Chapter 5 #2
Slowly, unbearably, I become aware of my body. Of the way my nipples are tightening under my sweater. Of the slick pulse of wetness between my thighs. Of the fact that he hasn’t even touched me, not really, and I’m already aroused enough to feel embarrassed by it.
God.
I shift in my seat and instantly regret it, because the movement only makes me more conscious of the damp heat gathering between my legs.
He notices.
Of course he notices.
Not because he looks down. He doesn’t. He just sees too much. Something in my face must change, or maybe it’s the way I press my knees together, the way my breath turns shallow.
One dark brow lifts. “Are you all right?”
No.
I am absolutely not all right.
I’m sitting in business class by mistake next to a man old enough to know better and handsome enough to make that meaningless, and my whole body is responding to him like it has no interest whatsoever in dignity.
“I’m fine,” I say.
He leans back, one arm resting near his side, his body angled just enough toward mine that I can feel the heat of him even without contact. “That sounded unconvincing.”
I look out the window because it feels safer than looking at him. Rain beads across the glass. Beyond it, runway lights blur in the dusk.
“I’m a nervous flyer,” I say.
“We haven’t even taken off yet.”
“It’s my first time on a plane.”
I shift my attention back to him. The change in his face is subtle, but it’s there. Interest, maybe. Surprise.
“Your first?”
I nod.
“And you wound up in business class by accident.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds glamorous.”
He smiles.
It’s not a kind smile. It’s a deeply male one. The kind that makes my pulse jump and something inside me soften despite every instinct telling me not to trust the effect.
“I’m not sure glamorous is the word I’d choose.”
I swallow. The seat suddenly feels too warm. My sweater feels too thick. My skin is hypersensitive, as if every nerve has turned outward.
A flight attendant appears with a practiced smile and offers him a drink. He asks for whiskey. She turns to me. “Champagne?” she asks.
Before I can answer, he says, “Bring her water.”
I blink at him.
The flight attendant nods and moves on as if this sort of thing happens all the time.
I should object. I should bristle. Tell him I can order my own drink, thanks very much.
Instead I just look at him. “You do that often?” I ask.
“What?”
“Order for strangers.”
“You’re not drinking on your first flight while already nervous.”
“And that’s because…”
He tilts his head. “Because you’re wound tight enough to snap, and alcohol would make it worse.”
I stare at him.
He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
“That’s annoyingly perceptive,” I mutter.
“I’ve been called worse.”
I believe that immediately.
The water arrives. So does his whiskey. He thanks the attendant without really looking at her and waits until she leaves before turning back to me. “Tell me your name.”
I hesitate. I’m not sure why. Maybe because names make things real. Maybe because the chemistry between us already feels too charged for two people who have exchanged exactly one boarding-pass disaster and half a dozen sentences.
Still, I say, “Sienna.”
His gaze lingers on my mouth when I speak. “Sienna.”
The way he says it makes it sound darker. Richer. Like something he might bite into.
I grip the bottle of water a little tighter. “And you are?”
He takes a sip of whiskey, then says, “Viktor.”
Of course he is.
There’s something about the name that suits him too well. Solid. Old-world. Masculine in a way that doesn’t need decoration.
“It fits you,” I say before I can stop myself.
His mouth curves again. “Does it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I should not answer that, but I do anyway.
“It sounds like someone who gets what he wants.”
His eyes hold mine, and for a second neither of us moves. Then he says, very softly, “Usually.”
Heat floods me so quickly it feels almost humiliating.
I look down at my water bottle, at my own fingers wrapped around the plastic, at anything but him.
My body is betraying me in every possible way.
My breasts ache. My nipples are painfully hard.
The wetness between my thighs has gone from a flicker to a pulse, warm and insistent, and I can’t remember the last time a man made me feel anything this strong fully clothed.
He hasn’t touched me. Not once.
And somehow that’s the most erotic thing about it.
I shift again, trying for subtlety, and hear the soft catch in his breathing when I press my thighs together.
My face burns.
He noticed that too.
There’s a silence then, not empty but full. Dense with something neither of us is naming yet. The kind of silence that feels like standing on the edge of a drop and knowing exactly how far it is to the bottom.
When he speaks again, his voice is rougher. “Tell me,” he says, “do you always get this flushed around strangers?”
I look up at him.
That’s not a safe question.
“No,” I say.
“Good.”
My breath catches. “Why is that good?”
His gaze drops, just for an instant, to my mouth. Then back to my eyes.
“Because,” he says, “I’d rather believe this is specific to me.”
Present Day
When I see him tonight, I almost faint.
Not in a dramatic way. My vision just blurs for a second. The room shifts. My knees feel unreliable. I’m standing there in front of Ethan and Camille, already humiliated, already trying not to cry, and then I hear that voice behind me and turn.
And it’s him.
The man from the plane.
For a second, nothing makes sense. I just stare at him.
The room, the guests, the candles, Ethan, all of it drops away.
I know that face. I know the silver at his temples.
I know that mouth. I know the body under the tuxedo because I’ve felt it on top of mine, inside mine, in dreams that still wake me up wet and aching and angry with myself.
And then Ethan calls him Father and my whole world turns around.
That’s the part that nearly takes me down.
By the time Viktor steps in and shuts them up, I’m barely holding myself together. When he makes Ethan apologize, I’m still standing there, but only just.
Now we’re outside, alone, and somehow this feels even worse.
It isn’t really a hallway. More like a long open passage running along the side of the house.
Stone floor. high arches. Cold air moving through from the lawns below.
The rain has eased, but the night still smells damp, and now and then a gust slips through and brushes against my face and bare hands.
Behind us, through the glass, the dinner goes on in warm light as if nothing happened.
I can’t seem to get enough air.
Viktor is standing too close. Not touching me. Just there. Solid, quiet, watching my face in a way that makes me feel seen in places I do not want seen.
“You’re pale,” he says.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
I am not fine.
I’m outside my ex-boyfriend’s rehearsal dinner with the man I slept with on a plane seven months ago, and that man is my ex-boyfriend’s father, and I’m carrying his baby under a loose coat and a dress chosen very carefully for exactly this reason.
I want to put a hand over my stomach, but I don’t. I can’t.
He must never know.
Not now. Maybe not ever. This is too ugly, too tangled, too absurd to say out loud. One wrong look from him and I feel like the whole thing might rise to the surface.
He watches me for another second. “You look like you might pass out.”
“I’m not going to pass out.” The words come out too quickly.
He doesn’t argue. He just stays there, steady, and that somehow makes it harder to keep hold of myself. Concern from him feels dangerous. Too intimate. Too easy to lean into.
I need distance from him. From this. From the way my body still reacts to his voice.
So I say, “I need to go back in.” I move before he answers.
The passage is narrower than I thought, or maybe he hasn’t stepped aside enough. Either way, I have to brush past him to get by. My shoulder catches his chest. My coat skims his leg. It’s barely anything, but my body reacts instantly. Heat, memory, want. So fast it makes me feel sick.
I keep walking.
I don’t look at him.
I don’t touch my stomach.
I don’t stop.
When I step back inside, the room feels wrong in a different way. Too bright. Too warm. Everyone pretending to have recovered. The kind of careful conversation people use after something ugly has happened and no one wants to admit they enjoyed it.
I feel someone watching me before I even look up.
Ethan’s mother. She’s seated now, posture straight, expression unreadable, but her eyes are on me. Cool, direct, unpleasant. Not curious. Not kind. Just assessing.
I look away.
A second later Ethan returns to the table, and she turns toward him at once. Her face softens. Her hand goes to his sleeve. She leans in and says something low to him, something meant only for him, and I can tell from the shape of it that she’s comforting him.
Comforting him.
That gets me more than it should.
I’m the one they tried to shame in front of a room full of guests, and somehow he’s the one being soothed. Of course he is.
I tighten my hold on the binder and head toward the staff near the side of the room. I need something to do. A list. A problem. A tray that needs moving. Anything that lets me keep walking and not think about the fact that Viktor is somewhere behind me now.
I can still feel him, that’s the worst part. Not just because he defended me. Because he’s real again. Not a memory. Not a dream. Not a one-night mistake I could file away under things that changed my life and left me alone with the consequences.
He’s here. And if he looks at me too closely, I don’t know how much longer I can keep this from breaking open.
I get through the rest of the evening by refusing to think. That’s the only way.