Flying (17 page)

“Well, I was. Don’t ask me what I wanted to do with that. Work in a lab, I guess. I never worked in my field.”

Matthew cleared his throat. “Why not?”

“I got married.” Stella thought about that for a few seconds. “My husband was a few years older. Met him at my first job out of college, which was first flight crew, then office work for Pegasus Airlines.”

There was silence. Then, “Is he a pilot?”

She laughed. “Oh. God, no. Thank God. He’s the CEO. I’d never date a pilot.”

“No?” Matthew paused. “Would you be too worried?”

“Pilots are so arrogant. Kind of like surgeons,” Stella told him. “All that responsibility. You’d think it would make them humble, but it doesn’t.”

“So you married a CEO. Because they’re never arrogant, huh?”

Stella laughed again. “You got me on that one. What about you? Have you always been a teacher?”

“No. But like you said, it pays the bills. I like making a difference. I was an English lit major,” Matthew said abruptly, as if his own words had surprised him. “What the hell I thought I could ever do with that, I don’t know.”

“So you like to read?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Love it. What’s your favorite book?” Stella looked at the overflowing bookcase next to her bed. With Jeff gone, she’d taken over what had been his nightstand, as well. A stack of favorites towered there, scraps of paper and bookmarks keeping her place in novels she’d read several times each. Sometimes she just liked to pull out an old favorite and skim the best bits.

“How can you ask me such a thing? That’s like asking me which is my favorite hand!”

They laughed together.

“What were you going to do before I called you?” Matthew asked. “What would you be doing right now if I hadn’t?”

“Hmm. I’d probably be in the tub with a book.” Stella looked at the clock. It was getting close to bedtime. She got up and went to the door, but Tristan’s door was still firmly shut, and she hadn’t heard so much as the creak of hinges since he’d disappeared inside. “Maybe some soft music. Couple candles. You know. Romantic.”

“So, what’s stopping you?” His voice dipped low.

“You.” Hers did too.

“You can talk and take a bath at the same time.”

Stella closed her bedroom door and locked it. Cradling the phone to her ear, she went into the bathroom. “Yeah?”

“I’ll take a bath too, how’s that? We can take a bath together.”

Her heart skipped. Her mouth remembered the taste of him, her body his shape and length. An answering pull centered between her legs. “That sounds like trouble.”

Matthew’s low chuckle tiptoed over her every nerve ending. “It will be fun. Good, clean fun.”

Stella turned on the taps and toyed with the button of her blouse. “What if we drop our phones in the water?”

“Put it in a sealed plastic baggie,” Matthew said.

“Have you done this before?” She tucked the phone against her shoulder and slipped the rest of her buttons free, then shrugged out of the blouse and tossed it in the hamper.

“No. But it makes sense, huh?”

She had a plastic bag in her drawer. She always kept a few there for packing her carry-on supplies. She wouldn’t trust it to fully submerge her phone, but for protecting it from stray splashes... “Sure. Okay. Let’s do it. Gotta put you down for a couple seconds while I get ready.”

“Me too. Meet you back here in ten.”

Laughing, giddy, feeling ridiculous, Stella quickly stripped and added a couple caps of bath oil to the water. She lit her scented candles—lavender, which she always found so soothing. She pulled her hair up in a messy bun and dimmed the lights before slipping into the heated water with a sigh.

Pressing the plastic-protected phone to her ear, she listened for Matthew. “You there?”

“I’m here. It’s been so long since I took a bath, I had to clean out the tub first.”

She heard splashing. “Not a bath fan?”

“I usually take showers. Faster that way. But this...” He hissed and sighed. “This could be good.”

Stella leaned back against her bath pillow. “I take a bath most every night, if I can. It’s relaxing. If I try to read in bed, I usually fall asleep. So if I get a few chapters in while I’m in the tub, that’s good.”

“I do a lot of reading in the bathroom too. But not in the tub.” Matthew splashed.

Stella giggled. “Nice.”

“So I’m keeping you from your reading. I’d say I’m sorry, but...”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you called. I didn’t think you would.”

“No? How come?” Matthew splashed a little more, then seemed to settle.

Stella rubbed the top of her foot along the back of her opposite calf, enjoying the way the oil had made her skin so slippery. “Just a feeling.”

“But you left your number. You wanted me to call you.”

She’d regretted it almost as soon as she was out his front door, so much that if it hadn’t locked behind her she might’ve gone back in and stolen the note so he never found it. “Took you long enough.”

Matthew didn’t take offense. “You ducked out of my apartment without saying goodbye. I was surprised you left a note at all, to be honest. I was afraid maybe you’d be having second thoughts. I didn’t want to call and make an ass of myself. But then I realized you didn’t have my number and couldn’t call me, so if I ever wanted to talk to you again, I’d better call.”

That was so close to the truth, the part about second thoughts, that it gave her pause. “You must’ve really wanted to talk to me.”

“So much,” Matthew said at once, voice rasping. Lower.

Sexy. God, he was sexy. Stella closed her eyes again, letting her free hand travel along her oil-slick skin. Collarbones. Breasts. Her nipples tightened under her fingertips. Down lower, over her belly, to dip between her legs and stroke her clit gently, just a few times.

Her voice, when she answered him, rasped too. “I’m glad you did.”

“Stella...would it make me a creep if I were imagining you naked right now?”

“I am naked, Matthew.”

“And wet,” he whispered.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “All over.”

He made a sex noise, half a growl from the back of his throat. It sent a shiver through her; her nipples had already been teased erect, but at that noise, they tightened even more. The sensation echoed in her cunt, almost as if a chain connected the two places on her body. Stella’s rolling hips made waves, and she held her phone up to keep it away from the sudden splash.

“Stella...”

“Yes, Matthew.”

“Do you think I could see you again?”

It wasn’t exactly what she thought he’d ask her, but it did put a smile on her face. She slipped a little lower in the water. “Do you want to?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

“I think...that could be arranged.” She mentally ran through her schedule of upcoming weekends. “What were you thinking about?”

“How hard is it for you to get to Chicago?”

“I live in Pennsylvania,” she told him, then laughed. “So it’s not easy.”

“Oh...I didn’t realize...” Matthew laughed and splashed. “I’m getting out of the tub. My head’s spinning, I ran the water too hot.”

She could’ve stayed in longer, and would have had she been reading a good book. But a peek at the time told her she should get out too. Get into bed. The thought of that...getting into bed with him still on the phone...had potential.

“I live a couple hours outside Philly. Amish country.” Stella carefully climbed from the tub and stood dripping, listening to him breathe. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. Just had to sit down for a minute. Now I remember why I don’t take baths.”

“It helps if you don’t pretend you’re a lobster in a pot,” she said.

Matthew snorted softly. “Philly, huh? Cheesesteaks are good there.”

“You’ve been there, huh? How about shoofly pie? You ever try that? It’s a local delicacy.” She dried off and padded naked to her bedroom, where she pulled a clean nightgown from the drawer and slipped it over her head, missing half of what he’d said.

“...travel to Philadelphia.”

“Sorry, I missed that. I was getting dressed.”

“Nooooo,” Matthew said in protest. “Why you wanna do that?”

Stella laughed. So much could’ve been awkward about this conversation, or it could have so easily devolved into nothing but a mutual wank session—not that she’d have minded, not exactly. “Because I don’t like to sleep naked.”

“That’s not totally true,” he tried to say, but her laughter cut him off.

“I barely slept with you. It doesn’t count.”

“True. We didn’t do much sleeping. So what are you putting on now?”

Stella looked down at the lightweight plaid flannel granny gown. “A sheer black nighty with matching lace panties.”

Matthew gave a soft growl. “Wish I could see that.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky.” Stella opened her bedroom door to check on Tristan, whose door was still closed. No light from underneath. She thought about knocking, but frankly couldn’t face him. She closed her door again.

“So. It would be hard for you to get to Chicago.”

“No harder than it was before. I could come see you. If you really wanted—” She stopped herself. He wanted. He’d asked. “I mean, yes. I’d like to come see you again.”

“We had fun, huh?”

“Yes. We had fun.”

There was silence, though not awkward or uncomfortable. She heard the rustle and shuffle of him doing something. Perhaps pulling a T-shirt over his head. Maybe getting into bed the way she was, snuggling into the covers.

“Stella.”

“Yes?”

“Are you happy I called you?”

“Yes,” she said, and held back a yawn. “Are you happy I left my number?”

His voice was a little hoarse with sleep, the way hers was. “Yeah. Can I call you again?”

“Whenever you want.” Stella turned off the light and tucked her blankets around her.

“It’s late. I should let you go.”

No,
she thought.
No, I don’t want you to let me go.

But that was too much for a first phone call, even if they had already fucked their brains out, and more than once. Stella smiled into the dark, remembering. “Yeah. Well. Goodbye. Thanks for calling.”

“We’ll talk again soon.”

“Whenever you want,” she told him, though she was far from old-fashioned and would have no problem calling him.

“Well. Goodbye,” he said again.

Neither of them disconnected. Both started laughing. Stella tried to keep her voice low, not wanting Tristan to hear her in here guffawing like a lunatic.

“You hang up,” she said, then in a slightly different voice, mocking, “‘No! You hang up!’”

“We can count to three,” Matthew said. “One. Two. Three...”

She waited, but he didn’t disappear.

“Good night, Matthew,” she said, amused by his reluctance to end the call.

“Good night, Stella. Dream in color.”

She’d been a second away from disconnecting, but this stopped her. “What?”

But it was too late. He’d already gone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Stella had woken this morning with a pounding head and twisting stomach, certain that the flight she’d booked would’ve filled up, leaving her stuck in Harrisburg. But nope, the Gods of Getting Laid had seen fit to smile upon her, because not only was the plane not full, but she got to sit in business class.

“Why not?” Carla, a petite blonde who worked almost all of the zone-three flights, said as Stella gladly took a seat in the empty row. “Nobody else is in them, right?”

It was a great way to start the morning. Stella had opted to aim for the most ungodly early flight she could get so as to maximize her time in Chicago.

She was already exhausted.

She and Matthew had spent the past two weeks either chatting online or on the phone, or sometimes, if he didn’t have his girls, on video chat. The conversations had ranged from serious—the importance of financial planning, for example—to silly—why did pepper make people sneeze? They’d flirted. Matthew was a tremendous flirt and Stella an aficionado of the double entendre. Some of their conversations had left her head spinning and her panties soaked. But they hadn’t sexted. Not even on video chat, when sometimes all he did was stare at her with that look, and her cunt clenched. The suspense, as Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka had said, was terrible. Unlike the chocolate maker, Stella didn’t hope it would last.

There was no question she was going there fully with the intent of fucking him again. It was all she’d been able to think about, as a matter of fact. Days and days of fantasies had consumed her. She’d been distracted at work, losing herself in memories of the slide of Matthew’s cock inside her. At home, her patience with Tristan had been greatly extended, which in turn had made his attitude a little better, so a win-win all around. She’d hesitantly told him about her new relationship, emphasizing that it wasn’t a big deal, and bracing herself for blowback, but Tristan hadn’t seemed to care very much. She hadn’t said anything about it to Jeff.

Every night for the first week after she and Matthew had gotten off the phone, Stella had touched herself. She had a drawer full of sex toys, many of them accumulated from the spate of home parties that had been popular a few years ago, when all her friends had been suckered into hostessing and they’d all spiraled into this incestuous orgy of “if you come to mine, I’ll come to yours.” She had waterproof vibrating bullets, realistic dildos in several different flesh tones. She had one or two vibes with animals on them, a beaver and a rabbit. She had all these “toys,” but when she thought about Matthew, all she needed was her hand.

Hell, barely that sometimes. Lying in bed with the phone pressed to her ear, all she really had to do was squeeze her thighs together and roll her hips, and she could bring herself to the edge of orgasm just listening to his voice. She always waited until she was off the phone to finish, though, in case her moans gave her away.

She didn’t want him to think she was creepy, after all.

Still, she hoped that their talks had led him to do the same things she had done. To take his cock in his fist and stroke it while he thought about her. The heat of her mouth or of her cunt. The thought of her on her knees in front of him. The taste of her...

“Get you something to drink?” Carla smiled curiously. “Are you too warm? I can bring you something with ice....”

“Oh, I’m fine.” Stella reached up and turned on the air vent, tipping her face toward the burst of cool but still stagnant air. She gave Carla a wide, bright grin. “I could use some orange juice, though, if you have any. And coffee.”

“We have some muffins and fruit, if you’re hungry. The flight’s not that long,” Carla said apologetically, and swept a hand around the empty business-class cabin. “But as you can see, we don’t exactly have a full house.”

“Don’t worry about it. A drink’s fine.” There was no way she could eat, anyway.

The trip took about two hours, but because of the time change, she got there only an hour later than when she’d left. She’d offered to take a cab to his apartment, but Matthew had promised to pick her up.

“Have a great trip. What time are you coming home on Sunday?” Carla asked as Stella hung back, waiting for the rest of the plane to empty before she got up to pull her bag from overhead.

“I have the last afternoon departure.”

Carla grinned. “I’m working that one. I’ll see you then.”

Stella went first to the restroom, where she smoothed her hair, powdered her nose and refreshed the lipstick she’d nibbled off during the trip. She had faint circles under her eyes from lack of sleep and anxiety; she pressed her hands flat to her stomach and turned from side to side to look at herself from all angles.

She had not dressed the way she usually did for flying. She wore a cute royal-blue dress of soft fabric and a pair of complementary leggings, along with her favorite pair of black-and-white floral Converse, the ones she’d custom-designed and treated herself to for her fortieth birthday. It was a comfortable outfit, and cute. Flattering. It was sexy if you already liked her, she thought as she smoothed the fabric over her hips. It wasn’t an outfit meant for seduction, even though beneath it she was wearing new lace panties and a matching bra.

Stella drew in a deep breath. She couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever. She washed her hands carefully and dried them, but they were still shaking when she took the handle of her rolling bag and pulled it behind her through the terminal.

Everything seemed brighter, clearer, louder. All the kiosks, the people passing her, intent on their own destinations. How many of them were going to meet their lovers? Longtime or brand-new, how many were on their way to a reunion?

She saw him before he saw her, and was glad of it because it gave her a minute or so to calm herself. This was Matthew, she reminded herself. She already knew him. This was going to be a great visit, she told herself.
Stop worrying, Stella.

He caught sight of her and waved. He pushed through the crowd. And then he was there in front of her.

He was real.

They hadn’t talked about how they’d greet each other—who would? But now Stella wished she had asked him if he intended to kiss her. If she should brace herself for a hug, or if they would simply stare at each other with foolish grins painted all over their faces while everyone around them thought they looked like morons.

Matthew kissed her. A quick peck on the cheek, just at the corner of her mouth. Almost nothing, but then she was in his arms and he was holding her so tight she could barely breathe.

“Hi,” he said into her ear.

Stella found her voice. “Hi.”

They smiled and smiled, and then she pushed up on her tiptoes to angle her mouth across his for a proper kiss. Long, lingering, the quick slip of tongues before she pulled away with flushed cheeks. She hadn’t let go of her carry-on’s handle, and it made standing so close to him a little awkward, but she didn’t want him to let go.

“Hungry?” Matthew asked.

“Starving.” Suddenly, she was. She’d woken just before dawn, too anxious to sleep longer than that. Tristan had been at his dad’s already. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, declined food on the plane. Her stomach was in knots, but at the sight of Matthew’s smile, all the tension had begun to drain away.

He took the handle of her bag from her with one hand, and her hand with his other. Fingers linked, he led her toward the exit. “Breakfast?”

“I can always eat breakfast,” she told him.

“I remember.”

He’d parked in the garage, which was far from empty at this time of morning. Somehow that didn’t matter when he pushed her up against his car and kissed her, hard. Stella’s arms went around his neck, holding him close. The kiss almost bruised her; she didn’t care. They gorged themselves on each other in those few minutes, until her knees got weak and her breath caught so tight in her chest she had to break the kiss or faint.

Matthew pressed his forehead to hers. “You taste so good. It’s all I’ve been able to think about. Kissing you again.”

“Wow.” Stella laughed a little self-consciously. “You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

“Breakfast. I promised you breakfast. I’m a terrible host,” he murmured against her mouth.

“Kiss me just a little longer,” she told him. “And I’ll forgive you.”

He did kiss her, and more than that. Matthew slipped a hand between them to press between her legs. Swiftly, only for a few seconds, but the pressure sparked pleasure through her, and she shivered. The staccato blare of a passing car horn pushed them apart. Matthew looked a little guilty, maybe embarrassed, and Stella gave a mental chuckle. She’d done more than make out in a parking garage before...but she didn’t want to think about what she’d done with other men now. Not when she was standing with this one.

He opened the car door for her, and shut it when she got inside. In the few seconds it took him to round the car and get in the driver’s side, Stella stole a glance in the rearview mirror. Her mouth was wet, lipstick a little smeared, but the weariness that had plagued her expression for the past few weeks had vanished. Bright eyes, pink cheeks. She pushed some stray hair out of her eyes and turned toward him as he got in the car.

“Let’s go, Jeeves!”

“Call me Alfred,” Matthew said. “It sounds better.”

“If you’re Alfred, then that makes me Batman.” Stella made a face. “I don’t want to be Batman.”

“Who doesn’t want to be Batman?” Matthew asked as he backed out of the parking spot and eased his car into the line of others waiting to get out of the garage.

He drove a BMW, Stella realized as she looked at the dashboard and the logo on the glovebox. She hadn’t noticed before, so busy with his mouth on hers. It didn’t impress her, exactly. But it did sort of surprise her. “You should be Batman. Not me.”

“Then does that make you Catwoman?” He shot her a grin.

Stella lifted an eyebrow. “Meow, Bruce Wayne.”

Matthew was not a patient driver. She saw that within the first few minutes as he muttered about the other cars in line and even flipped off, albeit discreetly below the level of the dashboard, one car that cut him off. What she hadn’t been expecting was that he drove like a Nascar racer with something to prove. Once he hit the highway, it was pedal to the metal and no brakes.

Stella tucked her fingers into the door handle, squeezing it. Her other hand gripped the side of her seat. With both feet on the floor, staring straight ahead as Matthew wove in and out of traffic, it took everything she had not to “brake” every time he came up too close behind another car.

* * *

There aren’t many cars on the road this time of night, and in this weather, but the red flash of taillights up ahead reminds her of the lights on Brad and Janet’s Christmas tree. So do the traffic lights up ahead, glowing green, glowing yellow. The orangish-white of the streetlamps overhead. Everything is bright, everything glows, and she tips her head back against the seat and laughs and laughs at how good the world feels. From the backseat comes the shuffle and grumble of two little boys up way too late past their bedtime.

“He’s touching me!”

“He’s looking at me!”

“He took my guy! Mama, make Tristan give me back my guy!”

“Gage,” Stella says, twisting in her seat to shake a finger at him. “Can’t you share?”

Then there is the squeal of brakes, the crunch of metal and glass and everything is cold.

Everything is dark.

* * *

“Hey. You okay?”

She’d closed her eyes against the sudden wave of nausea brought on by memory, too much coffee, not enough sleep, not enough food. Stella looked at Matthew, intending to smile and lie, but the ache in her fingers from where she gripped the door handle distracted her. The road ahead of her swarmed with cars and the flash of taillights, but it wasn’t night. The roads weren’t slick with ice.

Matthew wasn’t going to rear-end a pickup truck and, in turn, be sideswiped by a tractor trailer.

And there were no children in the backseat.

He eased to a stop at a red light at the end of an off-ramp and turned in his seat to put a hand on her leg. “Stella?”

She jumped at the touch, her breathing slowing through force of will, and gave him a weak smile. “You drive really fast.”

“I do?” The light turned green, and Matthew took his foot off the brake, his attention still on her.

“Eyes on the road,” Stella snapped. It was too harsh, she heard that at once. It embarrassed her, and she shut her mouth with a painful click of her teeth.

Matthew had been reaching for her, but now he put both hands on the wheel with a nod, and focused his gaze on the road in front of them. They drove in silence for the next five minutes or so, getting away from the highway and onto local city streets. Each minute that ticked by left her feeling more and more embarrassed about her outburst, until by the time he’d pulled into the parking lot of the diner he’d taken her to last time, Stella was full of anxiety again.

“I’m sorry—” she said as he turned off the ignition, but his mouth on hers stopped more words from coming out.

“No. I’m sorry.” Matthew cupped the back of her neck, his fingers beneath her hair. “You told me about the car accident. I should’ve thought about that. My wife tells me all the time I drive like a maniac.”

Stella didn’t miss the word
wife,
but she didn’t point it out. She let him kiss her. “I’ve gotten a lot better. When I’m driving, I never have a problem. It’s only when I’m in the passenger seat.”

“I understand.” He pushed her hair off her face and over her shoulder.

He didn’t, not really. He couldn’t. Nobody could, not even Jeff, and he’d been in the car too.

“It’s about being in control,” she told him. “When I’m driving, I feel like I’m in control, so it’s okay. But when I’m not, sometimes it all comes back.”

Matthew didn’t say anything, which was the perfect response. He kissed her again, lightly. Then he took both her hands and simply held them for a few minutes until they stopped shaking. “Ready to go in? Or we could go someplace else.”

“No,” Stella said, linking her fingers in his. “This place is perfect.”