Chapter 29 Illusions
ILLUSIONS
Jack
“Are you going to tell the truth now?” I asked, as I ran my finger against the top of Michelle’s hand. The plane soared away from New York, the sparkling lights of the city I called home growing more distant. I wouldn’t miss it one bit, since I was with her.
She pulled her gaze away from the window and raised an eyebrow. “The truth about what?
“You might not even have to tell me. I guess I might see when we land at seven a.m.”
She shot me another confused look. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, this is the first time I’ll have seen you in the morning. You turn into a monster, right? You have dragon breath, or seven toes?”
She turned her fingers into claws, then bared her pretend fangs. “Thirteen toes, actually.”
“I knew it. That’s why you’ve been afraid of spending the night.”
“Absolutely. I’m hideous, and you’ll go running for the hills when you see me when the sun is all the way up.”
I leaned in close. “What if I want to fuck you in the morning?”
“We’ll just have to see if I let you,” she said.
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Was it tough to get away from the office at the last minute?” she asked, shifting gears.
I shook my head. “Not when you help run the company,” I said, flashing her a confident grin.
She rolled her eyes.
“Besides, I was supposed to be away this week in California anyway.”
“I’m sure you’ll be working the whole time too in Paris.”
“Not while I’m fucking you.”
“You have a one-track mind, Jack Sullivan.”
“No, it’s two tracks. Fucking you, and thinking about fucking you.”
“You know that only makes me want to tease you this whole flight,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “Sort of like what you said to me the night we met.”
“Payback is a bitch,” I said, grabbing her shoulder and planting a quick kiss on her delicious lips that tasted of the champagne the flight attendants had handed out in the first-class cabin during boarding.
Surely, we wouldn’t be the only couple locking lips on this flight.
The cabin appeared rife with lovers and partners, and of course, solo travelers too.
Even though I’d only had a day’s notice, I’d snagged the last seat in first class, and the airline had found two together.
Being next to her for a seven-hour flight and unable to touch her the way I wanted was hell, but I’d happily suffer that kind of torture.
“But to answer your question, no, it wasn’t that hard to get away.
My sister pretty much pushed me out the door. ”
“She knows about us, right?”
I nodded. “She wants me to date again,” I said, the words coming out easily. Everything was becoming increasingly easy to say to her. Maybe it was her warmth, her lack of judgment, her kindness that made talking to her simple. Even about things I didn’t usually share.
“Because of Aubrey?”
Like this topic. “Yeah.”
“I think that’s common with widowers, or near-widower in your case. The family always wants to set the man up with a new woman not too long after and vice versa. There’s a whole subset of the romance novel genre with widower heroes.”
I cringed inside, gritting my teeth. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so easy when I hadn’t come clean with all the details. When she still operated under the illusion the rest of the world had about me. “Yup. I know all about that.”
“Remember when you told me at dinner that you don’t really miss her anymore?
Is that why you came to me in the first place?
To be able to move on and let go of all that missing?
” she asked, her voice quiet to keep the conversation private.
The low hum of the airplane flying through the night was like a shield; our words were just for us.
But how could I answer her without lying?
I was tired of being weighed down with guilt, and with the public’s misperceptions about my emotional state, or lack thereof.
Obviously, I’d been devastated by Aubrey’s death.
I wasn’t a cruel asshole who had no feelings.
I was broken when it happened, and in the days and months that followed, I missed her in the way you miss a close friend.
But I wasn’t grieving a lost love, a significant other.
I didn’t want to waste a single ounce of energy with Michelle on anything but the truth. I couldn’t lie to her, not when she was so patently open with me about so many things. I shook my head. “No.”
She raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“It’s not missing that I came to you for. It was other feelings. Guilt. Regret,” I said, biting out the honest words.
She shot me a sympathetic smile, cupped my cheek in one hand.
“It’s normal to feel all that as well. I hope you’re starting to let go of that too,” she said, then ran her thumb across my lips, almost as if she were wiping away the rest of the conversation, exonerating me of the need to expand on what I’d said.
I’d managed not to lie; but I hadn’t revealed the whole truth.
That would have to do for now. It was a step.
A small one, but it brought me closer to this woman who always seemed able to share her whole self.
Well, except overnight.
“Besides, it’s hard for me to think of anyone but you,” I said, and it was freeing to say something that was incontrovertibly true.
I kept my gaze on her the whole time, searching her eyes for her reaction.
The expression in them matched the one in mine, making my heart thump harder against my chest.
“I feel the same,” she whispered, and it was as if a layer of the ice I’d encased my heart in split wide open, letting loose what lay beneath. I could feel that damn thing trying to wriggle free from the chill I’d wrapped it in.
“That guy you mentioned the first night we went to dinner?” I asked, and she nodded, so I kept going.
“Do you still think about him? You said you were in love with him for ten years.” Maybe I was playing the therapist now, asking her questions about her past. But it wasn’t a question borne from a game, or pretend therapy.
I was asking as the man who wanted her all to himself.
Who didn’t want to share space in her head or her heart with anyone else.
The more I had of her, the more I wanted. And I wanted it all.
She shook her head, her lips curving up in a smile. “You’re the only one I think about now, Jack.”
I cupped the back of her head, pulled her close, my lips brushing hers. “I want you so much. I don’t know how to go this whole flight without being inside you.”
She laughed. “You are a two-track man.”
He laughed too. “I told you so.”
“But aren’t you the one who taught me about holding back?”
“Yes. Ignore all I’ve ever said on that.”
“Just think about how amazing it will be when we finally make it to the hotel,” she said in a sexy purr.
A low rumble worked its way up my chest as I pictured her naked, spread out on white sheets for me. “I want to walk into a hotel room and find you with your hand between your legs.”
“That might happen. But there’s something else I want to do while we’re in Paris,” she said, taking time with each word then pulling back to meet my eyes. Her teeth were pressed into her lower lip, the only sign she was nervous.
My eyes widened with anticipation. “What is it?” I asked, heat roaring through my body with ideas, images of what my sexy, naughty woman might want.
“This is going to be kind of dirty,” she said, her mouth falling open in an O, her eyes wild. Blood pounded in my head. I hoped she was going to say the very thing I wanted, the thing I’d been planning to ask her for in bed. Tension rolled through my bones.
“I like dirty,” I growled.
She moved closer. We were face-to-face, inches apart in our cushy, leather first-class seats with more than three hundred other passengers, not to mention pilots and flight attendants on this jet with us. But she was all I saw.
She reached for my collar, played with the edge of the fabric in her fingers, her eyes still on me. “You know how I like it when you play with my ass?”
Lust thundered in me. I was engulfed by hot, raw desire for her. “Yes.”
“I want more.”
I swallowed thickly. I wasn’t sure I could speak right now. I knew I couldn’t move. I was so fucking hard it hurt. “Oh god,” I groaned.
“I never have before, and I want to. With you. Do you want to?” she asked, her pretty voice so straightforward. I’d never been asked before. I’d never encountered anyone so blunt with her wishes.
I threaded my hand through her hair, gripping the back of her head as the strands fell like silk waterfalls across my fingers. “I dream about your perfect little ass. I fantasize about how it would feel. You have no fucking idea how much I want that.”
She shivered against me, a sexy little movement that revealed how utterly in sync we were in the bedroom.
She was my perfect fantasy. She was my perfect reality.
She was everything I’d ever wanted, even if she’d never asked for this.
But she had asked for it, and I was going to do everything I could to make it perfect for her.
“We have to wait till after my keynote though,” she said, her voice a soft warning.
I laughed lightly. “Yes. Of course. I do want you to be able to walk.”
“But after that, you can have me.”
“I wish your keynote were ending this very second,” I said, and dropped my mouth to hers, consuming her in a hot, wet kiss that would have turned into so much more if we weren’t on this goddamn plane.