Fighting the urge to cover her br**sts with her arms, Lily shook her head and shot Travis a brilliant smile, pulling her one and only ace out of the hole. “Thanks for your concern, but I’m fine.” She accented the word “fine,” knowing how much it bothered him ever since their mind-blowing sexual interlude in the pool.
Her taunting seemed to do the trick, since he immediately stowed his briefcase in the overhead bin and sat down next to her without another word.
The stewardess leaned a little too close to Travis in a blatant display of youth and sexual confidence.
“Would you like a glass of champagne, sir?”
Travis nodded and took the glass as the woman said, “Let me know if you and your wife need anything else before takeoff,” then turned back toward the cockpit.
Lily blinked stupidly. You and your wife? Someone actually thought that she could get a guy like Travis to marry her?
As if sensing her thoughts he leaned toward her. “I wonder what gave the stewardess the impression that you and I were married?” he said, his words slightly mocking, implying that Lily was the obvious responsible party.
All of her stuffed-down embarrassment bubbled up inside her, mixing with something that tasted remarkably like rage. “I certainly didn’t.”
The plane taxied and soared over San Francisco Bay, up beyond the clouds. Lily tried to focus her attention on the bright blue sky, on the clouds, on anything but Travis’s thigh and arm only inches away from her. Briskly, she opened the thick romance novel she had bought at the airport newsstand and tried to lose herself in the story, but she could hardly make sense of the words that swam before her. It was no use, not with Travis in the seat next to her at thirty thousand feet, so she pretended to sleep, all the while, horribly aware that she wanted him more than she ever had before.
Overwhelmed by Travis-induced claustrophobia, Lily realized that if she didn’t get up out of her seat and away from Travis in the next second, she was going to lose it completely. And since she didn’t want to leave the rest of the first-class passengers with the memory of some big girl breathing into a barf bag to stop hyperventilating, she kicked off the soft blanket across her legs and stood up, trying to figure out how to slide past Travis without touching him.
“Excuse me,” she muttered to his knee.
Travis shifted barely an inch. “Getting up to stretch your legs?”
Lily stopped staring at his knee and glared into his pupils. There was a threat implied somewhere in his seemingly innocuous words, she knew there was, even if she didn’t know exactly where. And the smug way that he stayed buckled into his seat really bugged her. He knew perfectly well that he was making getting into the aisle virtually impossible for her. Why, she wondered furiously, couldn’t he be a gentleman and stand up so that she could get into the aisle without rubbing every inch of her heated flesh against him?
“Yes,” she hissed. “Now will you please move?”
Travis smiled placidly, but Lily didn’t miss the devil in his eyes. “You can get past me, can’t you?”
“No problem,” she said, her voice flat with suppressed anger. “I’d hate to disturb you when you look so comfortable,” she said with disgust. Travis merely nodded and raised an eyebrow while waiting for her to slide on by.
What had she ever seen in him? Why had she pined after such an out-and-out jerk all these years? So what if he had a huge c**k and knew just what to do with it? So what if the things he did with his tongue made her want to slip into a coma? Big deal if his hands on her ni**les was as close to heaven as she’d ever get. Phenomenal sex was no excuse for the way he treated her.
I hate you, she thought and it was so good to feel something other than lust for Travis, that she thought it again. I hate you, so there.
Now that she had decided she hated Travis Carson, once and for all, all that remained was to figure out how to get past him into the aisle without bringing herself to orgasm on some part of his body. She looked at his thigh and remembered her wetness on him, then cursed herself for being lily-livered again.
“Maybe I should change my name to Jennifer,” she muttered.
“What was that?” Travis asked, all innocence.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” she said, and licked her lips, trying not to notice that Travis closely followed the progress of her tongue, then shifted in his seat, looking suddenly uncomfortable.
Back to her plan for making it out to the aisle in one piece. No matter how she looked at it, there was no way to win. Either she was going to smash her boobs into Travis’s mouth or she was going to suffocate him with her butt. And then she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on him. Who knew where his hands might go if she wasn’t looking? She caught the amusement and blatant sexual challenge in his eyes at her quandary and knew that she had no choice but to slide out with her eyes fixed on the blackguard.
Sucking her stomach into her rib cage as far as it would go, Lily pressed her spine into the back of the seat in front of them and slid to the left. Right then, Travis’s book fell off his lap onto the floor and he bent forward to pick it up. Silky black hair brushed against Lily’s ni**les, and she sucked in a breath.
“Stop that!” she whispered, her face hot with need and annoyance.
Travis straightened up and put the book safely on her empty seat. As if he didn’t realize she was caught between the seat in front of him and his thighs, he brushed a red curl away from her cheek. “My book fell.”
His gaze fell to her hard ni**les, and Lily wanted to scream with frustration. Suddenly her rash decision to put on something enticing seemed like the stupidest thing she’d ever done.
How could she have thought that wearing something so revealing with virtually no support was a good idea?
Closing her eyes, she pushed past Travis, ignoring the warm hand that somehow found its way to her thigh. Finally, she was in the aisle, and freedom had never felt so good.
Or so cold now that Travis’s heat was gone.
I’m finally free of him, she told herself, planning on spending the rest of the flight at the bar, but instead of feeling happy, she couldn’t help but feel a little let down.
Shaking her curls out, she straightened her shoulders and smiled at the cute young bartender, who was making no bones about his appreciation for her dress. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.
Pleased by his appreciative smile after all of Travis’s barely disguised mockery, Lily slid onto the round barstool with a sigh of relief. “I’d love a gin and tonic,” she said, feeling naughty and giddy. “And I love your accent,” she added, wanting desperately to have a normal conversation with someone after the stilted repartee that she and Travis were so good at it. “Where are you from?”