CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LUNA
The private jet waited for us like a creature coiled in the sun. Sleek and silver, it crouched on the edge of the tarmac, its nose angled toward the wide sky as if impatient to take flight. Its body glinted under the pale morning light, all polished metal and quiet menace.
It was beautiful in the way dangerous things are beautiful. A predator dressed in elegance.
The hum of its engines was constant, low, and alive. Not loud enough to demand attention, but impossible to ignore. It pulsed through the soles of my shoes, into my bones, a mechanical heartbeat that belonged to Riley’s world. A world that ran on speed, wealth, and power.
Behind me, my battered suitcase was carried onto the jet by an indifferent baggage handler. Its scuffed fabric and fraying seams were an insult to the immaculate skin of the aircraft. I felt the insult too, because it was me. I was the mismatch.
The air was warm on the asphalt, and the smell of jet fuel clung to it, sharp and chemical. My steps slowed despite myself, dread pooling thick in my stomach. Every pace toward the open door felt like another pace into something I would never be able to walk back from.
There was no one else on the tarmac. No other passengers hurrying to board. No cluster of strangers to disappear into. Just me. Riley. And a flight crew who existed like shadows, trained to look without seeing, to hear without listening. Their silence was not courtesy. It was allegiance.
Inside, the cabin was both small and infinite.
Cream leather seats sat in polished pairs, each curve and seam perfect.
Mahogany tables gleamed under the overhead lights, their surfaces too flawless to touch without leaving a mark.
The air smelled faintly of fresh polish, leather, and something chemical and clean from the sterilization.
Everything whispered exclusivity, intimacy, confinement.
There was no corner to disappear into. No space where I could angle my body and pretend he wasn’t there. This wasn’t like the car, where the driver’s presence had been a thin shield between us. Here, there was no shield at all.
The flight attendant’s smile was polite but hollow, the kind of smile that lived on duty alone. She gestured toward two seats across from each other, a neat little table between them. My heart lifted for a fragile second. I could have space, distance, a small slice of autonomy.
Riley stepped past me and ruined it instantly.
“No,” he said smoothly, not even glancing at the attendant. “We’ll take the pair in the back.”
Her smile didn’t falter, but it dimmed, just a fraction, a flicker of obedience snapping tight. She inclined her head and motioned toward the two seats at the rear of the cabin, the ones tucked against the wall like a shared confession.
My breath stalled.
Side-by-side.
Of course.
The jet felt suddenly smaller, the air warmer, the walls narrowing around the edges like a throat closing. Riley didn’t wait to see if I followed. He simply walked, his stride long, loose, utterly unhurried. His world. His plane. His rules.
I moved after him because there was nowhere else to go.
The seats were plush, made of leather that cupped the body too easily, too intimately. He slid into the one by the window, stretching one leg out casually, as if the jet were his living room and I were merely intruding in it. His arm draped over the armrest, fingers relaxed, claiming space.
He tilted his head toward the seat beside him.
“Sit.”
A command. Soft, but a command.
My skin prickled. My spine stiffened. But I lowered myself slowly, carefully, letting my body fold into the seat next to him. The leather was cool, then warm under my palms. My pulse thrummed in the hollow of my throat.
I clipped my seatbelt immediately, needing the barrier more than the safety. The metal clicked sharply in the hush of the cabin.
Riley didn’t buckle his. Of course he didn’t. He turned slightly, one knee brushing mine, light, accidental only in theory.
His eyes dragged over my profile with a gaze that felt like fingers.
“You tense up every time you’re near me,” he murmured, voice low enough that the engines had to lean in to hear it. “It’s adorable.”
My breath snagged. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” His voice dipped, a velvet taunt. “Observe? Breathe? Sit beside you on my plane?”
“It’s not your plane,” I snapped softly.
His smile sharpened. “Isn’t it?”
Before I could answer, the flight attendant moved down the aisle with that silent glide private crews perfected. She checked our belts. Her gaze lingered half a second too long on Riley, as if she expected him to comply just because she asked.
He didn’t.
She didn’t push.
“Please prepare for departure,” she said lightly, then vanished behind the galley curtain like a ghost returning to her haunt.
A moment later, the cabin lights dimmed slightly, the engines surged, and the pressure in the air shifted, a subtle, unmistakable warning that we were seconds from leaving the ground.
My fingers tightened around the armrests. My ribs locked. Heat climbed my throat.
Riley noticed instantly.
He angled his head, studying my hands as if deciphering a language only he had the right to read. “Nervous flyer?”
“No,” I whispered.
It wasn’t a lie.
But somehow it felt like one.
Maybe I was afraid of flying trapped beside him.
The jet began to roll forward, slow at first, then faster, wheels thumping rhythmically against the tarmac. The rising speed pressed me back into the seat. My breath came shallow and uneven, my pulse pounding in my wrists, my legs, everywhere.
Riley’s fingers brushed my knee.
Barely.
A question disguised as comfort. Or comfort disguised as a threat.
“Easy,” he murmured.
I flinched, jerking my knee away from him, but the movement was small, pathetic, a tremor instead of a retreat.
He saw it all.
The jet lifted, smooth and decisive. Weight dissolved from my body for a moment, then crashed back as the nose angled upward, pulling us into the sky with the cold, elegant certainty of something designed to conquer gravity and everything weaker than itself.
My stomach dropped.
My heart rose.
Riley leaned in, his breath grazing the shell of my ear, warm enough to melt bone.
“For the next few hours,” he whispered, voice a slow blade sliding under skin, “it’s just you and me. No parents. No escape. No interruptions.”
The plane climbed higher, engines roaring softly, sky swallowing us whole.
His fingers traced the brief ghost of a touch along the inside of my wrist.
“And trust me, princess…” he added, the words a dark promise curling into the pressurized air between us. “I intend to make very good use of the time.”
I angled my body subtly toward the aisle, putting an inch of space between us. One pathetic inch, but it felt like oxygen.
Riley noticed, of course.
He didn’t chase the space, didn’t lean in the way a normal boy might. No. He held still. Perfectly still. That terrible, patient calm he wore like a second skin. As if he were content to wait for the tension to snap on its own.
The engines leveled out into a steady roar. We were airborne, slicing through a sky too blue to be kind. The cabin lights softened into a warm glow, intimate and conspiring.
My pulse was still too fast. My breathing still shallow.
“Relax,” he murmured.
“I am relaxed,” I lied.
He hummed, a low, amused sound that vibrated through the seat and straight into my spine. “Your veins are working overtime. I can hear your heartbeat from here.”
“You can’t,” I snapped.
He turned his head just enough that his shoulder brushed mine, light, accidental, deliberate. His lips curved near my cheek in a smug, quiet smile.
“Princess,” he murmured, “I can hear everything.”
Heat crawled up my neck. A mix of anger, fear, and something traitorous I refused to name. I forced my gaze out the window, focusing on the endless blue instead of the warm gravity of his presence.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?” His voice was a low purr. “It fits.”
“It doesn’t.”
“It does when you look at me like that.”
My head whipped toward him. “Like what?”
His eyes dropped to my mouth, then climbed slowly, obscenely, back to my eyes. “Like you’re angry enough to bite.”
My breath caught. My stomach twisted. I tore my gaze away, but I could still feel his eyes tracing every line of my profile like a touch.
“Stop trying to get a reaction out of me.”
“Why?” he whispered. “Your reactions are the best part.”
I clenched my jaw so tightly my teeth ached. He was doing it again, pulling the ground out from under me with words and proximity, cracking me open just to see what leaked out.
But I wouldn’t give him more. I wouldn’t.
I inhaled sharply, gathering the frayed edges of my composure.
My phone buzzed.
A single vibration. Short. Sharp. A blade pressed to the moment.
Riley’s eyes flicked to the sound.
I nearly stopped breathing.
I whipped the phone up, shielding the screen inconspicuously with my palm. Casual. Controlled. Nothing important. Nothing for him to see.
I felt the blood drain from my face, then flood back in a hot rush. Last night I had texted the number that had haunted me for weeks. A risk. A stupid, desperate risk.
And this was the answer.
You have no idea.
My stomach plunged.
Riley leaned back, watching me, not the phone, not the screen, but me. My breathing. My posture. My micro-reactions. His gaze was a scalpel.
“Who is it?” he asked, voice soft and deceptively bored.
I locked the screen instantly. Too fast. Too defensive.
“Spam,” I said. Too quickly. “Just—junk.”
He smiled.
The kind of smile that said: Lie better.
My phone vibrated again, as if mocking my attempt at normalcy.
Riley’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Persistent spam.”
“Yeah.” My voice was steady only because I clutched the armrest hard enough to bruise. “Persistent.”
His attention lingered on me for one unbearable heartbeat longer, searching, measuring, then he looked back out the window as if he’d given me a gift by not pressing.
I exhaled shakily and angled the screen toward my thigh, just enough to answer without being obvious. My fingers trembled over the keys.
What do you know about Riley Maddox?
The words looked wrong the second I typed them. Too revealing. Too risky. Too much like a terrified girl asking a stranger about the boy sitting inches from her.
But I hit send anyway.
I locked the phone. Slipped it into my pocket. Sat back.
Acted normal.
Pretended my ribs weren’t vibrating with terror.
Pretended Riley wasn’t watching me in the reflection of the window.
Pretended the sky wasn’t shrinking around us like a tightening fist.
The cabin settled into a hum, soft, steady, claustrophobically calm. I tried to breathe evenly. To pretend Riley’s presence wasn’t a weight sliding over my skin.
His thigh brushed mine again.
Accident. Not accident.
I shifted away.
He didn’t.
My phone buzzed.
Again.
A faint vibration, muffled in my pocket, but in the compressed quiet of the cabin, it felt like a scream.
I reached for it and pulled it out, but before I could unlock it, Riley’s hand moved, fast, precise, a snake strike.
He plucked the phone out of my hands and out of my reach.
“Riley—“ My heart slammed against my ribs. “Give it back.”
He raised a brow, unconcerned. “Relax. I’m not reading anything private.”
“You just—“ My voice cracked. “You grabbed it.”
“Because you jumped like it was a detonator.” His tone was silk over steel. “Which makes me… curious.”
My breath tangled. Panic spiked hot and sharp.
But then I remembered.
My message previews were off. All he saw was my new wallpaper. A grainy picture of Chiara holding a bubble tea and making the world’s worst face.
Riley tilted the phone in his palm, amused. “Your friends are disasters.”
“Give. It. Back.”
He didn’t.
Instead, with infuriating ease, his thumb pressed on the screen and the phone unlocked.
My stomach dropped so fast I felt weightless.
No.
No no no.
“How—“ My voice strangled itself. “How did you—?”
He glanced at me, eyes gleaming with slow, wicked satisfaction. “You unlocked your phone when we were walking to the reception yesterday. You thought I wasn’t paying attention?”
My blood went cold.
He had memorized it.
Because of course he had.
His thumb slid to the message icon.
My breath stopped entirely.
If he opened those messages… if he saw what I asked the stranger… if he saw the fear…
But I couldn’t move.
I was frozen, every nerve wrapped tight in dread.
He tapped the notification.
The message thread opened.
My lungs burned.
Riley’s brows lifted.
“Well,” he murmured, “this is… interesting.”
I nearly collapsed.
He read aloud in a mocking falsetto:
“Hey Lulu, how was the wedding? Is your new stepbrother hot—“ He lifted his eyes slow, like a predator savoring the pause. “—??”
Heat detonated across my face so violently I thought I might faint. Kill me. Someone kill me. Now.
Riley leaned back in the leather seat, the jet humming behind him, and grinned. Not the smug boyish grin he gave adults. The dangerous one. The one with sharp edges.
“So this is what your friends are curious about.”
“They’re joking,” I managed, voice a rasp. “They’re stupid. Give me my phone.”
He ignored the command entirely.
Instead, he typed with one hand, unhurried, confident, completely in control, while I watched in silent horror.
He angled the screen just enough for me to see the words, as if inviting me to witness my own destruction.
He’s trouble. And he knows he’s hot. Don’t encourage him.
My heart seized.
“Oh my god—stop—stop—stop—“
He hit send.
The bubble appeared instantly.
Delivered.
Riley locked the phone, flipped it around, and placed it gently in my trembling hand, his fingers brushing mine like nothing was wrong.
Like he hadn’t just set a fire inside my life.
“See?” he murmured, leaning close enough that his breath skimmed the edge of my jaw. “Nothing to worry about.”
I stared at the screen, my pulse a frantic drum.
He watched me with a lazy, knowing smile.
“But I’ll admit, princess…” His voice dropped, soft and lethal. “I’m very interested to see how your little friends react.”
I swallowed hard.
Riley’s fingers brushed my knee.
“And how you’ll explain me to them.”
The jet cut through the sky, smooth and quiet, carrying me higher and deeper into the one place I shouldn’t be:
His proximity.
His control.
His game.