Kinked (Elder Races, #6)

Of course there wasn’t.

He looked down at the person who occupied the aisle seat. A young teenage boy, maybe thirteen years old, sat hunched over an electronic game.

“Hi,” Quentin said to him.

The boy grunted but didn’t look up.

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars if I can have the aisle seat,” Quentin said.

That brought the boy’s head up. As he opened his mouth, a woman from across the aisle snapped, “You’ll do no such thing. Robert, ignore that man. Never take money from strangers.”

“But mom,” the kid said as he blinked up at Quentin. “It’s a hundred dollars and it’s just an aisle seat.”

“Get over here! Change places with me.” Quentin rubbed the bridge of his nose, watching as the boy got up. Resignedly, he shoved his pack into an overhead compartment, slipped out of his jacket and stuffed it underneath the seat in front of his, then he slid into the middle seat, buckled himself in and crossed his arms.

He was over six feet tall. Aryal was just a few inches shorter than he was. Together they were packed in like sardines, their arms, hips and thighs touching. Her heat and energy washed over him, sharp like vodka straight from the freezer but hot like mulled whiskey.

“Before you say a word to me, shut up,” she muttered out of the side of her mouth. “If I have to look at you, I’m going to punch you.”

God, yes. Adrenaline flooded his system. He was ready and itching for the fight, but there was nowhere to take it. If they started to brawl here, they might blow out the side of the plane and take everyone else aboard down with them.

On his right side, the mother of the teenage boy heaved herself into the aisle seat and glared at him. He said, “It was just a hundred dollars, and just the aisle seat.”

“Don’t talk to my boy again,” Mom told him.

Jesus. He let his head fall back against the seat with a thunk. He had to fly nine fucking hours like this. It was a goddamn pressure cooker.

Something was bound to explode. If something didn’t let up soon, he thought it might be him.

The flight attendants did their show-and-tell while the plane taxied into position and accelerated down the runway, lifting into the air with a mechanical roar. Cranky Mom on his right played Sudoku with a pencil. On his left, Aryal finished flipping through her magazine and dropped it onto her lap. He glanced sideways at it. Somehow she had found the time to buy a copy of Rolling Stone.

Aryal mimicked his position, crossing her arms and tucking her elbows tight against her side, while she leaned as far away from him as she could get, hunching against the interior wall of the plane and glowering out the window.

The relief at the inches of space she managed to put between their torsos was marginal compared to the upsurge of irritation Quentin felt. She had no fucking tact. None whatsoever. Her body language screamed that she would do almost anything to get away from him—anything except deplane.

Besides, she could lean sideways all she liked, but the seats were so goddamn miniscule, their thighs still touched. He looked down at the length of her legs alongside his. Her bone structure and musculature were slimmer than his, undeniably feminine while also strong and athletic.

He had watched her bouts at the Games. Hell, of course he had. Like most of the contestants, he DVRed the bouts so that he could go through them again, analyzing each fighter’s strengths and weakness. He had pored over Aryal’s fights time and time again. It was only smart to study his enemy in an effort to discover any weakness.

During the Games, the contestants had their own box. Once they had gotten far enough through the rounds that the contestants’ numbers were limited, the new contenders mingled with the five sentinels, exchanging sharp, assessing glances and friendly smiles. When he wasn’t competing, Quentin had lived in that box.

Aryal fought with power and confidence. When she struck, she was fast as a snake, and the one time she chose to change into her Wyr form, she rioted across the sands of the arena like a joyous minitornado.

The sight was so magnificent, Quentin was on his feet before he realized it, along with the rest of the stadium. She laughed as she fought, her face vivid and wild, talons out and flashing in the white-hot lights, and everything about her aligned.