“Oh God! We’re all going to die!” I yelled, my voice echoing around the lavish interior of my private plane.
“Jesus,” Sam muttered, flashing a pair of wide eyes at his wife, Levee. She also happened to be my BFF for life, so our relationship trumped theirs. (What? That’s totally true. It’s written into the best friend bylaws. Look it up!)
“Henry, stop being such a diva,” Levee said, gathering her daughter in her arms.
See? It was obvious she loved me the most.
Because she clearly hadn’t heard me, I repeated, “We’re all going to die!”
Levee took this news in stride. With a huff, she cradled baby Bridget against her chest and allowed Sam, who was weighted down with bags like some sort of pack mule, to guide them down the steps. She probably would have had a stronger reaction to deplaning if she’d taken her eyes off her daughter long enough to look in a mirror and see that her long brown curls currently looked like she was wearing an electrified poodle on her head. Humidity was not her friend.
Bad hair aside, I was still losing my fucking mind.
And not a single person was surprised.
“Oh God,” I cried, my heart slamming into my ribs as I folded over and put my head between my knees.
“Breathe,” Evan urged, perching his muscular body on the leather armrest. “I promise it’s going to be okay.”
“That’s what you said when we got on this plane,” I argued before sucking in a painfully deep breath of air that, judging by the way my lungs burned, held no oxygen.
His deep baritone got soft. “And it is okay. Jackson sent over another plane. The crew is switching over all four hundred pounds of Levee’s luggage now. We’ll be wheels down in North Carolina before you know it. I’ve got a handle on this. I swear.” His strong hand glided up and down my spine, which was something it did so often when we were together. Usually, I was naked and he was behind me when he did this, but him comforting me in the middle of a flight-induced panic attack wasn’t exactly something new.
I’d become terrified of flying after my plane had been struck by lightening a few years earlier. It had been paralyzing at first, and as a touring musician, flying wasn’t something that I could just avoid. It wasn’t until I fell in love with Evan that I was able to even step foot onto an aircraft without a liter of gin coursing through my veins. He was an amazing pilot—a more amazing boyfriend—and I trusted him with my life. But with a broken wrist thanks to a not-so-friendly game of basketball with the kids at the youth program we sponsored, Evan’s abilities in the air would be limited. A thought that had made me lose more sleep than I’d ever admit.
“Maybe we should just drive,” I said, turning my head to catch his gaze without sitting up. “First your hand and now the plane? What’s next? Dixon isn’t ready for this.”
His stark blue eyes danced with humor as he grinned down at me. “Babe.”
That was it. That was all he said. And he’d said it in a condescending tone that transformed my fear into anger. He thought I was overreacting.
Okay, I probably was, but that didn’t make the distress any less real.
“It’s a valid concern!” I snapped entirely too roughly. “This trip has been shot to hell since I planned it.”
His chin jerked to the side, and he arched an admonishing eyebrow. “You gonna bring that attitude down a notch?”
I folded my arms on my knees and rested my head on top of them, strategically avoiding eye contact as I sniped back, “Are you going to stop with the placating ‘babe’ shit? My attitude isn’t going to matter much when we’re both dead in a plane crash. Which is exactly what’s going to happen if you force me into another plan with Dixon behind the controls.”
His hand on my back froze, and a pang of guilt socked me in the gut.
It was a known fact that I could be a teensy-tiny bit of a dick when I was scared. But if there was ever a man who did not deserve to be on the receiving end of that anger, it was Evan Roth. He’d been good to me too many times when I didn’t deserve it. When I’d wigged out after discovering he was bi-sexual, he hadn’t let me go, not even when he should have. Back then, I should have been the one groveling at his feet, begging for him to take me back. But that wasn’t Evan’s style.
He was patient and tolerant.
Loving and kind.
Everything I didn’t deserve.
He took care of me on a daily basis, and let’s be honest, that wasn’t the easiest of tasks. It could be said that I was a smidge high maintenance. But Evan didn’t seem to think so.
He loved me unconditionally.
I closed my eyes and sucked in a sharp breath, trying to align the right words to form an apology. Before I could, though, he gently trailed the tips of his fingers up my neck.
“Mmm,” I hummed. My body sagged, and my heart slowed as he threaded his fingers into the back of my hair.
Then, with a sudden tug, he yanked me up until my back hit the seat.
“Ow, ow, ow,” I complained, swatting at his wrist, but he didn’t release me.
Evan was known to do a little hair pulling in the bedroom.
And I was known to enjoy it immensely.
But he’d never touched me like this.
I couldn’t decide if this was the beginning of some seriously hot foreplay, or if I’d finally found the right button to push to piss him off.
He forced my head back so that I was staring up into his darkening eyes. Looming over me, he brushed his nose against mine. “You think I’d ever let anything happen to you?”
My heart stopped, guilt washing over me.
He wasn’t mad. Nor was he trying to get me naked.
He was hurt.
“I didn’t—”
He gave my hair another sharp tug and lowered his mouth to mine. His plump lips, which were the beginning and end of every sexual fantasy I had, moved against mine as he asked, “You trust me?”
“Always,” I breathed, my eyelids fluttering shut as I swayed toward him, desperate for his mouth.
He dodged me.
When I opened my eyes, I found him glaring at me expectantly.
Oh, I knew what my man wanted.
My lips tipped up into a ghost of a smile. “Always, Evan.”
“Fuck.” He groaned, his eyes searching mine before he dipped down to bite my bottom lip. The nip was followed by a deep and reverent kiss. It was the perfect combination of brute masculinity and tender romance that had made me fall in love with him in the first place.
He released my hair and blew out a ragged breath. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”
I licked my lips seductively. “Yes, you should have. And perhaps you should do it again tonight . . . with slightly less clothing and a lot more lube.”
He rolled his eyes, moved off the armrest, and dropped into a squat beside me. I took the moment to appreciate the way his powerful thighs strained against the denim of his jeans. My man was gorgeous beyond reason. I had no idea what I had ever done to deserve him. But he was mine. And I was his for as long as he would keep me.
Resting his casted hand on my thigh, he said, “You know I won’t let anything happen to you in the air.”
Sheepishly, I brushed the dark brown hair off his forehead. “I know.”
“Then trust me to make the right decision here. Dixon is a good pilot. A pilot I trust. A pilot who has co-captained for me on every single flight you’ve taken this year. A pilot who is so fucking overqualified, he’s only a co-captain because you pay him a captain’s salary and give him approximately three hundred and five days off a year.”
I peeked up at him, a smirk pulling at my lips and a modicum of anxiety ebbing from my system. Tracing circles he’d never feel over the plaster covering his palm, I continued with my hissy fit, just at a slightly lower decibel. “Dixon’s first flight in command does not need to be one in which we have such precious cargo on board.”
With two fingers under my chin, he tipped my head up. “And just to be clear here, this precious cargo we’re talking about is you and not Levee’s baby, right?”