In Flight (Up In The Air #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Mr. Tender-Lover

I awoke as James pushed inside of me. He had my wrists clasped in his hands and pinned above my head. Our naked chests rubbed together and he was kissing me softly and sweetly, murmuring endearments. I was wet and so aroused that he slipped into my tight passage smoothly.

“Morning, Love.” He smiled against my mouth.

“Mmmm,” was the best reply I could get out of my throat. “Ahhh,” followed quickly.

He moved so slowly inside of me, stroking with long, hard strokes that seemed to go on forever. “I want to wake up like this every morning,” he murmured between kisses.

“Mmmm. I could get used to this,” I mumbled back, gasping as he withdrew, dragging along my most sensitive nerves.

“Good. I want you to,” he said with a smile. “Get. Used. To. This.” He said, thrusting to drive home each word.

“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he told me.

I did and he thrust hard, making new nerves quiver inside of me. His beautiful eyes were glued to mine, intense and tender.

“You’re so beautiful,” he told me. “Your eyes change color. I swear they’re almost green this morning. Have I told you yet today how perfect you are?”

“First he’s sour, then he’s sweet,” I murmured back to him, quoting an old line from a commercial about sour candies.

He laughed, then began kissing me passionately.

I felt like I was drowning. I was too inexperienced to resist such a seduction. He wanted all of me, even my emotions, and in spite of myself, he was getting it.

I felt things as I looked into his intense gaze that I hadn’t thought to feel for anyone, let alone someone I’d met just over a week ago.

“What are you doing to me?” I asked him in a rough whisper.

His nostrils flared and he drove into me hard, picking up speed. “I hope it’s something like what you’re doing to me. I want you to feel what I’m feeling, Bianca. I want you to feel this uncontrollable need. I can’t stand the thought that you’re indifferent to me.”

As though in answer to his words, I came, crying out, tears seeping from the corners of my eyes from the exquisite rapture. Shudders wracked me and I cried out his name, again and again.

His eyes went so soft with his own release, and he released my wrists, cupping my cheeks. He held my gaze as the ecstasy took him.

“Bianca,” he called. It was the most intimate moment of my life, shivers of my release still running through me as our eyes exchanged our charged, raw, emotional need. I wondered if every woman he did this to fell in love with him.

How not? I thought, my mind rolling helplessly back into an exhausted sleep.

I awoke to the smell of breakfast and the sound of soft cursing in the kitchen. Short minutes later he served me breakfast in bed, and I sat up, eating the simple fair as though I were starving.

“How do you get women to leave you alone after this kind of treatment?” I teased him, smiling into his beautiful eyes. “I’m surprised you don’t have a mob of them following you everywhere, just for a taste.”

He smiled back, but his eyes held a hint of trouble. He smoothed my hair back from my face, kissing me on the forehead affectionately.

“You think I’m like this with everyone?” he asked, mild reproof in his voice. “Don’t you know? You’re special, Buttercup.”

I just gave him a wry smile. It sounded like a line to me, so I shrugged it off. “So what’s the plan today?”

“You wanna work on those paintings?”

“I’d love nothing more. I’ll need a brief nap in the late afternoon. It’s a long night without one, since I can’t sleep on the redeye, obviously.”

And so we shared another idyllic day, me painting to my hearts content, him working and posing as I worked on the two paintings.

Amazingly, I finished the first painting of him, a record for me. It usually took me weeks to finish a project. I pinned it up in my room proudly, deciding that it would definitely be getting a frame as soon as I had a chance to make one.

James seemed to love the prospect of having his image marking my room whether he was present or not. He grinned as I hung it, then dragged me to the bed for another bout of love-making. The tender lover was driving for that one, with just a dash of the master. I wasn’t particular. I had quickly grown to adore them both.


We napped for hours, far longer than I was usually able to sleep for my usual pre-redeye nap. I worked on his nude briefly before getting ready for the flight. “I can only hope that this one will get done anywhere near as fast as the first. I usually don’t work this quickly. It can take me weeks to finish a piece.”

He helped me dress for work, buttoning my blouse and straightening my tie. He fondled and kissed and made me wish we had ten more minutes by the time I needed to leave.

“Don’t you have to catch a flight?” I asked him archly as he walked me out.

“Why, yes. I’m leaving now, Love,” he said, kissing me shamelessly in the driveway while Stephan waited in his car. “I don’t exactly need to pack. Remember, I live in New York most of the time.”

I hadn’t remembered, and the thought saddened me. This thing we were doing, where he invaded my house and lavished attention on me, would end soon. Even if we didn’t end everything right away, it would soon be dwindling down to a one day a week affair, I was certain.

He seemed to notice something on my face. His eyes pinned me. I tried harder to make my face expressionless.

“Don’t worry, Love. I have obligations there, but I will certainly make an effort to be here more. This hotel is one of my larger properties. It makes perfect sense for me to divide some of my time here.”

I gave myself a little shake. He wanted me to depend on him for some perverse reason, and I had started to give in to him a little. I determined to make a better effort at keeping my head on straight.

“I’ll see you soon,” I told him, walking away.

It was going to be a particularly dead night at work. I studied our paperwork briefly and saw that the flight was only booked to 60 out of 175, with only 3 passengers in the first class cabin. I usually hated flights like that, with too much time and not enough to do, but tonight I was relieved.

Perhaps I would get some time with James. And some time with Stephan, to talk about James.

We met up with our pilots on the crew bus. Damien and Murphy both embraced me.

I hugged them stiffly back. I genuinely liked the two pilots, but I was loathe to let the other pilots on the crew bus get the idea that I was receptive to any kind of touching. In my experience, pilots were always looking for an excuse to touch. I preferred to be seen as untouchable, particularly at work.

“You look amazing, Bianca,” Damien said, smiling as he pulled back from his spontaneous hug. “Beautiful as always. I can’t tell you how happy we were when we found out that you were our layover crew.”

Damien was very good-looking, with shiny black hair and friendly brown eyes that had charmed many a flight attendant right out of their clothes. He was at least six one, and I could feel the hard play of muscles on his arms and torso when he embraced me. To top it all off, he had a strong Australian accent that acted as slutty girl Kryptonite.

I smiled back. “Yeah, when Stephan told me you were our New York pilots, I knew it was going to be a fun month,” I told him.

I was always friendly with him, but I also felt the need to be a little reserved. He had hit on me when we first met, but when I declined, he’d been nothing but platonic. However, I still got the feeling sometimes that he was just waiting until I changed my mind. Even if I had been interested in dating, which I emphatically wasn’t, I wouldn’t have dated him. He was a shameless womanizer, had in fact slept with some of my friends, and no part of me wanted him as anything but a friend.

Murphy, the first officer, was a heavy-set blond man with rosy cheeks and a constant stream of jokes that had had me rolling many a time. His endearing face wore a perpetual grin. I couldn’t ever even recall a time when his happy face wasn’t smiling at least a little.

“Damien made a deal to be born the anti-christ just to be on your route, Bianca. HIs poor mother wasn’t too happy about it, either,” Murphy told me by way of a greeting.

The entire bus laughed. He just had that infectiously happy nature, always bringing everyone in on the joke.

Melissa was the happiest I’d ever seen her when she met our new pilots. Perhaps her romance with the married Captain Peter had grown stale already. I’d be shocked if she and Damien weren’t sharing a room by the end of the layover.

I sent a glance Stephan’s way, and he beamed at me. “What happy times, Bee. My girl is finally falling for a great guy, our crew is practically a dream team, and I’ve got a date tomorrow.”

Stephan was a staunch optimist. Despite everything bad that had happened to him, he was always finding the silver lining. He never failed to make me want to be a better person. A person more like him. I couldn’t be, but I always tried not to bring down his happy moments with my own doubts and fears, so I just beamed back at him.

“It’s bound to be a great month,” I agreed.

We had a crew briefing when we got on the plane, leaning against the plush first class seats. It was a jovial affair, the seven of us joking and laughing and making plans for the next evening.

It was easy enough for everyone to decide on Melvin’s bar, since it was on the corner by the hotel, and Stephan suggested it. Melvin had arranged for us to get a crew discount, as we did in many bars, so drinks would be cheap, and of course, there was the karaoke.

“Oh, Bianca, say you’ll sing for me,” Damien teased.

I just smiled.

“She can’t come tomorrow. She has plans,” Stephan said, frowning a little as he looked at Damien. “Let’s hope she’ll come next week.”

I nodded. “Sure. Sounds good,” I said. I couldn’t ditch Stephan two weeks in a row, so I didn’t have to consider it long to know I’d be there.

Damien made a mock begging gesture. “Too cruel, Bianca! We haven’t seen you in months, and you ditch us?”

“Have mercy on the man, Bianca! You’re going to turn him into a cutter if you ignore him much more!” Murphy joked.

I saw Melissa giving me none-too-friendly looks behind their backs. The only thing she hated more than someone else getting the man was someone else getting the attention, I had observed.

“We need to prep for boarding or the gate agent is gonna kill us,” I said, trying to shift the attention away from myself. It was effective, since we really had been chatting for too long, neglecting our work.

I was prepping my galley as Murphy and Damien took turns poking their heads out of the cockpit to joke with me.

“I’ll take a gin and tonic,” Damien said in his attractive accent.

I just laughed, and he ducked back in.

Murphy poked his head out. “I’ll take a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred,” Murphy joked, butchering his own version of an Australian accent.

“James Bond was British, not Australian, or whatever accent that is you’re trying to do,” I told him.

He looked shocked and wounded.

I was giggling in spite of myself as I checked my carts.

He gave me a mock stern look. “Okay, I didn’t want to have to do this, Bianca, but you leave me no choice. Here’s my final offer. I’ll perform Tina Turner’s ‘Private Dancer’ for you at Karaoke, if you come. Take it or leave it. Well, okay, you twisted my arm. To sweeten the pot, I’ll take my shirt off and do my Chris Farley Chippendales dance to the beat. Final offer,” he warned, then ducked back in without waiting for an answer.

I was laughing too hard to give him one. I’d seen that performance before. It was as funny as it sounded. I’d even heard tales that it had gone viral.

Damien showed up again. “Okay, picture this. Murphy is Chris Farley and I will play the Patrick Swayze part, and in a thong. And we’ll make it a duo. Final offer, Bianca.”

I still just shook my head, laughing as he ducked back into the flight deck.

“Would it be possible to get a drink of water when you’re done flirting with those pilots?” a frosty voice asked from behind me.

I turned, my laughter dying, as I took in a furious James.