In the clear light of day that was streaming in through the oval window at her left shoulder, Lily reopened her eyes and watched with trepidation as Travis stalked her in her oversized leather seat. His eyes roved over her outfit, and Lily couldn’t help hoping he liked what he saw. She had dressed in one of her few nice outfits, a flirty red dress that Janica had made for her several years back. Lily hadn’t had the courage to wear it before, but as she got dressed after a long, scalding shower she realized she was going to need all the confidence she could get. Evidently Travis had liked her red suit enough to have sex with her in the swimming pool, so she figured red was a good bet. Now, seeing the heat rise in his eyes—thank God he wasn’t totally immune to her, she thought with a rush of pleasure mixed with relief—Lily wished that she owned a few other sexier outfits.
“Hello,” he said, his voice husky and warm.
Lily shivered under his gaze, and he bared his white teeth in a smile so beastly, she almost pushed past him to go lock herself in the bathroom for the duration of the flight.
“Hello,” she replied in a remarkably steady, light voice, even as she wished that she could be so lucky as to wake up to a naked and warm “Hello” in his bed in the near future.
But that, of course, was out of the question given her brilliant plan. Although it was looking less and less likely that she would be able to hold out during their trip, not if she was wet and wanting him in the first five seconds of their flight. That is, she reminded herself with harsh reality, if he even wanted to be with her again.
Five days in romantic Tuscany with Travis was going to be impossible.
The familiar taste of the fear of rejection hit Lily like a brush of cold air, and she shivered, picturing the scene too clearly: Travis hitting on a lovely dark-haired, olive-skinned lady in a bar, while she nursed a glass of wine in a dark corner and tried not to feel ugly and out of place. Travis making passionate love to the lithe, vibrant woman, while she made do with the dildo she had packed and gallons of chocolate gelato. It was all too real. All too possible. All too much like her life had been up to that point.
Travis cut into her negative visions. “Are you cold?” he asked, making no disguise of staring straight at her rapidly hardening ni**les. “Should I get a blanket from the stewardess for you?”
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.