Chapter 5 Miles
Miles
Ray's palm moves from the armrest to my thigh, slow and deliberate, fingers spreading over the fabric just above my knee.
The blanket covers both of us from the waist down, and the cabin is dim, and everyone around us is asleep or pretending to be, and Ray Garcia is touching my leg and I'm not pushing him off.
I should push him off. I should tell him to move and then I should go to the bathroom and splash water on my face and come back and pretend this never happened. That's what a smart person would do. That's what Miles Covington, senior associate, partner-track, would do.
His thumb moves. Just a small stroke against the inside of my thigh, back and forth, and my entire body lights up.
I press my head back against the headrest and close my eyes and try to remember why this is a bad idea.
It's a bad idea because he's my assistant.
Because we're on a work trip. Because Richard Aldridge is expecting me to give the most important presentation of my career and I'm sitting here getting stiff because a twenty-three-year-old in a wrinkled shirt is touching my leg.
"Breathe," Ray murmurs, barely audible. His lips are close to my ear. When did he get this close?
"I am breathing."
"You're not. You're holding your breath."
He's right. I force air into my lungs and it comes out shaky, and I hear him make a low sound in his throat.
His fingers slide higher. Still over the jeans, still innocent enough to be deniable if someone looked over, but we both know what's happening. He presses into the muscle of my inner thigh, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound.
"You're tense," he says quietly, like we're having a normal conversation. Like his thumb isn't six inches from my dick. "You've been tense since we left the airport."
"I'm always tense. It's a personality trait."
"Must be exhausting."
"You have no idea." My voice comes out lower than I want it to, rougher, and his grip tightens on my thigh in response.
We sit like that for a while. His palm on my leg, both of us staring straight ahead, the plane humming around us.
It's the strangest thing — the anger from before is gone, or it's not gone exactly but it's transformed into something I don't have a name for.
I swear I can feel his pulse through his palm against my thigh. It's fast. Mine is faster.
"Can I ask you something?" Ray says.
"Can I stop you?"
"When's the last time someone touched you?"
The question lands in my chest like a fist. I want to snap back with something cold — none of your business, or that's inappropriate, or any of the phrases I keep loaded and ready for moments when people get too close.
But his hand is warm on my leg and the low cabin light feels safe in a way it shouldn't, and the honest answer is so pathetic that saying it out loud might actually kill me.
"It's been a while," I say.
"How long is a while?"
"Garcia."
"I'm asking because I want to know, not to make fun of you."
I swallow. "A long time. Years."
His thumb goes still. I wait for the follow-up — the surprise, the pity, the questions about why. But he just lets out a slow breath and says, "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." His thumb starts moving again. "What about hookups?"
"What about them?"
"Do you do them? Have you?"
"I had a life before this job," I say, and it comes out more defensive than I want. "I went to college. I'm not a monk."
"Never said you were." I can hear the smile in his voice even though I can't see it. "I just can't picture you at a bar picking someone up."
"I've done it." Twice. Both forgettable. Both with the lights off, both quick, both something I did because I wanted to feel normal and then felt worse afterward. "It's not really my thing."
"What is your thing?"
"Working."
He laughs, quiet and low. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard."
"What about you?" I ask, and I don't know why I'm asking, because I already know.
I can picture Ray's hookup history without any effort at all — bars, apps, quick smiles, enthusiastic no-strings-attached sex with guys who are fun and uncomplicated and nothing like me. "Let me guess. You've lost count."
"I haven't lost count. I just don't keep count.
There's a difference." His fingers inch higher, casual, like he's not thinking about it even though we both know he is.
"I like sex. I'm not going to apologize for that.
But it's always come naturally for me, you know?
I meet someone, we have a good time, nobody gets weird about it. "
"How nice for you."
"It is, actually." He presses into the muscle of my inner thigh and I have to bite down to keep quiet. "But that's the thing. I've never had to work for it. I've never wanted someone who didn't want me back, or at least didn't act like it."
"Is that what this is? You want me because I don't want you?"
"Do you not want me?"
I don't answer that. I can't answer that honestly and I won't answer it dishonestly, so I just sit there with his touch burning through my jeans and my cock straining against my zipper and my dignity somewhere on the floor under seat 4B.
"I think you do," he says, and his voice is lower now. "I think you've wanted me for a while. I think that's why you're so pissed off all the time."
"I'm pissed off because you're bad at your job."
"I'm great at my job. You just don't want to admit it because that would mean you like something about me, and you can't handle that." His thumb drags, slow and deliberate, and I feel my hips shift toward him before I can stop them. "You can't handle wanting something you didn't plan for."
"You don't know anything about what I can handle."
"Then show me."
His pinky finger grazes the line of my cock, and I suck in a breath. He freezes.
"Sorry," he whispers. "Too much?"
"No." I swallow hard. "No, it's not too much."
"Tell me what you want." His mouth is right next to my ear, his breath warm on my skin. "I'll do whatever you want, Miles. Just tell me."
Nobody has ever asked me that. And the answer is so big and so terrifying that I can't say any of it — I want to let go, I want someone to take over — so I say the only thing I can get out.
"Touch me."
His fingers move. He unbuttons my jeans under the blanket, and it's clumsy with the lights down, his knuckles bumping against my stomach, and I'd laugh if I could breathe.
He gets the zipper down and slides his palm inside, over my boxers, and wraps around me through the cotton, and I almost come right there.
"Fuck," he breathes against my ear. "You're so hard."
I can't respond because he's gripping my cock and my brain has gone completely offline. He strokes me, slow and firm, his thumb rubbing over the head, and I seize the armrest until my knuckles go white. A sound tries to escape my throat and I trap it behind my teeth.
"You gotta be quiet," he murmurs, and there's something in his voice — this low, focused steadiness — that's nothing like the Ray I know from the office. The goofball is gone. This is someone else. Someone who knows exactly what he's doing. "Can you do that?"
I nod because I don't trust my voice.
He strokes me slow, learning the shape of me through the cotton, and I'm already leaking, a damp spot spreading under his thumb that makes me want to die of embarrassment.
He doesn't seem embarrassed. He makes a low sound in his throat, almost a growl, and rubs his thumb right over the wet spot, pressing the fabric against my slit.
"Fuck, you're wet," he breathes. "Already dripping."
My teeth lock together. Nobody has ever talked to me like this. I've never let anyone close enough. And the filthy, direct way he says it makes my cock pulse against his palm.
He slips under the waistband of my boxers and wraps his fingers around me skin to skin, and the noise I make is barely human. He covers my mouth with his free hand, fast, pressing my head back against the headrest. "Shh. I've got you. Just breathe."
I'm not breathing. I'm dying. His grip is big and sure on my cock and he's stroking me with this steady, unhurried rhythm like we have all the time in the world, like we're not surrounded by sleeping strangers, like this is just something he does — takes people apart in the low light with one fist and a low voice.
"That's it," he whispers against my ear.
"God, you feel good. I've been thinking about this.
About what you'd feel like." He tightens his stroke and his thumb swipes over the head, spreading the wetness, and my hips buck up.
He presses down on my thigh with his forearm to hold me still. "Steady. I've got you. Let me do this."
I turn my head and his face is right there, his lips almost touching mine, and I can see the glint of his eyes in the dimness. He's watching me come undone and he looks focused and hungry and like this is the most important thing he's ever done.
"Has anyone ever made you come like this?" he asks, low and filthy. "In public, trying not to scream?"
I shake my head.
"Good." His fist speeds up, just slightly, and I grab his wrist. Not to stop him, just to hold on. "I want to be the first. I want you to think about this every time you sit next to someone on a plane."
My hips are moving now, pushing up into his grip, and I can't stop them. The wet sounds of skin on skin are obscene in the quiet cabin and I should care but I don't, I can't make myself care about anything except the pressure building low in my stomach and the heat of his breath on my neck.
"Your turn," I manage, and my fingers fumble under the blanket between us until I find him. He's stiff, and when I press my palm against him he groans into my shoulder, muffling the sound against my sweater.