Chapter 34 #3
He just stands there in the morning sun looking unfairly good and completely unsurprised by my reaction, like girls regularly discover they’re being put on private planes before noon and respond with less outrage.
“I hate you,” I say.
His smile deepens.
“No, you don’t.”
Which is the problem.
The jet is sleek and cream-colored and obscenely quiet inside, all polished wood, pale leather, and the kind of luxury that makes you instinctively sit straighter even when you’re in leggings and trying not to think about the fact that the boy who broke your heart once is now flying you somewhere secret.
A flight attendant greets us at the door with exactly the right amount of discreet professionalism. If she notices the heat between us, she gives no sign of it whatsoever.
Which I respect even if it makes me feel seventeen and transparent.
Tristan sets our bags aside, thanks her, and guides me farther in with a hand at the small of my back that is somehow more dangerous than if he’d grabbed me outright.
“Sit,” he says quietly.
I turn and look at him.
“That tone is new.”
“Is it working?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
I take the window seat because I need something between my body and his for self-preservation.
He sits beside me anyway.
The door seals. The plane begins to move. The engines hum low and smooth beneath us.
I last all of four minutes.
Maybe five.
Then I’m unbuckling my belt with unnecessary force and turning toward him.
His brows lift.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
His mouth twitches.
“Doing what?”
“Acting like you don’t know exactly what this is doing to me.”
He leans back in the seat and looks at me with those dark, steady eyes that always make me feel one second from either violence or prayer.
“I know exactly what it’s doing to you.”
“Then why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“Controlled.”
That gets him.
A real laugh this time.
Low and rough and startled out of him.
“Oh,” he says. “That’s the complaint?”
“Yes.”
The plane lifts, pressure changing in my ears, California shrinking below us in clean, sunlit lines.
I twist more fully toward him.
His gaze drops.
Lingers.
Returns to my face.
Every line in his body goes still.
Not relaxed.
Still.
A different thing entirely.
I lean in until my mouth is just shy of his.
“Do something,” I whisper.
His jaw flexes.
“Seatbelt sign is still on.”
I stare at him for one incredulous beat.
Then I laugh because that is such a deeply Tristan answer that it almost kills me.
“Are you serious?”
He reaches up, smooths one strand of hair back behind my ear, and the softness of the gesture makes the laugh die in my throat.
“Be a good girl,” he murmurs.
My pulse goes wild.
There are approximately ten thousand things wrong with how much I like that.
He doesn’t push me away.
Doesn’t drag me closer either.
Just leaves me there, suspended in the heat of my own bad decisions, his thumb resting lightly against my jaw.
I make a frustrated sound.
His eyes flash.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “You want me so badly, Stells.”
The problem with Tristan is that once in a while he says something in exactly the tone that bypasses every defense I have.
I lean in the last inch and kiss him.
Hard.
He lets me.
For half a heartbeat.
Then his hand slides into my hair and he kisses me back, and the world narrows to the taste of coffee and heat and the low groan that catches in his throat when I climb the rest of the way into his lap like the belt sign and good sense and basic public decency have all ceased to exist.
The kiss deepens fast.
His mouth is hot and controlled and devastating, like even now some part of him is choosing every angle, every pressure, every second he lets himself take.
My hands grip his shoulders. One of his slides to my waist and holds there—firm enough to make me feel exactly how easily he could move me wherever he wanted.
He just doesn’t.
That’s what wrecks me.
Not the hunger.
The discipline inside it.
I kiss him again, deeper, until my lungs are burning and my whole body is tuned to one cruel, impossible fact: he wants me.
I can feel it.
In the tension locked through his thighs.
In the way his breath goes ragged when I bite his lower lip.
In the way his fingers flex against my waist like they’re arguing with themselves.
But he still does not touch any of the places in me aching hardest for him.
When he finally breaks the kiss, his forehead drops to mine.
Both of us breathing too hard.
Both of us very aware of where I am.
His voice comes out scraped raw.
“You are making this difficult.”
I smile against his mouth.
“That was the goal.”
His hand tightens at my waist.
“Brat.”
I sit back just enough to look at him.
“Chicken.”
That makes him laugh once, breathless and disbelieving.
Then his eyes move slowly over my face, my throat, the curve of my mouth, and I swear the look alone should be illegal over state lines.
“You have no idea,” he says quietly, “how much effort it’s taking not to lay you down across this seat and forget I ever had a plan.”
Every single nerve in my body lights up.
“Then maybe forget it.”
His smile returns, smaller now. More dangerous.
“No.”
I smack his shoulder.
He actually laughs.
Which is infuriating.
“You are the worst.”
“And you’re impatient.”
“I’m not impatient.”
He just looks at me.
I roll my eyes.
“Fine. I’m impatient.”
“There she is.”
I hate that I’m smiling now too.
I shift, still half in his lap, and glance toward the front of the plane. The flight attendant appears professionally occupied with literally anything else in the universe.
Good for her.
I look back at Tristan and lower my voice.
“Remember that game?” I ask.
He studies me for a second.
“Which one?”
“The one where the court was the battlefield and the volleyball was my sword.”
Recognition flashes over his face.
A slow grin follows.
“Yeah.” His thumb drags once along my side. “My teammates were scared of you.”
“Good.”
His eyes darken.
I lean closer, close enough that my mouth brushes the corner of his when I speak.
“Imagine that level of intensity on you in a bedroom.”
He goes perfectly still.
Not a full stop.
Something sharper.
Like I just struck a match in a room full of gas.
His hand leaves my waist and comes up under my chin, tipping my face up.
“Careful.”
The warning is quiet.
Not empty.
I hold his gaze anyway.
“Why?”
“Because if you keep talking like that,” he says, voice gone low and rough all over again, “this surprise is going to end with us never making it past altitude.”
The image hits me so hard I almost lose the thread entirely.
I glance at his mouth.
Then back to his eyes.
“You find this funny.”
“A little.”
I smack him again, lighter this time.
He catches my wrist before I can pull back and turns his head to press one kiss to the inside of it.
Soft.
Unexpected.
Deadly.
Then he lowers my hand to his chest and keeps it there.
The beat of his heart is hard and fast beneath my palm.
There.
Proof.
Not that I needed it.
But there it is anyway.
He wants this just as badly.
He is just better at surviving it.
For now.
“Sit back down,” he murmurs.
“Make me.”
That earns me a look.
One that starts at my face and ends somewhere lower and returns slow enough that my breath catches.
“Don’t tempt me with promises I’m trying to keep.”
My whole body softens at that in a way I deeply resent.
Because beneath all the heat, all the friction, all the dangerous almosts, there it is again—care.
He is restraining himself because he wants the surprise. Because he wants this memory to hold. Because he is not taking the easy version of us anymore.
That should make me calmer.
It doesn’t.
However, it does make me slide reluctantly off his lap and back into my own seat before I do something unwise in front of a woman who definitely deserves hazard pay.
Tristan reaches over, fastens my seatbelt for me, and kisses me once more—quick this time, just enough to leave me dazed and annoyed and wanting.
“Good girl,” he says quietly.
I turn my face toward the window so he can’t see how hard that lands.
He definitely sees anyway.
The sky outside is impossibly blue, the clouds bright enough to hurt.
d I’m on a private plane with Tristan Vale, lips swollen from kissing him, body still humming from the pressure of his hands, and no idea where he’s taking me.
I glance sideways at him.
He’s watching me closely.
I narrow my eyes.
“If this surprise is disappointing, I’m ruining your life.”
He smiles. “It won’t be.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know you.”
The answer is immediate.
Certain.
He knows me.
My pulse softens into something just as dangerous.
When I speak, my voice comes out quieter. “You better.”
His expression changes for a second—less amused, more intent. Like he heard the meaning under the words and took it seriously.
“I do,” he says.
Then he takes my hand, laces our fingers together, and looks out the window like he didn’t just turn my entire bloodstream into lightning.
And for the first time since he picked me up in that alley behind the athletic complex, I stop fighting the suspense and let myself sink into it.
Into his hand.
Into the hum of the plane.
Into the terrible, beautiful truth of how much more intimate this waiting has become than if he’d just taken what we both wanted at the first chance.
He is making me wait.
And somehow that only makes me his more.
At some point, the private jet stops feeling insane.
Not normal.
Never normal.
Just… suspended.
Like time loosened its grip somewhere above the clouds and forgot to tighten again.
We study.
Which sounds stupid even in my own head, but it’s true.
Somewhere after making out in his lap and threatening his life if the surprise disappointed me, Tristan pulled my laptop onto the table between us, opened his own, and somehow turned the whole plane into the most expensive study hall in North America.
I finished an outline.