Stephan was painfully tense. I knew he hated fighting more than just about anything else in the world. I had also seen him fight several times, though it had been years since he'd had to. He was exceptionally good at it. Whatever happened, he would be able to handle himself, I knew. But he would hate it. He abhorred violence of any kind.

James opened his eyes suddenly, looking more furious than I'd ever seen him. Apparently counting to ten hadn't worked. His hands shot again to his seat belt and I watched in horror as he shot from his seat, striding to the troublemakers with violence in every quick step.

"f.u.c.k," Stephan cursed. "Stay here. Please," he pleaded, going after James in a flash.

There was a very tense exchange. James was leaning down close to speak to the man who had addressed me earlier, and I couldn't see his face or hear what he was saying.

Stephan was pointing at one of the other men and his voice was raised, though I couldn't make out the words over the plane engine and the distance. I was surprised that Stephan didn't even look at James, making no attempt whatsoever to make him return to his seat.

s.h.i.t, I thought. That probably meant his own temper was flaring up as well. It really would be a brawl if Stephan started throwing punches.

I saw the man who Stephan was clearly reaming out raise his hands, as though in surrender. That didn't seem to appease Stephan, though, who just turned to the man who James had taken special exception to. I a.s.sumed he was still talking to the man, though I couldn't hear him.

He was speaking quietly, while Stephan was just getting louder.

"I mean it. One more word out of any of you, and we are diverting this plane and there will be law enforcement waiting for you at the gate." With that, Stephan stormed back to the seat beside me. He still hadn't bothered to make James take his seat.

A few tense moments later, James straightened, walking stiffly back to his seat. He didn't look at me, just sat, buckled up, and closed his eyes.

I felt a relief so huge it almost shamed me. Seeing that, although he'd really wanted to pound someone, he had restrained himself, was something I'd almost needed to see. Whatever else I didn't know about him, at least I knew he could practice self-control.

Uncontrolled violence and aggression were the monsters of my childhood, and I felt almost limp with relief to see that I wouldn't find them in James. Not in the way I had feared. The way I always feared, despite a decent amount of time and therapy.

"What happened? What were they saying that would involve law enforcement?" I asked Stephan finally.

He just shook his head. "I'll tell you later. Please, just give me a minute to compose myself." His voice was pleading, so I dropped the issue. If he said he'd tell me later, I knew he would.

I was up the second I heard the double ding that indicated we were at ten thousand feet. I started my usual routine, preparing my galley for our breakfast service. I liked the routine, liked routines in general. I found them soothing, in a way.

The chaos of my adolescence made me crave stability in my adult life. So my life, even with all of the traveling, followed a schedule and routine that I enjoyed. Sat.u.r.day morning breakfast service out of New York was a part of that.

Our airline prided itself on it's first cla.s.s service, so our breakfast service was extensive. We would be busy until we landed. With first cla.s.s full, Stephan stayed up front to help me.

I worked the galley, and he served. That suited me, especially today, with a volatile James, and some apparently degenerate men in the cabin.

Stephan and I didn't even speak for the first hour as we worked. He was brooding, and we didn't really need to talk to communicate.

We worked together effortlessly, after all these years. He took the pa.s.sengers' orders and I read them and made them. As he served, I worked on the next step. We were fast and effective even without speaking.

I loved this part of the job. I wasn't even sure why. Just the busy feel in the air, the familiar galley routine, making sure everyone felt like they had received exceptional service, and like we had done a good job. I supposed I had just spent a large part of my life feeling worthless and lost, and this job, on a good day, made me feel like I had some worth. When I thought of it that way, it sounded pathetic, but that didn't make it any less true.

I noticed everything we served to James, of course. He drank water exclusively, that I had seen. No ice, just the bottle and a gla.s.s. I started putting a slice of lemon in his gla.s.s, and he didn't complain, so I continued to do so.

For breakfast, he ordered the only healthy thing we served on the first flight of the day. It was greek yogurt with fresh blueberries and raw pecans. I wasn't surprised that he was the only one to order it. We usually didn't have any takers, so Stephan and I often had it for breakfast ourselves. I could've guessed from what I had seen of his body that he ate healthy, but that confirmed it.

Could I ever be comfortable getting naked with someone that good looking, who had a flawless body, so far as I could tell? I didn't know how. I tried to stay in shape but I had junk food sometimes, and I probably didn't work out as often as I could.

I thought my thighs were too big, and my ankles were too small, like toothpicks. And my arms were thin, but my hips were a little wide and my shoulders were too broad, to my critical eye. Like every woman, I had body issues. Would James notice them when I was naked? I tried not to dwell on it, but I did anyways. I was relieved when we got too busy for me to think about it anymore.

It was a solid two and a half hours into the flight before Stephan could make his way back to check on the main cabin.

"I'll be back in a few minutes. Brenda is baking the cookies back there right now. I'll bring some back to add to the cheese service," Stephan told me as he hung up the inflight phone.

I nodded absently. I was prepping our three-tiered cart for the cheese service. There was nothing he could help me with in first cla.s.s for at least ten minutes, so it was good timing.

I heard the bathroom door opening on the other side of the curtain, and shifted the cart to make sure the pa.s.senger could get back to their seat before I moved it into position.

I was startled when James entered the enclosed galley. He looked much calmer than he had before.

I offered him a small smile. "Hey," I said, studying him carefully, trying to read his mood.

He gave me a small smile back. He moved my cart for me, seeing that I was bearing it's weight. He used it to block the aisle completely, just outside of the curtained area, managing to stay behind the curtain completely as he did so.

"Oh," I said softly as I watched him rearrange the galley, getting an inkling of what he intended. He was arranging a moment of privacy for...something.

I just watched him, mesmerized.

He set the brake on the cart with the toe of his shoe easily, as though he did it every day. He took a deep breath, his back to me for one long moment.

Abruptly, he turned, pacing to me. He grabbed my braid, pulling my head back. He kissed me, and it was hot and angry and hungry.

In spite of myself, I melted in an instant, melding my body as close to his as I could get it.

He backed me up against the counter, lifting me onto the only small bit of empty counter s.p.a.ce available. I barely fit. He didn't stop kissing me.

I murmured a protest as I felt his fingers inching my fitted skirt up my legs. He had my thighs bared in a flash, and I pulled back, panting.

"What are you doing?" I asked, a little panicked at his intent.

"Shh," he told me, and started kissing me again, his hands still pushing my skirt up impatiently. "I need to do this."

That didn't make me feel rea.s.sured, but he stopped abruptly when his hands had shoved my skirt up far enough to bare my garters and the tops of my stockings. He shoved the skirt higher roughly.

He cursed when he saw my lacy lime green thong. "This is the type of panty you were wearing last night, too, wasn't it? But that one was blue."

I just nodded, feeling a little disoriented. "They're the most comfortable underwear I've ever worn. I can't wear anything else, since I discovered them."

"I f.u.c.king love them," he told me, and it made me smile at him.

Then he surprised me again by kneeling in front of me in one fluid movement. He handed me a cloth. An old fashioned handkerchief, I observed "Put that in your mouth and bite down. Try not to make too much noise." I obeyed him without hesitating, my whole body vibrating in antic.i.p.ation at what he was going to do.

"Grip my hair," he told me. My hands stroked through it hungrily. It was perfect, of course, soft as silk, and so smooth and thick. I saw all of the different shades of light brown and dark blond, highlighted by the sun shinning through the small window in the door of the plane just to our left. People payed a fortune for highlights not half as beautiful as that shifting, golden color.

My mind went blank, my head suddenly falling back. He had shoved my thong to the side and buried his face against me.

I was lost instantly in the shocking wash of sensation from his accomplished tongue lapping at the core of me with singleminded purpose.

His masterful fingers thrust into me, a finger stroking along just the perfect spot. I whimpered into the cloth I was biting, not quite m.u.f.fling the high-pitched noise.

Almost hurriedly, his tongue moved up to my c.l.i.t. He sucked at it, hard, and I came without warning. I'd had no idea it could happen so fast, even with our earlier episode in the hotel bathroom.

He continued to nuzzle me, even when I went still after the powerful aftershocks subsided. I felt his head pulling back, and looked down at him. He propped his chin on the material of my skirt, just above my pelvis.

"One more," he ordered, and went back to his exquisite ministrations.

I screamed into the cloth when I came that time, just as surprised by this o.r.g.a.s.m as I was by the last one. He'd brought it on even faster, as though his tongue had just found and pushed my o.r.g.a.s.m b.u.t.ton. Or perhaps the last one had had me primed and ready. I wasn't experienced enough to know for sure. I hadn't known my body could be played like an instrument, until James had gotten his hands on me.

He lapped at me a few more times after my tremors had subsided.

"I could eat you all day," he told me as he stood. He pulled the handkerchief from my mouth, shoving it between my thighs to sop up the excess moisture.

"I love how wet you are," he murmured, delving down to kiss me. His tongue swept into my mouth, licking, and I was a little scandalized to realize that I was tasting myself in a way I'd never imagined.

I sucked on his tongue, and he groaned. I knew he definitely liked that, and I sucked harder.

He didn't kiss me long, pulling back to lift me down from the counter. It didn't seem to strain him at all to lift me. I loved that, loved feeling small and feminine compared to his strength.

He shoved the dirty handkerchief into his pocket and started to straighten my clothes with an almost impersonal efficiency.

He was still pulling my skirt back down to my knees when Stephan burst through the curtain, looking baffled, and then shocked at what he saw.

It must have been obvious from James lowering my skirt that we had obviously been doing something much too intimate for the galley of an aircraft.

Stephan's shocked eyes flew to my face. Then he blushed like I'd never seen him blush before.

"Was that noise you? That m.u.f.fled scream?" he asked slowly.

I knew I turned just as pink as him, but I nodded. No point in denying it.

Stephan was still bright pink as he gave James a censuring look. "Really, James? On a morning flight? With a group of perverts just a few feet away?"

Apparently, Stephan was heaping the responsibility of this embarra.s.sing episode squarely on Mr. Beautiful's shoulders.

James looked a little shame-faced at the a.s.sessment. It made him look almost boyish. It was hard to reconcile that look with the James I knew.

I just blinked at them both, at a loss. I had never been in anything even approaching a situation like this.

Stephan pointed in the general direction of James's seat. "I think you should go sit down now."

James did so without so much as a word or a look.

CHAPTER TEN.

Mr. Kinky The rest of the flight went by in a kind of a blur for me. We did the wine and cheese service, and I deliberately refrained from making any eye contact, knowing I would be mortified if they gave me strange looks.

I wanted to just pretend that no one had heard us in the galley, and that they certainly hadn't taken the noises for what they actually were. As long as I didn't look at anyone directly, I could just keep trying to convince myself that that was the case.

I especially avoided looking at James as we served him. I had pulled my cool composure around me like armor after our sordid scene, but I knew one look at him could undo all of that.

My side of the cart was lined up to serve him by a stroke of bad luck, so I quietly asked him what he'd like without ever looking directly at him.

He said he would take one slice of the brie and some grapes. I set the small plate on his tray table, the sight that met me there stilling me for a long moment.

I noticed several things at once.

He had rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, revealing tanned forearms, both presented wrist up as he affected a relaxed pose. With the sunlight streaming through his window I could see faint white lines tracing thin scars around his wrists. I was instantly curious about the marks, but they weren't what caught my rapt attention at a glance.

He'd removed his tie, leaving his tanned throat and just a hint of his chest visible. The sight of his smooth golden skin made me wild. I felt deprived of it, especially with how little I'd gotten to see of it, considering all that we'd done to each other.

The sight of him like that was incredibly s.e.xy, seeming to me almost too intimate for airplane attire. That was ridiculous, of course. There weren't special rules against him showing any of his skin in public, just because it was so much finer than everyone else's.

Yes, the sight of him like that turned me on acutely in an instant. But that wasn't what had stopped me in my tracks. It was the object in his hand that did that.

His right hand lay on his knee, just beside his tray table, empty. But his left hand lay across his tray table, as though displaying the object clutched in his hand like a trophy.

It was the handkerchief he had used on me in the galley. His hand was fisting it reflexively, as though it relaxed him.

I made myself look away from him. I didn't look back again.

The thought occurred to me quite vividly that he was impossibly out of my league. He was way too experienced. And rich. And kinky. And I was just about as close to the polar opposite of all of that as a person could get. The thought was sobering.

Somewhere along the way I had decided that I would have s.e.x with him. But I had to remember that it wasn't going any further than that. He obviously liked the pursuit. I would give in. He would f.u.c.k me for a few memorable days, if I was lucky, and then we would go our separate ways. I certainly didn't want anything more.

Relationships terrified me to my very core. So what better candidate to rid me of my virginity? At twenty-three, it was nothing but a burden. I just hadn't bothered to do anything about it before because no one had interested me enough to try to get past some of my hangups.

Masturbation and some rather sordid online p.o.r.n had cured the rare urges I'd had. And I'd certainly never felt this sort of all-consuming attraction before.

So I would do it. I would have s.e.x with him. I would satisfy my curiosity, and then I would get back to my normal life.

I managed not to look at James again until we were taking our jump seats for landing.

He smiled at me when I did finally look at him. It was an intimate smile, unlike any I'd ever been on the receiving end of. I couldn't find the will to smile back, or do anything but stare at him dumbly, trying not to look at the thing still clutched in his hand.

I didn't come close to stifling the gasp that rushed out of me as he brought the handkerchief to his face, inhaling deeply, his eyes closing as though he were savoring the smell.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Stephan muttered the question beside me.

I didn't answer, not even sure if it was directed at me, or James.

I looked out the window hastily, blushing from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Yes, I thought to myself, a little stunned. He is worlds out of my league, but I'm going to go through with this anyways.

Somehow, over the course of the flight, I had managed to forget all about the near brawl that had almost happened over me. Stephan's announcement as we taxied to our gate was what reminded me of the tense event.