ended up in the middle of the aisle, a jumble of arms and legs. The fall hadn’t knocked the air from his lungs, but nonetheless, he found it hard to breathe with her lying on his chest.
“Are you okay?” There was that breathy whisper again, uncertain, a bit nervous. And unless he missed his guess, tinged with an acute awareness of him as a man.
“Okay,” he replied, hating for this moment to end.
“Please take your seats,” a flight attendant said sharply as she rushed over. “And buckle yourselves in.”
“Let me help you up,” Charlize offered, rising to her feet with amazing agility and grace for a woman wearing three-inch heels and a mean pair of stockings.
He almost laughed at the notion of a slender branch like her helping a tree trunk like himself to his feet. But he liked the idea of touching her again, so he put out his hand, which dwarfed hers, and allowed her to tug him.
Quinn pushed against the floor of the plane, and his own momentum brought him to a standing position. The top of her sleek head only came to his armpit. Her hip was level with his upper thigh. She seemed as perfect and delicate as the first butterfly of spring.
Without a doubt she was the most exquisite woman he’d ever met. Her straight blond hair was cut in a polished style and appeared as finely spun as silk. Her complexion was flawless, except for a small scar below her right earlobe. He had an almost overpowering urge to explore that scar with the tip of his tongue.
How he wanted to say something more to her, to do something more with her, but the frowning flight attendant was clucking her tongue and waving at them to take their seats. Charlize scooted past him, her breasts lightly brushing his upper arm, causing a brushfire to leap up his nerve endings, and made her way to her seat.
Kay was practically panting as she clicked the seat belt in place around her waist. Her heart pounded, blood suffused her skin. She couldn’t believe what had just happened and her body’s heated response to a stranger. Touching him had been far more electric, far more satisfying than her wildest imaginings.
She didn’t look up, because she knew he was still standing there staring at her as if he’d been struck with a bolt from the blue. What was the matter with him? Didn’t they have women wherever it was he was from?
“You sure you’re all right?” He squatted in the aisle beside Kay, defying the angry flight attendant, who looked as if she wanted to tie him into his seat but was too quelled by his size to approach.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Please, for your own safety, sit down.”
“If you need me, I’m right behind you.” He touched her wrist with his massive paw, and her blood slipped through her veins like quicksilver. Intense. So intense. If she closed her eyes, she could see the two of them in a forest. Walking. Alone. On a bed of soft, mossy ground. The sunlight flitting through the trees.
Stop it, stop it, stop it. Don’t you dare go into another sexual fantasy, Kathryn Victoria Freemont!
She raised her hand to her face. The hand that had been wrapped in his. She smelled of him. Robust, masculine. Like pine needles, wilderness and soap. A shiver she could not suppress overtook her body. She could easily imagine him back there in his seat watching her with eagle eyes.
What was it about this man that so stirred her blood? What was it that made her feel giddy and girlish and oh-so-happy to be alive?
Kay was kidding herself, and she knew it. Just because he made her feel desirable didn’t mean she was licensed to jump his bones. She didn’t even know the guy’s name. What he made her feel was simply a reflection of her wishful thinking. She wanted rescuing from her life, and he was a convenient escapist illusion.
Because lately, nothing in her current experiences seemed to satisfy her. Not her relationship with her parents, who were pressuring her to marry Lloyd and produce an heir. Certainly not her romance with Lloyd, if you could even call what they had a romance.
Lloyd had proposed to her by email two days ago in a manner as romantic as a root canal. His exact message had been “Your father says he’ll make me partner if we’re married by the end of the summer, guess it’s time to do the deed.”
Whoopee! Sweep a girl right off her feet, why don’t you?
She’d ignored Lloyd’s email, pretending she hadn’t yet seen the missive, because she wasn’t ready to deal with it, and surprise, surprise, he hadn’t even called her in Chicago to see why she hadn’t responded.
And even her job as a reporter for Metropolitan magazine no longer fulfilled her as it once had.
“What happened to you?” she whispered to herself, grateful no one was seated next to her. “In college, you dreamed of writing novels and having adventures and taking a lover that was as kind and considerate and understanding as he was good in bed. Where did that girl go?”
It seemed her entire youth had been spent trying to please Mommy and Daddy and striving to be the perfect Freemont. Her one tiny insurrection had been insisting on studying journalism rather than art history, as her mother had wished.
“Lloyd Post comes from blueblood stock, dear, just like you,” her mother had told her when she called the day before to see if Kay had gotten Lloyd’s emailed proposal. Apparently Lloyd had already discussed it with her parents. Would have been nice if he’d talked things over with her first. “Give his proposition some serious thought. You could do worse than marrying him.”
Hmm, what was worse than binding yourself for life to a man who virtually ignored you for weeks on end? What was worse than until death do you part with a man who didn’t even care where your G-spot was located? What was worse than spending the next forty years beside a guy with whom you had absolutely nothing in common other than the fact you were both filthy rich with impeccable pedigrees?
Let’s see, what was worse than marrying Lloyd Post?
Well, owing money to the Mafia had to be a bummer. Being stranded in the desert with no water wasn’t cool. Having oral surgery wasn’t a blast. So yes, Mommy, you’re absolutely right. There are worse things than marrying Lloyd.
But there were so many better things, too.
Like taking that rugged woodsman to bed?
She tried to picture what would happen if she was to walk into her parents house on Paul Bunyon’s arm and announce they were engaged. Laughable! Even she, of the overactive imagination, could not conceive of such an event.
Helplessly she found her head drawn to the right, her eyes peeping surreptitiously over her shoulder.
And there he was, just as she knew he’d be. Staring at her and not a bit ashamed of his unabashed appreciation.
He was pure testosterone in a huge package that proclaimed, “I’ll never let any harm come to you.” It was a heady promise. Between his protective attitude and his raw animal magnetism, the man oozed an essential sexiness that called to something wild within her. Like a wolf to his mate. Something primal and elemental she hadn’t known she possessed until now.
She deserved to be happy. She deserved to be sexually satisfied, and she deserved far better than settling for Lloyd Post. In reality she knew Paul Bunyon did not figure into her future, but regardless, meeting
