Chapter 2
2
HANNAH
Breathe, Hannah! Read your book and breathe!
Except breathing meant I got lungfuls of the bossy hot guy’s scent because he was right there . As in inches away. It was as if the hero from the romance book I was reading had morphed into reality.
Solid, sexy body. Check.
Dark hair, smoldering good looks. Check.
Potent stare. Check.
Growly and–oddly–protective. Check.
Dare I say chivalrous, rearranging seats? Check.
Because of him, I wasn’t squeezed between the two creepy guys. Thank God. They’d oozed over the armrests and pretty much taken up all my space. How I would fly two hours wedged between them, I hadn’t been sure, especially since one smelled sharply like his deodorant quit, the other of a potent, toxic cologne which made me sneeze. I’d considered ringing the call bell and asking for a new seat assignment because besides being cramped, they made me weirdly uncomfortable. I knew one stared at my boobs, even though they were modestly covered in the t-shirt I got the day before at the huge romance book signing where I spent all weekend. The other widened his legs intentionally so his thigh pressed against mine. It was as if they were toying with me, a mouse stuck between two mean tomcats wanting to play with their food before they pounced and killed it.
I’d been stuck until the guy in a crisp black suit from across the aisle stood and ordered the men to move. He’d either noticed my discomfort or that the men were being kind of jerks. They had to be traveling together but it didn’t seem like they got along. Based on the suits they sported–one better than others–they were probably work colleagues. You didn’t have to like the people you worked with. Heck, I was more than aware you didn’t even have to like your family.
Whatever their relationship, after an accompanying growl and glare, they did the seat shuffle. So had I. Moved… and obeyed. Obviously, since I was settled into the window seat.
With my book open, I tried to read. Except my eyes darted to the crisp line of the man’s dress pants, how they were taut over impressive thighs. Or his hand, resting on the armrest, veiny and large. I couldn’t miss the sliver of a tattoo that peeked out of the hem of his suit jacket and the thin line of his white dress shirt.
We weren’t looking at each other, but I could feel him beside me. The hair on my forearms stood on end. And that zap of static when we’d touched in the aisle? I could still feel it humming beneath my skin. It was so strange, this attraction. There was a pull to this guy, and we couldn’t be closer.
I swallowed and tried to focus on my book, To Have And To Puck . Based on the catchy title, it was obviously–right?–a spicy hockey romance.
I gripped her hips, knowing there would be small bruises. Marks she’d see for days knowing she was well and truly claimed. By me.
Yup. Spicy. The hero was a six-four defensive player who was the team enforcer. A man who knew what he wanted and took it–with consent, cunnilingus, and a condom.
Except the dominant hockey hottie I had imagined at the start of the book had morphed into the businessman beside me. Distractedly, I wondered what he did for a living. A billionaire CEO saving me from creepy guys? My stomach swooped at the possibility of that trope happening in real life… to me, then realized it wasn’t excitement at the possibility, but that the plane dipped with a bout of turbulence.
I mentally shook my head. My fantasy was only that. Not real. No billionaire flew in row seven of a commercial flight out of Vegas. He wouldn’t sit in the middle with a kid behind him kicking his seat back every few minutes, especially to help me. I was surprised he even noticed me. Or… what was that smell? God, who farted?
The man raised his hand and subtly pinched his nose. Yeah, he picked up on that unpleasantness, too. He might’ve saved me from the men earlier, but he couldn’t save me from someone else’s intestinal problems.
I swallowed hard, then reached up and twisted the air vent. He looked my way, grinned, as if we were in this travel adventure together. I always wondered about lots of things I read in books. One of them? Five o’clock shadows. They sounded too… scruffy. Rough. Oddly intentional. Like, shave sooner, maybe? Or is it a beard or not?
This guy had stubble across his square jaw, and it was a work of art. A touch darker than the hair on his head. If I had to bet it would be soft and would feel amazing against my inner thighs.
Shit. No! No sexy thoughts about my seat mate! Thankfully, cool air spread across my heated cheeks. Maybe he didn’t notice the blush from thinking of him going down on me.
Yes, please.
No! This was a random Sunday in September. He was a stranger on a plane. I knew I should take my best friend Brittany’s advice and get back out there and get fucked out of my mind–her words not mine–but I doubted she meant Mr. Hot Middle Seat.
I couldn’t keep staring at him for the whole flight like an idiot, so I broke the post-fart stare and went back to my reading. It was a book from my library, one of my favorite authors. She, along with over a hundred other authors, had participated in LoveNLust Romance Con. It was a weekend-long convention of fun games, author and reader panels, and book signings. It had been amazing. While I’d gotten a signed special edition with gorgeous foil and sprayed edges of the book, there was no way I was going to crack the spine or mess it up. It was going on my shelf with all my other favorites. I was reading a well-used paperback copy. I was on chapter two and already hooked.
The hero was hot. Rough around the edges and had that touch-her-and-die vibe going when it came to the heroine. Sure, he wasn’t perfect, but who wanted a man who was? No, a woman wanted a man who saw her and only her. A man like the guy beside me who treated her like a queen but most likely fucked her like a–
I cleared my throat. Gah! My brain was wandering into even naughtier territory. No thinking about how Mr. Sexy Stubble fucked. Read, woman! So I did, getting lost in the story for most of the flight, my eyes flying over the words, especially since the author got to the good parts–the sex scenes–in the fifth chapter.
“You’re a good girl, Mia, taking me so well. I–” I flipped the page desperate to read what the hero said next.
“Wait,” the man beside me murmured, interrupting my sex reading. I blinked, turned his way. “You’re reading too fast. I can’t keep up.”
If he said the plane was crashing, I would have been less stunned. Or panicked. I slammed the book shut and closed my eyes. As if I did, I’d become invisible. I wouldn’t be stuck in the window seat of a plane besides Mr. Hottie who knew I loved reading smut.
“Don’t stop now. We’re getting to the good part,” he added, making my nipples instantly hard, wishing he’d say that to me when we were somewhere else. Like a bed.
“That’s what she said,” I muttered, then slapped my hand over my mouth. Had I actually said that? Oh my God.
He chuckled, somehow not finding me dorky. “ What I meant was, I need to know how Colin’s going to get Mia to believe that she’s more than just the woman who bought him at a charity auction. I think he has to tell her that he’s her brother’s new teammate, right?”
I wasn’t sure if it was a smart move, but I opened my eyes, glanced his way. A glint of amusement brightened his dark eyes, but it didn’t seem like he was making fun of me. He didn’t poke fun at how I loved to read “those books” as my mother called them. Or that I was living in sin as my brother Perry spouted.
As if. I was an official good girl. Breaking the rules made me sweat.
“Wow, you’ve been reading along for a while,” I said, more mortified than ever. My gaze drifted towards his eyes, although I couldn’t meet them directly yet. I noticed a spot of blood on the collar of his white shirt. Had he cut himself shaving? I imagined him in a snug pair of boxer briefs, leaning against his sink and running a razor up his neck and–
GAH! Fine. I acted like a good girl, but my mind was very bad.
He shrugged in the casual way of a man who had a heck of a lot of confidence. “It’s a good book.”
I flipped it over so he could see the cover.
“It’s for work,” I said, not admitting I loved to read spicy romance. My family made enough fun of me. I didn’t need this hot stranger to do so, too.
His lips quirked. “Based on the book, I’m really curious what your job is.”
“I’m a librarian. In Colorado.” I had no idea why I told him the state thing. It wasn’t like a librarian was different in… say, Miami.
“Ah.”
“Yeah, not that exciting,” I admitted, glancing down at the book in my lap. Not many people saw books as being exciting, as an escape or a way to visit different worlds. Or fall in love with a character, because book boyfriends were the best kind. They loved your life goals, found your cellulite sexy, growled at any man who looked at you twice, and wanted to rail you against any available surface.
My ex hadn’t done any of those things.
“Sometimes exciting’s overrated,” he murmured. “If those are the books on the shelves in your library these days, I might need to stop in.”
Stop in. STOP IN!
I cleared my throat. “So not much of a reader then?”
“Don’t have much time.”
“What do you do?” I wondered. Should I be talking this guy up? He had been reading over my shoulder. My inner Brittany–my best friend–said “hell yes.”
“I’m not a romance book hero, that’s for sure,” he said, self-deprecatingly.
I wasn’t so sure about that. He pretty much checked off every requirement.
“So you’re not a pro-hockey player auctioned off in a charity event?” I asked, referring to the plot of the book I– we –were reading.
The corner of his mouth quirked. “No.”
“Rodeo champ headed to the Stock Show?”
He shook his head. “That’s a romance book hero?”
I nodded. “Yup. So hot. ”
He made a funny sound, like a chest rumble, as if he didn’t like the idea of me finding a rodeo champ hot. Any conscious woman–unless she didn’t like a man in snug Wranglers or was allergic to horses–would toss their panties at one.
“Try again,” he prodded.
I tapped my chin, considering all the possible romance hero options. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. “Alpha leader of a werewolf shifter pack.”
His eyebrows winged up. “Um… what?”
The plane hopped over a bit more turbulence, then settled.
My lips twitched with amusement. “Trust me. Those books are good.”
“Got one in that bag of yours we can read in the next–” He peeked at the watch on his wrist. The really nice, fancy one. “–thirty minutes?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. You never mentioned what you did.” I really wanted to know.
“Hitman.” He said it with a straight face, and it had me laughing, my eyes raking over him wedged in the middle seat. I thought I heard the guy on the aisle grunt. Maybe he was the farter and was having more stomach problems. At least he wasn’t the other one with the bad cologne that made me sneeze. “What?”
“Sorry. Hitman? That’s definitely a romance book hero. You, though? Can’t see it.”
He set his hand on his chest as if offended. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. Maybe I want to be a romance hero after all. You’re saying you wouldn’t go for a hitman? ”
“As long as you’re not a petty, cheating, self-absorbed loser like my ex, I wouldn’t care what your profession is.”
“A man cheated on you ?” His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “What’s his name?”
I frowned. “Why? You going to kill him?”
He didn’t answer and for a second I was a little worried he took my little joke seriously. Although, there were moments in the past few months that I wanted to kill Kevin, my ex, because of what he did.
“Okay. No self-absorbed losers,” he practically growled. “What would you go for then?”
I blushed, because his voice went quieter, but it also went deeper. More intimate, if that was possible on a crowded plane. Was it my imagination or had he leaned an inch closer?
I swallowed hard as the plane went over another bump of air. The playful banter seemed to have morphed into something else. “Um… what?”
He tipped his head toward the closed book with the sexy hockey player on the cover. “A guy like that in bed?”
I swallowed and his eyes dropped to watch my throat work. We were practically whispering; our heads were that close together.
“You want me to tell you what I want in a guy I have sex with?”
“Fuck,” he murmured very softly, the word raising goosebumps on my skin. I looked around, but there was nothing to see but him. The side of the plane, the seat in front of me and… him. “What we were reading in that book was definitely fucking.”
“I can’t tell you that,” I practically hissed, tucking my hair back. The only experiences I had with sex were the one time with Craig Chlebek freshman year in college and Kevin. Based on what I read in romance books and what Brittany kept saying, neither guy was remotely proficient in bed. They pretty much sucked in the sack since they hadn’t been able to satisfy me, which meant I’d only had good sex with my vibrator and vicariously through what I read in romance books.
“Why not?” he prodded, cocking his head. “We have thirty minutes, and we’ll never see each other again.”
True. I bit my lip. My heart pounded for some reason. Because this was totally insane. But what happened on a plane from Vegas, stayed on a plane from Vegas, right? I’d never see him again. “Fine, but you go first.”
He studied me for a moment, his eyes raking over my face. I didn’t know what he was searching for, but I felt seen. Like there wasn’t anyone else on this plane but the two of us. “Think you can handle my answers?”
Could I? I wasn’t so sure, because a guy like him–smolderingly gorgeous and seemingly nice–probably had potent tastes and needs. I wanted to know anyway, or because of that. Definitely.
So, I nodded and let him tell me exactly what he wanted in a woman he fucked.