“Foreplay,” he answered with a grin.
“Pervert,” she replied with a little less rancor.
“Truce, Kristin? For just a few days? Micah and Tessa will only have one wedding day.”
She crossed her arms and glared at him, but her lips were starting to twitch, and Julian was gratified to see her slowly softening. “Why should I stop fighting with you after what you did?”
“Because I’ve seen you puke? We have to be friends after that. I even held back your hair for you.”
“It was in a ponytail.”
Okay . . . it had been, but he’d held back the loose strands for her. Didn’t that count? “I tried. Truce?” he asked again.
She was trying not to laugh, and that made Julian glad that he’d bullied her just a little. Kristin had always had a sense of humor, dry and sarcastic as it might be at times.
She twirled a damp lock of hair with her fingers. “I’ll think about it.”
After he felt the plane lift off, he grumbled, “Think harder.”
Christ! He was sporting a seriously hard dick watching her twirl her curly hair around her finger. All Julian could think about was seeing that fiery mass spread across a pristine white pillow while he pounded into her until he was sated.
She laughed. Not one of the coy giggles he was used to, but a sexy, throaty sound that made him instantly harder.
“I’m not sure I want to be friends with you. You’re arrogant, bossy, high-handed, and always determined to get your own way,” she mused.
“You’ve never gotten to know my nicer side,” he argued, starting to wonder if he’d want to be friends with himself. Maybe he was a prick. But there was something about Kristin that made him want to be a better man.
She formed an expression of mock surprise. “You mean you have a nicer side?” She chewed on her lip as though she was trying to find something good to say. “You are a good tipper,” she said helpfully.
He remembered the night he’d left her an outrageously large tip when he’d been in Shamrock’s with Micah, helping his cousin Evan to get through his broken heart.
“I never thanked you for that,” she said softly. “It came at a time when I really needed it.”
Her words were sincere, and Julian swallowed hard, wishing he’d left another few thousand. The thought of his proud Kristin ever hurting for anything made him majorly pissed off. “You’re welcome,” he acknowledged simply. “So are we calling a cease-fire for now?”
“It won’t last,” she warned.
“Why?”
“Because you’ll do something else to piss me off.” She laid her palms back on the table as the jet started to climb.
He laughed just because she was positive that they couldn’t be civil for very long. There was something about the way she judged him as a person instead of a superstar or a rich Sinclair that made him want to please her. And he really hadn’t given a shit about anyone’s opinion of him for a very long time.
“You okay?” he questioned as he looked at her concerned expression and the placement of her hands.
“Yeah. Sometimes if I put my hands on something tangible, it helps.”
“Sarah told me the medicine would help.”
“It does. I’m fine. Really.”
She didn’t look fine, and Julian hated that. “You look nervous,” he observed.
“I’ve never flown before. It’s . . . different.”
Julian knew that she was almost twenty-eight, several years younger than he was, but still, he wasn’t sure how it was possible that she’d never been on a plane. “Why? The motion sickness?”
Kristin shook her head. “No. I’ve just never had the chance.”
He watched as she seemed to visibly relax. “No travel?”
“Only by car. I’ve never gone far enough to need to fly.”
He’d found out enough about her life that her answer made sense. “So I’m your first?”
Kristin rolled her eyes. “The plane ride is my first,” she retorted and raised a brow. “Maybe I haven’t flown, but don’t you think a twenty-eight-year-old virgin would be a rarity?”
Her question made Julian think about Kristin with other men. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. He didn’t want to contemplate her being intimate with anybody except him. Possessiveness clawed at his gut, and he clenched his fists on his thighs to keep from grabbing her and making her forget there had ever been other guys.
Slowly, he calmed himself down. He didn’t need to be her first.
But he was damn certain he was going to be her last, best, and only from now on.
CHAPTER 4
Okay . . . maybe Kristin hadn’t been with a ton of men, but she wasn’t about to share her sexual history with Julian Sinclair. Yeah, she’d only been with two guys, two boyfriends that had never worked out, but that was her business.
Julian wanted a truce, and Kristin could agree to that . . . for now. But she and Julian were always at each other’s throats, so it wouldn’t last long.