Chapter 14
Laurel
The jet has finally reached cruising altitude, so I unbuckle my seat belt and stand.
Sin glances up from his phone. “You good?”
“Just need to use the restroom.”
His eyes are dark as he watches me, far too knowing.
I don’t look back as I walk down the narrow aisle. I pass the bathroom without stopping and go to the small bedroom at the back of the plane. My hand is barely on the door before I hear him behind me. The quiet certainty of his footsteps follows me as I step inside.
Sin closes the door behind us, pressing the lock.
For one second, we just stand there. The room is small. Too small. A bed built into the wall, soft lighting, a window shade half-drawn against the clouds outside. The hum of the jet surrounds us, muffling the rest of the world.
He looks at me like he knows exactly what I did. Like he knows I didn’t come back here for the restroom, and he didn’t follow me because he was worried I’d gotten lost.
“Tell me this is a bad idea,” I whisper.
His jaw flexes. “It’s a terrible idea.”
I nod. Then I reach for him. He crosses the space between us in one hard step and pulls me into his arms, kissing me like he has been waiting since Amsterdam to do it again. Which is ridiculous.
He had me this morning.
Twice.
But somehow, every time feels like the first time we stop pretending.
His hands slide into my hair, tilting my face up as his mouth moves over mine. I fist my hands in his shirt, dragging him closer, greedy for the weight and heat and impossible solidity of him.
The plane dips slightly and I stumble. He catches me against him.
“Careful,” he murmurs against my mouth.
He backs me toward the bed, but before my legs hit it, he stops. His forehead rests against mine, and his breath is rough.
“Laurel.”
I know that tone. The last thread of reason. The tiny space where either of us could still stop.
I hate that space.
I kiss him before he can fill it with guilt.
His hands tighten on my waist, and then the thread snaps.
He turns us, sits on the edge of the bed, and pulls me into his lap.
My dress rides up around my thighs, and his hands follow, warm and certain, sliding over my curves like he has no interest in pretending he doesn’t know every inch of me now.
The knowledge alone makes me ache.
“Sin,” I breathe.
His eyes close for half a second. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want me to forget we’re on a plane.”
I shift against him and his hands clamp down on my hips. I feel the restraint in him. It makes me reckless.
“You once told me no one could see what happens in your truck,” I whisper. “Does that apply to private jets too?”
His eyes open. Then he kisses me again, and there is nothing careful left in the room.
The bed is narrow, but somehow we make it work. Or maybe need makes everything fit. His shirt comes off. My dress follows. His mouth moves over my skin while the jet hums beneath us, and every time turbulence trembles through the plane, he holds me tighter.
When he finally pushes inside me, slow and deep, my hand flies to his shoulder and my mouth opens on a sound I can’t stop.
He moves like he has been trying all morning not to remember what I feel like and failing.
Every thrust is hard, intimate, devastating.
His mouth stays close to mine, catching my breath, swallowing my sounds, his hand braced above my head as if the only thing keeping him from losing himself completely is the thin wall of the plane and the knowledge that we are already damned.
I come with his name against his mouth.
He follows with his face buried in my neck, my body held so tightly beneath his that I can feel the shudder run through him.
For a moment after, neither of us moves as the jet carries us home. We lie tangled in the small bed, breathing hard, the clouds outside the window bright and endless.
Then Sin lifts his head. The guilt is already there. I see it before he speaks.
I touch his mouth. “Don’t.”
His eyes close.
“We’re going home,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“Everything changes when we land.”
I swallow. “I know that too.”
But neither of us says what we both understand. Everything already changed. Landing just makes it harder to ignore.
By the time the jet touches down in Chicago, we are dressed, polished, and sitting across from each other like we spent the flight discussing market projections instead of fucking each other in the bedroom. Sin’s ring is back on, and I try not to look at it.
I fail twice.
He drives me home from the private terminal. In his big black truck.
The city is dark by then, wet from earlier rain, the streets shining under headlights. I sit in the passenger seat pretending I am not hyperaware of every inch of him beside me.
Then we stop at a red light. The same kind of red light that started all of this. I glance at the tinted windows.
His voice is low when he says, “Don’t.”
I look at him. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
My pulse jumps. The light turns green and Sin drives through the intersection, jaw tight, hands hard on the wheel.
“Take me home,” I say.
“I am.”
“No.” My voice shakes. “Take me home before I ask you to pull over.”
His breath changes.
“Laurel.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No,” I admit. “Not anymore.”
That’s the truth. I don’t know anything anymore. Not how to want him less. Not how to go back to work and pretend I don’t know the sounds he makes when he comes. Not how to watch him put that ring back on and still want his hands on me.
He turns down a quieter street.
Not mine.
My heart kicks.
“Sin.”
“Tell me to keep driving.”
I should. I absolutely should. Instead, I reach across the console and touch his thigh.
The truck slows near the curb. For half a second, neither of us breathes. Then he parks.
His seat belt snaps free. Mine follows. He reaches for me at the same time I climb across the console, and then I’m in his lap, my knees bracketing his hips, the skirt of my dress shoved up, my hands in his hair, his mouth already on mine.
The truck is dark. The windows are tinted. And no one can see.
The thought makes me dizzy.
He kisses me like he hates himself for needing it. Like he wants to punish us both for landing, for leaving Amsterdam, for pretending the sky was the only place we could be honest.
His hands slide under my dress, gripping my hips as he drags me against him.
“This is insane,” he says against my mouth.
“Yes.”
“We’re back.”
“I know.”
“We should stop.”
I grind down against him, and his head falls back against the seat.
“Then stop,” I whisper.
His eyes open. There’s no softness in them now. Only lust and the kind of need that has stopped asking permission from his conscience.
He doesn’t stop.
The second time is rougher. Messier. All hands and breath and the creak of leather beneath us. I have one hand braced against the window, the other locked around his shoulder, while he holds me in place and takes what I’m giving him like he’ll die if he doesn’t.
The truck windows fog.
My lipstick smears across his jaw.
His ring catches against my thigh.
We both feel it, but neither of us stops.
That might be the worst part. Or maybe the worst part is that when I come, I bite his shoulder to keep from crying out, and he groans like the pain is the only mercy he deserves.
Afterward, I collapse against his chest. The truck is silent except for our breathing and the soft tick of the engine. Then his phone buzzes in the cup holder.
We both look at it and my body goes cold.
Jenna.
Sin stares at the screen for one long second before reaching for it. It’s a text.
I look away, but not fast enough.
Staying in Kansas through the weekend. Don’t wait up.
The words sit there between us.
Sin exhales slowly and I climb off his lap and back into the passenger seat, fixing my dress with shaking hands.
“Take me home,” I whisper.
This time, he does. Neither of us speaks the rest of the way.
When he pulls up outside my building, I reach for the door handle.
“Laurel.”
I stop. His voice is different. Lower. His eyes are on my apartment building. Then on me.
“Is your couch comfortable?”
My breath catches. It’s such a stupid question. Such an obvious question.
“No,” I say.
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Good.”
I should tell him to go home. I should remind him that Jenna is in Kansas but still his wife and this is where we stop.
Instead, I open the door and step out into the cold.
He follows.
He takes my suitcase from the back like this is perfectly normal. Like he is just being polite. Like he isn’t about to come upstairs and make another mistake with me in the apartment I have spent years making lonely on purpose.
The ride up in the elevator is silent. Sin stands behind me, close enough that I can feel the heat of him through my coat. I stare at our reflection in the elevator doors. Me, flushed and undone. Him, dark and unreadable, my suitcase at his feet and guilt sitting somewhere behind his eyes.
Inside, my apartment is dark and cool and smells faintly like vanilla.
This is my safe place. And then Sin steps inside, and it changes.
He sets my suitcase down. The door closes behind him.
The lock turns. Neither of us moves. The temptation is so strong it feels like a physical thing in the room, pressing against my skin, filling my lungs, pulling me toward him.
“You should go,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“You’re not going to.”
“No.”
My heart slams. “Why?”
His eyes hold mine. “Because I’m tired of pretending I want to.”
That does it. I cross the space between us, and he meets me halfway.
His coat hits the floor first. Then mine.
Then his hands are on my face, and his mouth is on mine, and my back is against the door, the apartment dark around us, the city outside, Jenna in Kansas, and every reason we should stop locked on the other side.
The lust isn’t softer here. It’s worse. Because this isn’t a hotel room, or jet, or truck. This is mine. My bed down the hall. My life.
And he is in it now.