Chapter 36
STUCK BETWEEN A DREAM GIRL AND A HARD PLACE. LITERALLY.
NOLAN
We’ve just entered hostile airspace.
I look up at Rorie and catch a flash of resignation in her eyes. Or annoyance.
Yeah, probably annoyance.
Though it could be something else entirely. One I can’t name, but it knocks me just off-center.
When she slides into the seat beside me, her thigh brushes mine. My body locks up tight.
“So,” I say casually, “are you planning to stab me mid-flight?”
She tilts her head, weighing it. “We’ll see how the first hour goes.”
Christ. Why is that hot?
My gaze snags on her lips, and everything in me goes very, very still.
And then loud.
She’s here. Next to me. In the flesh. Flushed and fine and infuriating.
And every ounce of self-control I had? Gone. Blown straight out the emergency exit.
The reasons I told myself to back off? Disintegrated. Burned alive in the pressurized cabin air.
All I want is her.
She’s settling in, oblivious to the fact that she’s detonated my nervous system. And then my imagination—traitorous as ever—launches straight into a visual.
I don’t just think about her mouth. I see it. Feel it.
The drag of her tongue. The slow, punishing pace. Her lips wrapped around me as I fist her hair and force her to take more—
Shit! I’m fucking hard.
Dying inside, I adjust in my seat, subtly, discreetly, because my dick is clearly on a different page than my brain. This is bad. I’m wearing gray joggers. Gray. The official flag of “Hey, look at my boner.”
She smooths out her shirt and clicks her seatbelt. And it’s only now I realize she’s not in one of her usual man killer outfits and heels.
She’s in leggings and a ribbed tank, chambray shirt hanging open as though it was a casual afterthought. Hair in a messy bun that makes her look like sex incarnate. Her scent drifts over—citrusy and soft—and I’m already undone.
And knowing that she might not be wearing anything under those leggings, makes my already inconvenient boner, rock fucking hard.
A few minutes of the worst awkward silence in history go by. My mind keeps drifting to her. Mostly how she made me feel. The way she looked at me like I was the most annoying man alive yet somehow still worth her time.
I miss that. I hate that I miss that.
“Your team ready?” I ask, grasping for neutral.
Rorie doesn’t look up right away. She crosses one leg over the other. She’s trying to test my soul. Then finally says, “Fifty percent.”
“Fifty?” I arch a brow.
She shrugs, all nonchalance and quiet steel. “I don’t pitch on anything I haven’t experienced. You can’t fake connection. You have to feel it first.”
There’s weight in her voice. Intent. She doesn’t pitch products—she pitches emotions. She feels everything. Which is exactly why I’m fucked.
A flight attendant appears with menus. “Can I get you anything to eat or drink?”
Rorie barely glances at the menu before shutting it. “Club sandwich. Fries. And a really strong dirty martini. Straight up slutty.”
The flight attendant smiles.
“Same,” I say, because at this point, I need something solid in my system to counteract the storm swirling through my body. “But bourbon for me, please.”
Eventually, our food arrives. Rorie’s halfway into her sandwich when I swipe one of her fries.
Her head whips toward me. “Seriously?”
“Mine are meh.” I pop it in my mouth. “They’re better when stolen.”
She exhales, shakes her head slightly and mutters, “So I hear.”
It’s the way she says it so dryly that knocks something loose in my brain. It’s familiar. Exactly how Textually Frustrated would say it.
For one brutal second, I almost wish she were TF. That’s not possible though.
To distract myself, I stare out the window, watching dusk bleed into night. Below, the ocean stretches endlessly, its surface a dark mirror reflecting the last traces of sunlight, scattering like embers before they disappear entirely.
This trip is going to kill me. And I still don’t know what the hell to do about it. If anything.
My head leans back against the chair. Rorie’s nose is buried in a book, her fingers idly tracing the edge of the pages as she reads.
At first, I don’t think much of it until I catch a few words on the page. Words that make my brows shoot up and a slow, wicked grin tug at my lips.
Well, well, well.
Leaning over, my smirk curves. “His fingers teased along her wet folds, spreading her open as he—”
Rorie flinches, slaps the book shut. “Jesus, Nolan. Do you mind?”
“Oh, I mind very much.” I grin like the menace I am. “I’m very interested in this literary masterpiece. What was the next line? His fingers stroked the desperate ache between her thighs—”
“Stop it.” Her cheeks blaze.
“Do you prefer the rough type of book boyfriend? Or the teasing-until-you-beg kind? I can do both.”
Oh my God! Why did I say that?
Rorie’s eyes narrow.
I grin, sheepishly, watching the way her lips part ever so slightly, the way her pulse flutters at her throat. And it’s in this exact moment that I know…
I’m going to fix this broken thing between us.
Rorie exhales through her nose, visibly seething. She might actually throw the book at my head. She twists in her seat, meets my gaze, and lets a slow, wicked smile curl her lips. Then she taps her fingers against her spicy read, completely unbothered.
“You really want to know what my type is?” Her voice drops so low it makes my pulse stutter.
“I prefer a man who knows exactly how to make me come with words alone, how to read my body without needing instructions, how to drag it out until I’m shaking, begging for more, and still doesn’t let me have it. ”
My grin freezes, then fades.
Well, fuck.
She lifts a smug brow.
As I open my mouth to fire something back, she tilts her head, eyes glinting with cutting amusement.
“I thought I met a guy like that once,” she says. “My mistake.”
Her words don’t just land—they carve. Right through the armor I thought I still had.
I need to laugh it off. Roll my eyes, make some cocky remark.
Instead, I stare at her, jaw tight. This time I don’t have a damn thing to say.
The plane lights dim as the flight drags on, conversations fade and Rorie, for all her lethal confidence and sharp edges, has finally gone still.
She’s slumped in her seat, head tilted to the side—my side—and the faint glow of her phone screen casts soft shadows across her face. Her earbuds are in, and her breathing has evened out, slow and unguarded. Her scent floats in the air between us.
I could pretend this doesn’t mean anything. In fact, I should move. Shift away. Jostle her so she wakes up and spares me the torment of feeling her.
I don’t.
My pulse ticks up as her head inches closer, and then, with a barely-there exhale, it happens—she rests against my shoulder.
Something thick settles in my chest.
I don’t hate it.
I fucking love it, actually.
The weight of Rorie against me feels good. And when I think I might be able to hold it together, she nuzzles into me.
Jesus Christ.
My fingers ache to touch her, and before I can stop myself, I adjust my position so she’s more comfortable. It’s a small movement so she doesn’t wake up with a crick in her neck.
But it doesn’t go unnoticed.
Rorie stirs, whispering incomprehensible babble under her breath then she sighs. And it’s that sigh that kills me.
Soft. Content. Like she trusts me despite me already fucking that up.
Glancing down at her, my chest tightens even more. She’d die if she knew she’s all curled up next to me, letting her guard down.
Then she moves.
A shift. A tiny one.
But it’s enough.
Her arm slides, hand slipping from where it was resting near her lap, gliding downward until—
Oh, fuck me.
Contact.
A delicate hand lands right between my legs.
Direct hit.
Kill me now.
My entire body seizes up like a man being held at gunpoint. Every neuron in my brain starts screaming, but there’s no escape, no logical plan of action.
Does she realize?
No. No, she doesn’t.
She’s asleep, for Christ’s sake, oblivious to the absolute hellstorm she’s unleashing on me.
I stare at the ceiling. The overhead compartment. Anywhere but down.
Do not react. Do not react. Do not—
I react.
My dick, my traitorous, good-for-nothing dick, swells beneath her hand. Of course it did, it just got its own private invitation to paradise.
I flinch.
And you know what she does?
She sighs.
That soft, sweet exhale of contentment, as if my suffering is bringing her peace.
I want to scream. I want to shove her off, shake her awake, demand she take responsibility for the absolute travesty of this situation. But I also cannot, under any circumstances, wake her up to this.
What would I even say?
“Hey, Adams, thought you should know you’re currently cupping my junk in front of our entire professional network. No big deal. Hope you’re well-rested. Oh, and I liked it. Will you consider doing it again?”
Nope.
Not happening.
Twisting enough to escape, I move her hand off my already tortured situation.
She stirs again.
Fuck.
Her hand flexes.
She squeezes.
I black out.
I am deceased.
I have left my body and entered another plane of existence.
This is it. This is how I die.
Death by unintentional hand job.
And then, because as I’ve mentioned, the universe hates me, she shifts again, rolling to the side, pulling her hand away at last.
Relief. Sweet, glorious relief. Until she mutters in her sleep. Soft. Dreamy. Barely there.
“Mmm… so big.”
My pulse is now rewriting the laws of physics and I’m about five seconds from spontaneous human combustion.