Chapter 35 Sonya
SONYA
It takes a full twenty seconds to come to my senses and realize:
I. Am. On. His. Lap.
My muscles get ready. That micro-moment of tensing before action. I’m going to pull away from Hughes, and he feels it. Because his lips brush against my ear as he asks me to, “Just wait.”
A gruff, desperate request.
It makes me hesitate just enough.
“Until?” I breathe.
“Until it stops, Sonya.”
That small oval-shaped window to the outside world says that he has a point. We’re inside an angry cloud, and the plane is rocking enough that I shouldn’t get back to my feet, because a ballerina with the yips is bad enough, but getting injured would be a death knell for my audition.
My heart beats like a hummingbird as Hughes tucks my head under his chin and locks me in closer with his big arms.
What was I thinking, unbuckling myself and going over to him when the seatbelt sign was on?
I don’t know, but now that I’m here, he’s the closest substitution of a seatbelt there is, I guess.
It’s why I haven’t gotten up yet, I justify to myself.
Seems like I have no choice but to bear with it.
It’s cozy. A tight embrace. I’m enclosed.
Protected. We’re so close that I feel his throat flex.
Multiple times. He’s a big swallower, I see.
I am, too.
I keep swallowing. Fuck, are we both scared now? It’s a bad storm that we’re flying through, not like anything I’ve ever experienced before. The sky cloaks us with purple-gray darkness. If it wasn’t for these overhead lights shining down on us…
They dim.
Not in a we’re-crashing-and-the-plane-is-malfunctioning kind of way. More in a the-flight-attendant-saw-me-on-Hughes-and-is-trying-to-give-us-privacy-for-some-potential-chaotic-Mile-High-Club-situation kind of way.
My mouth drops open. This is bonkers. Rain is coming down hard, our surroundings have blended together with soft shadows, and…
“They really think we’re about to fuck?” I wonder, my tone bewildered and sharp. “Is this what happens in the world of rich hockey players? Safety protocols are suggestions?!”
I should be so embarrassed and outraged that my face feels on fire, but all I can feel is the heat and pressure of Hughes’ firm grip.
“You’re in my lap and I’m not letting go, baby. Anyone might think that…you know.”
He’s trying to keep his voice casual, I think, but we’ve both gone frozen. Lap-sitting in the dark was not on my bingo card.
My core twinges. I can’t help it. Despite the fact that we could drop out of the sky as a fiery ball of metal and the rain splatters the plane like soft bullets, I’m now imagining us without our clothes.
God, the way we’re sitting without any space between us, he could have pushed into me the whole way.
I could have taken him and warmed his hard length for as long as he wanted. It would be…
Fuck!
I’m winded somehow and my face is officially on fire. I don’t say a word. Neither does he.
We hear the booming of thunder in the distance.
The lightest shudder runs through Hughes’ body. My cheeks hollow as I contend with not just my arousal, but a surge of protectiveness curling in my gut. This version of Hughes that’s afraid of flying is so different from the arrogant, confident man who loves to tease me.
“You know what you need to do?” I hear myself saying. “What I do all the time.”
“What do you do all the time?” he asks in a way that makes me think his eyes have closed.
“Catastrophize.”
“…what’s that mean?”
How do I explain this? “Okay, imagine the very worst-case scenario in your head—”
“Then you figure out how to beat it?”
I snort, amused. Of course, that’s what he’d think. “No, then you embrace it. Like you trick your brain into thinking it’s happening to you. So that when anything bad does happen, you’ve already worked through the steps of accepting it. Since your brain thought it was real.”
There’s silence.
I’m trying to be patient, letting him digest this wonderful mental trick I’m suggesting, while also trying not to be very aware of how my hips are lined up against his crotch. The issue being that I wore thin cotton leggings today. What a mistake. I can feel every cord of his muscle under me.
“And you do this?” says Hughes finally. “You tell yourself to expect the worst at all times?”
His tone hasn’t changed, but there’s a new stiffness in his body. From the corner of my eye, I glimpse a clenched jaw.
“Don’t make it sound depressing, it’s not,” I argue, shifting my head as much as I can to look at him from over my shoulder. “Just try it. Think about what you’re most afraid of, Hughes.”
“Wait.” Hughes’ hands tighten on me. “Keep still, darling. You can’t move like that.”
“I can do anything I want,” I hear myself snipe, more than a little defensively. I generously shared this inner, private technique of stress management with him, and now what? He’s making me think it’s not great?
Possibly, I wriggle some more in annoyance.
“Fuck,” Hughes grits out. “Play nice, Sonya.”
“When have I ever—”
Oh.
An erection presses into my back. Feeling it grow in real time makes me go light-headed. He’s getting hard. Really hard.
“I bet you’re not thinking about flying anymore,” is another thing I say without thinking.
Hughes’ chest rumbles against my back. I can’t tell if he’s laughing or suffering.
I pretend it’s the latter. My skin is hot as I picture being the reason Adrian torturously falls apart. He’d be wrecked. Defeated, I know. That’s the only defensible reason as to why I’m tilting my pelvis and creating more friction.
“You can’t do that,” he groans, leaning back, his head lolling to the side slightly.
“What makes you think that you can tell me what I can and can’t do?”
If I wanted to, I could unbuckle his pants, lower the zipper, and take him out. I could bring my leggings down and find a way to sink onto that thick length—watching his expression change as I ride him hard.
Hughes sucks in a sharp breath, almost as if he’s able to read my mind.
A deeper flush spreads across my cheeks at the thought of that—and also at the demanding throb between my legs, pushing me to make my idea become reality.
Especially when I feel his length pulse against me. Will it pulse like that in me?
Lost to such impossible thoughts, I keep wriggling, and soon, my knees pull apart. Widen. A silent, seeking request.
He sees. He must see, because, while one of his arms stays banded across my body, his other hand lowers, going down, down, down until it stops right above that spot. The source of my incessant throb.
I bite back a whine. I think I’m about to beg Adrian Hughes to rub circles over my clit as I grind against his erection while pretending we’re both out of our mind. We’ll blame the dark, or blame the fact that we might die, even though I haven’t heard any thunder in a while.
“You’re such a good girl staying on my lap, baby.” Adrian’s mouth nips the shell of my ear, then presses against the side of my neck gently. “I have to keep you safe.”
I don’t answer. I can’t think. My eyes might’ve rolled back.
His hands flex open and closed. “What else do you need from me right now? Whatever you want, it’s yours.”
My underwear is soaked, and he hasn’t even touched me there. My mind imagines what’ll happen when he does. He’ll feel how much I want this…
“This is your pilot speaking,” overhead speakers blare out. “I want to apologize about the turbulence. It took some time, longer than anticipated, but we’re back to clear flying from here on out. Thank you for hanging in there!”
My heart stops.
The lights snap on. Okay, they don’t. But it feels like they did. Like there’s a massive spotlight shining on me and Hughes.
I’m blinking. Gasping. A spell is broken. There’s no in-the-heat-of-the-moment madness anymore. Whatever happens next, it’s intentional. Because I wanted it.
“Holy shit,” says Hughes, his broad chest rising and falling against me.
Holy shit is right.
I scramble off his lap.
What the fuck did we almost do?
I look out the window, at the sun streaking through fluffy white clouds. “The storm’s gone.” As if it never happened in the first place.
From the corner of my eye, I see Hughes jerks a nod. “Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.” He already said that. Hughes clears his throat. “Sonya—”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
Without looking back, I rush towards the other end of the plane. Denial, confusion, vulnerability, and arousal whip inside me as I yank open a door and lock it behind me.
I should scream into a towel.
I should splash water on my face.
I should lecture myself in the mirror.
Pulling my leggings down, I close my eyes and rub circles over my clit.
It only takes seconds before the most devastating orgasm bursts through me, pleasure shooting out from my center while my spine arches, and I imagine that I’m still back there, riding Hughes’ cock as he tells me what a good girl I am.
It’s unbelievable. So unbelievably good.
But it’s nowhere close to being enough, because this isn’t real. My own hands don’t compare to his. I’m not full and stretched, but empty. Clenching on nothing.
Just as quickly as I broke apart, I crash back down and rip my hand away from my pussy, so I can stare at my flushed, wrecked self in the mirror.
I can’t do this. It’s going to end in disaster.