light of the cabin, my hastily-packed bags stowed away, the adrenaline still hadn’t let up.
The private jet sat on the tarmac like some sleeping creature, dark windows glinting under floodlights.
We’d boarded fast—fast enough that my backpack, once stuffed with textbooks when I was still in college, was still half-zipped under the seat across from me.
The guys had all worn black too, of course, though it wasn’t as much of a novelty.
Still, it was ridiculous how good each of them looked.
Too bad I was too wired to appreciate the gorgeous view for more than a heartbeat at a time.
Paris. I had chosen Paris. Because they told me I needed to pick a place—somewhere far, somewhere safe.
Now here we were, waiting to take off into the night, headed for the city of lights.
My stomach fluttered. It should have been excited butterflies, the thrill of visiting someplace I never thought I’d see. But these winged insects inside me didn’t feel like the good kind.
Across from me, I could see through quick glances that Devin was watching me.
Jonathan sat by the window, murmuring quietly into his AirPod, jaw tight with whatever logistics he was handling.
Alex had his laptop open, fingers moving fast, eyes flicking up to check on me every once in a while. Protective even when distracted.
At least Mom was safe.
That thought grounded me like a warm weight in my chest, even as everything else threatened to spin.
The all-expenses-paid tropical cruise guys had arranged for her—wheelchair accessible, staffed, and apparently outrageously fancy—had made her squeal with excitement too much for her to consider why and how it had come to pass.
My poor mother hadn’t truly relaxed in years, not since her body started failing her.
She deserved soft things, gentle days, ocean air. She deserved so much more than the constant medical and financial stress she’d been dealt.
Still, leaving her…it felt wrong. Even knowing how excited she was for this “adventure.” And knowing how excited she would have been for me to go on one, too, if I could tell her about the clandestine Paris trip.
The captain’s voice crackled through speakers overhead, something about final checks and expected flight time, and the instant the engines began that low, rising rumble, my pulse shot up.
My fingers curled around the armrest of my leather, much-fancier-than-I’d-imagined seat until my knuckles went stiff and hot. I tried to breathe, but the air felt thin, like the cabin was shrinking.
I’d never been on a plane. Not once. Now I was on one because I was fleeing life-threatening danger. Somehow the two stressful situations didn’t cancel each other out in the slightest.
“Hey.” Devin’s voice was soft enough that I barely heard it over the engines.
I blinked away a daze of fear and looked at him. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, those dazzlingly green eyes warm and steady as they searched every one of my features.
“Frankie, you’re crushing the armrest to death.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out strangled. “Is that…not what you’re supposed to do?”
His mouth tugged into the kind of smile that made my chest loosen a fraction. “Come here.”
“But we’re taking off—”
“We’ll be fine,” he murmured. “Come on.”
My breath hitched, though the fear didn’t let go completely. He stood and offered his hand, big, warm, and steady. I took it like a lifeboat in a shipwreck.
Devin led me down a short hallway, the hum of the engines vibrating through the floor as we moved. “The bedroom’s quieter,” he explained. “And I think you could use…something else to focus on.”
The moment he shut the door behind us, sound softened, like we were in our own little cocoon. I let out a shaky exhale as I looked around the small, though no less luxurious space.
It was mostly a huge mattress, white sheets, and a fluffy duvet, the overhead lighting warm enough to mimic candlelight.
Devin was too big for the space, having to hunch a little to really fit, but somehow that closeness grounded me.
He pulled me into his arms, and I could really breathe.
Devin held me tight for a while, easing me down to sit on the mattress with him in a firm cradle, surrounded by his perfectly sculpted arms.
Then he pulled back to look at me, cupping the side of my face with a gentleness that felt like…I couldn’t name it. Not yet.
“Hey,” he murmured again, that rough rumbling voice so comforting to me after such a short time, “you’re safe. You’re okay. All we want, all three of us, is to keep you safe.”
My throat tightened. “I know. I just…the flying. The danger of it all. It’s…new, just like everything lately. I don’t know how to do any of this.”
“You don’t have to know.” That devastating tilt to his lips settled in, warming me even as I felt the jostling, the angular ascent of the plane. I held tighter to him as his voice grounded me. “You just have to let me take care of you, Frankie.”
When his arms came around me more fully, wrapping me up in his decadent musky scent, I relaxed against him at last, burying my face into his hard chest.
His heartbeat was steady, sure.
It was everything I wasn’t. Everything I needed right now.
As his hands slid lower, his mouth brushing my temple, the nervous adrenaline in my body began to shift into something warmer, deeper, unmistakably alluring. I melted into his embrace.
Devin usually kissed me like a man starved.
Like he was bad, and he knew it, and every kiss was an opportunity to prove himself.
But now, in the wake of my stress, he imbued it with a tenderness that somehow fit his quick-to-smile, quicker-to-laugh persona even more than the irreverent bad boy act did.
There was softness in his touch as he guided me back onto the bed, as his hands slid up under my shirt to find my breasts. It felt wonderful.
Normal.
Like I was a regular girl with her regular boyfriend, fooling around. Preparing to connect in the way two people who cared about and understood one another could.
“Frankie,” Devin sighed into my ear as he massaged my breast, worrying the nipple between his thumb and forefinger in a way that made me sigh. “You’re going to be safe now, okay? Just let us take care of you. Let me take care of you.”
I didn’t have time to think, to have any silly doubts, before Devin was sliding down my body.
When he stripped me of my leggings and panties, he found my pussy already waiting for him, wet and flushed and needy.
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he relished the musk. “God, this pussy’ll haunt my dreams, angel. You’ve got the perfect one. I’d eat it as my last meal.”
I blushed from his words, then his mouth covered my sensitive flesh, and I blushed for an entirely different reason.
Devin didn’t cease making his tongue swirl and flick and tease me until I was panting, two orgasms down and needier for his cock than I’d ever been for anything.
I had to pull him up by his ears, his hair buzzed too short, to get him to stop. When he pulled back, grinning, the lower half of his face was slick and shiny, and I couldn’t help but moan at the sight.
“I love the way you love to pleasure me,” I told him before I could second guess. He grinned wider, licking his lips like he was savoring a gourmet treat.
“I love eating your pussy. But I love being inside of it even more, angel. Want me to come inside?”
In response, I shimmied further down the mattress, spreading my legs as if to invite him inside.
When Devin’s gorgeous, thick length was free, I only had a second to admire it, to grab it in my hand and wish for a moment to take it in my mouth again, before he plunged it into me.
It slid home so well, slick and easy despite his girth, because I was so damn needy for him. Then I was whimpering, moaning, crying out in turn as Devin fucked me.
I never thought I’d join the mile high club, but here I was.
“Love this fucking tight pussy,” he half-gasped in my ear. “God, you’re perfect, Frankie. I could stay here forever. Just buried inside you until I die.”
“Do it. Stay forever. Stay inside me.” Come inside me, I didn’t say, but Devin seemed to hear it regardless.
“You want to feel it when I come, angel?”
“Yes,” I gasped. “Give it to me.”
He grinned wickedly, kissed me hard, and said, “You first.”
In another few hard, skillful thrusts, he kept his promise. I came hard, calling out his name as the intense waves of pure agonizing bliss shook me from head to toe, squeezing his perfect cock further into me.
The spasms brought upon his own climax, and Devin half-roared as he came, filling me with his hot seed and the indescribable feeling of him pulsing, kicking against my still-fluttering inner walls.
I fell asleep with Devin still inside me, his mouth on my neck. And when I woke up, we were landing in Paris.