Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
VICKY
I’ve never been on a private jet. My parents aren’t short of money, but we’re a far cry from De Vil wealth. My eyes bug out of my head as I walk up the steps and into the body of the plane. A flight attendant greets me with a glass of orange juice, or maybe it’s a mimosa, but whatever she says as she hands it to me goes right over my head. I’m too busy gawking at the luxurious interior: the plush leather armchairs, the walnut styling, the gigantic TV on one wall.
Business class has nothing on this. Not that I’ve flown extensively. My parents always preferred to holiday in the UK, but a few years ago, we went to Japan for Beth’s eighteenth birthday, and Dad splurged on upgraded flights.
Another memory crawls uninvited into my mind. For my eighteenth birthday, we visited the Cotswolds.
Before the weight of depression can settle on my shoulders and ruin this experience, I push it aside and take a sip from my glass. Mmm, it is a mimosa. Nicholas’s hands settle on my hips, and he steers me farther into the jet. My skin heats from his touch, and I lean into him slightly, breathing in the clean scent of bodywash and a trace of expensive cologne.
“Where do I sit?”
His lips touch the shell of my ear. “In my lap.”
A rush of desire explodes in my veins, a reminder, as if I needed one, that we still haven’t slept together. He can’t mean to do it here, surely? Not with two bodyguards settling into their seats at the rear of the plane.
I can’t say that for certain, though, can I? Nicholas is almost a stranger. I might have known him and his family for years, but we’re little more than acquaintances, and now we’re married.
Only because Beth died.
A familiar agony rips through my chest, both for the loss of my precious sister, who’d never hurt a fly yet died a violent death, and for me, for never being good enough no matter what I do.
“Relax,” he murmurs in my ear. “You’re stiffer than my dick.”
A tremor slithers up my spine, and I clamp my thighs together. He’s misread my body language as nerves, maybe, but I don’t correct him. As much as I adored my sister, the last person I want to talk about on my honeymoon is Beth.
For once, I want something that’s for me. Only for me. And if that makes me selfish, so be it.
Nicholas guides me to a chair. I set down my mimosa and rest my linked hands on my thighs. He shares a few words with the bodyguards, then takes the seat across from me. His rich, chocolate eyes settle on my hazel ones, and I almost squirm under the intensity of his stare.
“Do I find out where we’re going now?” My question is as much to distract myself as it is curiosity regarding our destination. He’s ignored the two previous times I asked during the car ride to the private airfield where the De Vil family keep their fleet of private jets and helicopters. I hope it’s somewhere warm, or at least warmer than England as we hurtle toward winter.
He runs his finger along his lower lip, and I track the movement. This alluring, sensual side of him is addictive. I’ve never seen him act this way. He certainly didn’t with Beth. Not in public, at least. Perhaps in private…
A fiery burn spreads through my chest, and shame coats me. I have no right to be jealous. Beth is dead. How can I be jealous of a dead woman, especially when that woman was the person I loved most in this world? What kind of a monster does that make me?
“Well, I don’t know,” he says, jolting me out of my dark thoughts. “Maybe if you ask nicely.”
The slight curve to his lips is a sign he’s teasing me—another new addition to Nicholas’s personality, which, until recently, consisted of glowers, scowls, and curt words shared begrudgingly and only when strictly necessary.
I’m on the cusp of doing as he asks, but at the last minute, I change my mind. He’s used to people capitulating. Time to show him he won’t get that from me.
Hitching one shoulder, I school my expression into a disinterested stare. “It’s fine. I can wait until we get there.”
As I turn to look out of the tiny window, I catch Nicholas’s brows knit together. He wasn’t expecting that answer. Good.
“As you wish,” he murmurs, and when I face forward once more, he’s focused on his phone, both thumbs flying over the keyboard.
I retaliate by retrieving a book from my handbag. I’m not particularly interested in reading it, but I am interested in forcing Nicholas to make the first move in striking up a conversation. Last night, and this morning, he had the upper hand, dazzling me with his superior seduction skills and disproving a belief I’ve had for years that I can’t orgasm. But I’m back now, and I refuse to play the part of a malleable De Vil wife.
The plane rises into the air, and rain splatters the windows. The book falls into my lap, my hands too busy white knuckling the arms of the chair. I don’t mind flying, but I’ve never been all that keen on the takeoff part. I’ve watched enough documentaries to know this is the danger zone. Once we’re in the air, chances of anything happening reduce to close to zero.
“I wouldn’t have thought you were scared of flying.”
Keeping the triumphant smile from my face that he broke first, I shrug. “I’ll be fine in a minute or two. It’s just this part.”
“You’ve already survived the most dangerous part.”
“What’s that? Marrying you?”
A hint of a smile plays at the corners of his lips. “The car ride here.” Leaning across the table, he unpeels my left hand from its death grip on the expensive leather and encases it in his far larger palm. Warmth from his skin soaks into mine, and his intense stare bores through me as he brushes his thumb over my knuckles. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Goddammit.
My trusty sarcasm withers in the face of his overt sexuality. It’s as though he’s cast a spell on me. One touch, one heated look, one incredible orgasm, and I metamorphize into a timid little mouse.
Like Beth.
I rip my hand from his as though the heat pouring off him had set me on fire. My loins are burning, that’s for sure. Is this his game? To somehow mold me into a carbon copy of the wife he should’ve had. The wife he chose.
Is that the only chance I have of building a relationship with him? To change every facet of who I am, every strand of DNA until I’m like her? Is that the solution to having my parents finally love me the way I wish they would?
If there’s even a grain of truth in my chaotic thoughts, then it’s too high a price to pay.
A shadow falls over his features, the muscles in his jaw visibly tightening. The ping of the seatbelt sign being switched off sounds over our heads, but he leaves his belt fastened, and his eyes don’t leave mine. The leather creaks as I shift my position, uncomfortable under the weight of his stare. He steeples his fingertips together and brings them to his chin, his elbows resting on the table that separates us. This time, it’s me who blinks first.
“What?”
His nostrils flare to accommodate the deep breath he inhales. “I’m curious.”
“What about?”
“Why you couldn’t seem to get enough of my touch last night and this morning, yet now, it’s as though you’re worried you’ll catch an incurable disease if our skin so much as brushes against one another.”
A single, high-pitched laugh leaves my lips, but it’s too false sounding and too bloody late to swallow it down. “Don’t be silly.”
“I’ve never been silly in my life.”
“Now, that’s just sad.”
“I’m also impossible to distract if I want answers. I’d advise you to save your energy and don’t even try.” He holds out his hand, palm facing up, and he waits. And waits. And waits. It’s a battle fought in silence, and I already know I’m going to lose.
It’s the eyes, the curve to his full lips, and the trace of a dimple that flashes at me from time to time, and the fact I’ve been infatuated with this man for so many years, life before him feels like a distant dream.
But if giving myself to him means losing who I am, how will I live with that?
“Half-pint, spit it out. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
A grain of truth erupts out of me without permission. “I forget who I am when you touch me.”
He flashes me those dimples, and I’m a goner.
“If it helps at all, I’m as surprised as you are by how much I enjoy touching you. I didn’t expect to.”
“I’m unsure whether that’s an insult or a compliment.”
His smile broadens. “You’d be under no illusions if I insulted you.”
“Good to know.” I concede, placing my hand inside his. He closes his fingers around me before squeezing lightly. “So, what, you were expecting to be repulsed by me?”
“Not repulsed. Not at all. Just not…” His eyes shift up and to the right before returning to land on mine. “Fascinated.” He brings our joined hands to his mouth and kisses the back of mine.
Thoughts of Beth force their way to the forefront of my mind, drowning me in a flood of guilt. I push it down deep into my stomach. Would he have said these things to her if they’d made it as far as the altar? Whenever they were together, in my presence at least, he behaved respectfully at all times, but if I think about it, he was aloof, too. Distant. Yet whenever our eyes met, his came alive, but back then, they were filled with antipathy. Now, they’re brimming with interest, and I can’t figure out what’s changed, other than we got married. But a ceremony doesn’t alter a person’s feelings.
“You hated me.”
“Never hated.”
“What, then?”
He nibbles the inside of his mouth, giving my question careful consideration. “I’m not sure. You got under my skin simply by breathing.”
A laugh bursts out of me, a hint of bitterness to the tone. “Lovely.”
“That came out wrong.” He releases me and runs a hand over his face from forehead to chin. “You’re too opinionated, too… ballsy. De Vil men prefer their women… passive.”
“Sounds dull as shit.”
His lips turn up on one side. “Haven’t you ever met anyone, and, for whatever reason, you’re irritated by them? The way they walk, the way they talk, their mannerisms and body language?”
“Most of your family, actually.”
He laughs, too, but it’s far more amused than mine. “I guess that makes us even.”
The plane levels out, and my pulse settles back into a normal rhythm. When he starts tapping on his phone again, I pick up my book, but the words all blend into one another. I can’t concentrate, too busy trying to manage the volatile emotions coursing through me. I’ve only been married a day, but nothing is turning out as I thought it would. Most of all my husband.
Maybe I do have a shot at happiness. And hot fucking damn, I’m going to take it.